Beyond the canyon, mostly

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When it came to the great outdoors for us, the year 1977 early on presented us with a trip that settled in E’burg rather than a few more hours on to Seattle. We found refuge in the Outrageous Taco, a freak center in an old beer hall turned pizza/taco/deli quiet with live music and free poetry journals to circulate … a sense of pleasant decay (a $2 movie nearby) … incense in the air, too. We would return frequently … a good selection of new and used books, too.

Homeward by the Canyon Road, walked over the swinging bridge at Umtanum Creek, Kitty screaming, scared, delighted, a future point for a hike …

~*~

The Yakima River Canyon stretches 27 miles through three major ridges between Yakima and Ellensburg, with summits that rise more than 2,000 feet in places. A railroad and two-lane highway cling to the base beside the river.

In late February, we made our Umtanum ascent, including the bald eagle observation, the first in the valley in 25 years. It was the middle ridge, as I recall, and forms a pivotal chapter in my novel Nearly Canaan.

Thinking of my nature poems … man, the legions of demigods, takes something away, reduces the richness of the land … Nancy Trueblood’s “in the mountains I feel closer to God” … limits the diversity of the species, the expansive quiet, the wonderful circling weaves … in Indiana, my nature poems were often at the edge of the woods — the interface of man, land, and seasons … historical depth where farms sometimes expressed a harmony … a deep cold springhouse, a summer porch … the mountains here, ever green or, like our desert ridge, light brown, are something else … and man adds nothing …

~*~

10 July, Sunday

Drove along Sauk Creek to Stevens Pass … [north of Ellensburg]

Gold-mining remains … introduction to Leavenworth and then the North Cascades …

Leavenworth, with its Swiss Alps festive mood … shame that something similar cannot be created/sustained in “American” or Native authentic theme … maybe something to do with America’s lack of holy rivers and mountains or maybe our flat “Christian” approach to life … (Swiss Calvin not withstanding)

~*~

18 July … apricots gone

~*~

31 July/First-day evening

No entries in a week —

Last Sunday, left early for Seattle (after a midnight Saturday shift) to meet Bill and Mig Dietz and Curtis and Jacquie. The whole port city bit: winos, sailors, loggers, porno shops (me, buying newspapers!), Blacks and students, crowded Sunday parks, jazz. Got to know Curtis better, though their planned North Cascades backpacking got jettisoned by Jacquie’s emergency retinal surgery. His gentleness and humor, plus his Seattle friend Bob Green. Our disappointment with the Seattle art museum, then learning it was cut in half, with anything modern at City Center. The aging freaks and the strangest cats.

Met the Dietzes for dinner at Ivar’s, pier 54. How beautiful these people are. Bill’s ability to melt Kitty’s sharp questioning from Jacquie …

Had salmon, scallops. [Not crab?] The Yakima, a sleek new ferry, in the next pier. Seagulls and seafoam.

Heard of one Friend’s decision to go to Australia, though she didn’t have enough cash to get a visa. Hitched to SF, her first ride was with a trucker who CB’d ahead, starting a chain that got her safely, quickly down the pike — always the next ride waiting. Got to the SF consulate office, sat outside till she got a “hardship” visa. Got her case heard. And went on her way, after staying at Friends House.

The uncommonly filling spirit at our parting. So high, elated from this visit, happy to be together, laughing aloud on our long drive home with a new moon.

~*~

Mount Rainier, photo by William B. Jacobs via Pexels.

Fremont lookout

Rainier National Park

7,200 feet sea level

Kitty joined me in the ascent from Sunrise; thought she’d stop at Frozen Lake but seeing children’s tracks felt shamed into continuing. Amazing Alpine natural gardens …

Clearest day one could hope for: Adams, Goat Rocks sharp view from the trailhead, yet a violet haze layer over Puget Sound from Olympia to Mount Vernon.

Next page a sketched panorama map showing Mount Baker, Glacier peak, and the Stuarts … plus notation, “Olympics a blue ragged line riding above the haze.”

Sitting up here’s just like riding a cloud.

And thus we are cloud-riders being ambushed by ’monks,

the fearless chipmunks attempting to ride our lunch …

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Dreams of publishing poetry bigtime

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the Far East there is a vital, well-read proletariat literature – speaking for a people.

Here, we have intellectuals playing games. Along with populist idiots.

Still, how much of the Far West book scene I knew revolved around poetry-conscious, well-stocked bookstores that were also patrons to readings, broadsides, and small private volumes.

Suppose, now, a poetry journal allied with a bookstore where its authors’ books could be purchased …

This was pre-Internet, which has opened new opportunities, or before I knew of radical publisher and bookseller Giles Calvert and his Black Spread Eagle on Ludgate Hill near St. Paul Cathedral in London, the voice of many early Quaker tracts and volumes.

 

A man defines himself primarily by his position

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I noted:

My mother-in-law sent a copy of the R-T — nothing there but sadness — the only merit to the pages at all were touches I had added: Datebook, Round the Square — a paper the current staff can’t handle …

And then, Friday night, 2 pitchers of beer with Gil, many revelations, that he has his eye on many people and when he gets his own paper, he’ll go after them … and that I’m No. 1 on his list. “It’s almost eerie how you take a project of mine and do what I want and improve on it” … would especially like to see me in a weekend editor capacity, responsible for the whole paper … also, details about the new photographer, as photo chief over Dean / fireworks … desire to revamp the p.m. edition but no idea what the publisher wants … As Gil said to Tippet: “Hodson’s my man, he never was part of the news desk pool” … that Kent can’t stand [fill in the blank], “Every office has the squealers who camp in the boss’ office” … Gil keeps waiting for the bubble to burst, for the dream to fade, but it doesn’t … [how was Kent able to create Gil’s position and then mine?] … In that regard, this was my golden era … not a later leap, back in Ohio, despite its aspirations … I came in there a step too late and D.P.’s fatal blow sent us reeling …

Here, though, our initial changes seem to be working: “We’ve thrown just about everything at you and you’ve improved it all,” as Gill confided in me.

~*~

Early February ’77:

Bummed and surprised after Whiz-Boy’s first slide show at the office and the threatened reaction of the drones, sleepwalkers like Marriott and the admen … the comfort of mediocrity, newspapers dying in their sleep versus the growth and excitement of life and excellence …

Early March:

Awoke at 4:30 despite falling off at 10:30 or 11 at Whiz and Wisteria’s, where we felt the awkwardness of office status distinctions. He was officially a step above me, meaning having dinner with the Kents and Gils the night before and, besides, they get a free membership at the Y.

My wife was secretly resentful, but it’s not a just world.

Monday night, the 4th, at work — everything going well until the end, when heds piled up (Marriott on the rim), meaning we didn’t finish shipping until 12:20, didn’t get off the floor until 1 … bad night, horoscope said it was good day for my career …

The workweek was too long. Arriving at the office on Tuesday, already a day behind. The TV booklet was due out back on Monday. On Friday I lose three hours to the arts section and meetings. No time to breathe in between, no sense of creation. That’s no way to work.

August:

Kent “unveiled” his master plan yesterday — going to a more “magazine” style (my God, how many typographical sins have been committed under that category? How many magazines practice any kind of layout of that order?). Where we had variety, flexibility, we now have one rigid style; where we once kept mediums with mediums, we are now ordered to mix them, not necessarily attractively. … We now have a complex set of directives of what size goes with what hammer, depending on the number of columns used in that instance.

The new plan requires twice the time to perform, and twice the space, of the old …

Surprisingly, Gil was never consulted. Whiz is not a makeup man; Gil is. Gil is supposed to be in charge of the desk. But these orders came down on him as much of a surprise as to the rest of us.

Realize I need to sit back now, just do my job, not offer any help (it’s requested but never used). Let Kent do himself in or split somewhere with Gil.

The entire newsroom reaction: resentment. Fishback’s Q in the staff meeting wasn’t about feature photographs at all. It was about content and guts. Just where are we really going?

Enough of this. Must remember not to pull any “grand plans” when I’m in the place. Take everyone into my confidence.

[One thing I did win here was raising datelines to their own line of type, flush right, in the manner of the New York Herald Tribune.]

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

There was an old farmer who lived in Maine

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Actually, there are a lot of them. A recent Census of Agriculture found that of Maine’s 13,053 farmers, half are over the age of 57½. Not only that, but there are more farmers over 75 than under 35. Do we see a shortage coming soon?

Now, for ten more tidbits.

  1. Four-fifths of the farms are family owned-and-operated. Corporations account for less than a tenth, 677 farms, while another 474 are partnerships.
  2. A bit over two-fifths of the respondents said farming is their primary occupation. The majority of the farmers rely on other jobs or other income.
  3. Women farmers comprise 43 percent of the workforce, 5,638.
  4. As the Census observed, “Male producers had higher rates of involvement in land use and/or crop, livestock, and marketing decisions than female producers. Female producers were most involved in day-to-day, record keeping and financial management decisions.”
  5. USDA-certified organic farms = 412.
  6. Black farmers: 132 operating 2,238 acres.
  7. New and beginning producers = 4,681.
  8. Renewable energy-producing systems in use = 907 farms.
  9. The state leads the nation in wild blueberry production and ranks second for maple syrup, but potatoes lead the way as the largest crop. Other leading agricultural products potatoes, milk and other dairy products, chicken eggs, and floriculture.
  10. Of special interest to Washington County, where I live, was the Maine harvest of 24,735 acres of blueberries on 703 farms in 2022, an increase from 20,473 acres five years earlier.

 

As for our home life?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Our first winter Out West was accompanied by domestic tensions. As I noted:

Sucking, swirling blaze
fire in here, snow on the roof
faintly false smell of burning tea

candy on the table
bulbs in the box
tears on my wife’s cheeks

Also:

inner silence in contrast to the newsmen made of gossip,

bitching, down the drain to sorrow

Kitty’s down: “I don’t belong anywhere!”

Also unhappy with my Chinook “paraphrases” (her term): “write your own stuff.”

When I go back over the Chinook pieces, add my own smart-aleck comments: the evil thing at the door “must be the cops” or Indian agents … BIA … or go free-wheelin’ into myths and texts … go back over the economy thing I’ve been trying to develop, “we’ll all be tent makers.”

Beer as cheap as Pepsi.

 RITUALS, especially on a day free of the office:

  • Rising early, when silence is strong. Or, more lazily, sleeping in, hopefully late.
  • Making coffee, to sip all day using a special mug
  • Reading sacred texts. Followed with the morning paper
  • Cooking. Breakfast. A dinner wine. Candles.
  • Shower.
  • Planting, Weeding. Harvesting. Canning in old glass jars.
  • Washing dishes, cleaning tools.
  • Watering the houseplants.
  • Cleaning the toilet.
  • Returning to a favorite book.
  • Split and stack firewood. Or bring it indoors.
  • Making love, especially when the moon is full.
  • Letting the cat in. And out.

At odds with self: static, knot in lower back.

How dead this living room is without a wood fire.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

I’m delighted to know Indigenous petroglyphs are found here

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Previous posts this year have presented my curiosity in petroglyphs and petrographs even before I relocated to the Pacific Northwest and saw them in the wild. That time in my life was accompanied by a growing appreciation of tribal mythologies, which I believe enhances an understanding of the region’s unique biosphere. Living at the edge of the Yakama reservation meant the ancient stories I was reading were local news.

The Indigenous spirit was something I missed in my dwelling-places since in my moves eastward across the Midwest, Baltimore, and then New Hampshire.

Eastport, however, with its Passamaquoddy legacy and presence, has revived that. The tribe somehow survived oppression and is rediscovering and reclaiming much of its culture, thanks to the pioneering efforts of individuals like the late Wayne A. Newell, who wrote more than 40 books in the supposedly dying Passamaquoddy language before his first book in English in 2021, Kuhkomossonuk Akonutomuwinokot, Stories Our Grandmothers Told Us.

The late Fredda Paul was doing something similar within herbal medicine and healing lore, while also continuing the storytelling tradition. They are both deeply missed.

Tribal historian Donald Soctomah has furthered their work. These days, he’s part of a circle documenting and preserving the local petroglyphs in the face of rising sea levels. His online presentation earlier this year with the Border Historical Society in Eastport had me realizing I may have been overlooking impressions here – many are stippled into the rock surface in a way that they’re visible only early in the morning or late afternoon, especially if the stone is wetted. A video, A Song of the Drum, and several short YouTube videos from Machiasport can be found for free online.

This petroglyph depicts a woman giving birth. It was chipped into rock using smaller stones, a style different than the long incisions made by sharper instruments.

Another wonderful video, Rhythm of the Heart, on the life of birch-bark canoe maker David Moses Bridges, is also available for free online. It’s a moving testimony. He passed way too early.

 

With premonitions as visions in the night

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Vol. 47, starting 29 November 76, was the third tall, tan Citadel … had many poetry drafts and other bits that were eventually published. Now, for a few things that weren’t …

First, an erotic dream a few nights earlier, resigned myself to a wedding feast, mine to a wealthy, rural, landed girl — Quaker family — and, oh, how happy the whole circle was, as if trying to wake me from a heavy sorrow … she had long hair. This dream would haunt me later.

I woke myself, insisting, “But I’m already happily married!”

The farmhouse, set in a grove of solid trees, was a three-story federal style I would encounter six to eight years later in Maryland or Delaware and then, later, in New England.

Also, an erotic dream of Celeste followed the next day, in fact, with a tender letter from her in the mail …

“Got Yule cards out Thurs, only marginals remain.” Guess that means the ones that needed more personal notations.

~*~

Mount Adams, the distant presence to our west, continued to fascinate, perhaps as an emotional anchor for me.

Mount Adams by David Lepore at Pexels.

~*~

In revisiting my journals from this stretch of my life, I’m struck by ways my memories diverged from the timeline recorded in the pages.

I would have insisted, for instance, that the wedding dream took place about two years after leaving Yakima.

On the other hand, the Quaker circle gathered earlier than I sensed.

The office situation was more tangled than I remembered, too.

I’m also more conscious of not having close local connections or friendships in Fostoria, apart from Kitty and her family, and wonder how a local church might have altered that, had I not been such a yogi. Jump ahead, and it becomes apparent that my Yakima contacts, apart from the office, were mostly among transplants, especially our new Quaker circle.

I do wonder, too, if it weren’t Friends, how might I have connected. Unitarian?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

How a new Quaker worship group came together

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

On the 12th, received two pieces of mail. The first, a list of local Friends and their addresses from University Meeting in Seattle.

The second, a letter from Swami urging me to stop procrastinating and return to the ashram.

A perplexing, even symbolic, clash but neither to be taken lightly. Especially a message from one’s guru stated directly and forcibly. Yet my guru-of-gurus, my heart, is not there. I am not ready to answer beck-and-call, to go back to a single trunk, to do no personal writing (or submissions). I have taken on responsibilities and opportunities here and perceive a need for Yoga/Quaker alternative to fundamentalist jangling, even before considering possibilities Native poets and others offer to my outlook.

Then yesterday received a challenging, derogatory rejection from Loon, as if to say, “Why are you bothering to write?”

24:X:76

Cold, damp, in a Binghamton mood / my aura dark gray, the one who has known God and is now out-of-light yet sitting in the morning, lifting me away …

And then a strange call from Tacoma Friends … me sounding phony yet happy to hear from another …

The 2nd Yakima Quaker gathering, my first, came after 17:XI … the phone number and directions for Tom and Carol’s …

Out Summitview to 74th, turn right up a grade with orchard on right, straight to end and take a left, West Lincoln going west a half-mile, starts to up over irrigation canal, a T go left, PRIVATE DRIVE DO NOT ENTER, around crush rock, past house under construction, the only house on left, go up to 2nd driveway, park on (?)

The Meeting here started worshipping in September, as if by my prayer … once a month, initially, with potluck and children …

21:XI:76 … got a letter from Tacoma Meeting and a call from Seattle Sunday night (arranging to be there).

Continuing 21:XI:76, first mention of Zenny and Bloom, who stayed over at our place … she was happy to have a shower, since they have neither a shower nor electricity yet on their blackberry farm … the house was uninhabited 11 years, in the woods with a wood-stove …

Kitty realized, from talking to them, how middle-class we’ve become — she’d been wondering (from her coworkers) if we were really strange

Extended talks with Zenny, and his Buddhist background, explored fronts of reconciliation between Yoga/Zen and Quaker traditions, “Eastern paths Quaker stumbled onto by fits and starts but without full knowledge of what it had discovered”

Also, how much wasted time in becoming convinced! How much unnecessary agony! How many fall away who could be helped by clearer direction?

So much bad information / misinformation is floating around out there!

Also raises matters of theatrics or colors rather than heart-essence. All around. (For Friends, the thees and thous or Quaker Oats figure.)

Already, I was glimpsing how the “Christ trap,” as I saw it, as Lord and Savior leads into “salvation” and “sinners” and the shallowness of “I’ve found it!” In this line of thinking, Friends were left vulnerable to the Methodist/Baptist pickings, depleting Quaker ranks.

Many seekers in Christian veins have been turned away by verbose non-answers (Fox: how they turn upon themselves), shallowness, lack of compassion, exploitation of man and nature (including persecution of others), and self-righteousness.

Yes, Jesus was divine. But what about others, too? “If I understand Friends correctly, all men are divine,” including women and children. (Today I would add that many turn their backs on it and despise it.)

Quaker faith is Christian and more. Sitting in silence returns us to our own hearts, our truest guru.

I do not mean book learning but rather the practice between a teacher and student, leading to an awareness within the student of his own God-nature, regardless of whether the term “God” enters into it (in many ways, the Quaker term “Light” is far better — no images of the Sunday School

[Today I’m surprised how closely these early observations develop into LightSeedTruth.]

29 nov, note another letter from Swami Lakshmy, for money (again) and questioning increasingly deeply …

Need for sacrifices, even though we are not making it financially — in fact, most of my pay steps from Fostoria have gone into rent (from $50 a month to $135 ti $275) and then into art supplies, food, and clothing … the car still the same …

4:XII:76 still bummed out by Swami’s (increasingly) harsh/strident letters, because I was already in the midst of a what-am-I-doing-here contemplation in the weeks before and been suffering root rot regarding writing — a dry, dryest of hearts: loss of laughter) …

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.