Some quivering in the newsroom

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

At this point, I’m not sure exactly when ActionNW was launched as weekly tabloid insert focusing on outdoors activities and opportunities, everything from hiking and camping to hunting and fishing and rodeos and travel, especially daytrips.

I do know that it soon became one of my responsibilities at the paper, Noted on 10:III:77, eight months after my arrival, “ActionNW preprinted today — I finally changed the format, raw-wraps [ragged right] and quote-outs. Oxford rules atop the pp. A cram-jam job that worked, and I’m happy.”

Obviously, we weren’t doing a lot of discussion before each edition. It really was seat-of-the-pants, like so much American journalism.

Over time, it would become the closest I would have to running a magazine … I took some inspiration from the Sunday Herald Tribune’s New York section. Yes, the Sunday magazine continues long after the newspaper itself folded.

I also found a letter of recommendation I wrote for a photojournalist buddy: “He sets high standards for himself and uses his art as a means of maintaining a state of constant discovery about life itself. As a result, he has deep influence on many of his colleagues.” Little would I know the eventual downfall …

Goz, bringing in a Time magazine review to Wren, pointed out: journalists as novelists seem to lack plumage. They cannot make their sentences dance, they cannot make them spin with magic.

Sounds like so many of the rejections I’ve been collecting.

James Michael Gosney, 79, died Nov 7, 2017. He was a sportswriter we tasked with the lead stories in ActionNW before giving him a daily column he used to profile everyday locals …

~*~

Noted on 30:VI:77, full moon: Maurie retired today — reception party at the office, surprise party later — new suit, everything like a high school graduation …

Officially, he was news editor of the afternoon edition … died March 16, ’92, in Yakima nursing home, I find now …

A sweet guy, as I recall … pretty much semi-retired already …

Was this another opening for me?

[How much I was oblivious to what was popping up around me or my threat to others and their existing order.]

So during this stretch I had Mondays off … allowing me an “outdoors day” free of the weekend crowds …

In mid-August: With a Wednesday off work, I slept till 11. Who needs 11 hours sleep? I had set the alarm for 6.

Wednesday, I shift back to two weeks of night labor, wondering how Tippet will accept my presence over him …

Friday night, after work, stopped at the Lewisville (a log cabin tavern) for a pitcher with Whiz and Jeff. Goz dropped in after a glut-out on escargot and Reisling. He and I talked out back till 3:30 under half moon and clouds after the tavern closed. He wondered about the value of it all, “Am I a good writer?” Answering himself, no, but later, yes, reflecting on the joy he’d given old men with one piece.

“Hooper, he was a good editor. Could really make a piece sparkle. But you, Mr. Hodson, have a touch that may be better.”

~*~

How many times have I not done something because I know from news stories how dangerous the time/place/action is?

How much have I never done because I was doing my job instead?

~*~

A really bad night at the office, when Macknicki and I were suddenly far behind after the new copy courier had dumped all of the UPI perforated tapes because the machine had gone bad. Perton swearing he’d never seen things so bad, copy piled up, etc.

Yes, I was dead when Kitty came home and was pissed I slept late the next morning.

Notes of frustration, having to cover for Mrs. Stone plus a farm tab on top of what was already too much …

~*~

22 Nov., morning, I note working two weeks of day slot (the afternoon edition), which even means getting Thanksgiving Day off … (Hurray!)

And then our HR administrator noticed Mrs. Stone was 15 minutes late the day she “fell” … um …

[slackers]. And thus to can or ax a bounder can become natural, to make the forest come to climax or to fulfill its own — to bump them off keeps the youngest saplings from starving.

16:XII: Worked night shift, came home, my wife within, the little house seemed so sad, even from the distance.

At work, two-paragraph story, conductor Thomas Schipper had died, of cancer, age 47. I had almost played his recording of Rossini’s Stabet Mater today as a requiem for Nosmo. How strange.

~*~

Gil’s leaving, for Woodbury, NJ, and a daily of his own, yet our sense of loss and reassurance, Whiz and me.

Gil telling me how Kent’s a bit afraid of me, thinks I’m unpredictable, too independent for his taste — how the back shop claims I’m indecisive (what I get for being considerate of them).

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

With yellow bursting in the grass

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

“Those yellow flowers, what do you call them? They are so beautiful.”

“We call them weeds.”

The Frenchman cannot understand our reaction to dandelions.

Still, a sparrow carefully picks at the puffs bit by bit for breakfast.

A jerk here, tug there, then swallowing. And flies away.

~*~

Summer Full Out:

Kat smoking her new pipe

~*~

Nosmo:

Our four-legged asshole
an input-output equation
hops on our bed
tears at the carpet
leaps nearly three feet at eleven weeks
stinks terribly
goes after moths
when we call, he comes
“He’s really a dog”
“He’s really a pest”

 

Sometimes we went camping together

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The year 1977 presented us with several memorable treks that included camping.

In early May came this entry:  2nd day of my first real vacation in two or four years … about to set forth on the Olympic Peninsula camping trip … in that cumbersome umbrella tent, smelly but with odors that stirred much within me …

The experience evolved into my longpoem, American Olympus.

The place is a cosmos of its own, one we explored before the summer crowds flocked in.

Pacific Ocean coastline along the Olympic Peninsula. Pexels photo by Landon.

 

Photo by Mario Tutic at Pexels.

 

Rainforest by Alex Moliski at Pexels.

~*~

 Meeting campout the weekend of June 5, Meeks Table, elevation 4,200 feet …

Nathan Trueblood, 7, in his dad’s Cub Scout shirt … Indianola, Iowa …

Recorder music resounding at twilight …

Great worship atop the butte …

Prickly pear cactus on the way home

My sit focused on a feeling that people should strive for excellence, constantly making an effort to expand, grow, produce their best, but then feeling it contrary to faith, in which God gives all, that the way may unfold — like bees, birds, grasses, with ease and faith (the child). But then realized that every tree in nature survives by effort, by striving to stand (in light), that many seeds fail (may eaten or trampled), that even the biggest fall, are cut, get blight and die (silver snags, silver forests, or become nurse logs) …

~*~

And then, 26 jun 77, First-day:

Workt long hours (1 p.m. to 1 a.m. yesterday to get the Sunday paper out: breaking a new guy in for the rim)

Today, woke at noon at packed for camping, off to Adams. Kitty resistant, her tension fighting me (don’t go, don’t leave me) …

Stopped at Maryhill, place to honor a minor queen (as if a movie queen), mostly mediocre art, save Rodin studies, some glass, Russian icons, and Native collections …

Tonight, Morrison Creek camp, wondering if we have enough gasoline to get out tomorrow (on empty) … learned later this was rattlesnake infested …

Mountains white as moonlight … even in the day.

Mount Adams from a cherry orchard. Photo by Chukar Cherries orchard via Wikimedia Commons.

Glacier-clad Mount Adams dominated the western horizon of the valley, peering over 6,000-foot-ridges of the Cascades, though it was more than 50 miles away. The summit was, however, much harder to approach than Mount Rainier, some 2,000 or so feet taller.

After spending the night camping in a high-country grove in what we later learned was rattlesnake-infested, we explored the alpine edge of the mountain, where I collected two elk vertebrae.

Then we packed up the Bug and coasted down, out of the mountain, tank on empty. Silently, wildly rolling. Found a Chevron station at Trout Lake but lady afraid to fill it, tank under the front hood.

Back home, via the Horse Heavens heights and their barley expanses:

So many stars familiar constellations vanish. The awesome addition of the unexpected.

Perseid showers: fat, brilliant streaks sometimes long, others dim, thin; fast flashes or slow particular dissolves. Such variation.

Pure cold fireworks.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Bodies of water attract us, naturally

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Walking along rivers, lakes, and ocean shores seems to have healing powers for the soul. Just consider.

  1. “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” — Loren Eiseley
  2. “Rivers run through our history and folklore, and link us as a people. They nourish and refresh us and provide a home for dazzling varieties of fish and wildlife and trees and plants of every sort. We are a nation rich in rivers.” — Charles Kuralt
  3. “To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.” — Barry Lopez
  4. “The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world.” — Zhuangzi
  5. “Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?” That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.” — Herman Hesse
  6. “I’m an old-fashioned guy… I want to be an old man with a beer belly sitting on a porch, looking at a lake or something.” — Johnny Depp
  7. “When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
  8. “There’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.” — Sarah Kay
  9. “Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.” — Zora Neale Hurston
  10. “Despite the ferocity of the current, a river is always moving but it’s always in the same place. And much like a river, while we should surge forward with great ferocity, our principles should never move.” — Craig D. Lounsbrough

 

As if in another life or lifetime …

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

She’s sick of herself and everything she touches. So I noted.

In early March, while we were still living in town: Sometime today, water began filling the irrigation canal along the hill and the new massive house where the sun destroyed the grass now has all of its sprinklers spraying no matter their son playing professional football.

Apparently, we were visiting the Dolphs at their new orchard.

we are all nearly homeless
hoping for anchors
within our own time

[or: attached to our lines]

CHRONIUM DOWNPOUR

~*~

On 3:IV:77, started a new journal notebook, Vol. 48, Progress 100 sheets, 12 ½ by 8 inches college ruled … tan/kraft cover …

As I recorded, “It’s all here in the solitaire deck — the origin of statistics — all those crazy rules I never quite understood in statistics class — so obvious here before me — bell curve, for starters — the addiction of hands, feel of the shuffled cards, the electric knowledge that there are still undealt cards, in the random orders, with the anticipation of the one that will do it. The sense of yet unmoved faces that could make this hand go down, yes this one, will do the trick. And all those maybes — balance, in numbers and colors, highs and lows, latent moves — aces, kings, and deuces … it’s all there …”

[So I was getting hooked to the game long before I’ve thought]

Palm Sunday, partial lunar eclipse of the full moon. [Are lunar eclipses always full moon?]

Getting her back into the Sunday bed, long, languorous love-making, continuing past climax, slow and warm, in many positions through the morning …

That afternoon, at Gils’ once again sensing the futility of trying to find “the good life” in alcohol and horses, Whiz so loud, Wisteria’s conversation so much about things, my trying to extricate from books and type into my whole-self … back home going for a wind-fighting bicycle ride, my leg muscles taut …

Whiz trying so hard to make everything loving, caring, brimming with feeling — somehow reflecting a fear of his own empty hunger …

Hmm, like that phrase “empty hunger” … in contrast to the stone?

Gil had a cat named Mousetrap …

~*~

On her birthday, the first of her rejecting me because of her painful vaginal/uterus itching …

Do I blame pantyhose?

~*~

Saturday before Easter …

Earlier notations of impending drought now come to the fore …

White apple blossoms already open, earliest ever; prior record was 20th of the month. Now the fearful frost watch …

Everywhere, irrigation sprinklers squirting, using the water while they can …

~*~

Realized how much Whiz and Wisteria ape us … for instance, buying a chess board when neither of them plays. In two weeks they’ll act as though they know the Olympics once we’ve said we’re here …

~*~

Nothing much grew there without irrigation. Here’s one major canal diverting water to orchards from the small Yakima River, essentially snowmelt from the southern Cascades Range mountains. Water rights are a legal issue largely unknown in the eastern half of the U.S. My political science guru Vincent Ostrom was an authority on the matter. Finally, it was registering on me.

~*~

Early June:

Back from Tinowit powwow

dancers in angel wings
and Allan Ginsberg’s 50 already

The thinners — man and three women — floppy sun hats, loose dresses waving in the breeze — coming down from the ladders for dinner, chattering in Spanish, their movement like a dance

Also had just read Ecotopia the first time …

Late brunch today at Frasu’s at the airport (I didn’t get out of bed till one) — champagne part of the deal. Stopping to see Wisteria, Abell’s grown, rolls sideways, barks at dogs, cows, birds, and cats, and plays with balls. Laughs at subtle surprises, like when it’s caught or bounces on his head or disappears. A pleasant Sunday afternoon.

Learned how Hamilton lost his watch — gambling with a subject. Then tried to buy a new one at Penney’s, “Like to look at a Seiko under $35,” but the clerk just walked away. Next day he returned but the clerk wouldn’t accept his check. Called the manager, who demanded three pieces of identification before approving the check. At which point, Jeff took the watch off his wrist, said “Wait a minute, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve been treated rudely,” and then took his check back and ripped it up. The clerk looked wounded, as if “not me.”

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Let’s catch up on recent releases

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My weekly offerings at my free digital bookstore, Thistle Finch editions, include some remarkable new entries gleaned from our ongoing journals review.

There’s the Chronicle, Antiques Dealer, profiling a woman who saw deeply into the landscape she adopted. I do miss her.

Another Chronicle, Shakers and Me, has me now reflecting on a late friend who had held extensive conversations with Eldress Bertha, one of the last Shakers; I urged him to set the exchanges down on paper, to no avail. Yet a few he mentioned still echo. What I present here could be a prelude.

Still another Chronicle, On the Rock Wall, underpins the petroglyphs and petrographs I would later see firsthand in the Pacific Northwest.

I am fond of Scenes From a Life, prose sketches of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

And then there’s Sue’s Bread Recipe. Yes, learning to bake loaves was one of my lessons in the yoga ashram, one that led to hundreds or maybe thousands later. Here’s what Little Sue introduced to me.

If that weren’t enough, there are the poetry broadsides Within a Bigger Order, Kansas and Kyoto, and Bronx to Brooklyn (about someone I’d still love to talk to once more).

Put them together and I think you’d have a great magazine. Well, I am open to letters to the editor.

 

As our circle connected and stretched

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the morning, beside the fire, Kitty said if we were still in Indiana, we’d be at Meeting right now, which spurred thoughts of friends and places. Then Carol Grow phoned, to say the Dolphs had friends/guests coming from Oregon and we’d meet at 8 — no potluck, just what turned out to be good, deep energy.”

Was this Smitty Young Bear?

Ivar noting “something strange” in the Valley, the lack in most of it of older, well-maintained structures — instead, the use of trailers, storefronts, a “boom town” attitude … we were also into a deep drought.

The Scotts, of Ellensburg, home from sabbatical … they’re highly regarded and outgoing … but their son is dying, something that returns them to Friends after backing off for years — burned too often, too much standing up for conscience, let somebody else do it …

In short, the Quaker gathering was becoming the center of our social world.

 As I noted 6:III:

Meeting growing closer, deeper, with strong, invisible bonds … a beautiful, loving communion … speaking initiated by Louie’s strange, deep, loving, and troubling speaking … our next meeting will be at their place … where I would pick up what I thought was a curious white, striated and very heavy rock from their mantelpiece only to be told it was a mastodon tooth …

On 17 apr:

Meeting in E’burg, in the morning, at Joe and Myrtle Wilkening’s … they can’t come Sunday nights but mornings or Saturdays are good … also got the address for another place to meet here, through them …

Later, we stopped at the Dolphs’ on our way back from a salmon bake in Toppenish we couldn’t find. Cut asparagus along the canal banks. Learned their little tenant shack is up for rent. Now, trying to find the courage to move in there … smaller but much, much cheaper …

At home, finding an ad in Crossroads, another couple sitting for Meeting … called them and learned of two other couples. So our Quaker circle here, in a single day, has grown by half again, if we arrange ourselves …

~*~

Ten days later, we were half-moved into the little house … and trying to cut back to fit into it …

So the move took place at the end of April? I would have placed it a month a letter, from memory.

The move put us much closer to the earth and agriculture that were so essential to the existence of the county. It would also spur much of the action in my novel, Nearly Canaan. It brought me closer to the culture and ecology of our environment.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Bear-hunting in mythology, not so far back

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The Hunter is typically a male, an image of strength and tribe. In this case, Truckers.

Citizens’ Band radio, take a totem, new name for self:

  • Wildcat
  • Canadian Redhead
  • Blue Marlin (a Chevy van)
  • Kentucky Kid
  • The Illinois Playboy
  • Bluebeard
  • Old Dutchman
  • Bumblebee

with a talking stick / in your hand, in the air / at the wheel of an 18 / yes, eighteen-wheeler

Sometimes talking four-wheeler, too:

“Four-wheeler, she’s clear”

that is, not a Bear

“Ya got ears”

“Keep an eyeball out for”

~*~

Time check
Road check

~*~

“At 205, Eight-O
westbound Bear flipping around”

~*~

“Green stamps” are dollar bills
(reflecting store promotion trading stamps
of the time)
hence, “on the green stamps”
means turnpike tolls
perhaps bridges, too

~*~

“Was you in Harrisburg Pee A last night?
I was a-talkin’ to you”

~*~

In Gilligan’s Island, meaning Ohio
during Governor Gilligan’s term

“The Bears got seventy-five dollars out of me,
lost you,” meaning fine paid

A rig is reported doing “a roly-poly,” that can’t be good.

The signoff of departing or divergent interchanges:

  • “Have a good trip”
    “Don’t feed no Bears”
    “Catch you all later”

Wonder where they all are now.

Just where was I … in life?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

 As I noted in February, ‘77:

Beginning my 30th year. [I wouldn’t turn 30 for another year. It’s just that you start life at age 1, not zero.]

Quaker Meeting in our house last night, 17 in our little place [in town], Ward’s observation, “This is a comfortable room.”

Swiss-born Louis Ulrich spoke of gearing up to ascend Mount Stewart again, “a cure or a kill.” He was in his late 70s at that point. The mountain summit rises 9,415 feet above sea level and is notorious for its rugged steep sides.

“How are you going?”

“Up my gully.”

Otherwise known as Louie’s Couleur on the official maps. He was in the trio that made the first known ascent to the summit, pioneering his technical-climbing route.

As I would discover, beyond Wenatchee and Leavenworth two hours to our north:

Enchantment Lakes Wilderness Area at Mount Stuart, photo by Jeffrey Pang. via Wikimedia Commons.When we had Meeting in Louis and Anna’s home, I was drawn to a curiously striated large rock on their fireplace mantel. It was the size of a bowling ball but much heavier. Turns out to be a mastodon tooth found on one of his outings.

~*~

Throughout our valley, set up next to the mountains, there was great concern about drought, especially the lack of snowfall, which was the source of the irrigation water.

As I noted from one trek:

The Wildcat is not raging … despite a snow shower off in the mountains …

Or, regarding the Lady in the White Continental: And since there was no snow at White Pass she took the twins and flew to Switzerland.

Thing is, she can’t ski.

Well, I’m now thinking the twins soon became Olympic skiers.

~*~

People think of writing, perhaps especially poetry, as work but here I’m seeing more the frustration when it’s constipated.

Much later, I would come to see the practice of writing crossing over into prayer.

~*~

What I couldn’t see was how much change was about to occur in the multiple fronts of my life in the coming months.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.