Month: February 2023

Massachusetts’ treasonous coins

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of the many surprises I encountered in researching my book Quaking Dover was the fact that the Puritan authorities in Boston were ready for revolution from the git-go, way before Paul Revere.

I’d like to see more of their history presented from that riotous side.

There were the cannons they set up on Boston Harbor in 1634 to fire on Royal Navy vessels, should they come to follow up on the king’s voiding their charter. As things developed, Charlie the First got distracted from his problems over here and thus those volleys were never fired.

For another example, we can look to the coins John Hull produced from 1652 plus others for the next 30 years, even though the new king, Chuck Two, soon declared the practice treasonous.

Yes, treason. Off with your head or mere imprisonment in the Tower of London, that sort of thing.

Leap ahead, I’m wondering how he would have handled credit cards and their depths of debt and to me, at least, usurious rates.

Looking at some of those figures today, is anyone ready to say “Off with their heads?”

Maybe ancient history isn’t so far back there after all.

On top of it, the colonists had no representation in Parliament. That had to chafe on their identity as Englishmen through and through.

That was compounded by the costs London imposed on the Americans in defending themselves from the attacks by the French and their Native allies in the decades of warfare prompted by petty European royal succession and alliances. The New Englanders were definitely on their own.

A big question is what made the ruling Virginia Cavaliers turn from Loyalist to revolutionaries? Plus, why did it take so long?

How to lose customers, chapter something or other

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Perhaps you’ve called your auto dealer for a service appointment and been surprised to face a two- to three-week wait in the schedule. Yeah, yeah, blame it on the supply chain issues and the worker shortage.

Our nearest franchise has responded by limiting appointments to cars purchased there. Everyone else can be put on a waiting list, should a cancelation create an opening. Never mind that I’ve been a loyal customer for two years since moving from New Hampshire.

What miffs me is that when I bought my car before the opportunity for our relocation developed, my choice of the American-made brand was based on an awareness that it was the core of the only new-car dealer in Washington County. Its nearest competition is 2½ hours away or somewhere over in Canada.

I’ve been happy with the service department, even if it is a haul up the highway and back. Frankly, though, the car itself has left me wishing I’d stayed with Toyota.

Adding fuel to the fire is the coupons for discounts that show up in my inbox, sent from Detroit but applying only to the brand’s service departments.

Instead of encouraging me to buy my next vehicle there, I’m feeling ill will. In today’s business world, that’s not a good thing. You spend a lot on advertising to get a new customer. Maintaining an ongoing relationship is much cheaper.

As for those annoying “How are we doing” surveys that show up after an appointment, I do wish I’d get one now so I could say just how peeved I am.

Feeling vulnerable all the same

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

LIVING AGAIN IN AN OLD LIMESTONE dorm, had a room in each of two or three buildings, under the pretense of opening some kind of retail store in all but one. For some reason, though, none of the doors would lock; or if they were locked, they wouldn’t hold. Anybody could push in. I was greatly annoyed – after all, I couldn’t be everywhere at once; besides, I had to be away for classes and the library, too, even though nobody actually broke in.

On the way back to one of the dorms, I saw a two-story building that had smoke rolling out of its windows – “Oh, no! It’s the firehouse!” – and then bright flames licked from the structure.

Poetic justice, perhaps, more than alarm – and relief wasn’t our building.

OUR building?

 

I RETURN TO MY APARTMENT, which is at the bottom of a staircase in a carpeted basement. The apartment is essentially one room, with the door in the corner and a panel of windows along the hallway – a commercial feel to it, like a small store. But as I approach with a friend, we realize the door is agape – and everything has been cleaned out, except for my violin case and same papers atop the closet. Somehow, I’m not disturbed by all the loss.

This leaps to something from another set of dreams, the door latch that will not lock – which has been the case in this apartment. “They” finally got me, and that’s it. Except it’s somehow also liberating.

This came the morning after our trip to IKEA, with all of its designer small-scale apartments, and my unexpected surge of feelings of poverty no doubt arising from my sudden “retirement” with its accompanying issues of finances that still need to be addressed. So who was with me? You? Even so, I felt insured … and that all my creative work and notes could be recovered. That, before clothing and kitchen ware!

Our Coast Guard icebreaker

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When the icebreaker Thunder Bay visited Eastport last summer, I wondered why the Northeast would need one. And then I learned about the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers this time of year, as well as the mighty Hudson. Yes, they ice up even in the navigable tidal stretches.

Here’s how the Penobscot Narrows look from the observatory atop the Fort Knox bridge:

As for romantic attraction?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, this is the big day for roses and chocolate and those mood-drenched candlelight dinners. Let’s put it all in some perspective.

  1. Historically, it overlaps an ancient three-day Roman festival that included drunkenness, nudity, sacrifices of dogs and goats, and slapping by goatskins intended to heighten fertility. It was something the early church tried to deflect by invoking Saint V.
  2. As for the saint? The bio gets mysterious. Did the man really exist? Or was it eight?
  3. The oldest printed card, 1797, cited a day the sender desired to “be your Valentine.” Whatever that meant.
  4. The Quaker Cadbury chocolate company introduced the Valentine’s Day heart-shaped box in 1861 but failed to register the design. Copycats soon piled on.
  5. About a billion cards are sent for Valentine’s Day every year, second only to the 2½ billion at Christmas.
  6. Nasty cards have also been part of the tradition. Ever get a “vinegar Valentine”? Anyone else intrigued?
  7. It’s big business – by one count, $27 billion pre-Covid, with candy – mostly chocolate? – the biggest gift, followed by cards, roses, romantic dinners, and, for ten percent of recipients, jewelry. Not that you’re limited to just one category. And I’m not sure if the ranking is by the quantity of each one or by the amount spent.
  8. As for that jewelry? Much of it takes the shape of engagement rings – with six million being presented on the day every year.
  9. In Japan, women are expected to give the chocolate.
  10. Teachers receive the most cards, maybe because children age six to ten, exchange the three-fifths of the cards overall.

So far, I haven’t found perfumes, love potions, or aphrodisiacs on the list.

 

A few diamond jubilee reflections

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Yeah, a big Seven Five. Amazed I’ve survived so long, considering much of the stress and upheaval earlier.

The achievement comes with a burden of feeling I’ve failed to accomplish so much of what was expected of me – even without appropriate resources or support – as well as an amazement at the twists my life has taken along the way.

Perhaps that’s a generational issue many of my peers feel. Please weigh in.

Meanwhile, the serious political crisis in America’s future leaves me feeling utterly terrified. Quite simply, we failed to preserve the republic, with the assault coming not from a Commie left but rather by the know-nothing, no-saying, me-first, destroy-it-all right – those who would conserve nothing, despite the label they cling to. Along with their superrich allies.

Let me admit that at one point in my development I would have claimed to have been a Goldwater Republican. These folks are way to the right of that, like the hoards that destroyed Rome.  Yes, ready to sack and ravage. Could they be the dreaded zombie hoards awaiting in the ultra-wacko wing?

I was amused recently by a Project Runway Junior’s challenge that had the teens trying to define themselves (blame my beloved elder stepdaughter for my even watching the streamed series). How would I have seen my core at age 14 or even 17? Quite simply, I’d say we were all so confused.

So here I am, once again pondering how we ever wound up in this state.

Me, back as a cub reporter.

Personally, it’s been what I’ve seen as a zig-zag journey, building from what I heard in a poetry reading by John Logan in the very early ‘70s.

Much of what evolved in my encounters can now be found in my novels and poems, though my last third – and most fulfilling – years are yet to be expressed, apart from flashes here at the Red Barn.

In short, I’ve moved far beyond my expectations of things like Paris Review and the haute literary scene or some upper middle-class comfort.

There were 25 years in my native Ohio, most of them early but with two returns to other corners, one in my 20s and another a decade later. But they ended in ashes.

To my surprise, there are 42 years in the Northeast, 36 of them in New England. Well, technically Maryland isn’t quite Northeast but as Eastern Seaboard, I’ll include it.

Throw in four years in the interior Pacific Northwest, four in southern Indiana, and a season in eastern Iowa.

Plus a childhood I’m finally admitting was dutiful, not “happy.”

Two years later, between southern Indiana and Upstate New York,

Many people my age find themselves living more and more in the past. I, in contrast, want to live more and more in the present – having dug out through so much of what has guided me here, to the easternmost sliver of the continental U.S.

When I’m 80, I will have lived half of my life in the Northeast.

Unless another twist pops up before then.

And two years after that, as a young yogi running a mimeograph printer.