Author: Jnana Hodson

In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.

Here I am living in a most photogenic terrain

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Others have pointed out that most of the places I’ve resided in have been rich in natural beauty. While I’ve dampened that with an argument that you can find beauty wherever you are, or at least visual stimulation, I do have to concede how rarely that’s the case.

Many places, in fact, are brutal on the eyeballs.

Part of the attraction to Eastport for me was, after all, its access to wilderness and a rugged shoreline. Good shots seem to be waiting everywhere.

It shouldn’t be surprising that I’m overwhelmed by the number of solid photos I’ve been taking. How on earth is one supposed to organize them, much less share them?

It’s not like the old days of light meters, F-stops, film, or even focus, either.

Digital makes it a snap. All you have to do is look and see something.

And, yes, sometimes the camera – or cell phone – sees something more.

Eastport is a pedestrian-friendly village with old houses and storefronts, meaning more variety and detail than you’d find in the average drive-by suburb. It’s surrounded by forests, shorelines, and streams that present more opportunities. No wonder we see people pointing their lenses everywhere, and not just for selfies.

Where are all of these images going to go, anyway?

Turn around and it’s history

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We were watching a movie the other night, one from the early ‘90s, I believe, and I realized most viewers probably didn’t recognize what the rotary-dial phone was, much less the busy signal.

It’s the sort of detail I had to watch carefully in revising my novels about the ‘60s, ‘70s, and even later, and it’s something I have to address in much of my poetry, especially when I’m reading pieces to a younger audience. Like the time I had to describe “transistors,” which were as big a leap forward as microchips a bit later.

Quite simply, authors of “contemporary” fiction are unintentionally writing history. Life is changing that fast.

On a related front, I comprehend very little of the dialogue in the online serials and movies we’re streaming. They’re not sentences with subjects, verbs, or supporting color. They’re often not even logical, in a traditional sense. They’re even contradictory. I certainly couldn’t recreate it.

I first noticed it back in Dover when listening to the young lifeguards together and wondered how on earth I’d diagram their communications.

Even worse, I hate feeling left out. Is there even a trail to follow? Anyone else with me here?

Forget what you think you know about pirates

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The popular image, shiver me timbers, comes straight out of Disney.

To set the record straight:

  1. They didn’t punish people by making them walk a plank blindfolded. Instead, the victims were killed immediately or keelhauled – tied to a rope and dragged behind the ship.
  2. They didn’t say “Ahoy!” or “Matey!” I’m not so sure about “Argh!”
  3. Female pirates had to disguise themselves as men to protect themselves. But, by some accounts, there were many of them.
  4. Forget the buried treasure. And their loot was often something other than gold or jewelry.
  5. In fact, maps and some books were more treasured as booty than gold.
  6. Captains were elected and could be removed. Who would have thunk?
  7. The eyepatch wasn’t to hide a missing eye but rather to allow for rapid visual adjustment between above deck and below. Anyone want to try that for verification?
  8. Conditions aboard a pirate ship were often more civilized than those on merchant vessels, where lousy rations and low pay were often common.
  9. The skull-and-crossbones Jolly Roger wasn’t the only terrifying pirate flag, by far. How about Black Bart’s one having himself holding an hourglass with the Devil? Or Captain Low’s blood-red skeleton standing at the ready?
  10. Pirates still flourish today, especially in the Indian Ocean and parts of the Pacific.

Well, Eastport’s annual pirate weekend festival’s coming up. We’re bracing for the invasion.

Clammed up pun

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We’ve driven past the site countless times without noticing the motto on the now abandoned motel and restaurant. Oh, shucks.

Here’s the stone dam behind it, its pond long drained, built for the famed iron works in Pembroke in 1832. Here it’s seen from away from the U.S. 1 highway.

 

Johnny Appleseed was really a preacher

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

More accurately, John Chapman, who distributed Swedenborgian church tracts with those packets of seeds all along the American frontier of his time.

As was William Penn, on the Quaker side, largely still confined in old England.

It’s curious how individuals’ religious motivations get excised from the sanitized histories.

The Book, or Bible, if you prefer, is filled with a lot of revolutionary vision for those who want to reclaim and then pursue its fulfillment.

So starting with apples, which do get a bad but undeserved rap at the beginning of the epic, seems a fitting place to begin.

End of sermon. For now.

We have four principal towns in Way DownEast Maine

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

They’re Calais, Eastport, Lubec, and Machias. Or the other way around, depending on how you’re driving or sailing.

Like pearls on a string, one that hugs the coastline of vast Washington County.

The image of four anchors arrayed along a map makes sense, each one with its own distinctive attraction.

Their combined population comes to barely eight thousand.

The terrain around here is much more real than Acadia, for sure, if you’re the least bit interested in the Real Maine.

Gratitude to the public library

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Dover’s public library has been quite proactive in developing an online presentation of the city’s historical profiles and images. I’ve found those resources to be very useful for fast checks when drafting these posts and related material, for certain.

Its dark-hued historical room upstairs is a treasure chest of local lore, as I discovered decades ago chancing upon Dover’s Quaker family records serialized in the fat volumes of the New Hampshire Genealogical Record, 1903-1909. They’ve since been keyboarded and made available online, if you Google, though I’m still relying on my photocopies.

In time, as a library cardholder, I even had online access to U.S. Census records from home in the wee hours. What a privilege!

If it weren’t for the Covid restrictions and my relocation to far eastern Maine, I’d like still be digging around on the top floor there. I certainly encourage others to do so.