Blueberry barrens can be stunning this time of year.
Author: Jnana Hodson
In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.
On a clear night in a dark landscape
Looking at the multitude of stars and pondering infinity.
The origin of God, even.
Pumpkins are no longer just a Halloween and Thanksgiving thing
At least in New England, pumpkins have become a ubiquitous autumn flavoring, from bread and doughnuts to muffins and classic cheesecakes and pies. I still balk at beer.
Here are some more facts to chew on:
- They’re actually fruits, though I’m glad they don’t grow on trees. And, yes, they’re technically also vegetables, something they share in common with watermelons.
- Each pumpkin contains about 500 seeds. For the record, many birds love those. Roasted, for humans, they’re low in calories and rich in iron.
- Some varieties can grow 50 pounds a day.
- Every part of a pumpkin is edible, including the blossoms – well, they share that with other squashes.
- As pie, pumpkin is America’s favorite Thanksgiving dessert.
- For the record, small sugar squashes are superior in taste to pumpkins for making those pies or also soups.
- The orange color comes from the same chemical that gives carrots and sweet potatoes their distinctive look. It’s good for Vitamin A, which in turn aids eye and skin health and supports your immune system.
- The first Jack o’ Lanterns weren’t carved from pumpkins but rather turnips. The practice arises in an Irish tradition regarding someone who tried to get the Devil to cover his bar tab and failed. Irish emigrants to America found the pumpkin superior to a turnip for those carvings.
- Illinois produces more than twice as many pumpkins as its nearest rival in the USA.
- The heaviest pumpkin grown in America was by Steve Geddes of New Hampshire in 2018 – a 2,528-pound monster.
Within our extended family, nobody had nicknames
Diminutives, yes, but nothing like Sonny or Bunny.
I don’t know what that means, other than perhaps a lack of imagination.
~*~
Well, Dad was known as Sandy, but only at the office. Guess it was because of the time he was stationed in Florida during the Second World War.
Gray seals on Fundy Bay
As seen on Capt. Butch Harris’ Windjammer Whale Watch out of Eastport, Maine.
The Jolly Breeze out of Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, was also scouting for whales and more.
Kinisi 178
Oriental Sauna & Health Spa
Can it really be a whole year since the book appeared?
Have to admit it’s been an exciting, though not exactly lucrative, past 12 months since Quaking Dover appeared in print. The 255-page volume is quite different from my earlier publications. It’s history, rather than a novel or poetry, and its tone and outlook pushed my journalism training in new ways. I’ve even come to see this as my major creative nonfiction opus.
Reader reaction has been enthusiastic, and the book’s perspective has challenged the conventional take on New England history and its impact on the rest of America.
Friends Journal magazine called it an “eminently well-argued and documented account,“ while others declared it “a rich feast of a book” or said “It’s like you’re speaking right to me! It’s not like a history at all!” or simply “enjoyed your conversational writing style.”
Unlike my novels, its publication led to a festive book-release party in the Dover Quaker meetinghouse, followed by other events – some of them with unique PowerPoint visuals – in Dover, New Hampshire; Haverhill and Cape Cod, Massachusetts; and Eastport and Pembroke, Maine. Ten in all, and all well received. Didn’t get to do that with the novels. I’ve even had strangers stop me in the street to tell me how much they like my reading. And creating the presentations and accompanying illustrations has been fun in a whole new way for me.
One thing that’s impressed me is the way this has connected with people. It’s about places they live in or have visited, about families and communities they know, about values they share. It’s more concrete than fiction but no less personal.
Overall, it’s sold close to the U.S. average of 200 copies a year. Considering that the book is, at its core, the story of a small congregation in a small city in a small state, I’ll take that as a good start.
Fork in the rough road
It’s not all water around here, though the road to the right leads to two lakes.
Sometimes Downeast Maine reminds me of the Far West. This is one of them.
Older than it seems
Dover: where New Hampshire started. Leading to the second-oldest state in New England.
And then? Dover was already 200 years old when the textile mills took over the town.
Note, too, that Dover’s mills predate the more celebrated ones at Lowell, Lawrence, and Manchester on the Merrimac River.
It was hardly a fringe settlement in terms of action.
The one place I’ve never wanted to live was the suburbs
I love big cities, even have a certificate in Urban Studies, but can’t afford them, not for long.
Internet, at least, allows me some important virtual connections that way, not that it includes strolling into ethnic restaurants or great museums.
On the other hand, I’m living in a place others consider ideal for a vacation.
And for me, it’s an ideal writer’s retreat or de facto arts colony.
The ability to walk to so much of what I want in daily life is a huge consideration.
Jnana's Red Barn 