normally, straight into the (meager) savings or IRA but with tax changes anyway thought I’d hold on to it for a while and for a switch dreamed and played, asking myself what I’d like to do with it? pay off on the car? (naw!) finally get a CD player, some Ives and Camerata discs, and those new Boston Acoustic speakers? (now that would be a wonderful self-indulgence!) or how about finally breaking down and getting those twelve-year-overdue cross country skis? gee, I could even finally throw in a ten-speed bike, too! not knowing what the IRS had uncovered but then, surprise
Author: Jnana Hodson
In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.
Kansas City conundrum
Why is it the best part of the state of Kansas is in Missouri?
As I learned in researching some scenes in my novel Daffodil Uprising, the city itself has some deep culture in its bones, as well as the Wild West.
Before you reply ‘Just dandy’
Are all of those “Hi, how are you doing,” Facebook messages to me really from accounts that have been hacked?
Sure, I recognize half of the people, maybe more, but do they all come up with identical messages? How improbable. Makes me wary, especially after my own account had been hacked.
Apparently, it’s very easy to set up a counterfeit you and invite all of your “friends” to check in at the new address.
Just how secure is that party line, anyhoo?
If you think one of your real friends has been hacked, tell them, so they can alert FB security. Inform them that merely changing their password won’t fix it, too.
Anyone else gone through this?
How can anyone ever read all of what’s pouring in?
There’s just so much out there, in print and especially online, and it keeps proliferating daily, even hourly, and I don’t know about you, but I’m in the camp that finds it truly overwhelming.
Everywhere, each minute, make that second, we’re expanding outward, away, from any notion of a renaissance man, and woman, who could possibly be well informed on every facet of a civilized society.
Even in science – or maybe, especially in science – it’s become impossible to keep abreast of the flood.
Interdisciplinary collaboration has become more essential than ever, but also more elusive.
Is this leading toward disintegration?
Is this, in fact, the root of the reactionary backlash around the globe, not just the Trumpian cultists?
Yeah, the folks who rely on Fox TV biased “news” in the USA.
I look at the crises facing our children and grandchildren, and these are critical, but there are so many it’s mindboggling trying to decide where to pitch in taking a stand. Climate change, population explosion, racism, corrupt politics, the one percent and injustice, environmental protection, medical systems, education … Hey, I’m back to hippie era causes on steroids.
How are we supposed to preserve our sanity and still press toward a better future?
We still have to be informed, right? And thinking clearly?
Like a piece of sculpture
Urchins on a blue bench
Signs we’re reverting to ghost-town status
The indicators started showing up by the last week of August but are inescapable now. Eastport’s locking up for the winter.
As evidence?
- The passenger ferry to Lubec has already been hauled out of the water and is up on props in the boatyard for annual maintenance.
- The Tides Institute Museum is closed for the season, with the Eastport Art Gallery set to do likewise at the end of the month.
- I trot down to Horn Run Brewing and find it closed today. Gotta check the new schedule. Not that I expected its popular deck to be open all year. And other restaurants have curbed back as well.
- Nobody’s out on the Breakwater.
- Rosie’s hot dog stand is closed and its sign thanks us for a good summer.
- I haven’t seen a super yacht for a month, much less tied up at the dock.
- Most of the out-of-state license plates are gone, along with the luxury car models. It’s mostly Maine and New Hampshire now, and soon it will be about all Maine.
- Well, there is a sole convertible stubbornly zipping about – but just one, with its driver bundled up.
- There just aren’t as many folks around, period. At least the dog walkers are holding up their end.
- There’s an uptick in the number of houses for sale as some Summer People realize they can’t keep up with another year. And the places are staying on the market longer.
Which door is the real one?
Don’t know about where you live, but in New England, the front door typically is rarely used.
That insight was confirmed when I was canvassing for the Census and we had to leave a notice behind when nobody was home. Often, the real door is the one at the rear of the house.
It’s a curiosity that reminds me of something I once read about Zen temples in Japan, which were initially copies of ones in China.
The Chinese loved symmetry, which the Japanese detested, and so when the imported designs were expanded, they grew to one side or the other. Many old New England houses also have many additions, most famously the connecting barn.
Well, for the record, our back door is where the action is, and it runs through a mud room addition from the kitchen.
Now I’m starting to think about trying to enter by the right door as a metaphor for life. Like maybe there’s a hidden key, even. The one others know about, but not you or me?
Some of the most successful farms around here are out on the water
As many fish stocks dwindle precariously, salmon farming and related aquaculture are hailed as a viable alternative.
Young salmon are placed in the circular enclosures when they’re about six inches long, where they leap and splash under netting that protects them from eagles, osprey, cormorants, and gulls. In about two years, they grow to a harvestable size of about two feet and ten pounds. A specially designed vessel sucks the mature fish from their pens and its conveyor stream immediately cleans and guts them.
Cooke Aquaculture, based in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, manages 15 pens in Deep Cove and Broad Cove, operating from a former fertilizer plant on Estes Head. A feeding barge sits amid the pens, which house about 450,000 salmon. About one-third of the pens are left fallow at any time.
From our upstairs windows, we can see other salmon farms at Campobello Island across the channel.
As for recipes? I’ll often make mine as sashimi.
Kinisi 124
my truest feelings keep disappearing
one-two-three, poof!
at odds with any action / reaction /
correction
Jnana's Red Barn 