An orange is an orange is an orange orange

February 6, 2022January 27, 2022 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The mystics and traditions I’ve encountered are anything but airy-fairy. In fact, they can be pretty down-to-earth and practical, based on personal experience and testing rather than empty speculation or dogma.

As George Fox said at the beginning of the Quaker movement, “This I knew experimentally.” That is, by first-hand experience including trial and error. Or as was said a few years later, “Some of the best barns in Rhode Island were designed during Quaker Meeting,” during quiet meditation.

Never underestimate the importance of the disciplined circle of fellow practitioners, either. Anyone who says “I’m spiritual, not religious,” but lacks that communal base is headed for trouble.

I learned that 50 years ago in a yoga ashram – see my novel Yoga Bootcamp for unorthodox examples of how it works – and have seen it in other traditions since, especially my Quaker circles.

One of my favorite stories comes via fellow blogger Tru-Queer, who relayed the incident this way:

A Tibetan lama and a famous Korean Zen master in the Rinzai school were to have a debate.

The Tibetan lama sat meditating, counting his mala. The Zen master produced an orange from his robes and asked the lama, “What is this?” It was a famous koan. Waiting for a response, the lama continued meditating. The Zen master asked again, “What is this?”

The Tibetan lama spoke with his translator for a moment, who said, “Do they not have oranges where he is from?”

~*~

I suppose I should explain that a koan is a kind of mental puzzle intended to push a student beyond rational thought. Zen is essentially black-and-white ascetic, while Tibetan Buddhism is full of colorful esoteric teaching and drama. Yet here the roles are reversed, in a great joke.

But it doesn’t end there. When’s the last time you really looked at an orange? How many varieties can you identify, much less their differences in uses or subtle flavors? Does your recognition that it’s “an orange” put a stop to regarding it fully? That is, when’s the last time you had an “OH WOW!” moment with something so seemingly commonplace.

Gertrude Stein was aiming at something similar with her “A rose is a rose is a rose,” which blows open when you learn she was also speaking of a friend named Rose and not just the metaphors associated with a specific flower that somehow too often gets lost in the entire equation.

So just how do we live full of wonder – a state a Friend hailed as the Holy Now?

I’d say having dear ones who share it with you does help. Even if they’re Zen Buddhists.

You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows, nosirree

February 5, 2022January 31, 2022 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Not when you have one of these.

The heart of the station is this unit, joined by a rain gauge nearby. They send data via Bluetooth to a digital monitor indoors.

Thanks to this Christmas gift of a personal weather station, I’ve been watching the local weather direction and speed closely, along with the fluctuating temperatures, barometric pressure, and humidity indoors and out. Rainfall will be fun to observe, but snowfall – alas – is a problem.

Hola Orlando

February 5, 2022December 30, 2021 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

talk of spiced sausage all you want or the angelic art of seduction all come clean in the springing but circle the wagons or your ways if you will sometime when riders approach, demanding their due we’ve no cavalry to the rescue what runs on the line honestly, not since the divorce have we sensed any mid-afternoon vehemence comparable to that blazing dirty bird union . let me tell you of the plagues of Moses . invest the rest wisely

My encounters in a yoga ashram altered my perception of life

February 4, 2022January 26, 2022 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I stepped out of my journalism career three times in my life before retiring for good. The first was when I decided to move to the ashram where I could immerse myself in yoga philosophy and practice. Responding to Swami’s invitation to settle into her rural setup was something I did slowly and deliberately, with a large degree of trepidation. As I relate in my Yoga Bootcamp novel, the daily life was intense and evolving. Leaving the ashram was a different matter, with others largely resolving the outcome – out you go. For weeks afterward, I felt myself falling helplessly through space. Eventually, I reestablished my feet on the ground and then headed off for a new life in a town I call Prairie Depot.

What happened for me during my residency was life-changing. I regard it as my master’s degree and my introduction to psychotherapy of an amateur sort. Among other things, it led me to the Society of Friends, or Quakers, which turned out to be the faith of my Hodgson ancestors from the 1660s down through my great-grandfather.

In the novel, I chose to confine the structure to a single day, in part because I had so many lingering questions I could not answer. Yes, within that day individuals could look back on their previous history, but the focus was on the NOW. And a lot could happen there in a 24-hour span. Besides, as I later learned through some candid discussions with a former Episcopal nun, monastic life has some commonalities of its own. As she said, some of the most intense interactions came in trying to choose the flavor of ice cream when the rare opportunity arose. I’ll argue you’re the most human under such rarified circumstances.

On top of everything, when I was drafting the book, I was out of contact with the place and its people. Critically, I had refused an order to return to the ashram after I’d married and moved to Washington state and a follow-up stipulation of heavy financial support was out of the question. A half-dozen years later, back on the East Coast, I had an opportunity to stop by but was not admitted into the house. I did learn that Swami had died and I sat by her grave. So much for making amends.

Since then, I’ve reconnected through social media with some of the key players and had a few assumptions, not in the story, deflated. In addition, Devan Malore’s “The Churning” reflects life there a few years after I’d moved on.

The story itself could have gone another way, if I hadn’t wanted to present the ideals that drew us together and kept us going. Especially the humor and playfulness.

More compelling for many readers would have been a more sordid tale of just one more “new religion” outfit run into scandal of a sexual or financial sort, preferably both. There were enough elements for that, as I’ve since learned.

The story first came out as a pioneering ebook in PDF format only and was later updated to Smashwords and its affiliated partners. A more recent, quite thorough recasting (again, blame the influence of Cassia in “What’s Left”) changed Swami from female to male and introduced Jaya as one of the eight resident yogis, thus linking her to the heftier Nearly Canaan novel. Besides, the transformation made Swami more acceptable to the expectations of many readers and allowed the Big Pumpkin and Elvis dimensions. The role was already unconventional enough, and this was more fun.

Am I still doing yoga? If you mean hatha, the physical exercises, let me say rarely and embarrassingly, at that. As exercise, I’ll substitute my daily laps in the swimming pool, and as meditation, my weekly Quaker meeting for worship. And no, I’m no longer vegetarian, other than when I voluntarily follow the Greek Orthodox “fasting” of Advent and Great Lent (again, blame Cassia), though I also eat much less flesh than most Americans. Actually, in these seasons, the Eastern Orthodox Christians are stricter than we yogis were.

I do wish there were a similar haven for youth today, one freed from the burden of student college debt. I’ll let “Yoga Bootcamp” stand where it does.

No, the settlers don’t own the land – they can merely hold it and pay rents

February 3, 2022December 30, 2021 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

It’s hard for modern Americans to understand a basic reality of European colonies in the New World.

None of the players in the story own the land they’re dealing with.

Not the settlers, even though they’re clearing it and building on it.

Nor the proprietors or investors, either. They’re more like developers who offer leasing opportunities. Think of rental agents.

Nor the Indigenous tribes, surprisingly, even though many of the settlers also negotiate a payment to them for their land. The use of their land, more accurately. Admittedly, the payments are largely symbolic – a bushel of corn a year, for example.

No, quite simply, all land “belongs” to the king, and he allocates the privilege of using it as a means of leveraging his own prestige and power.

Under the feudal system, that would mean grants to barons and other lords in return for their fealty.

They, in turn, could dole some out to knights, who then become wealthy, as well.

Add to that the gentlemen farmers, living off the rents to their estates.

And then yeomen, who are still free on their own tenants, as their small holdings were called.

And husbandmen.

And, somewhere below that, the serfs who are bound to the land and its holder. Well, by this point in time, they’d been freed but were still at the bottom of the ladder.

~*~

THIS IS THE MODEL OF LANDHOLDING – not landownership – up through the American Revolution.

Its assumptions are quite different from those of modern Americans. What do you mean? I don’t own the ground under my house and barn?

No, you don’t. And you still have to pay rent on it.

~*~

AS A FURTHER COMPLICATION, charters could be revoked or rewritten.

Falling out of the king’s favor would have costly and dire consequences.

As my upcoming book describes, this land arrangement affected Dover and the rest of New England through a series of realignments and controversies and attempted evictions.

In fact, it almost leads to a rebellion in Boston Harbor against the king a century-and-a-half before Paul Revere’s midnight ride. Well, that’s one aside I don’t develop. There’s too much else going on along the Piscataqua.

Microclimates? Dress accordingly

February 2, 2022January 28, 2022 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My awareness of microclimates – ways weather conditions in small spots differed from the wider scene – came early one spring when I was dwelling in an orchard in Washington state. There were critical hours once the trees began blossoming when a frost could devastate a year’s crop. Cherries were particularly susceptible, but the apricots, peaches, pears, plums, and apples were also at risk. Remember, a whole year’s income could be wiped out in a few hours.

Frost-fighting measures, such as smogging pots, propane heating lines, airplane propellers pulling the slightly warmer air aloft down into the groves, or spraying the trees with water to form a protective ice coating around the blooms, were all costly. Essentially, it was a gamble. The orcharists relied on alarms sent out on special radio frequencies, usually in the wee hours, before taking action. Sometimes three feet of elevation made the difference in whether to act or simply ride it out – or, in the other direction, whether any action would be futile.

Years later, in New Hampshire, I encountered something similar, where a band somewhere between Manchester and the seacoast could vary by ten degrees within a mile or five. It could mean setting out in shorts and being uncomfortably cold on arrival. Or setting out in long pants and sleeves only to be sweating.

Once, in Dover, I saw an 11-degree drop – plus a cloud bank – between one side of the bridge into Newington and the other. Another time, I left for work in 39-degree favorable conditions only to encounter freezing rain and a hill that took a half-hour to go down midway to the office.

Now that I’m living on an island in Maine, I hear a common saying that our temperature is typically ten degrees cooler in summer and ten warmer in winter than it is even at U.S. 1 on the other side of the causeway, just seven miles away.

The differences were even more dramatic one morning when I checked last month. Our reading was plus 4, but inland had minus 8, on one ridge an hour’s drive away, or minus 14 at a lake a few miles away. Close by us but inland only 15 to 20 miles away were readings of minus 12 and minus 15.

A few days later, we had a minus 3, but Calais, 25 miles north and on a tidal river, was minus 25!

Do you experience anything similar where you live?

Add or subtract 22 degrees from 70 to get an idea of how much the impact can be. I mean, the 90s are usually miserable while the 50s mean keep the furnace running and maybe the car windows rolled up. Unless you’re a native New Englander. (I’m not.)

Well, it is Groundhog Day, which is really the end of Solar Winter, by one calendar, or the halfway point of Calendar Winter, another. Either way, we’re entering a stage when things warm up a tad but can produce some horrendous snowfall in my part of the universe.

Once again, I’m ever so glad I’m no longer having to commute to an office, day or night.

Just from one storm

February 2, 2022February 2, 2022 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

We had generally cleaned up from earlier snowfalls, with only a light covering left in town, before last weekend’s blizzard blew in. And, oh, my, did it!

Officially, we had 19 inches, though stiff wind and wicked gusts left some patches surprisingly bare, along with most roofs, but then piled the offset precipitation in the lee.

We were also hit with a widespread electrical outage, which fortunately was repaired in about only an hour or a bit more. I was braced for two or three before getting worried. Oh, I do miss having a wood-fired stove, though one is in our plans. And we do have a generator on order, one that would have been in by now if only we weren’t trying to relocate its proposed placement to allow for a tiny future full-sunlight garden, which is, in fact, now buried by the snow plow driver. Life gets complicated.

Shoveling out the front entry allowed for lighthearted conversations with passers-by, not all of them walking dogs. One woman even showed me a phone picture of her son or son-in-law’s back door, which was floor-to-ceiling snow when they opened it. Yes, I was deeply grateful ours wasn’t anything like that theirs.

So far, according to the weather service, we’ve had about 48 inches so far this season, but this last storm was the doozy, as you can see from our digging out. But, wait, there’s more, as the cliche goes. Tomorrow and the day after are expected to deliver another foot or so, the figures are still bouncing around. Dial up, scale back. Yeah, folks around here are skeptical of the forecasts, for good reason, but not stupid, either.

Reminds me of the guy behind me at the IGA checkout before the last blast. He had baby spinach and some related healthy ingredients followed by an impressive selection of wine. And you thought it was always milk, bread, and canned soup that got cleaned out?

Now, the big question is this:

If we get hit by this much snow in the days ahead, where we will put it?

Traditionally, February and March can bring the big whammies in New England and neighboring Upstate New York. This could get interesting. Or even tedious.

No, it’s not all flat, either

February 1, 2022February 1, 2022 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In my novel Nearly Canaan, Joshua and Jaya meet in a railroad crossing known as Prairie Depot. And in my newest release, The Secret Side of Jaya, she returns there in a magical sort of vein.

Yes, Prairie Depot is somewhere in the Midwest. But the region itself is hardly as homogeneous as many portray it.

~*~

Defined: The region is generally comprised of 12 states – Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. I question the inclusion of Missouri, which was a slave-holding state and thus Southern, but others try to add Oklahoma. Population 65 million.
Breadbasket of the world: Wheat, corn, and oats are major crops, along with soybeans and sugar beets. Beef, dairy, and hog production are also huge. The fields run on for miles. And Wisconsin is the nation’s leading producer of cranberries.
Major cities: Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Des Moines, Omaha, Columbus, and Indianapolis head the list.
Mall of America: The 400 stores, waterpark, and aquarium in Bloomington, Minnesota, are deemed one of the most popular tourist magnets in the country, drawing 35 million visitors a year.
Heartland: The geographic center of North America is in Ruby, North Dakota.
A taste for the oddball: Cawker City, Kansas, is home to the world’s biggest ball of twine. Ten feet in diameter.
Linked by rail: The Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska, is the world’s largest railroad yard. It’s eight miles long and up to two miles wide, with 301 sets of rails.
Horses and buggies: More Amish live in Ohio than in any other state. In 2015, there were 69,255. And Iowa has a significant number, too – about 7,000.
Cowboy country: Much of what we consider cowboy-and-Indian out west actually took place in Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. And sharpshooter Annie Oakley was raised by a Quaker family in Ohio.
It’s not really homogenous: Each state is different, starting with the economy, religious mix, ethnic origins and culture, and amount of annual precipitation. Even the parts of a state can vary widely along these lines. Much of the eastern half of the region is heavily industrial, with steel and auto making at the fore, while other parts are intensively agricultural. There are further breakouts like the Great Lakes region or the Great Plains. And it’s not all flat, either.

~*~

What are your impressions of this part of the country?

Restoring a one-of-a-kind Civil War mural

February 1, 2022February 1, 2022 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Now owned by the Tides Institute and Museum of Art, the post is being renovated to include a significant Civil War-era collection and display.

Eastport’s Civil War veterans had good reason for naming their Grand Army of the Republic post after Major General George G. Meade. Not only had he commanded the successful Union troops at the Battle of Gettysburg, he was stationed in Eastport after war to curb the Fenian Rebellion, an Irish liberation attempt that had organized in the United States and conducted raids in neighboring Canada.

During his time in Eastport, he caught pneumonia and nearly died, and some residents got to know him first-hand. One – the wife of the owner of the house where he was staying – complained bitterly for years afterward about his poor aim in spitting tobacco juice all over her home. Let’s hope he was better with a firearm.

The local post wasn’t the only one named in his honor, by the way, and the organization itself became a powerful force within the Republican Party, helping to elect at least four its members to the White House and pressing for progressive legislation.

In 1881, the local post took over a two-story frame structure at 6 Green Street as its meeting hall. As its membership – limited to Union veterans of the Civil War – died off, the building passed to the local Veterans of Foreign Wars for its post. The building next door included a bowling alley, roller skating rink, and dance hall all fondly recalled by youths of the time.

The murals and ceiling were long hidden by a dropped ceiling and rediscovered only shortly before 2014, when the building was gifted to the Tides Institute and Museum of Art.

The mural runs the length of the roughly 40-by-25-foot room and includes images of eight Army corps badges.

Tony Castro of New Gloucester, Maine, has been renovating the murals. Despite severe water damage, they may be the only surviving interior of their kind in the state.

The patch at upper right shows how this section looked before its restoration.

The Tides Institute has also been gifted with important Civil War artifacts and documents, which may be displayed as the museum adds gallery space.

A sign from the hall’s later use as a Veterans of Foreign Wars post.

Something new I’ve been seeing in the weather alerts

January 31, 2022January 27, 2022 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Living along the ocean, I’ve seen gale warnings become a regular part of the forecast. You’ve heard of gales of course. But freezing spray?

I hadn’t given it much thought till now. Remember that magical “sea smoke” I’ve been observing? It no doubt condenses on vessels. As does moisture whipped up from the surface by those gale-force winds. Either way, here’s what the weather service says:

Freezing spray may render mechanical and electronic components inoperative. Ice accretion on decks and superstructures may result in some loss of stability. Very strong winds will cause hazardous seas which could capsize or damage vessels and reduce visibility.

During freezing spray conditions the U.S. Coast Guard advises that you ensure all lifesaving equipment remains free of ice.

Mariners should prepare for accumulation of ice on their vessel and consider altering plans to avoid or mitigate these hazardous navigating conditions.

Mariners should prepare to remain in port, alter course, and/or secure the vessel for severe conditions before conditions deteriorate.

And that’s for today’s steel-hulled ships. Imagine what it was like back in the days of sails and no warnings. As for trying to walk on decks or man the rigging?

And you thought freezing rain was bad? Seems it has a nastier brother.