Just down the road from the birthplace of the U.S. Navy, the decommissioned Bucks Harbor Naval Radar station has an otherworldly presence, as if everyone had been taken away to another planet in the middle of the night.
Author: Jnana Hodson
In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.
Inside Charles F. Kettering’s mind
The prolific inventor, entrepreneur, and civic influence Charles F. Kettering was still alive in the Dayton community when I was an aspiring chemist in my youth.
My career in science never materialized, but his influence as an inspired ideal of leadership remains.
You may recognize the name from the famed Sloan-Kettering cancer research hospital in Manhattan or from the city in southwest Ohio named in his honor. He also led the research teams that invented the electric cash register, the automobile electrical self-starter, and no-knock gasoline. Other work made the diesel engine practicable as well as the refrigerator and, in time, air conditioning. In all, he had 186 patents, second to fellow Ohioan Thomas Edison. He was a founder of Delco (Dayton Electrical Laboratory Company) and from 1920 to 1947 was head of research for General Motors.
As a power in the new General Motors corporation, he aligned with management pioneer Alfred Sloan – as in that Sloan-Kettering Hospital in Manhattan,.
Let me repeat, there’s even a city named in his honor.
Today we have another Double Tendrils.
Get ready to know him better. Let’s start with his perspectives on the creative process and problem-solving, especially as they apply to engineering and invention. Here’s what he said:
- If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.
- I don’t want men of experience working for me. The experienced man is always telling me why something can’t be done. The fellow who has not had any experience is so dumb he doesn’t know a thing can’t be done – and he goes ahead and does it. … The person who doesn’t know something can’t be done will often find a way to go ahead and do it.
- Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success. … 99 percent of success is built on failure.
- An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
- Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need. … A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.
- All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise, we would never have anything new.
- A problem thoroughly understood is always fairly simple. Found your opinions on facts, not prejudices. We know too many things that are not true.
- Research means that you don’t know, but are willing to find out.
- We work day after day, not to finish things; but to make the future better … because we will spend the rest of our lives there.
- If I want to stop a research program, I can always do it by getting a few experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it was a fool thing to try in the first place.
- When I was research head of General Motors and wanted a problem solved, I’d place a table outside the meeting room with a sign: “Leave slide rules here.” If I didn’t do that, I’d find someone reaching for his slide rule. Then he’d be on his feet saying, “Boss, you can’t do it.”
And now for his perspective on life itself.
- There is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything.
- The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
- If you’re doing something the same way you have been doing it for ten years, the chances are you are doing it wrong.
- Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.
- My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.
- If I have had any success, it’s due to luck, but I notice the harder I work, the luckier I get.
- The whole fun of living is trying to make something better.
- No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.
- You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
- Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.
He really was one who made America great.
Not up for dealing with others?
She’s tired of talking socially
and so am I
We have calling hours
and a funeral ahead
Kinisi 271
I remember when he had a Willy’s Jeep
cool, like a square dance
Cool Beans in a crowded harbor
Pleasure boats are everywhere in Camden Harbor at the height of summer. It’s iconic Maine, after all. This detail was noted aboard the historic schooner Louis R. French last summer as we set out for five days of prime sailing.
For more schooner sailing experiences, take a look at my Under Sail photo album at Thistle Finch editions.
Surprise at the top of the stairs
People looked skeptical when they heard that we were living in the house during all of the renovation.
It’s not like our budget had enough of an edge for us to lease quarters elsewhere. Were we just more daring or more tolerant than others?
A key to the project turned out to be the translucent plastic “door” created at the top of the stairwell at the beginning of the work, the one with the zipper. It reduced the amount of dust that escaped from the construction and also kept much of our heat down on the first floor.
The sound of that zipper became a fact of life for us. All three zippers we had over the course of the project.
~*~
What awaited us on the other side of that veil went through a progression.
At first it faced a crowded set of shelves set in under the sloping roof, along with sliding doors to two makeshift closets and a narrow hallway running to each side.
After that came the demolition that revealed charred rafters and sheathing.
We briefly had a stretch of open sky followed by the raised roof and then the framing for the bathroom and laundry room.
What caught us by surprise, though, was the blank wall when the sheetrock went up. The stairs didn’t lead straight to another door. What would we put there? A large painting? A bookcase? A settee?
One of the coconspirators in our planning insisted on having a wide hallway, or perhaps more accurately, a landing – 6-by-16 feet, it turns out – conjoining the doors for the four bedrooms, the bathroom, and the laundry room. As a practical matter, this would make moving large items much easier, but aesthetically, the space feels wonderful, especially when we decided to keep the ceiling there running all the way to the crown of the house rather than having a low flat one.
No photo would get you a sense of that.
~*~
Somehow, Adam managed to keep the stairwell in place through all of the demolition and rebuilding. It did have that hand-cut oak lathing that predated 1830, for one thing, and the period molding.
For months, it stood like a dark ark at the center of all the action.
Once the new upstairs walls and details were in place, he turned to repairing the stressed stairwell walls and ceiling. One alteration we had envisioned was an interior window for natural light from the bedroom nook. Minor touch, but satisfying. Alas, one that was cut, in part for budget considerations.
We also gained storage space above in a kind of mini-attic accessed from a bedroom. It’s perfect for seasonal decorations that are needed just once a year. Easter, Halloween, Christmas, mostly.
~*~
As I had to confess by this point, the project was much more complicated than I had expected. I could now see why one contractor had just wanted to gut everything from the get-go, while another wanted to rip the top off and replace it with a gambrel roof. But I’m confident neither of those routes would have led to what’s emerged.
How do you come upon the writing that excites you?
Assuming that you’re an active reader, let me ask where you’re obtaining your books of interest. With a thousand or more new novels every week, you can’t possibly keep up there. As for bookstores, there are only so many shelves. Ditto, public libraries.
Some of those stores and libraries do have sections where their employees recommend new volumes, and I applaud that, even while physical bookstores fight for survival.
Goodreads is another option, though also quite crowded.
For commercially released works, the New York Times reviews and a few other sites are key to the latest.
But my interest – and work – falls outside of that realm, and I do believe the real action takes place at the fringe.
Quite simply, I see opportunity for a dedicated reader – especially a recent graduate in literature – to set up shop online as an informed critic in a specific vein. What I’ve seen too often among the bloggers who review is gushing froth about stuff they like, akin to movie fanzines, rather than any critical detailing of why something soars above the pack or even why others fail. They don’t say what makes the piece they’re praising truly stand out.
The ideal I’ll acknowledge is the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema, founded in 1951, which ran only pieces extolling new work of merit, rather than all new movies. It gave rise to a new wave of cinema, one based on daring directors rather than the film actors aka “stars.”
~*~
Real change originates at the fringe of society, not at the center. It typically develops in obscurity, sometimes flashing into widespread recognition and acceptance, and that’s been true in literature over the years.
Rarely will truly adventurous pages be found through the bestseller lists, but when one does break through, then everyone – writers, readers, publishers, and booksellers – will be in pursuit. Imitations will abound, as well as new labels and genres for marketing.
So how do you find fresh books and their writers, the kind who turn you on, fill you with a sense of discovery and make you want to tell everybody you know what they’re missing?
The history of novels is filled with instances of canon masterpieces that were rescued from oblivion by a single critic, either in a pivotal review or by sustained championship. And nothing beats word-of-mouth by a few fans.
So here we are, in a remarkable period of access for both readers and writers, thanks to digital advances. The problem is that there’s so much, there’s no way to keep up.
That’s where a few celebrity critics could step in.
~*~
Sometimes I regret writing novels that are “out there.”
It could be fun writing sharp reviews of many lousy books if I weren’t facing retaliation. (By idiots.)
Still, I feel it’s an opportunity well worth examining for an enterprising young English major graduate: sorting through the eruption of new writing and signaling what might be worthy of further examination.
By the way, online I usually don’t click the button on “pages” or “posts” that have more than 20 “likes.”
Like what is this, a popularity contest?
Still, on the receiving end, it is nice knowing that some folks are at least seeing this. Better yet is when you know that someone else “gets it.” Or, as I originally wrote, “Digs it.”
~*~
So back to the opening question, How are you finding the writing that excites you?
Are there any websites you would especially recommend?
Here’s your chance to give a shoutout.
AI counterpoint
The machine doesn’t know
fear
or love
or loyalty
or betrayal
or any of the gut-level
or off-the-cuff range of thinking and action
much less revolution
I’m coming to suspect that ambiguity
such as the simple “maybe”
will be the downfall of so-called
“artificial intelligence”
and its blatant plagiarism.
“Maybe” and related ambiguity may be the nemesis of AI.
What a Treat to explore
Officially, Treat Island is part of the city of Eastport, Maine, and once had its own thriving fishing village, school, and post office.
Today, though, nobody lives there. Instead, it’s one of the many preservations of the state’s coastline now held by the Maine Coastal Heritage Trust.
At low tide, it’s connected by a rocky breakwater to Dudley Island, which is officially in the town of Lubec.
The only way to get there, do note, is by water.
To take a quick tour upon landing, including its 7,000 feet of shoreline at the mouth of Cobscook Bay, check out the free photo album at my Thistle Finch blog.
Just look at the fog
As a child, foggy mornings frightened me, and attempts to comfort me by calling them “fallen clouds” only thickened my anxiety. It was quite simply abnormal. Get me outa here!
Where I now live, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that we have more than a hundred foggy days a year. Many of those, it burns off early, but on others, we are caught in gray for what can extend for weeks. Maybe I need to start counting.
Still, as one Navy commander exclaimed, “You don’t have your share of fog. You have everyone’s!”
That said, let’s get more specific.
- Technically, it is a ground-level cloud. Water vapor, which is invisible, turns into tiny droplets that hang in the air. That happens in very, very high humidity, wherever the temperature falls below the dew point. Not that it’s dew, either.
- In order for fog to form, dust or some kind of pollution needs to be in the air. Water vapor condenses around these microscopic solid particles. Sea fog, which shows up near bodies of salty water, is formed as water vapor condenses around bits of salt.
- Its hazy and ethereal atmospheric marvel has inspired artists, writers, poets, and even lovers, and has a profound impact on various aspects of nature and human emotions.
- It’s not the same thing as mist. Fog is denser, more massive, thicker. There are more water molecules in the same amount of space in a fog.
- Fog cuts visibility down to one kilometer or roughly a half-mile, meaning it prevents you from seeing further away that from where you’re standing. Mist can reduce visibility to between up to a mile.
- One kind of fog is identified as radiation, when heat rising from the ground into cooler air than the air above it. Another is advection, when warm air blows across a cooler surface and condenses. It’s especially common on the west coast of the U.S. Hello, San Francisco. Upslope or orographic happens when warm air blows up a slope, such as the face of a mountain, and then cools “adiabatically.” It’s also called valley fog, when warmer air is trapped by mountains and much colder air above. Typically, it’s a winter phenomenon. And evaporation occurs when warmer water evaporates into cooler air.
- Don’t confuse it with smoke, even if London’s famed “fog” was really industrial-era air pollution. Well, that complicates on fashion-coat label.
- Fog enhances acoustic experiences. I can definitely hear the fog horn better when there’s fog and it did create the eerie experience of hearing voices from a ship we couldn’t see as it came to the pier.
- It’s more common in coastal areas, due to temperature differences between the water, air, and land. As I was saying about our encounters here?
- It can help mitigate high temperatures and reduce heat stress. Or turn everything into a steam bath. But it can also freeze into delicate layers of crystal across a landscape or treacherous conditions on boats, airplanes, cars and trucks. Make for slippery walkways, too.
Wherever you are, look for the fog bow, too, like a rainbow within a cloud.
Jnana's Red Barn 