Author: Jnana Hodson

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

FRIENDLY GREETINGS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

I’ve heard there was a time when elders would hand tracts to Friends entering Meeting for Worship. I suppose it was like the ushers in many congregations who distribute bulletins listing the order of hymns and sermon title, as well as announcements. Let me confess I’ve been tempted to randomly distribute some of our weekly mail that way, just to see what pops up.

Tracts and pamphlets do seem quaint in an Internet era, but a lot of Quaker teaching has been passed down in those small pages. Are there new ways of doing this without “spamming” the message? Maybe relying solely on the written word is too limited. Perhaps the actors and visual artists in Friendly circles will step up to the challenge. Audiotape? DVD? Web streaming? Well, the newsletter as a PDF download is one step in that direction.

All the same, in this frenzied season, there’s something comforting in opening next year’s Plain-style calendar – the one from the Tract Association of Friends. And who would have guessed how helpful it is, thanks to the numbered rather than named months, in dealing with the computer protocol at the office? Maybe some things are simply timeless, even when looking toward a Happy New Year at the end of frenzied holiday celebrations. So here we are, turning the page, and in some ways, just starting all over again.

WHEN OUR LIVES OVERLAP

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I never intended for my blogging to take the place of personal journaling.

What I’m posting is, after all, far more public, drawing on a deep archive of writing on all fronts now augmented by current happenings in my life and the world around us. What’s emerged is a kind of collage roughly defining the boundaries of my life and thought. I was about to say “normal” life and thought, but not everyone would agree.

Over the past few years, the blog’s also evolved into a showcase for my literary writing, even during a politically overcharged year like the one we’ve just encountered. Remember, I live in the Granite State, which remains a political bellwether as well as the home for many well-known writers. After all the years of having to keep quiet about these concerns, it’s been a relief to be able to air my feelings.

That said, let me admit I’m never quite sure what will turn up here. Maybe that’s why your likes and comments, especially, are so welcome. It’s nice to know when our hopes and dreams and experiences overlap or when there are alternatives to what I’m thinking or even presuming.

Now, back to work …

MAYBE I’VE BEEN LOOKING AT LIFE WRONG

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

Let’s be honest. We have days like this. Ones where we wish we didn’t have to deal with these a#!/?\*s. You know the ones I mean, even if you live halfway around the globe. They’re one and the same.

But we’re all in this together. No matter what they think.

Now, what can we do together … to solve the real problems we’re all facing?

Well, that’s how it too often feels. But could another take give us a healthier way of dealing?

Suupose, for example, what if we’re all nuts?

Not just the others, the ones all around us who leave us pondering the rampant lunacy. (Not just in politics or the workplace, either. The highways are full of them. As for the checkout line at the store?)

No, what if we who’ve thought ourselves responsible and sane, are really the looniest of all?

Might we enjoy life more if we joined the out-to-lunch club?

~*~

Close to home, I’m seeing how trying to cope with an elderly family member afflicted with advancing dementia can put the caregiver in a tailspin. Somehow there must be a better way to span their alternative outlook and our reality without losing our own balance or course of action. Is it possible to enter their world and still stay grounded?

Just why am I here, anyway? What am I supposed to be doing? Or, as my dad used to ask when looking at his nursing home, “Who’s paying for this hotel? Who’s paying for this dinner?”

From my perspective, he seemed to be trapped in a dream that would rarely allow him to waken. As much as I love good dreams, I anticipate and appreciate the clarity of a wakeful state.

But then I write and read fiction and poetry, and maybe they bridge these awarenesses in alternate worlds. And I meditate, which enters other realms as well, at least as far as most people are concerned.

~*~

So here I am, still trying to make sense of it all. Maybe it’s time to reread some of those old stories about celebrated lunatic Zen monks. Think we’d find a clue there? Loud laughter, after all! Unexpected twists in everyday perception!

Stuck with a similar diagnosis, I’d want to be the one filled with childish delight in the trip. Maybe the one lost in a world of prayer for the world and all within it. Maybe I shouldn’t even wait – start now to look at all my surroundings with such wonder.

I’m open to other perspectives and suggestions. Anyone else on board here?

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH THE CONSTRUCTION DEBRIS?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

We’ve not yet rented one of those green dumpsters that so often accompany a renovation project. To date, at least, that’s been one expense we’ve skipped. Yes, I’ve learned about the recycling center, as it’s called – in the old days, town dump was the term – except that now these things are hauled off somewhere else.

What it does mean is that we have temporary mounds of debris until I can borrow a pickup truck or find some new use for the waste.

With the bathroom and utility room projects, I kept pondering secondary uses for all the tile we ripped from the walls and floors. Any ideas? Can’t see using it as fill if there’s any possibility someone might want to dig there in the future. And yet?

As for the wood, I’d love to just have a big bonfire but know I’d never get a permit from the fire marshal. Alas.

Old piping, wiring, vents, fans, other mechanical parts, insulation, lathe … it all adds up.

The old drywall, at least, will disintegrate in the garden, and it’s a good source of lime to loosen up our clay soil. I’ll be using that stack on the new raised beds we’re planning for flowers.

As I blog about this, please remember I have no intention of speaking as an expert or saying this is how it is done, step by step. Far from it! Instead, these are simply the confessions of someone who’s fallen into the situation of being the owner of an old house – and whose abilities and interests fall far more into literary or theological realms than those of more pressing domestic matters. So much, it turns out, is a matter of muddling through. Or as one expert replied when asked where we were going with one problem: “We’ll know when we get there.”

OK, we did get that overbuilt monolith out from the doorsill we needed to repair and left it on the other side of the driveway. Six months later, I finally buried it – all 500 pounds – in a hole. We’re still thinking of building a gazebo above it. Now there’s one project I think I can handle!

~*~

My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.

CARPE DIEM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Among the historic divisions among Friends, none were more traumatic than the Hicksite-Orthodox separations, 1826-27. While New England and North Carolina were spared, most other American yearly meetings were torn in two. The reasons were deep and complicated – often along socio-economic and geographic lines. Subsistence versus commercial farming, artistan-craftsmen versus industrialists, rural versus urban, traditional versus forward-looking, tensions between having the polity of Friends lodged within the monthly meeting or at the yearly meeting level, even language itself, one holding to old expressions versus those wanting to embrace a new evangelical ecumenism.

We were not alone. The Puritan legacy, for instance, splintered into Congregationalists and Unitarians about the same time we Quakers split, theirs ostensibly over naming the president to head, first, Dartmouth College and then Harvard. The Dunkers (or German Baptist Brethren), meanwhile, managed to hold together, although their tensions would finally reappear in the 1880s, leading to a five-way split, producing the Church of the Brethren – about the same time many Friends began turning to pastor-led programmed worship. Curiously, the Brethren, laboring under a single yearly meeting, faced major tensions between the Eastern, old-fashioned members and the “Western” (west of the Appalachian Mountains) progressives – the same lineup that Friends would see in the quietist versus pastoral worship styles, with our Western Yearly Meetings going programmed and the Eastern ones largely holding to tradition.

These tensions were fueled by and reflected in many larger societal issues. In politics, the Jacksonians reflected the emergence of westward expansion. In religion, the Great Awakening first blazed through New England (sometimes as the New Lights movement) before igniting in Kentucky and the newly settled regions. In the economy, the industrial revolution was well under way.

For Quakers, the divisions essentially shut down the itinerant ministry from traveling Friends, which had kept the central messages of the faith and practice intact. That loss no doubt played into the emergence of the pastoral system in places where Friends were settling, rather than long settled. Another loss was a breakdown in the sharing of epistles and other written material. We no longer had a common vision to express or unite behind.

I reflect on these not so much as history but as a recognition that our larger society is in one of those watershed transitions – as our presentations and discussions on envisioning the future have suggested. How do we parlay what’s been entrusted to us into the future? Will Friends, as a whole, respond with radically new worship, organization, expression? Will we be sufficiently open to be led where we are needed? Of course, Israel under Roman occupation turned out to be another of those watershed moments, spreading both Judaism and the newly emerging Christianity across the empire. But that’s a much larger and more complicated story, except for the fact that we’re Friends as a consequence.

Or, as old Quakers would say, “Christ is come and coming.” It’s more than “Season’s Greetings,” after all.

LET’S CHIP AWAY AT SOME GENDER STEREOTYPES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s supposed to be a guy thing, I know. At least in the widespread expectations. This matter of home repair – carpentry, electrical, plumbing, roofing, and the like. Any of us can do it – or so we think.

It also explains a lot of what we’ve uncovered whenever we engage a new project in this house. And the common response, from anyone on the job now: What were they thinking?

Even I can see a lot of shoddy workmanship. As one example, let me mention the wildly askew joists, previously hidden by ceiling, that had never been attached to the wall. Why hadn’t they blown away years ago? We’d been lucky.

Don’t tell me about the “good old days,” either, or how much better things were done back then. There are solid reasons we’ve enacted building codes and now license electricians and plumbers, among others. As for apprenticeships?

What I do admire in our home upgrade undertakings is the skills many of these individuals bring to the task. As one Friend once articulated during worship, as a carpenter he’s come to recognize that each project is different and requires original problem-solving – it’s what he enjoys. What he didn’t add was the range of skills he also brings to the matter at hand, the recognition that you can tackle it this way or that way, certain tools are better suited at this point, or even the accumulated experience that immediately notices something the rest of us overlook entirely.

~*~

By the way, we’re still wondering about that paper plate we found, face up, in the gap as we ripped up the bathroom flooring. It was pretty much under the sink, or where the sink  had been.

Who’d left it there and how long ago? Back in the ’80s or ’90s? Or was it in the ’60s, when so much of the house was redone?

I’m tempted to blame a squirrel or one of the kids growing up here. Or just a careless worker.

Oh, the mysteries we uncover in a project like this!

~*~

My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.

MOVING ON FROM BLUE JEANS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Over the past few years, there’s been an unanticipated shift in the way I dress, one that’s not entirely related to retirement. One of the lessons I carry from the hippie experience is an awareness that clothing should be comfortable, rather than conforming to the marketplace – and, if possible, it should express some degree of style.

As someone who never fit into the half of the bell curve the clothing manufacturers targeted, I’d always had difficulty dressing to general expectations. Back-to-school shopping was always a terror, one abetted by our family’s financial tight outlook, and one result was my pants were always way too short on my tall, skinny frame. You can imagine my delight discovering during my college years that Levis were actually available in my size. It was heavenly, even if radical at the time. I remember breaking unvoiced rules in attending classical concerts in my denim, even while wearing a necktie. Fortunately, the shift prevailed and later, when I discovered Quaker meeting for worship, came an expectation of dressing humbly rather than for pretentious show. Viva denim!

Moving to New Hampshire, I was delighted to learn that the San Francisco-based Levi Strauss relied on denim produced in the water-powered Amoskeag mills in Manchester, where I lived. So the product linked the continent, New England to California Bay Area, with cotton from the Deep South, and back.

As prices rose, my brand-name loyalty evaporated, even at the outlet store in nearby Maine, but some alternative sources still satisfied. And then they all started tinkering with the fit and gone was that feeling of comfort. Well, all except my Amish jeans – no zipper or belt but a pair of braces (suspenders, if you will) – which seem indestructible. Mine are going on 20 years, I reckon, and just starting to show real wear. The braces, though, can be a pain, as can going to the john when I’m also wearing a sweater.

For everyday usage, I’ve now drifted into variations of khaki or olive cargo pants. I really like all the pockets, along with the fit.

This has been accompanied by a shift from the oxford shirts I always wore to the office. From my first copydesk job, I’d learned to wear my wallet in my shirt pocket rather than sitting on it and throwing my back out of alignment – and so my shirts always had to have that pocket, which never, ever had a plastic liner like nerdy engineers include. Well, with the new pants, I could place my wallet in the other front pocket comfortably and that, in turn, allowed me to move on into turtlenecks for daily wear.

Turtlenecks are simply more flexible – no need for undershirts, I don’t even have to take them off at bedtime, for that matter, and they’re warm, even in our cold house. Yes, they also go with the sweaters I used to wear with those shirts.

I am surprised by my reaction looking at men my age or older who are still going about in blue jeans. They’re appearing somehow, uh, inappropriate.

AS THE CENTER OF ATTENTION IN OUR BATHROOM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In explaining our rotten floor worries, my wife would tell others she didn’t want to find our bathtub crashing down onto the dining room table below. Meaning our cast-iron bathtub, the one that came with the house.

The one that drained poorly, at best, and required plunging and rooting once a week or more and constant cleaning of the screen to catch hair at the drain.

It wasn’t even attractive in an antique sort of way. No claw-foot style, no insulating layer for deep baths, either. And then there were the cold drafts from above.

A bathtub, of course, is the centerpiece of a bathroom. You might substitute a shower alone, but ideally you want a bath-and-shower combination, which is where we were starting.

Determining where the floor moisture was originating and how much damage had occurred would necessitate moving the tub. Was it worth salvaging? No. So make that removing the tub altogether.

The project nearly died right there. Need we mention psychological depression? Despair?

Our carpenter informed us he couldn’t take it out – that would be up to the plumbers, who replied they thought that was his job. And then, with a good deal of swearing and sweat, they relented, busting up the tub with sledgehammers that shook the whole house and likely more.

The floor underneath had escaped moisture damage, but the related piping was another matter. We haven’t seen brass pipe like this in ages, the plumbers informed us, before adding: it could burst anytime, without warning. As for our drainage problem, the old-fashioned ball-drain trap – rather than the standard U? Ours had clogged to not quite a pencil width passage, so that a few stray hairs could create blockage. In other words, we were in for some major new pipes.

No turning back now. As tile and drywall, along with some plaster and lathe, came down and out, we had a clearer picture of what was at hand. A new tub would barely fit in the old spot, and that would take some finagling.

One thing we’d agreed on was our distaste for tile. Grout’s hard to keep clean, and it cracks. While we tried blaming the squirrels for the moisture leakage that led to the floor rotting, a better argument would point to tile failure, especially in the corner between the tub and toilet. Tile, too, is unrelentingly hard, should you drop something or, worse yet, slip.

After the plumbers told us they couldn’t install a one-piece tub-and-shower surround – they wouldn’t be able to get it up the stairs, much less through the doors – we accepted their advice to buy a tub with a matched shower-surround, a three-piece unit that would snap in place. Which was fine until we discovered that would mean losing the window in the room, the one that also provided most of the natural light to the hallway. Cutting into the surround would be difficult, at best. More likely, impossible if we wanted acceptable results. No thank you, there’s enough funky work here already.

Everybody kept suggesting we reconsider tile.

We wound up turning to a composite masonry that could be cut for the window opening. It cost about three times as much as the surround, before we added in the extra labor, and wouldn’t snap into the tub as neatly as the matched unit, either, but it wasn’t tile. But tile would not have created as much dust as cutting this stuff did, either.

Our original plan, to take the composite all the way to the ceiling, failed to calculate the angles of getting the panels into place. As we tried to maneuver the precisely cut units, reality sunk in. So it was back to the masonry saw … and all that much more dust. And that was before tackling the adhesive that would hold the units to the wall – for all eternity, we’d hope.

Well, the new tub’s deeper and drains like a dream. I love the broad stream from our new shower head. We still have our window.

But there are more funky fine points than I’ll care to admit. And the remodeled room is hardly showy – certainly not what you’d expect for the price, which I’ll keep private. I’d rather say we did the best we could under the circumstances. And please don’t tell me about that “old house charm.” You’ll have to understand if we scream.

~*~

My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.