Author: Jnana Hodson

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

WHERE ARE THE VOLUNTEERS?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 8 Comments

Some years ago, as I recall, a New York Times op-ed piece mentioned that America’s reliance on volunteer service in public affairs shifted after World War I. We started turning more and more to paid workers – the ones we now call professionals.

Maybe some of it had to do with the shift from a rural and small-town society to big city life. And some of it, no doubt, as a matter of working inflexible hours in factories. Nowadays I’d add the shrinkage of local ownership, with executives who were expected to participate in public service, and the necessity of two-income families to make ends meet in the face of lower pay levels.

It’s a complicated issue, one that can lead to long discussion – maybe even some wailing.

I see it most directly in my Quaker circles, which function on an expectation that everyone in the faith community will offer service to the whole. That is, serve on a committee. I’m among those who are arguing that model needs to change to adapt to current conditions. Of course, it’s a matter many other groups – secular and religious – are facing. But it’s refreshing to read others who are thinking along similar lines. For one presentation, click here.

Maybe you have some helpful suggestions to add.

FROM A SECLUDED SLIP BELOW THE LEVEE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

I’ve already written of living along the Susquehanna and being introduced to the trail that wove through a wooded strip between the water and the freeway.

The site included a bridge that stood closed to vehicular traffic and a low dam that once diverted water to power cigar factories along the riverbanks. Only part of the foundations of the mills remained, along with some of the weir, which filled with moody water after a heavy rainfall.

At the time I was living in an inner-city neighborhood – Italian by day, Afro-American by night. The riverside provided a mostly private escape into nature.

It was enough, though, to give rise to poetry. Follow its seasons and flow in my new chapbook by clicking here.

Susquehanna 1

WALNUT ASSAULT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Among the mature trees surrounding our house are several black walnuts, including one that hangs over the 1928 one-story addition where our kitchen sits. Its open ceiling allows us to hang pots, pans, and stemware from the joists – shall we just call it a rustic look? – and I’ve sometimes considered installing a skylight or two.

On the other side of that roof, squirrels strip the nuts from the trees early in the season of a typical year. Watching their frantic action can be quite amusing, first as the leaves on a branch shake furiously and then as a squirrel bounds away with a large ball in its mouth.

A few nuts might actually survive into autumn. More likely, we find them buried the next spring as we prepare the new garden and sift compost. Having lived here for a decade-and-a-half, we think we know what to anticipate as the seasons advance.

Not this year, to our surprise, at least as far as the walnuts go.

Our awareness that something was amiss began in the middle of the night. Was somebody trying to break into the house?

The next morning, though, as wind whipped around the house, the noise really picked up. Imagine someone hitting the kitchen roof with a baseball bat. Repeatedly, sometimes three or four a minute. The whack was enough to make us jump.

I moved one car further from the house – we’d seen what large hail did to a friend’s pickup truck and the damage wasn’t pretty. These nuts were larger and heavier, after all, and ones that fell on that side of the roof were bouncing into the driveway.

The tree still has a few nuts left on the branches, but the racket has slowed considerably. Instead, some of the pathways leading to the garden are now covered in walnuts. As my wife observed, it’s like trying to walk on marbles.

Between that and the noise, it’s enough to drive anyone nuts.

Or squirrelly.

NOT JUST BETHLEHEM, THEN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In early postings about creating a suitable bibliography reflecting the hippie era, your comments suggested some of the best works are in the realm of non-fiction, in contrast to Tom Wolfe’s demand for the big novel. Yes, as we discussed, there are some good novels, the bulk of them proving that small is beautiful, in contrast to Wolfe’s standard.

My reflections the other day on Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids (2010), added the underground artistic scene in New York to the list and has me thinking just how different the hippie centers could be. Most of them, as I see it, eventually wound up around college campuses.

Some recent overviews of Joan Didion’s life work have brought her 1968 collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, to mind. Without going into criticism that she concentrated on the scandalous rather than the broader scene, what is stirred in my revisiting her essays is how localized and fleeting the hippie outbreak could be as it developed.

Quite simply, what fit one neighborhood or time didn’t necessarily fit others.

Haight-Ashbury, after all, soon morphed into back-to-the-earth networks or even rural communes, along with other situations, leaving its name to linger as a legend.

I mention this simply as a reminder of how far we are from a clear understanding of this remarkable history, much less its continuing – and pervasive – streams of action.

As for the big novel? Maybe it’s still waiting to happen.

RUPERT IN THE FRAY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

One of the more curious twists in recent American history is the impact of Rupert Murdoch, the Australian press baron who became an American citizen to keep control of his then fledgling television network.

Politically conservative, he’s nevertheless lowered the social standards of mass media. So much for values. He introduced dirty words to television and thus made them more acceptable in otherwise polite public discussion. His tabloid newspaper journalism, meanwhile, focused on celebrities and scandal in ways that have eroded serious political debate and public policy. That’s even without getting into his influence in Hollywood.

Put simply, we’re a less polite society than we were before his appearance. Or should we just say, cruder? That’s even before we get into the Fox News role as the Republican Party mouthpiece. Or all of the Murdoch-related phone-hacking uproar in Britain.

Now we might wonder how he’s reacting in private to the Donald’s emergence as the GOP presidential race leader. Someone from another television network, free from the Fox connection, all the same rising and then riding on the confrontational entertainment celebrity approach to political argument Murdoch’s nurtured.

Still, Murdoch’s far from the faceless corporate existence we see elsewhere. He’s passionate about print journalism, for one thing, and has been willing to take risks. But when people complain about “the media,” he’s still part of the mix, the one that almost always carries negative connotations. And, for the record, let’s point out it’s really corporate media, focused on big profits, rather than liberal.

FESTERING ETHNIC TENSIONS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

With America’s reputation as a melting pot, it’s surprising to see how long some ethnic tensions continue – often for generations.

Sometimes it’s simply in the ways values differ – the extent to which cunning is admired or detested, for instance, or how the family is expected to behave at the dining table.

Sometimes these erupt in a marriage of spouses from different backgrounds.

And sometimes the conflicts arise in the Old World the family fled in the first place. Think of the Balkans or Middle East, for example.

In Big Inca Versus a New Pony Express Rider, these come to the fore in mysterious ways in the isolated community of yrUBbury, especially once Bill puts the Company agenda into motion.

That is, once Big Inca also begins moving mysteriously in the background, drawing and redrawing the battle lines, largely along ethnic identities.

It’s a wilder fantasy, after all, than Wall Street. To continue, just click here.

Inca 1

AFTER THE CAMERA BATTERY QUIT …

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

I was enjoying a leisurely trip back through Vermont, taking many breaks with my camera. All was well until approaching the New Hampshire line, I stopped to capture pictures of a Mennonite church – one of a few in New England – and was about to walk a block or two to take shots of a long covered bridge across the Ottauquechee River. Alas, my camera stopped working.

I assumed the battery simply ran out of juice, though back home I remembered (too late) sometimes you just need to remove it and put it back in – have no idea why that works, but it did on my old Kodak. Well, I’m still getting acquainted with my new Olympus from Christmas.

There would no doubt have also been additional shots of the “quintessential Vermont” general store, a bed and breakfast, and other quaint buildings clustered around the green – this was Taftsville, after all, which turns out to be a neighborhood in the iconic town of Woodstock.

The 189-foot-long span built in 1836 along what’s now U.S. 4 was severely damaged by the remains of Hurricane Irene in late August 2011 and for several years was left dangling precariously from a middle pier. (It’s listed as a Multiple King post and arch design, by the way.) Now, including a fresh coat of red paint, it looks dazzling. Alas, you’ll have to take my word for it.

More missed photo ops took place an hour later, when I stopped for lunch in Lebanon, New Hampshire – not down by the busy interchange along the Connecticut River but up on the hill, around the old green. It’s one of those New England towns that has an opera house as part of city hall, and this one has an actual opera season each summer. This year’s bill includes not just Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio and Bernstein’s West Side Story but also Aaron Copland’s rarely performed Tender Land. What I saw and heard of that, by spying through a crack in double doors from the lobby, was gorgeous. Well, again you’ll have to take my word for it. You would have seen the exterior of the hall from the common.

Finally, much closer to home, as I was stuck in a construction delay at the Lee traffic circle, I looked out my car window and saw three fawns grazing placidly at roadside. If my camera were working, it would have been a classic shot. They’re such small, fragile critters with such big pointy ears!

Well, even with the missed opportunities, I am happy with what I got that day. Now, to plan ahead to scheduling them for this blogging!

PLAYING UPON THE LOONY TUNES, TOO

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

One acquaintance, preparing to be married under the care of another meeting, finally concluded you couldn’t find so many loonies collected in one place if you tried. There are times I suspect most of us would agree, especially when we get jammed on an item of business. We are an intelligent, opinionated, independent bunch of people. It’s said of us, as I also heard Jews at temple refer to themselves, that where twelve are gathered on an issue, you’ll have thirteen points of view.

Our way of doing business, requiring unity but no voting, requires us to try to listen carefully to each Friend. In practice, this can be difficult, especially if someone opposed to a proposal refuses to speak up or speak fully or, perhaps more serious, refuses to attend the business sessions where the matter is being considered. Sometimes, knowing there is unvoiced opposition, we will lay an agenda over to the next session, hoping for better representation – itself an admission that low turnout for our monthly meeting for worship for the conduct of business may also indicate its low priority in our lives. Laying it over, in turn, can often mean beginning all over again as a different set of individuals addresses the issue. Moreover, being present is essential, because miracles can occur in the session. Sending a statement on paper or via another Friend avoids moving with the Spirit in the meeting. There are times when being uncomfortable in the context of business meeting is healthy, and a sense of agreeing to disagree for a while may in turn lead to a third way and innovative resolution.

Our structure of doing business, in which each Friend is expected to participate in the operation of our faith community, can also be subject to breakdown. Individuals may fail to follow through on promised action, or not step forward at all for committee service. The work then falls back on a small core of Friends, who quickly become overburdened. Has there ever been a period when all of our committees were sufficiently filled and operating smoothly? It’s a lovely ideal, all the same, one that makes me all the more grateful for committees that are running well through the year.

Other dysfunctions arise in business meeting when we veer from the decision at hand, usually by trying to introduce a host of other problems and concerns – that is, trying to solve many of the world’s problems instead of replacing a furnace; when we forget the tenderness of the individuals involved and their motivations; when we try to redo work a committee has already labored over; when a committee comes forward to business meeting without finding unity on the proposal, hoping we can do what they couldn’t; or when we leap ahead toward a project we’re unlikely to give full support over time.

Once upon a time, reflecting on the traditional assumption that our business meetings would be led by Christ and that our job is simply to listen for the answer, I jested, “I don’t think Jesus cares what color the carpet is.” A decade or two later, when we were faced with that actual, prolonged decision, I had to add: “But he does care how we engage one another in deciding.” People can and do come away from our deliberations with hurt feelings, and it’s something requiring our mindfulness. Being opinionated doesn’t necessarily have to mean being heartless, even unintentionally. In the rug decision, the reaction of Friends in bringing heirloom Asian carpets to the meetinghouse for the wedding, while we were still deliberating the choice of permanent floor cover, remains a colorful reminder of the third way and its surprises.

We also need to be mindful that working through differences on small things is practice that strengthens us, as a body, for larger, more difficult issues.