Category: American Affairs

VOCAL ROOTS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Everybody’s from somewhere. You know, the accents, etc.

Merlinders with their “youse” and so on. To say nothing of the Bronx or Queens. Or New England, now that I’ve moved.

I should talk. I have no accent. Pure American Broadcaster Country.

Except that one line of my ancestry started out Pennsylvania Dutch (talk about talking funny!) and came to Ohio by way of Maryland and Virginia.

And another line came up north more recently, meaning the 1880s, from the North Carolina Piedmont.

So, there. No, folks. This time, I’m keeping my mouth shut.

RESTAURANT CITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment
A cluster of restaurants and their decks overlook Tugboat Alley in Portsmouth. It's an iconic site in the city.
A cluster of restaurants and their decks adjoins Tugboat Alley in Portsmouth. It’s an iconic sight in the city. A quartet of the tugs is also often seen in the ocean near the mouth of the harbor, waiting to escort a large ship to port. 

Portsmouth, a city of 24,000 just a dozen miles to our south, probably has as many restaurants per capita as Manhattan – by some counts, 160 within a close radius of the downtown.

Much of the demand relies on the tourist trade. Nearly everyone driving to Maine comes through the city, usually on Interstate 95. Half of those going to New Hampshire’s White Mountains turn north there as well. And many simply stop altogether to vacation. It is, after all, on the Atlantic.

Still, that’s a lot of dining.

NOTTINGHAM SQUARE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
The monument to the Revolutionary War soldier in Nottingham Square marks the town's fervent participation in the struggle for freedom. Gunpowder seized from the raid on Fort William and Mary was stored in homes facing the square, and months later, when cannon fire from the Battle at Bunker Hill in Boston was heard, the militia mustered on the square to begin its 50-mile march to join in the combat. The rural town boasts of having several generals among its residents.
The monument to the Revolutionary War soldier in Nottingham Square marks the town’s fervent participation in the struggle for freedom. Gunpowder seized from the raid on Fort William and Mary was stored in homes facing the square, and months later, when cannon fire from the Battle at Bunker Hill in Boston was heard, the militia mustered on the square to begin its 50-mile march to join in the combat. The rural town boasts of having several generals among its residents.

MANAGEMENT STYLES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Within an organization, you may see a manager who chooses to surround himself or herself with talented individuals and then allows them the freedom to perform at their best. This is the leader who’s not afraid of being placed in their shadow but rather supports their efforts and builds a team of responsible players. This leader hands out kudos, rather than blame, and corrects errors as a matter of avoiding them in the future. Credit is shared rather than hoarded.

There’s another kind of manager who wants to stand taller than his or her subordinates. Talent is viewed with suspicion, and workers are held on a short leash and often micromanaged. Scant praise is handed out – and when it is, there’s little reason to trust it. Fear and blame, especially, are the root of motivation, and maintaining a low profile and even doing as little as possible (to reduce one’s exposure) are inevitable consequences. These managers don’t want to hear your ideas, though they expect you to follow their orders.

One type leads to excellence; the other, to mediocrity.

I’ve worked for both – sometimes briefly in the same enterprise. But I know which one gets the most for the money. Not that money’s the top item when you’re working for them.

ONLY THE BEST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Often, the lessons appear when least expected.

One my thoughts returns frequently to a conversation I overheard on a Saturday afternoon in Baltimore’s Little Italy. A couple, recently back from New York City, was trying to impress the restaurant owner that everyone they had talked to was raving about the establishment, saying it was clearly the best in Little Italy. Finally, the owner was able to thank them, with this rejoinder: “Anyone who doesn’t think he’s the best in this neighborhood shouldn’t be down here.”

I admire that sense of upholding your own pursuit of excellence. No excuses. And I admire that esteem for the standards of others doing the same. Rivals. And yet colleagues.

I don’t want to hear a salesman slam the competition, or a priest short selling another denomination or congregation, except in this light.

My work is the best. And so is yours! And, yes, we can both do better!

Humbly yours, forever.

GRAPHING OURSELVES IN THE ECONOMICS CROSSHAIRS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

As I said at the time: Golly, I hadn’t thought in terms of “lower middle class” in ages, though that’s where I’ve been most of my adult life – even as management. According to government statistics, at least, and thanks to my union card, we made it up to median income, although in reality, considering the cost of housing in New England, we were never quite there. Before the housing market decline (our property had more than doubled in price in a half-dozen years), my wife saw the assessment and cried out, “I never thought I’d live in a quarter-million dollar house – and it’s still a dump!” Yup.

What is amazing is what can be accomplished when we focus our resources and set priorities. The secret is that you can’t have it all. My wife would love to travel, but then we managed for her to not have to be employed, which in turn allowed her to return to college and to chair the local charter high school (a full-time, unpaid job) while taking care of both her mother and the girls. Maybe we’ll get around to travel, but for now, there are too many other demands – on our time, especially. I was able to carve out blocks to draft/revise large sections of work, although in doing so, I wasn’t submitting much anywhere – that would come later, probably in retirement. So I hoped.

One of our favorite writers, Wendell Barry, points out that a divorced family is, on paper, far more economically viable because it has to pay for two households, hold down two jobs, maintain two cars, and so on, each point adding to the cash flow, which can be measured. Of course, that fails to calculate a lot of other, more meaningful values. Keeping my mother-in-law in her own little apartment in the barn, for instance, allows her some independence while still getting some family care – none of it showing up in the gross national product, or whatever we call that calculation these days.

BOTTLE FARM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Among those dim memories from childhood are Sunday afternoon drives, including one on a dull rainy day as we approached Farmersville. As Dad slowed the car, I heard an eerie panorama of tinkling glass and looked out over a seeming junkyard with large, black figures shaped from roofing tin, I suppose – witches, Indians on horseback, perhaps cowboys and the like – and many poles “like cornstalks,” as some have described, but with bottles instead of leaves. Plus, as I’ve read, a number of old church bells mounted somewhere, in addition to the bells of grazing sheep.

Yes, it was the chorus of sound that lingered strongest in my mind.

By the time we got a chance to go back, it had all been razed, declared a public health hazard, I remember hearing, because of the broken glass caused by vandals. Other stories suggested the orgies of motorcycle gangs instead.

One history I’d heard, that this was a relative of the late comedian Jonathan Winters, proved erroneous. The owner’s name was not Zero Winters, but Winter Zellar (Zero) Swartsel (1876-1953), an eccentric who turned his 22 acres into artwork fashioned from discards such as old bedframes and twisted wire. What I retain from that one day is far more cluttered than the clean photographs taken by Edward Weston.

It’s all lost, of course. How much it could have been an installation in some gallery will forever remain conjectural, but Winter was way ahead of his time on his multi-sensual approach to creation.

ALL THOSE TRAINS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

With the exception of a small spur to our south, all of the railroad traffic to and from Maine goes within a few blocks of our house.

The first year or so we were here, our youngest complained of the noise through the night – turns out it was gravel and sand headed to Boston for the Big Dig construction. At least that’s died down.

During the day, though, we have the Amtrak Downeaster’s five runs south, to Boston, and back, to Brunswick, Maine, plus the usual freight traffic.

But is it healthy to have so much dependent on such a tiny point of transit? At least as a point of homeland security, I’d argue not.