Category: Arts & Letters

BOTTLED UP EMOTIONALLY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Laboring behind the scenes in the subculture of daily journalism (Newspaper Traditions) meant bottling up a lot of my own feelings. My talent took place in near anonymity, advancing others and hoping to help the wider community and broaden the readers’ vision.

It was like being a teacher without any of the affection or apples. I suppose it took its emotional toll, too.

At least, I’m in the rush of a sensation of release now, even if so many of my recent postings look like history. Just remember, it’s unfinished history.

If you want to see what it was like inside the newsroom, especially in the escalating pressures of budget cutbacks, I’ll invite you to my novel, Hometown News. No matter how surreal the action turns, it’s not that far from the bigger impact of multinational conglomerates on local communities like the ones a daily newspaper covers. Or at least did.

Hometown_News~*~

For the novel, click here.

IN ITS URBAN DECAY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s life in the inner city, usually not far from downtown and often in an enclave near the river. High density population, at least compared to the suburbs, and filled with children. Usually blue-collar or poor or a mix of students added in, it’s noisy and lively, even colorful in its urban decay. You can walk to the store or corner bar.

We lived on the second floor and later, a street over, on the third.

That’s where these poems originate and resonate still.

Riverside 1~*~

For your own copy, click here.

MOODY RIVER WINDING AWAY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

What may appear to be a lazy river meandering amid its wooded isles deserves consideration and room to run wild.

Passions arise and freeze over. The flow dwindles to rock. Rats run along the shoreline of factory brick at the dam. A few miles on, either direction, the dairy herds gather.

All of it reflecting my soul when I lived there.

Susquehanna 1~*~

For your own copy, click here.

STILL LOOKING FOR AN EMAIL EQUIVALENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

Anybody have an effective suggestion for handling this email InBox conundrum?

With physical mail, I could divide the incoming missives into piles marked

  • Act
  • Delegate
  • File
  • Toss

and respond accordingly.

Another version made a distinction:

  • Respond now
  • Routine or schedule
  • Reflect
  • Trash

What I’m finding with my emails is whenever I’m uncertain how to answer, I put it aside – where it’s likely to wither and die. That is, if I don’t respond immediately, the message gets lost in the clutter.

I’ve thought about setting up a basket specifically to hold these cases, but once they’re out of sight, they’ll be out of mind. From my perspective, there’s no place to really put something aside, at least where I’ll see it but it won’t get buried. A pile for reflection sounds like limbo.

Anyone got a workable solution? Help! Tell us all!

ENDLESS PERSPECTIVES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Rarely do you stand at the summit. It’s a lesson of life.

Even on the trail, the climax awaits, somewhere overhead.

We need something to look up to, from infancy on.

And then there are clouds – or the surrounding range.

Or the streams, threading together, below.

Mountain 1~*~

For your own copy, click here.

PERUSING THE PERIODICALS, MORE OR LESS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

An opportunity to stop by the periodicals room in a well-stocked town library had me sensing something had shifted since my last visit. The room itself, at the heart of an 1884 building, is gorgeous, with tabletop reading lamps and much dark woodwork. The local history archives are in a tall-ceilinged room behind glass at one end, while the rest of the chamber is embraced by an open contemporary addition from 2006.

This time, though, as I looked around, I realized how few of the shelves had magazine covers facing me. Mostly it was the plain metal finish. And then what hit me was that of 14 of us sitting quietly there, all but two were working on their own laptops. We could have just as easily been at Starbucks, apart from the no talking and no food requirements.

As I read short stories in Ploughshares, with its heft an assurance in my hands, I reflected on the paradox of being one who treasures a room like this and its contents and then being one who’s appearing more and more only in digital formats read on these flickering screens.

What are we to make of it, ultimately? The library has posters telling patrons they can now access their favorite magazines online at home, thanks to an institutional subscription. So how do we simply wonder and peruse, open to whimsy and discovery? What are we losing and gaining in this exchange?

FORGET ZEUS AND HERA, FOR NOW

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The Olympic Peninsula is an extraordinary extreme in continental United States. It juts out in the far upper left-hand corner, surrounded on three sides by ocean and inlets and featuring a jagged mountain range in its center. Much of it is lush and tangled, and there is relatively little human habitation.

It could be a land of the gods, as its very name suggests. Or as the Native Americans, with their stories still intact, will relate. Forget Zeus and Hera, then – this is a panoply arising from American roots and its westward focus.

Come along into the rainforest and then camp just in from the beach. As I did, collecting these poems.

Olympus 1~*~

For your own copy, click here.

A LITTLE THING LIKE A TRILL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A common touch in classical music is a trill — a fast fluctuation between one note and another and back again. Executing it properly is difficult enough for a soloist, but for an orchestra? Well, it usually comes across as a flutter or blur, at best.

But once in a while, it’s different. When everybody’s precisely in sync, it becomes an exciting miniature roller coaster. In fact, the first time it happens, you’re uncertain whether you actually heard right. Your ears perk up for the repeat.

I remember the first time I encountered this — Max Rudolf leading the Cincinnati Symphony in a Cimarosa overture. I remember another time, as James Bolle led the New Hampshire Symphony in early Beethoven, and the smile on the concert master’s face in response. She was actually glowing over her violin.

Just heard it again, in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra in a broadcast of Mozart.

An opera house orchestra? Few major symphony ensembles can pull it off. Bravi, indeed.