Category: Arts & Letters

FROM RELIGIOUS COACHING AND ANTS AS SOCIETY TO DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries. But first I should note that this section was compiled during recovery from major surgery, when I’d been warned I could read like crazy but just wouldn’t remember much, thanks to the morphine. Thus, this was an exercise to help me recall what I’d completed – 43 volumes in all.

  • Rick Warren: The Purpose Driven Life. This is really set up as a sports COACH set of game plan instructions. Sports jargon is full of motivating, directing maxims, focusing concepts, directions. It’s also legalistic: these are the rules, this is what you do: behavior-oriented.
  • Paul Ormerod: Butterfuly Economics. A  challenge to orthodox economics. Curiously, ants, not butterflies, are the basis of the reconsideration of public policy options.
  • J. Brent Bill: Mind the Light. Pleasurable approach to faith by a Friends pastor, with good exercises for experiencing the Light.
  • Vanity Fair, February 2009. (I’ve subscribed to this magazine for years, so I could have included every issue.) On fundamentalism, Christopher Hitchens, “Assassins of the Mind”:  “For our time and generation, the great conflict between the ironic mind and the literal mind, the experimental and the dogmatic, the tolerant and the fanatical, is the argument that was kindled by The Satanic Verses.” Also,  a great, lengthy oral history of the George W. Bush presidency and a piece on how his administration killed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
  • Indiana Alumni Magazine, January/February 2009. Includes a touching piece on a Vietnam veteran who had been one of the top newspaper editors but died in isolation in Florida.
  • Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage, January 2009. (Another magazine, quarterly, where I could have noted every edition.) Includes an excellent overview of early Anabaptist history, resulting in four branches: the Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, and Munster uprising.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America. Volume 1: I had expected more description of his travels and insights in America. Instead, his focus in on how to avoid the tyranny of the majority as a consequence of democracy. An aristocrat himself, his interest is as much on ways democracy might be better constrained in its applications in France as it is on the American experience. His look at local and state politics is unduly weighted on the New England model, ignoring, for instance, the mid-Atlantic states in his contradistinction with the Southern states. His understanding of religion, especially his apologetics for Roman Catholic faith fitting well into democratic systems, fails to appreciate the Puritan connection of personal salvation and covenant or the Quaker sense of walking in the Light as foundations of democratic decision-making. On the other hand, he also perceives the states at this time as essentially sovereign, the resulting weakness of the national government (including a prediction of weak executives, which was in fact the case up to Lincoln), and foresees the possibility of the slave issue leading to the dissolution of the Union.
  • Volume 2: Here, the discussion turns to more of general findings from his travels in America and abroad. Still, his findings are vague impressions than specifics. Many of his conclusions must be seen in the time-frame of 1830, before American arts and letters really began to take shape. He does have an interesting theory about the tensions between an army in a democratic society and a democratic people itself.

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FROM SHERHERAZADE TO THE PARTHENON AND COYOTE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Fatema Mernissi: Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems. Puzzled by the smirks of Western men whenever she mentioned harem, this Moroccan Islamic feminist launches into an attempt to understand the differences between Islamic male-female dynamics and those of the West. She draws heavily on the stories of Scheherazade and painting, noting what is emphasized East or West. Along the way, she presents interesting insights into Muslim life, including the “secret” side of the feminine, often rural, traditions where forbidden teachings continue. I find this a provocative book, good for launching further discourse. Where I think she misses the mark is in her failure to comprehend the harem as pure fantasy, one that may be more about power and wealth – and pure leisure – than about sex. In the West, multiple sexual partners (other than prostitutes) was essentially limited to the upper (ruling) class – a mistress, at that, rather than a panoply; sex itself, according to Roman Catholic teaching, was not for pleasure, unlike that of the harem fantasy (Mernissi does write of the pleasures of the public bath, noting how often bathing was proscribed through European history); furthermore, for many Western men, having sufficient freedom of time and wealth to indulge in a harem would be foreign to their thinking – work before pleasure. Not until Hugh Hefner do we see anything remotely resembling the harem fantasy, and he and his empire have always been somewhat outside propriety. I sense that major difficulties arise in the fallacy of trying to compare a powerful male with a harem to an average male anywhere; this is paralleled by trying to celebrate the heroic wife among many, rather than the average wife trapped within the system. More telling, as she reflects, would be the insights of artists’ wives, knowing their husbands were painting nudes.
  • Barbara Jane Reyes: Poeta en San Francisco (poems). A blazing collection of mostly prose-poems by a Filipina-American, often seemingly free-association, often multilingual, often Catholic-anti-Catholic (blasphemous within faith?), often addressing the aftermath of war, racism, sexism from ghetto streets, often full of blame for the other. All the same, full of juice. Passionate. Inflammatory, priming me with a desire to write, as well.
  • Ellen Cooney: Gum Ball Hill. This novel attempts to recreate the tensions in a Maine community just outside York during leading up to and through the Revolutionary War. It has had me looking up some of the York and Dover experiences during the King Phillip’s War period, and considering this place as frontier through a difficult century.
  • Damon D. Hickey: The Cross of Plainness: A Century of Conservative Quakerism in North Carolina (issue of The Southern Friend, 2005). Excellent presentation of Wilburite Quakerism focused on a single Meeting, now laid down. Solid quotations and material for future writing.
  • Robert Bowie Johnson Jr.: The Parthenon Code. Examining the friezes of the Parthenon, the author argues that they present the other side of the Genesis story – one focusing on the Serpent and the line of Cain/Kain, having the Creator pushed out of the scene entirely, and showing Noah/Nereus being overcome by the human will of Poseidon and his kin. The work of an impassioned amateur, lacking in footnoted documentation, is nonetheless provocative and intriguing. I wish he had acknowledged that the Genesis stories themselves are drawn from widespread Middle Eastern mythology, which means that the Greeks might also be showing themselves overcoming Babylonian might, rather than a small and insignificant Hebrew philosophy per se. On the other hand, if the Greek account celebrates the victorious and conquering human, the Jewish account also seems to side with the underdog! Our God favors the powerless!
  • Grandfather Duncan Sings-Alone: Sprinting Backwards to God. Part Coyote tales, mostly memoir, an easy-to-read and often humorous account of a Cherokee half-breed’s spiritual journey from preacher kid to Disciples of Christ pastor to Native healer and pipe-carrier. Candid insights into the failure of his four marriages. (His father was Scottish background.) Includes some embarrassingly purple verse by his current wife. Helpful glossary.
  • Howard Norman: The Northern Lights. In this, his inaugural novel, Norman follows a young boy through his trials in the Canadian North and finally with his mother running The Northern Lights movie house in Toronto. Some interesting insights along the way, but not altogether satisfying from my perspective. The structure, for instance, seems flimsy and the conclusions don’t really fit … too much deus et machina for me.
  • John Canaday: Invisible World. Poems drawn from the year he spent in Jordan, tutoring the children of King Hussein and Queen Noor. I wouldn’t have known, however, from the poems themselves his reason for living in an Islamic nation, only that these reflect his attempt to understand the place and culture.
  • Melissa Jayne Fawcett: Medicine Trail: The Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon. A small, beautiful volume that includes telling blocks of quotations from the Mohegan matriarch responsible for bringing many of her people’s old ways into the twenty-first century. As the author notes, less is known about the New England Indians than about those anywhere else – and this is a valuable piece in that gaping puzzle.

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FROM SHAMANS AND NICE GUYS TO THE LEFT HAND OF GOD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

With the annual Christmas shutdown, I thought my reading drive had also collapsed; seemed during the first two months of 2007 I wasn’t getting any traction, either. Only when I sat down to update the list did I realize I’d got up through quite a number here, and there may have been more. So to continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Jeremy Narby and Franics Huxley, eds: Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge. Anthology of selected excerpts of field observations of “magic men and women … with the power to summon spirits.” Ranges from hostile writings by missionaries to anthropologists who submit to healing sessions, and from Siberia to South America and Africa variations. Includes mention of the dark side of the practice, too.
  • Paul Coughlin: No More Christian Nice Guy. Argument for a masculinity that has boldness in the face of fear – one that confronts prevalent assumptions in society at large, protects the weak, and upholds Christian values in the home and the workplace.
  • Stephen L. Carter: Integrity. This legal scholar of ethics presses the case that integrity is more than simple honesty. Rather, it is a matter of actions based on deep reflection, which also demands listening to perspectives other than one’s own. The crux of integrity, he says, is the willing of good rather than the willing of evil.
  • Geri Doran: Resin (poems). “We rowed all night in the river of God, / singing kyrie, kyrie.”
  • Sascha Feinstein: Misterioso (poems). Pieces rooted in and flowing through jazz.
  • Toni Tost: Invisible Bride (prose poems). “My friends are wheels turning away from themselves.”
  • David R. Montgomery: King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon. A geologist examines the pressures on salmon, both in historic preservation efforts in Scotland, England, and continental Europe as well as those in New England, and in the Pacific Northwest today. Includes consideration of the dynamics of rivers and they ways various varieties of salmon have adapted to the specifics.
  • Michael Lerner: The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country From the Religious Right. A social activist rabbi argues that in removing religious values from public discourse, the left has left a vacuum for the political right to exploit. Rather than being value-free, the result has been value-less positions by the left – and the left is perceived as spineless and without beliefs. Lerner has some good insights on the American workplace and the tension people feel, blaming themselves for unhappiness in their employment while applying value systems that are diametrically opposed to their religious faith. Much of this volume is quite painful to read, addressing public issues in full candor and complicity.

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OF THE GRAVE AND BEES TO PERFUME AND HOLLYWOOD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Graham Montague: The Stillness of the Grave and the Quickening of the Spirit. Pamphlet by a contemporary British Friend, suggested by Patrick Burns. I love the use of Walt Whitman’s description of attending his first Quaker meeting and sensing the worshipers were as still as the grave — followed by insights of dying to the world around us momentarily and resurrection.
  • Matthue Roth: Never Mind the Goldbergs. Flippant fiction as late-night fun for this reader. One of my favorite teen-angst novels, it has some marvelous insights into religious identity as well as some scathing portraits of Hollywood values and practice.
  • Holley Bishop: Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey, the Sweet Liquid Gold That Seduced the World. Although the author spends much of her time following a commercial beekeeper in Florida, she does present a range of fascinating detail on the care of honeybees through history, the evolution of commercial hives, and the place of honey and beeswax over the centuries. A book to stand alongside, Cod, Salt, Cotton, and other basic commodities. Includes recipes.
  • Mandy Aftel: Essence and Alchemy: A Book of Perfume. A beautifully designed and produced book (North Point Press) exploring the history, artistry, psychology, and ingredients of perfume. But do I want all of those recipes?

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FROM THE WEATHER TO SUICIDE OR EVOLUTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Dave Thurlow and C. Ralph Adler, eds: Soul of the Sky – Exploring the Human Side of the Weather. A Mount Washington Observatory publication presenting literary writing about weather.
  • Milan Kundera: The Art of the Novel. Seven essays in “a practitioner’s confession.” From a peculiar Central European perspective, he admittedly stands at odds, as he points out, with contemporary French fiction. After a first read, I find it difficult to place my work in relation to what he argues, except to acknowledge the ways my work does what only a novel can do. On the other hand, I like work that conveys solid reporting as well – history, geography, geology, theology, and the like – something Kundera clearly disdains, except in a most generalized or abstracted manner.
  • Albert Huffstickler: Poetry Motel memorial edition (No. 32). Work that stays too close to daily journaling for my taste. I’ve seen other pieces by him that seemed to take flight.
  • Maxine Kumin: Jack and Other New Poems. This volume doesn’t go far beyond observations of a New England horse farmer, of the genteel sort.
  • Jeff Clark: Music and Suicide (poems). A controversial and often sophomoric collection (from the Academy of American Poets), yet parts of it catch fire – get the juices going. Coming after Kumin, this is poetry.
  • Patricia Fargnoli: Duties of the Spirit (poems). Centering on a quotation from Thornton Wilder, Fargnoli argues for the duties of joy and serenity – all too easy, methinks, for an old lady living in rustic retirement. These are all pale garden pieces, of the white linen sort – dirty fingernails being for the hired help. Righteous anger, like the social justice verses of Isaiah, are also duties of the spirit – where the red blood flows through muscle.
  • Ntozake Shange: The Sweet Breath of Life. A marvelous collection of poems written in reflection to inner-city photographs by the Kamoinge Inc. collective (and edited by Frank Stewart). An incredible match-up.
  • Jon Tolaas: Evolution and Suicide. A thin freebie, this work turns into a fascinating consideration of the meaning of consciousness itself, using Darwin and Freud as its starting points, pro and con. At the core, perhaps, is the insight that the central question is not, What is the meaning of life, but rather: What have you done (are you doing) with your life.

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FROM MATING AND DATING TO THE GREAT NORTH WOODS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries from my scroll as I kept it:

  • Andrea Orr: Meeting, Mating (and Cheating) – Sex, Love, and the New World of Online Dating. One journalist’s argument that matchmaking is what kept Internet companies afloat during the dot-com bust. Also interesting vignettes of the changing nature of courtship in America.
  • Nathan Graziano: Frostbite. Fine short stories in a Bukowski vein, set mostly north of Concord. Pessimistic, young adult outlook. Is title a pun on Robert Frost, for a Granite State writer?
  • Ray Blackston: A Delirious Summer. Frothy romantic comedy set in South Carolina. But ultimately sexless enough for Southern Baptist readership.
  • W.D. Wetherell, ed: This American River – Five Centuries of Writing About the Connecticut. Good way to begin thinking more pointedly about living in northern New England, where I’ve now been nearly two decades. (Compare what I’ve done here so far to my reading about the Pacific Northwest back in the 70s and my Olympic Peninsula longpoem.) From where I live and work, the Connecticut seems to be the backdoor of the house, with my orientation toward Boston and Maine. Yet it also leads up to the crown of New Hampshire, which I need to explore sometime.
  • W.D. Wetherell: North of Now. Some personal thoughts about living in Lyme and the changing character of rural New Hampshire.
  • Simon Ortiz: Out There Somewhere. Poems and journal entries by a major Native American writer. Found the paperback in Kettering, Ohio, and shared portions on the Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Manchester with a lovely Sioux across the aisle. Still, the collection comes as something of a disappointment: I expect work of the level of the piece Rachel had for class discussion.
  • Iris Moulton: A Thin Time. First volume by a young Utah poet who seems to be instrumental in a revival in Salt Lake City.
  • Stephen Gorman: Northeastern Wilds. Full-color photos with essays exploring the Great North Woods sweeping from the Adirondacks eastward across Maine. Suspect I’ve seen many of these in Sierra Club calendars, and the writing often seems pitched to glossy magazines, with three or four not quite continuous sections pieced together to create a single chapter. Annoying, saved mostly by some decent reference material. An Appalachian Mountain Club volume.

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FROM BIRDING BY EAR TO GROWING OLDER, WITH OR WITHOUT CHOPSTICKS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Peterson Field Guides: Birding by Ear (booklet and audio tapes). Tweet! (OK, I still can’t identify most birds by their singing. Maybe I just don’t know the words?)
  • Stephan Yafa: Big Cotton. Exploration of the impact of another major commodity on world economies and politics. In line with Salt, Cod, Honey, even the fur and tusks that Farley Mowett has pursued.
  • E. Digby Baltzell: Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia. A disturbing comparison of the legacy of two Colonial cities founded on faith. Baltzell’s reliance on High Society and family dynasties gives the work its own twist, so that families that moved away from either city vanish from sight, no matter their continuing contributions to society. Still, many of his conclusions are also disturbing, especially from a Friends’ perspective.
  • Henry David Thoreau: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. A surprising amount of bad poetry here, as well as very little observation of what’s right before him. I find myself dismissing Thoreau as a suburban naturalist, more an antecedent to Kerouac than, say, Snyder.
  • Tom Montag: Kissing Poetry’s Sister. Includes looks at creative nonfiction as a genre. He’s another middle-aged poet who has continued to write in relative obscurity while being employed in non-teaching positions.
  • Elizabeth Lyon: The Sell Your Novel Toolkit. Had this one sitting on my shelf all along, thinking it was another self-marketing guide for once the work was published. Instead, it turns out to have in-depth sections on query letters, synopsis/outline presentations, landing an agent, and the like. As a result, I have reworked all of my materials for the three novels I’m pitching – even renaming two of them. Now, let’s see if it does the trick.
  • Victoria Abbott Riccard: Untangling Chopsticks. A young woman from New England moves to Kyoto to master the cooking and presentation of food that accompanies tea-ceremony. Along the way, she becomes adept in a culture where she would always be an outsider, even after a lifetime. Includes recipes.
  • Tom Plummer: Second Wind, Variations on a Theme of Growing Older. Pleasant essays more appropriate to newspaper or magazine columns, by an understated Mormon.

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UNBOUND PAGES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 8 Comments

What comes to mind when someone mentions “sitting down to read a book”? I often think of winter days, maybe sitting beside a window that has African violets on its sill. Or long nights, perhaps with classical music or jazz in the room. Either way, the image fits January, and that may be what gave me the idea of devoting my postings here this month exclusively to a list of “books read” I’ve been compiling from 2005.

It’s a break in the rolling categories I’ve been presenting each month – those will resume at the beginning of February. Even so, as we ponder the range of books mentioned here, you could argue those categories continue all the same.

The project originated when my schedule at the newspaper was switched from a Wednesday-through-Saturday timetable (with a double-shift hammer pounding each week to a close) back to all-nights. At the time, on those evenings when the newsroom was fully staffed, a break would occur between the lockup of the first edition and the later ones – and this was a great time to read a chapter or two from a book-in-hand. (Alas, cutbacks soon took their toll.) For a change, I could nibble at those volumes I’d piled up “to read someday” – and decided to keep track of just what I tackled. This ledger was never intended for public consumption, but given the nature of the Red Barn – delving through boxes, baskets, and bins stashed in the loft – it seemed fitting to air these anyway, at last.

As I’ve noted previously, one of my laments in trying to maintain a literary writing discipline while being employed full-time was the lack of time to keep up with thoughtful reading. As you’ve no doubt heard, if you’re serious about writing, you have to be devoted to reading. Even so, what I found was that my extended reading often came in “orgies” based on vacations, recovery from surgery or illness, even airline travel. So here we are, surveying a few volumes and occasional magazines each day during the month.

I love having you weigh in with related works or arguing with my observations – reading is, after all, a passion we share.

REVELS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I first heard of them while living in Baltimore, the Christmas Revels that friends participated in down in Washington.

But it wasn’t until I moved to New Hampshire that the event came into focus, first through live broadcast previews of that year’s Boston production and then through actually attendance at Sanders Theatre at Harvard.

Revels, you ask?

I initially thought of something along the lines of a glee club, but what I discovered was much more elaborate – gorgeously costumed stagings blending solo, instrumental, and children’s and adult choral music, dance, comedy, a mummers play (skit, actually), audience singing, and a story narrative. The closest event to it I knew of was the annual madrigal dinners back in college, but rather than repeating an Elizabethan theme each year, the Revels create a lively story around a particular culture in time and place. One year focused on Leonardo da Vinci’s Italy; another, Armenia and neighboring Georgia; and then Appalachian, Scottish, Irish, French-Canadian, and colonial Spanish themes also come to mind.

The events were the brainchild of folklorist John Langstaff, who launched the first public performance in 1971 in Greater Boston to draw people into a community-wide celebration of the season. It’s a great way to introduce children to live concert and theater without the second-class status of “children’s” attached. And they’re always joyful and fun.

This past winter, spring, and fall I was blessed with the opportunity to participate in the bass section of the Revels Singers, a community chorus that rehearses and performs music from the previous four decades of shows– not just the Christmas productions but other events throughout the year, ranging from the Middle Ages till now and including 15 or so languages at last count. The chorus for the Christmas shows, I must point add, is top-notch, by audition only. Having some of its members among us at our weekly sessions has been illuminating. And some of them wondered why I’d commute up to four hours for a two-hour rehearsal? OK, I try to make an outing of it. Still, it’s magical time when we’re together.

Meanwhile, how often do you get to watch a first-rate conductor and arranger like George Emlen behind the scenes? We soon recognized that within his light-hearted approach were some very high standards and matching expectations, and we’ve felt ourselves rising more and more toward them.

This year’s Christmas show is The Road to Compostela, focusing on the Galician region of Spain and its famed pilgrimage. If you can’t get tickets to any of the 16 performances, there’s always the CD. And, yes, we’re going right after Christmas Day itself.

MADRIGAL DINNERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

When I was in college, one of the unique Christmas events was a series of madrigal feasts replete with Renaissance music, troubadours, jesters, and, of course, a meal that included the procession of the roast boar – in actuality, a large Indiana hog. Effective all the same.

The event originated in 1947 in what we now call the Early Music movement, and soon evolved into its Elizabethan splendor, drawing (as I recall) 550 people to each sitting over a two- or three-week period. And it was quite colorfully memorable.

Alas, by the beginning of the 21st century, the dinners had become history – in part, I assume, because of the academic pressures of a reconfigured semester that now ended before Christmas, rather than two weeks later. (A change I applaud, all the same – having finals hanging over you during your so-called vacation was tortuous, as was returning for two weeks, leaving, and coming right back to register.)

Still, it has me thinking of the many holiday events that now sustain American arts organizations – the Nutcracker ballet at the top of the list, of course, and the staged Christmas Carol or Holiday Pops concerts. As well as the big collapse most people seem to suffer for two or three weeks after.