HISTORIC UPDATES, CONTINUED

March 12, 2014March 11, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

As I said at the time, so long ago now …

No changes on the love-life front. Maybe I really don’t have the time or energy these days to invest there. Just too much going on with the writing and publishing – plus the Quaker responsibilities as clerk of Quarterly Meeting (which is something like being bishop of New Hampshire congregations would be in some other denominations).

Besides, am trying to be careful this time not to connect with my previous patterns – a radar that seems to pick up on emotionally troubled romantic partners or seems to draw them to me. Important thing is to keep myself nourished and centered. There are, however some encouraging new friendships, including those arising from a local poetry group (the “Prozac Poets” meeting at Barnes and Noble) and a weekly open reading in Concord. Will be the “featured poet” at another, which raises its own set of concerns: do I basically read from one extended series or period, or do I instead select a sampler from the past thirty years? Any suggestions?

Am leaning, at this point, toward opening with a Hindu chant that’s supposed to be efficacious at warding off tigers and poisonous snakes and closing with a wonderful quote by William Penn, a piece that wasn’t written as a poem but certainly works as one and points toward both Walt Whitman and Greenleaf Whittier. After the opening chant, I would say a few words about poetry arising in the sacred, which includes sexuality and even the more successful sacrilegious efforts, then go into a long piece, “Flight With Sun and Moon,” from the early 1970s. After that, I anticipate a grouping of five micropoems to change the pace, then maybe three sections from a longpoem, Recovering Olympus, followed by five more micropoems, leading into three to five pieces from one of my more recent “Police Blotter Love Poems” series. I would then end my own work with a five-page piece from Maine, addressed to my favorite poet and the influence he’s exerted throughout my own moves during the past three decades. Guess I’m just thinking aloud here. Sound reasonable? Like all good plans, it’s subject to a slew of revisions!

Yipes, it’s time to run already. Another Tuesday, the last day of my “weekend,” and the sun’s just set (well, it is late afternoon) – need to get something to eat before running off to a poetry reading. Some good stuff being done around here, as well as the usual dross.

Am looking forward to all of those pictures you’re promising in your always scintillating ‘zine. And no, no way are you what they accuse. You’re a poet, remember? But you already know that.

Oh boy indeed!

Aquarius Tracker

ANTIQUE OR JUST OBSOLETE?

March 11, 2014March 16, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

Climbing around the barn the other day, I came upon a few items I now realize are ancient history. The T-square, for instance, was used for paste-ups for pages that would be photocopied for publication. But nowadays, that’s all done in the computer. The circular wheels were actually slide rules we used to calculate proportions when cropping photographs, also for publication – and once again, that’s all done in the computer these days. The metal ruler has special calibrations in picas and points, the measurements traditionally used by printers. You run into point measures now in the font section of your word program. And then there’s the mouse pad. You remember those, back before you switched to laptop?

So I came back into the house and turned on my stereo. You may notice I still play vinyl, which probably deserves a posting of its own. When I was a teen, I dreamed of the day I’d have an entire wall of LPs and the system to play them on. Now I look at this and realize it can essentially fit into my laptop or, uh, an iPod, if I ever go there.

LONG TIME PASSING

March 6, 2014March 20, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Thinking of people I’ve known over the years, I keep coming across memories of individuals who blazed intensely, almost compulsively, for a period – say as a poet or in a religious practice – and then vanished. And then there are others who have faithfully stayed the course.

It comes down to those who blaze for a season versus those who keep growing and deepen.

We could look at flowers and vegetables that are classified annuals, of course, or to the orchard and vineyard.

Still, I miss the ones who’ve vanished. Their loss reminds me of winter.

REGARDING A GRANDFATHER CLOCK

February 24, 2014February 21, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When I was growing up, “going to the farm” meant a trip to my grandmother’s sister and brother-in-law in the other corner of our county. One of my memories was of the grandfather clock that stood at the top of the stairs and Aunt Edna’s mentioning that it had been carried over the mountains in a Conestoga wagon “from the place where Conestoga wagons were made.”

As a history buff, I eventually realized that was Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, now famed for its Amish population. The plot thickens, as I explain at my genealogy blog, The Orphan George Chronicles.

Decades after the farm had been sold and I began working on the genealogy puzzle, I received a few photographs of the clock, and a few days ago I scanned them into my computer. You can’t see many of the details, but I remember the small moon and sun that would rotate in the clock face. A few years ago, back in Ohio, I was surprised by how short the clock itself is. We think of grandfather clocks as large, but this one is probably shoulder-high to me.

Most amazing, though, is the sweet ringing it issues in singing its quarterly rounds. Not a gonging sound at all, but more like the clinking of crystal stemware.

And to think, the clock itself had been rediscovered, hidden away on its side in a loft of one of the barns. Just goes to show, you never know quite what to expect when you go rooting around in an old barn now, do you?

WHAT A YEAR THIS HAS BEEN

December 29, 2013December 29, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

While this was the year I officially retired, what really happened has me once again (or should I say finally?) wearing my novelist’s cap, with four ebooks published at Smashwords since May and more planned ahead. What a relief it is to see these in public at last, rather than sitting forever in filing cabinets in the face of an increasingly difficult traditional book publishing industry. (Hooray for the ebook upstarts!)

The first half of the year included a rash of poetry acceptances in literary journals around the world, including three in India. In fact, in sheer numbers, it was my best year ever, even before I had three presses accept poetry chapbooks for their offerings. (Please stay tuned.) That’s always an honor and something of a breakthrough for me.

On a lower note (pardon the pun), I joined the baritone section of the Boston-based Revels Singers – performing with Ciarin Nagel of the Three Irish Tenors in June and Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary in September – on top of the choir’s weekly workouts in Watertown. Apart from the rush-hour part of the commute, it’s been a heavenly experience.

I can also claim some pride in my major contribution to the garden efforts – the many black bags of seaweed gleaned from Kittery Point, Maine. Rachel was especially impressed by the way the mixture repelled our notorious garden slugs, even before we got to its impact as a high-quality fertilizer. More will be on the way.

And, yes, I’m still Quakering madly.

Did I say retired? A better description is that I changed careers. At last.

And looking ahead, as we open new calendars, this hope: May we all have a happy and prosperous New Year!

JUST FOR ADDED KICKS

December 19, 2013December 19, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Admittedly, we live in an area that gives meteorologists headaches. It’s one of those where several major weather systems collide. Not quite as bad as where I once lived in Upstate New York and we sometimes wound up with four completely different forecasts for the day’s four editions of the paper as the day wore on. But here, one winter, when one of the local websites had its own retired Air Force meteorologist providing early morning reports, he did note an ongoing line running from Concord, New Hampshire, to Portland, Maine, and remarked that if it shifted slightly north or south, so would the weather, depending which side you were on. That line held on most of the winter.

In the past week, we’ve just come through two “weather events” that provide some amusement in the iffiness of science department, even if it has meant more than 20 inches of snowfall to dig out. In the last one, the projected amounts of snowfall kept changing, sometimes with hourly revisions, or so it seemed, going from one to two inches and settling on two to four, at one service, to three to six at NOAA. We wound up with over eight. So they missed, one of them (the one that’s usually somewhat hysterical in its warnings) off 75 to 88 percent.

In the storm before that, I’m glad I decided to back out of plans to head to Boston for a working session with Friends. The heavier-than-expected snowfall was a mess, and I never would have made it there in time.

Now we’re looking at another weekend, one with a gathering halfway across the state tomorrow night, and the other Sunday morning, the one we rescheduled in Boston. And I have no way of knowing what to expect, other than it might be messy.

Without getting into the percent chances of precipitation but sticking only to the forecast, here are the options:

Saturday overcast, Sunday ice pellets, Monday rain.
Tomorrow wintry mix, tomorrow night and Saturday rain/snow, Saturday night and Sunday freezing rain continuing Sunday night, Monday rain/snow.
Tomorrow a few afternoon showers, Saturday cloudy, Sunday rain, Monday cloudy.

So Sunday’s the only day they agree on, and even that could be simple rain or really messy?

I guess if I had to choose one, it would be the third option, especially since Sunday has only the warmer rain. Or maybe, if I look around more, I might even find a fourth choice I like better.

Or should I just check my horoscope for a clearer idea, instead?

HEALTHIER BALANCE

December 19, 2013December 19, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

For most of my adult life, I’ve tended to load up on the fresh vegetables, but fruit’s been another matter. Maybe if you stuck a piece right in front of me, on my plate. Yes, I love blueberries and, with breakfast, a grapefruit. But even after living in an orchard (cherries, plums, pears, peaches, and varieties of apples), I rarely went out of my way for that end of the dietary spectrum. Until I retired.

Maybe it was a sense of reclaiming some of my ashram experience, but once I left full-time employment, I found myself in a routine of setting down for a midmorning meal of fresh homemade toast (with homemade jam or jelly, meaning fruit), fresh homemade yogurt (with fruit), and (in season) an orange I’d just peeled.

And then there are all the goodies from our garden, much of it eaten fresh and the rest, frozen for later, such as the strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. That’s even before we get to the trips to the pick-your-own orchards, where we focus on the half-price drops on the ground, such as peaches and apples, or the crab apples we pick from the strips between the sidewalk and some city streets. Add to that a daughter who revels in canning, as well as making jams and jellies.

It may be deep cold outside, but on my table these days, I’m reliving summer. Now, what are we having for dinner?

SCARF ‘ROUND THE NECK

December 15, 2013February 12, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

At the first college I attended, nearly all of the writers wore scarves. I don’t think it was a conscious decision to create a group identity, but the school, small as it was, had an excellent writing program. As a commuter campus, we wound up hanging out in what was called a cafeteria, not that I recall a real food line. But the round table (as a roundtable, at that) was open, and maybe the scarves were initially just a way of finding a circle of kindred spirits.

In a way, the strip of cloth may have served like those reminders of guilds and monastic orders of ancient times and their echo in modern clerical and academic vestments. We weren’t yet hippies, with all of their expressive sartorial flair, but it was on the horizon. Think of it as a badge of self-identity and distinction.

In the years since, as I’ve come to appreciate the way scarves can add a layer of comfort through a northern winter, I keep recalling that circle and our aspirations. A few went on to earn literary recognition, but some of the others were also immensely talented and yet have vanished from sight.

Come to think of it, so have many of my own favorite scarves – especially the ones my new stepdaughters latched onto when they came into the picture.

Any way I look at it, a scarf still beats a necktie as an item of apparel. Remind me to wear one next time I pose for the back-of-the-book jacket portrait.

Oh, here we are, back to those aspirations, aren’t we?

BUBBLES

December 6, 2013November 15, 2012 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

With apologies to the Friends disciplines that warned of intoxicating beverages or to friends who are longtime members of twelve-step programs, let me confess to the period when I was an amateur homebrewer. I’ve recently retired from it, recycled the bottles, and distributed the gear. But it was an educational experience. (Seriously.) I never got as detailed as my friend Eric, with his sensitive scale to measure ingredients or his original recipes. No, the pre-measured kits from Stout Billy’s were unbeatable, especially when I learned ways to travel “cross country” to make double stouts or double bochs. And I soon bypassed the alcohol level measurements, a move that gave me one more bottle from each kettle of brewing.

My wife’s long been fascinated by the role of yeast in civilization. Think of bread or yogurt, for starters. We like the story that across Europe, the bakery and brewery were side-by-side, both relying on the yeast culture. She even baked some bread from our used beer yeast, though the younger daughter objected to its taste. Still, we know it can be done.

Yeast makes the difference between ales and lagers. The ale yeasts thrive at slightly warmer temperatures, such as the British Isles, compared to the lagers, of German fame, especially. (Pilsner is a sub-set of lager.) I soon fell into a pattern of brewing and bottling ales in the fall, before Christmas, when I’d take a break before launching into lagers. In all, I created more than 2,500 bottles, each one “hand crafted.”

Well, the Irish musicians did declare my stout tasted like the Guinness in Dublin – not the stuff they ship here. And I’ll take that as the highest complement, along with their smiles as they drank while playing.

HO-HO, THE ROSE AND THE HOLLY

November 30, 2013October 29, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

This time of year, we head out to collect sprigs of red berries from along the roadway – wild rose hips my wife uses for decorating the interior of the house. A seasonal touch.

Holly is another matter. Our sole bush remains stunted after all these years. Fortunately, we have a friend whose plant proliferates. She’s glad to have help with the pruning.

Ho, ho, ho!