Category: Personal Journey

SCARF ‘ROUND THE NECK

~ 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

~ 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

~ 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!

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RETIRED OR …?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

After officially retiring full-time early this year, I found myself saying I’d changed careers, taking up something that wasn’t yet paying the bills.

Actually, it’s been several things, from a rash of poetry appearances to publication of the novels, especially, on top of intensified Quaker practice.

Lately, though, as my wife returned to the workplace full-time, I’m beginning to sense I’ve retired from retirement to become … a househusband!

I really do need to learn to cook again, especially since the standards in my life have risen so sharply since we’ve been together. And then there’s the vacuuming and sweeping and washing … well, it really is endless, isn’t it!

As for meeting her in my apron, I’ll leave the details to your imagination. I hope she enjoys the cocktail and just kicking back. As if there’s time for that when you’re working.

PRESIDENTIAL COLORS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Without any sense of being one of them, I’ve known people who claim to see auras around individuals. They have their own vocabulary regarding what each color means. And I’ve listened without agreeing or dissenting. It’s their experience, after all.

Still, I remember in the midst of one of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primaries when one of the hopefuls was moving through the office, along with his entourage. I couldn’t quite identify the face, but it was familiar. What struck me, intensely, though, the way he was surrounded by a black vapor.

And a black aura, as they said, was satanic.

Afterward, I realized it was Pat Robertson – the Reverend Pat Robertson.

I still feel a chill, recalling the incident, with no way of confirming how much is true or fallacious. But others have told me the same.

MEMORY LANE OF DESIRES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As I said at the time …

Looking back through the yearbooks, I’m surprised to admit how few of the girls were as sexy or mysterious or genuinely attractive as they’ve remained in my memory. This is not what I would have thought earlier.

I can also wonder why I didn’t move on KK or why nothing connected with MM, despite the youth pastor’s encouragement. What were the astrological factors? Anything else I might have noticed later?

Of course, most of us guys, well, that was another matter. Some things never change.

GODDESSES OF AN EARLIER ERA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

As I said at the time, the attempt to gain a clearer picture of my high school and college years took an interesting turn as I considered (let’s call her) AA, and an attraction that never went beyond a few words and our shared hours in Mrs. Hopkins’ horrid English class. AA was, I believe, the one who knew what a choral descant was, perhaps indicating she was Episcopalian. What I remember – and the yearbooks confirm – was that she was squeaky clean, of the pure skin and bright eyes variety. Even Ivory Soap spotless.

I would have also added “virginal,” though I could speculate there was a hidden passionate side – she was, after all, on the elite marching squad, and ambitious enough to hold several offices. Some of the portraits hint at some mischief or playfulness behind those serious eyes and smile. Yet she did not show up on the homecoming or prom courts. I seem to sense she may have already had a serious boyfriend.

Now I find, as AB, a nurse, possibly divorced and looking nothing like the girl I remember, she’s still in that locale and even contributed to a Republican Senate campaign. It’s amazing what you can discover online, if you find the right thread, even without coughing over any money.

This has me thinking again of the missed opportunities and how, maybe, they were essential to my eventual pathway.

I never spoke much to her or to BB or to CC because I felt they were way out of my league. Even DD, whom I did ask out a couple of times, to no avail – usually too late. Now I see how our youth pastor’s comments about another may have actually been an attempt to bridge something on her part, but again I felt all too incompetent and impoverished and minor-minor league constricted. (Yet, as a golden boy in my mother’s eyes, only beauty would do as my consort, at least in my own expectations.)

The swirl around EE, of course, was a situation in which one person finds himself or herself unwitting having a small but pivotal role in a much larger drama. I wonder what I’d say to her now. (That would be an interesting letter to compose: note to myself.) My mother’s values, my own ambitions, my conflicted religious situation, and the raging hormones all tangled.

Suppose I had somehow found myself going steady with any of them? (Much less the twins or FF or GG – which brings up the younger woman syndrome.) Would I have felt more content, to continue studies at Wright State, work at the Journal Herald, settle in Dayton forever? Would I have been Republican, Methodist, or … ? How small that all looks now!

On the other hand, the hippie movement was around the corner. HH (now there, along with JJ, were older women – a grade or two ahead – I could have gone for!) did move, according to the Web, in that direction.

At the time, I thought the girls all possessed a secret wisdom far beyond what we wretched guys – well, for the most part: a few seemed to be on a privileged inside track – could muster. As if they would only show mercy! As if that was what I was reading in their coy glances. Heavens!

GETTING FREE OF GUILT EDGES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

A renewed compulsion had me rethinking, reworking, pruning, and punching up much of my earlier writing – the dozen unpublished novels; the genealogy research and narrative; several hundred poems, many of which had been published in literary quarterlies; and varied essays and journal entries. It hit with a vengeance, and was given extra clout at New England Yearly Meeting one August when, in a prayer circle, it was made clear to me that these labors are an exercise of talent, a gift, rather than a self-indulgence that had too often before stirred feelings of guilt.

For the first time in my life, I felt free to undertake this labor, the writing that does not pay the bills but somehow keeps me intellectually and artistically alive. What a blessing! (Never underestimate the power of prayer!)

Again, cleaning up these works and seeing them published may be one more way of bringing some closure to what too often seems a honeycombed life! Writing pulls so many of these threads together.

I began trying to set aside one free day each week as a no-automobile day, a kind of sabbath for writing, reading, or reflection; even with my usual three days off at the time (Sunday News worked a double shift every Saturday), achieving this goal became surprisingly difficult – but wonderfully rewarding when it did.

In some rich ways, it became a kind of retirement, even while being employed elsewhere full-time.

REMEMBERING JULIA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The Canterbury Shaker Village is a remarkable place to revisit history. I’ve had a lifelong appreciation of Shaker architecture and furniture. In fact, we used to bicycle out to what had been a Shaker village and catch crawdads in the stream. Our denomination also had its orphanage and retirement center at another former Shaker village not far south of us, and I remember touring its remaining buildings.

But Canterbury was one of the last two villages, and one Friend speaks fondly of his conversations with the sisters. Today it is a well preserved living history museum.

So one weekday, when I was free of the office, my girlfriend and I went up for a tour. As we arrived, I noticed one of my coworkers, Ellie Ferriter, and in greeting, asked what she was doing there. “I’m here to meet Julia Child,” she replied. Yeah, sure. “No really, she’s here to tape an interview with the chef.”

One of the things the museum had done was open a restaurant with a menu drawn from the distinctive Shaker recipes, and there was reason to celebrate the cuisine.

Sure enough, when we came back from our tour, there was Ellie, interviewing Julia. Now Ellie was a large woman, but Julia was larger – in fact, towering above and around the interviewer. I hadn’t expected that, even though one profile had described her as having very long legs when she went to work in military intelligence back during World War II.

Julia had already had a long influence on me. In high school, when we finally got a TV set that included UHF, I could finally watch the “educational station” out of Cincinnati, and there, through the snowy image that barely came through, I was introduced to exotic foods like lobsters, asparagus, artichokes, baguettes and croissants, hollandaise. Well, introduced to their concepts and preparation. The actual introductions would come across the years, and what had been exotic has long since become standard.

We settled into the Creamery, the small restaurant, for lunch – my girlfriend and I along with a couple from England at one table, Julia and Ellie at the next one. We could overhear every word. Our English visitors, meanwhile, had no idea who Julia was.

Later, I noticed Julia sitting alone in a shaded spot. Wondered if she was lonely or just needed a break. I was tempted to approach and introduce myself, but refrained.

*   *   *

About that same time, I was talking with a woman who knew someone whose husband conferred with Julia several times each year, and the wife was expected to serve lunch – a daunting prospect. What do you prepare for one of the world’s most famous cooks and food writers? And then she discovered that a boiled lobster and fresh green salad were always savored.

How I’ve come to love that insight when facing a seemingly impossible assignment – a simple but elegant solution, as the Shakers demonstrated, may be the ideal.

Here’s to Julia’s 101st birthday.

SPLITTING THE RENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Yes, splitting the rent, as I remember it, way back when leaving home and living not with a spouse or a lover, but instead sharing a dorm room or an apartment as a matter of economic necessity. You would wish otherwise, of course, for a space all your own, with privacy. In all of this transition, all the same, the unanticipated connections. As if you would ever go back.