Category: Tendrils

Typical comments from our cruise ship visitors

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In season, we like interacting with the passengers from visiting cruise ships. Eastport does limit the ships to no more than one a day, and most of the ships come after the summer season and many of our retailers had traditionally closed up. For the restaurants and stores, the ships more than doubled the retail season and often provide the best days of the year. What a relief!

So here’s a sampling.

  1. There are no yachts! This is a real working harbor!
  2. Where can I find a lobster dinner? Or a fresh lobster roll.
  3. It’s so lovely. (Or, quaint. Or, charming.)
  4. Is this typical weather? (Think of June with temps in the lower 50s.)
  5. What are the winters like? Is snow a problem? How much snow do you get?
  6. Your garden looks great.
  7. This is an island?
  8. Do you have schools?
  9. That’s Canada?
  10. It’s not like other ports, we feel welcome.

 Some inquire about lighthouses or the Bay of Fundy.

The crew members, meanwhile, want to know how to get to the IGA and Family Dollar, where they stock up on snacks and junk food. They quickly establish a kind of ant trail moving in both directions.

Naturally, I’ve collected tips on writing over the years

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Often, writers’ advice can be extended to life beyond writing itself. Here’s a sampling.

  1. “Trust your idea, and just start writing. It can seem like a huge task, especially if you have had your work commissioned and there is a relatively fixed deadline, but once you start putting words on the page it will come together, and there is always someone you can ask for a little bit of support.” – Jaime Breitnauer
  2. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” – Anton Chekhov
  3. “Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.” – Elmore Leonard
  4. “It has become increasingly plain to me that the very excellent organization of a long book or the finest perceptions and judgment in time of revision do not go well with liquor. A short story can be written on the bottle, but for a novel you need the mental speed that enables you to keep the whole pattern inside your head and ruthlessly sacrifice the sideshows … I would give anything if I hadn’t written Part III of Tender Is the Night entirely on stimulant.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
  5. “[S]tay focused and write what you enjoy writing. Don’t write for money or follow the trends of what might be selling at the time. Write something that you cannot only be proud of, but also enjoy the process of writing.” – Christopher J. Moore
  6. “Read it aloud to yourself because that’s the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out—they can be got right only by ear).” – Diana Athill
  7. “Write what you love, what truly piques your curiosity every day. I’ve met authors who have told me they were sick of the subject matter in their books by the time they came out. I’m so glad I don’t feel this way!” – Haley Shapley
  8. “Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.” – Jonathan Franzen
  9. “Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.” — Katherine Mansfield
  10. “How do you write? You write, man, you write, that’s how, and you do it the way the old English walnut tree puts forth leaf and fruit every year by the thousands. … If you practice an art faithfully, it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.” – William Saroyan

There were some positive steps for our City in the Bay last year

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

For a small community like ours, with just 1,300 year-round residents, though that swells in summer when the owners of second homes return, our shop owners and restaurateurs have to hustle to make their income during the summer season, long before the notorious Black Friday after Thanksgiving that other retailers rely on.

Our port’s growing popularity with the passengers of cruise ships, especially in the autumn, has provided a definite economic boost and essentially doubled our retailing season.

With that background, here are ten positive steps we saw in our local economy in 2025.

  1. Fiber optic cable came to Eastport and much of Way Downeast, providing both faster broadband connectivity as well as some healthy competition for dominant Spectrum. It’s especially important for many who work from home.
  2. The last leg of the I-395 bypass around Bangor finally opened, in time for the Fourth of July, even. (Officially, the new stretch is State Route 9 and only two lanes, but it is limited-access.) This eliminated a narrow country road link that fed into a typically congested stop-and-go suburban jag between Way Downeast Maine and the rest of the United States. It also shortened the driving time for us to get to major services in metropolitan Bangor, things that the rest of you take for granted, or for deliveries to get to us way out here.
  3. A savvy, local-oriented new and used bookstore opened downtown. It’s an inviting place to sit and read the latest. She knows her stuff and what makes our region tick. As an author, I can say how wonderful it is to be represented on her shelves.
  4. We gained a six-day-a-week bakery, the kind that makes real croissants and yummy breakfast sandwiches. Its opening overcomes the loss of our bagel shop a few years earlier, after its founders realized it was too much to tackle while still having full-time jobs elsewhere. Maybe folks will even stop lamenting a dedicated bakery that closed before the Covid shutdowns.
  5. There are solid choices for great coffee seven-days-a-week now. In addition to the bakery and the bookstore (yes!), an established gourmet coffee roaster has moved into the earlier espresso joint, this time six mornings a week instead of hit-or-miss hours. If you’re up here for a week, this will definitely brighten your day.
  6. Our fine dining options on Water Street have certainly improved. The wine bar now has a full kitchen and a masterful chef who curates a new menu weekly, featuring local sourcing while keeping the price-point in reach of us locals. Ye Ole Hookers, an upgraded incarnation of a legendary waterfront bar, also added a talented cook in the evenings, and we confidently recommend both locations for those who want something more memorable than average diner fare at the other end of the downtown. (In fairness, the Waco has stepped up its game by opening its Schooner Room with evening specials many nights of the week, too.) Gone is the motto many of us repeated a few years ago, “Don’t get hungry in Eastport on Monday.”
  7. The lobster pound returned to outdoor, next-to-the-tides seafood service after a multi-year hiatus. It doesn’t get any more iconic than this. And it is a relief to give an affirmative answer to the common question, “Where can I find a lobster dinner (or lobster roll) around here?”
  8. Ten years after the resident schooner in our harbor went down in the collapse of a section of the Breakwater pier, Eastport Windjammers (our whale watch service) once again has a schooner in its fleet. The Halie & Matthew’s day-sailing cruises are one more attraction for visitors. As an added twist, the two-masted ship was built in Eastport in 2006, so it’s also a homecoming.
  9. Passenger ferry service between Eastport and Lubec resumed on weekends. It’s a great way for tourists to view our waters and mosey around another town.
  10. Our volunteer airport opened a spacious terminal, something that can greet private pilots to our neck of the woods and assist locals who are being flown (gratis) to medical specialists in Boston, 352 miles or a six-hour-drive away. It even brings us a step closer to getting puddle-jumper commercial airline service.

Cheers to all!

In case you want one more excuse to celebrate a new year

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Just consider:

  1. New Year’s wasn’t always celebrated on January 1st. The earliest New Year festivities date back about 4,000 years. At that time, the people of ancient Babylon began their new year in what we call March.
  2. They would have an 11-day festival to acclaim the beginning of spring. It also celebrated that crops were being planted.
  3. What we use today is known is the Gregorian calendar, introduced 443 years ago by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 as a revised version of the Roman emperor Julian’s version. Gregory declared once and for all that January 1st should be New Year’s Day.
  4. Since then, most of the Western world marks the start of the year just like you and I do — on the first day of January.
  5. Still, it took almost 350 years for the world to get on board. Turkey didn’t make the switch until 1927. What was their objection?
  6. Ours is a solar new year, unlike the ones based on the moon – a lunar (Chinese) or lunisolar new year. The Islamic, Tamil, and Jewish calendars are prime examples of working around the moon. And India and Nepal are among nations that observe the event on a more fluid calendar, so we’re told.
  7. In Eastern Orthodox countries, January 1 is a religious holiday marking the circumcision of the Baby Jesus, seven days after his birth, rather than the beginning of a new calendar. The Orthodox religious calendar starts on September 1.
  8. Bulgaria, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Romania, Syria, and Turkey hold to a revised Julian calendar that observes January 1, but in other nations and locations where the Orthodox churches still adhere to the Julian calendar, including Georgia, Israel, Russia, the Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Ukraine, the civil new year is observed on January 1 while the religious feasts occur on January 14 Gregorian (which is January 1 Julian). Got that?
  9. Nobody celebrates a new fiscal year, do they? That date can vary, depending on the organization, but for the federal government, it runs from October 1 to September 30.
  10. And the income tax year, with its April 15 deadline, is a race to the finish line rather than a party.

There’s more, should you be interested. Like Ethiopia on September 11, with its 13-month calendar descending from the Egyptians.

Let’s leave it at that, for now. Instead, you may want to chill the bubbly.

Things I hate about Christmas

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments
  1. House cleaning. It won’t stay that way long, no matter how hard we try.
  2. The frenetic schedule. Nothing else gets done in the month.
  3. Parking lots. Really packed parking lots. And all of the accompanying traffic.
  4. Retail music. Really!  You can’t escape it.
  5. Nobody’s that happy. Or relentlessly chipper. And don’t try to goad me into it. Or guilt me, either.
  6. Cardboard boxes. Stacks of empty ones take up too much space, there’s rarely one that fits your need, and then all the wrapped ones soon won’t be, meaning trash to haul out.
  7. Pine needles everywhere from all the garlands around the house. They really start dropping overnight.
  8. Piles of dirty dishes. We do eat well, though.
  9. Waiting for everyone to get up on Christmas morning. Unless I’m really asleep.
  10. Having to wait for the cookies to finally become fair game.

Technically, most of this is actually Advent. The real 12 Days of Christmas are another matter, something I’ve thoroughly come to appreciate.

 

That ‘X’ in Xmas isn’t what most folks think

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Considering that X is also the Roman numeral for ten, here goes this week’s Tendrils.

  1. X, or Chi, is the first letter in Greek for Christ. Thus, using it as shorthand for the Yule holiday has nothing to do with striking Christ out of holiday celebrations.
  2. Applied to the English word Christmas, the use dates from the 1500s. Elsewhere, the use of ‘X’ for Christ goes back to at least the fourth century.
  3. It did take me a while in doing genealogy research of the 1600s to realize that Xpher was the name Christopher.
  4. Only half of Americans attend religious services on Christmas Eve or Day.
  5. The holiday was widely ignored in Colonial America. For that matter, the first session of the U.S. Congress was held on December 25, 1789. It wasn’t until 1870 that Christmas was proclaimed a federal holiday.
  6. Turkey is edging out ham as the centerpiece of the Christmas dinner in America. It’s even a big day for cranberry, perhaps surpassing Thanksgiving. Swan and peacock were earlier favorites, though I’m not sure where.
  7. The Rockefeller Center tree started out small. The first one, in 1931, was undecorated. Two years later, one appeared with lights. Each year afterward saw a bigger tree, culminating in the familiar giant that boasts more than 50,000 LED lights.
  8. Christmas caroling was originally mostly drunken men going door to door and making a nuisance of themselves. And then the unemployed poor took over with their begging bowls.
  9. The oldest Santa parade in the U.S. is in Peoria, Illinois, dating from 1888. Apparently, it’s played well there.
  10. The original Christmas pudding was a soup made of raisins and wine.

Fir tipping is a big job around here

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The signs “fir tippers wanted” this time of year can be puzzling, so here’s the scoop for those of you who don’t live in Maine.

  1. Christmas wreath makers need stands of evergreens to shape into their festive rings. In Maine, the traditional material is the tips of balsam fir branches. Don’t confuse the inch-long needles for spruce or hemlock.
  2. “Tippers” are the folks who have the skills to collect tips that usually range between 12 to 20 inches.
  3. Quality needles are found only in the mid-section of the tree. Tops and bottoms are deemed unsuitable.
  4. The season is short. The greens cannot be collected before the “tips” are set when a tree goes dormant for winter, usually around November 1, and that’s if the stand has had three nights of 20-degree or lower nights. (Beware of global warning.) Any earlier and the tips lose their needles prematurely. But the wreath-makers do need to get the product to market before Christmas Day, too. It gets busy.
  5. Millions of wreaths are crafted in the state each Christmas season. The trees are abundant and the fir branches are easily worked. Balsam is pleasant to smell, too.
  6. The work is a welcome boost in income for many rural families and comes after the crops are in.
  7. Tips can be harvested by a firm grasp between forefinger and thumb followed by a quick downward motion. Loppers or pruners do the trick for more out-of-the-way tips.
  8. Skilled tippers leave enough on a tree for it to recover in about three years.
  9. The tips are commonly gathered on a “stick” made of a small conifer stripped of most of its branches. When the stick has 40 to 75 pounds of tips, it’s carried off. Bundling the tips into smaller bunches is another method of transport.
  10. Tippers do need to get permission before harvesting from a site. Sometimes that means paying a fee for a permit.

– Source: University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service

Consider the Theotokos in the Nativity events

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to the mother of Jesus, Eastern Orthodox Christianity has developed a perspective that differs in subtle ways from the Roman Catholic and Protestant streams. Much of the teaching is not found in the standard Bible but does round out a broader understanding.

Here are ten points from the Orthodox tradition without getting to some very fine hair-splitting.

  1. She is called the Theotokos, Greek for “God-bearer” or “God-birther.”
  2. In her full title, she is referenced as the “all holy, immaculate, most glorified and blessed Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary.”
  3. Elsewhere in the liturgy, she is called the Mother of God, though the theology does but put some limits on that, as in “Mother of the Incarnate God.”
  4. She was the only child of an elderly couple, Saints Joachim and Anna, mentioned in the New Testament apocrypha Gospel of James. Their childlessness was a cause of shame, as the drama goes, until their big surprise. Their festival day is July 26.
  5. The Orthodox celebrate her nativity on September 8. Fittingly, that’s a week after the beginning of the Orthodox liturgical calendar year.
  6. Her presentation into the temple is celebrated on November 21. According to tradition, she was taken at age 3 and left there, consecrated to its service, where she remained until age 12 in preparation for her celestial role. The feast day comes about a week after the beginning of the 40-day Nativity fast, the Orthodox parallel to what Western-Christianity observes as Advent.
  7. The annunciation, where Archangel Gabriel appeared with glad tidings to inform her of her surprise pregnancy, is celebrated on March 25, nine months ahead of Christmas.
  8. On her death, or Dormition (Falling Asleep), she is believed to have been ascended into heaven. The event is celebrated on August 15. In support of the argument, the faithful are reminded that no bones remained behind. Thank “doubting” Thomas for that, when he arrived late for the occasion. Had there been any bones, they no doubt would have been highly regarded wonder-working relics preserved in a famous church or monastery.
  9. Her icon is displayed on the iconostasis that separates the sanctuary (altar) from the nave in an Orthodox house of worship. She stands holding the child Christ on one side of the Royal Door, through which only the priests may pass, while Jesus is depicted at the other.
  10. She is also referred to as Queen of Heaven and Mother of the Church.

 

Gertrude Stein could quick to the cut 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

She does show up in my sets of art gallery poems, accompanied by Norman Rockwell, for good reason, if only a fictional role.

Here are ten things she really said.

  1. “We are always the same age inside.”
  2. “Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?”
  3. “It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
  4. “The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.”
  5. “A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”
  6. “Literature – creative literature – unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.”
  7. “I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading it never can do.”
  8. “It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.”
  9. “Money is always there but the pockets change.”
  10. “America is my country, and Paris is my home town.”

For the art gallery poems, go to my blog Thistle Finch editions.

 

In case you need encouragement on that novel

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Yes, for those of you writers who should be well past the halfway point of your new novel draft by this time this month. As well as any others, working at whatever.

  1. “I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.” – William Carlos Williams, M.D.
  2. “Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.” – Gore Vidal
  3. “A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.” – Eugene Ionesco
  4. “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” – Anais Nin
  5. “The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.” – Zadie Smith
  6. “The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis.” – William Styron
  7. “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.” – Robin Williams
  8. “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” – Philip Pullman
  9. “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” – Aldous Huxley
  10. “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” – Albert Camus