Losing a reclusive neighbor we never really met

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Moving to a new community three years ago meant meeting new neighbors, and Eastport, as we’ve found, can be a friendly place, even for us who are “from away.”

But one of our abutting neighbors was very-hard-of-hearing, as my wife discovered in attempting to talk to her, and ignored my attempts of waving in greeting. In many ways, she resembled my late asocial mother-in-law, not only physically but also in a heavy cigarette habit. Don’t know if she rolled her own, though. Still, she seemed to relish her independence and had a support system that included a few handymen I could approach with problems to address. Which they did.

We did worry about her occasional drives to the grocery or doctor or wherever. She could barely see over the steering wheel while puffing away, for one thing. And her backing out of the driveway did appear questionable. Still, she eventually returned home, apparently unscathed. I did see her one day in the IGA parking lot receiving a lot of help packing her trunk with her purchases.

I did wonder about her living in a big house all by herself, though that’s not uncommon in a town that’s largely elderly.

So flash forward to a day before what was left of Hurricane Lee was to hit town and I looked out the kitchen-sink window to see a police officer nosing about, checking her car, knocking on her door (and receiving no answer). No surprise there, her lawn-mowing and snow-removing crews got much the same.

Still, he was persistent, making repeated calls from his cruiser after trying all doors and walking around the house.

The next thing I knew, an hour or two later, was a white glove through her apple trees and the black SUV before the blanketed gurney came into focus.

Even before the obituary, an online search gleaned details that she had been born in Eastport to the manager of the local Newberry’s store and, when it closed, moved by stages to Upstate New York, and then, after college, to San Francisco before the Summer of Love and a career in banking.

And then, in retirement, she returned to her roots – from the City on the Bay, as we say, to the City in the Bay.

Her maternal side ran back to a family of Loyalists who fled to St. Andrews, a neighboring community in New Brunswick, before relocating to Eastport early on, while her paternal line was Pennsylvania Dutch by way of Virginia.

The family’s eventual obituary adds details.

~*~

In the aftermath, masked family and friends have been working steadily over two weeks to collect bags of trash and purge the house, including a colony or two of rats. (The rodents, it turns out, are well established in our end of town today – one more challenge to address.)

This also raises the question of just how much I leave to others after my own passing, and how much I need to clear out before then.

In the meantime, other questions loom, including the meaning of life for each of us.

We do wonder who will be living there next – hopefully not one more Airbnb but a real family with kids.

Onward! As I like to say.

Not that I wouldn’t love hearing the rest of her life story.

Looking for witches among the Quakers

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of the first things the Puritan authorities examined for after arresting women preaching the Quaker message in America was physical proof of their being witches.

I have no idea about the specifics – and am not sure I want to know. Still, their obsession with the naked bodies strikes me as creepy, even pornographic.

After publishing my book Quaking Dover, the thought struck me that the Puritans must have seen Quaker worship as some kind of séance. Not that we were trying to communicate with the dead, but rather be open to the presence of the Holy Spirit, or Christ.

Of course, that Holy Spirit was translated at the time as Holy Ghost. Yipes! Sounds like Halloween, no?

From my perspective, Ghost is way too limiting for that Spirit, especially when Christ is seen along the lines of Logos in Greek philosophy.

It’s far more revolutionary and liberating than you’d think. One way builds religion as a kind of legal system with punishments and rewards. The other builds it as a set of relationships.

Now, to stock up for those little trick-or-treaters who will be knocking on our door. I promise not to put religious tracts in their bags, tempting as the opportunity might be.

 

Forget Disney, give Pluto his due

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Yes, the tiny one-inch ball with its moon Charon, at one-half inch, out on that branch.

We won’t get into the shock of the dwarf status revision within the lifetime of some of us, in part in consequence of the discovery of that moon.

As a further twist, the Aroostook system has two Plutos, one inside the Houlton tourism center, where it represents the orbs’ average distance from the sun (40 miles in the scaled version), and this one presenting its more current placement in its wildly elliptical orbit, a relative 33 miles from Presque Isle for the next 20 or so years.

Tamarack glory

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

 

A boreal larch tree, also known as hackmatack, is a member of the pine family, it is one conifer that changes color every fall and loses its needles. The species grows in wet soil and withstands extremely low temperatures, reasons it’s found widely around here.

Its bright yellow autumn color is shared with birches, also found widely hereabouts.

And let’s not overlook the red punch of sumac.

All too soon, it’s over.

Stonework, stoneworker, angels awaiting release

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

THE EPISCOPAL VICAR decides to construct a Celtic burial ground on a rise / knoll near her parsonage. Somehow, the parts have fallen on her: incredible stone crosses and monoliths, etc.

She engages my Lady of Gardenias to help on the stonework.

Getting there. we keep coming upon the rotary in Kittery, although the Vicar’s house is suspiciously like a restaurant at a rotary in Manchester in size and placement. More than once, I miss the right exit (or nearly do) – again, the tension of responsibility.

I remember raising Tibetan prayer flags in that cemetery-garden, too.

Rotary, or traffic circle, I now hear as “rosary.”

 

WITH MY LADY, ARGUING ABOUT where the town of PHARES was – are we trying to get there, together. What state?

I awaken and search my U.S. atlas: it’s nowhere!

 

I HAVE TO PICK HER UP AT THE AIRPORT. (Hey! That element again.) Take her to a ranch house, someplace we’ve rented. Lots of other people are around, as in-laws or whatever.

Not sure now whether she had a tattoo – think it was a fake, to goof on me. Washed off.

She has two babies now, the newest a curly haired boy with brown/black hair, who PURRS as I’m stroking his head, “putting him down.”

I’m building a wood fire in the fireplace while the phone’s ringing. “Will somebody answer that?” but all too busy.

Chaos! Chaos of her!

Every time I get near her, she backs off. Eludes me in the social scene, whether party or family gathering. Yet shortly before she’s to leave – and shortly after I concluded it wasn’t worth my effort to continue – she confronts me, invites me, draws me into a small room – a closet with a window, actually (like my bedroom in the bungalow long before I met her!) – and opens her blouse, asking me to caress her.

 

AS I THEN SEE, we’re in her apartment, also shared with a newspaper office – overlooking the workspace, like the residence in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

In tune with Neptune

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

With a 21.3-inch diameter and placed 31.7 miles from the sun in Presque Isle and having many moons too small to be presented at this scale, this stormy mystery orb also hints at the vast span of our solar system.

By this point in the drive, I’m really struck by the emptiness of the solar system and the space beyond. It’s essentially a vast, overwhelming nothingness. These are like pins in the proverbial haystack. And then, take heed of the incredible balance of forward motion and the sun’s gravity holding each one in place.

Science can attempt to answer the “How” in our ponderings, but as for the “Why,” if one even exists? That would mean facing questions of religion or theology. I’m not even touching on the mythological dimensions of these specks in the night sky.

Is it all an accident or some intentional mathematical outcome? Hmm, is there a neo-Calvinist turn in this thinking? We have miles to go yet.

In my previous visit to Aroostook County, I remember my amazement at passing this puzzling presentation only to encounter Saturn about 20 minutes later. Now I know it wasn’t one person’s quirky obsession.

Uranus, if you’re interested

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Supposedly my Zodiac identity, and likely not yours, the model sits 20.7 miles from the sun model at the bigging of the display. Here its diameter is 22 inches.

The reason for the angled arm that lifts the planet is to present the axis with its extreme tilt, pointing its North Pole permanently toward the sun.

And we think a midnight sun at the height of summer’s a big deal? How about the endless darkness at the South Pole?

When you stop to think about it, the labor and care supporting this solar system presentation is astonishing. Just whose flash of inspiration came up with the calculations of our central star and its orbiting bodies, starting by placing Earth a mile from the sun?

And then came all the craftsmanship not just with the heavenly bodies but also the concrete bases and metal arms plus landscaping and the willingness of landowners to make room for the displays on their properties and tourists poking around. In all, 700 volunteers were involved one way or another.

For a large county with a small population, it was a truly astronomical undertaking. And there’s more …

Unmistakably Saturn

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Getting further out on our solar system journey, we come to the dramatically ringed planet. Sitting 9.7 miles from Aroostook County’s model sun in Presque Isle, its diameter here is 51.9 inches but the outer ring extends the diameter to 117 inches – nearly 12 feet.

Of its many moons, only Titan is large enough to be displayed on this scale.

 

Sometimes I’m accused of acting squirrely

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Back in New Hampshire, I was often engaged in a losing battle with squirrels. We had them for a while in the wall of the house and in the bay window, found they’d chewed into the attic through the flashing around the chimney, and were never able to eradicate them from the Red Barn, where they pretty much devoured a 20-foot strip of crown molding. They were always digging up bulbs or taking chunks out fruits and vegetables in our gardens.

At least we eventually got a birdfeeder that would send them falling off, an advance that left us endlessly amused, especially when we noticed the obsessed critter as a new kid on the block.

One good friend, an avid gardener, aptly dubbed them tree-climbing rats with big tails.

Here are a few related facts.

  1. They eat their own body weight every week, typically 1½ pounds.
  2. They can find food buried under a foot of snow or, for males, smell a female in heat a mile away.
  3. Their front teeth never stop growing, even when they eat right through wood.
  4. They can climb about anything. Yes, metal poles are no problem. Plus they can rotate their front feet 180 degrees.
  5. To elude predators, they run in sharp zigzags. They also have a way of moving to the side of a tree trunk opposite the side of a human, keeping themselves out of sight.
  6. They can leap ten times their body length. But not quite that much straight up, which I think is only five lengths.
  7. They can fall 30 meters without injury and run sprints at 20 miles an hour.
  8. They can travel as much as 100 miles in a day. So much for all those Havahart trap runs I took across the state line, just to add a river between us and the liberated rodent.
  9. By chewing electrical wiring in the walls and attic, they’re a major cause of house fires, perhaps 30,000 a year globally. They’re also responsible for an estimated 20 percent of electrical power outages, including knocking out entire transformers and leaving towns in the dark.
  10. Chipmunks are a kind of small squirrel with a prominent stripe rather than a big fluffy tail. They may be cute, but they may be the most destructive of all of their kin.

At least we don’t notice them around our current home on an island in Maine. Instead, we have deer.