Ways American democracy is increasingly at risk

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Spoiler alert. This is a rant. Here are some of the places I see us as American society being in deep doodah.

  1. Out-and-out lies, delusions, and false expectations “Making America great again” has done the exact opposite. And ideological preconceptions block any reality of what needs to be done. It’s a great sales pitch, but if you’re promising to fix something, you better master the details. Think about making your car or computer or anything else run better and who you’d trust doing the job.
  2. The center is coming apart, along with the breakdown of face-to-face community. Who belongs to a lodge or bowling league or even a church anymore? Without those, just how are our opinions tested and refined? It’s part of a decline of civic awareness and participation.
  3. Refusal to give and take, i.e. compromise, to work out solutions for the common good. Health care is a prime example. Any faults with “Obama-care” can be laid at the feet of those opposed to any health insurance for Americans who didn’t have union jobs or the like. And we know who’s opposed those unions.
  4. Disproportionate representation by rural states. Not just the Senate, either, but especially the Electoral College, which was a faulty way of accommodating Southern slaveholders to begin with.
  5. Disenfranchisement of voters, one way or another. Want to talk about “stealing elections”?
  6. PACs and other big-money corruption, leading to the undermining of the middle class. It’s why the rich are getting richer.
  7. An uninformed electorate, along with the economic collapse of responsible journalism coupled with the tainting of “liberal media” by certain self-interests. Where on earth have the left-wing editorial page columnists been in the past half-century, anyway?
  8. Blaming the victims rather than the super-rich. Talk about “entitlement”? Add to that the myth of the “self-made man.”
  9. The collapse of the tax system. I’m no fan of the Internal Revenue Service, but it’s been gutted to let those with the most to get away scot-free.
  10. Without excusing the left for its too-often sanctimonious airs, I’d say the real threats are coming from an increasingly barbarian right-wing. Or should that be “anarchists”? They’re not conservatives or patriots, OK?

Look, unlike many, I’ve read the Federalist Papers closely, the arguments behind the American Constitution. I can say definitively that MAGA is dead-set against its principles.

Your turn to weigh in. Just be polite.

 

Heavenly rest? The Pepsi sign always raises a chuckle

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
The Cloud 9 Motel sign stands out along State Route 9. Initially, the name seemed to reflect some misplaced hip ’60s jargon. What we encounter is far from a plush, consummate destination. Eventually, I connected the “9” to the highway. Ha-ha.
As you can see, there’s no motel, just a sand pit, on Maine Route 9 – the Airline Highway – four miles west of Wesley.
A postcard shows the place in its prime in the ’70s. It had eight heated motel units and sold gasoline, groceries, beer to take out, and light lunches in what it touted as the heart of some of the finest hunting and fishing in Maine. Many of the sportsmen returned annually, but times change. The buildings came down in 2015.

A definite sign of spring

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Around here, you know spring has arrived when you see your first boat riding a trailer down the street. An uncovered boat, free of its shrink-wrap or tarp. Behind a battered pickup, of course.

And you can bet yourself that by the end of the day, you’ll have seen a second, if not more.

Who cares if there’s still ice on the lakes?

Deep Cove boatyard  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Eastport has the only big boatyard between Halifax and Bar Harbor, and, as they boast, the cheapest one on the East Coast.
Moose Island Marine Inc. operates the sprawling yard out of a modest office.
It’s a legacy from earlier days when shipbuilders popped up everywhere along the shoreline.
I do have to learn to identify the various boat styles.

 

 

 

Whazup

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

after several attempts to figure out how I’d list only what time and last-minute barreling impulses or friendships I wouldn’t want to lose these connections of phone calls and homespun meals in the absence of wild affection I’d lap up even distant lines as in conversation overheard ditto worship to lasso random thoughts and outline a start, so in the mailbox and an income besides to say nothing absolutely nothing about Jesus or just so many wildcards you keep some order re: the recording clerk, both our annual budget and a reminder the dues are due chock full of gossip I’d veer in adoration toward lunacy any day

 

Some things I thought I’d take up in retirement but didn’t

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Looking back on my pre-retirement visions, I’m facing the fact that much of what I had anticipated has instead fallen by the wayside.

Here we go.

  1. Meditation: First thing in the morning, just like the ashram. Instead, I go pretty straight to the computer and start writing or revising. The clarity of those early hours is treasured for creativity, rather than the wee hours of my earlier years.
  2. Hatha yoga: Along with chanting, hymns, or even Bible study that I anticipated in the calm of early morning. Nope, none of these have even made into the afternoon or evening, either.
  3. Fasting, mauna observance, retreats: Again, this would have sprung from my ashram roots. Fasting had been a one-day-a-week routine – no food, rather a restricted diet. Mauna was a period of non-speaking, which could initially be very difficult before turning liberating and enhancing. The idea of getting away from it all for a week at a time definitely deserves renewed consideration.
  4. Tennis: I never have figured out the scoring, but there were a few friends who seemed willing to teach, if I ever had time, so, hey, why not? . Alas, fate intervened and they were no longer able once I was open.
  5. Bicycling: My original regular-exercise option, this was about to take off (pardon the pun) just about the time our younger daughter decided she wanted her long-neglected, high-quality wheels to join her in Greater Boston. Here, I had just paid to have it tuned up and ready, too, and even purchased a helmet and lock. Admittedly, all those gears – which we didn’t have back when I was a kid – were rather intimidating.
  6. Camping: I had purchased a tent and stored it in the loft of the barn, but when I finally pulled it down, it wouldn’t open – the weatherproofing had melted over the years.
  7. Hosting a monthly Poetry in the Meetinghouse series: There would have been a featured reader followed by an open reading.
  8. Travel: This fell away largely because of our budget but also because of the other things impinging on my time – the writing and revising, especially. Destinations would have included the annual Friends General Conference, writers’ conferences, Tanglewood concerts, as well as a return to the Pacific Northwest and then on to Alaska. There might also have been England, Ireland, Scotland, Alsace, and Switzerland, for genealogy. Italy, for opera and cuisine. Spain, Morocco, Japan, utter curiosity. Macedonia and Greece, retracing the trip my wife and elder daughter made a few years ago. More likely is visiting Quebec City, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia, all neighboring my current home.
  9. Boston weekends or midweek jaunts around New England: Again, mostly budget, even when it involved little more than an Amtrak senior-discount ticket. I could add visiting old friends around the country.
  10. A regular deep-reading routine: I am a booklover, after all, but am not checking off a book or two each week, much less one every day or two.

~*~

There are some other, more general, things I could add, such as taking up a social activist role after all those years of being stifled as a journalist, or specifics, such as getting serious about getting back to making and baking bread, as I did in the ashram, or forcing bulbs to bloom in the depth of winter.

And I likely won’t ever introduce my wife to the mountain laurels in full bloom along the Merrimack River at Newburyport, Massachusetts, or the springtime wonders of the Garden in the Woods in Framingham, west of Boston, now that we’re centering ourselves at the far eastern fringe of Maine.

One item especially amuses me – “second home (mountain lake or Maine island)?” The turns in our budget wound up ruling that out, but I am living on a Maine island now. You never know what might happen when you start sky-lining.

 

Selling Natives into slavery was not an isolated instance  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

One of the more disquieting things my examination of early Dover and New England stirred up for me is an awareness of a prevalent expression of white supremacy.

It starts out as fear, expressed in the emphasis on fortifications. The Plymouth settlers, for instance, spent much of their first year on building palisades rather than farming, which led to a nearly disastrous shortage of food through the winter. The defenses were apparently intended against Native raiders more than the Spanish, French, Dutch, or pirates.

Later, Puritans required palisades around their houses of worship as well, as happened at Dover’s second meetinghouse, and ordered that all men carry arms, which were lined up against the wall during public assemblies such as religious services.

~*~

THE PREMISE OF WHITE SUPREMACY COMES THROUGH CLEARLY embedded in descriptions of the Indigenous as savages or pagans and is intensified in the resolution of legal conflicts in an unjust system of jurisprudence. Natives always came out on the losing end, with no means of appeal.

Especially telling is the reaction to the killing of John Stone and seven of his crew in 1634 in retaliation for his kidnapping and murder of the Pequot sachem Tatobem. Even though Stone had previously been banned from Boston for drunkenness, adultery, and piracy, and news of his death brought outright joy to some residents in the city, officials demanded the Natives turn over the warriors responsible to face trial. The Pequot, however, refused, even after paying atonement.

Simmering tensions erupted in 1636 after the killing of trader John Oldham and several of his crew on a journey to Block Island, Rhode Island. Even though Oldham was a troublemaker banished from the Plymouth colony, his death caused sermons across Massachusetts and prompted military action that quickly escalated into war.

Telling of the implicit racism is Roger Williams’ line of congratulation to John Winthrop in 1637 for disposing of “another drove of Adam’s degenerate seed.”

Natives being hunted down and captured.

~*~

BY 1638, MOST OF THE PEQUOT had been massacred or sold into slavery in Bermuda or the West Indies. An estimated 1,500 warriors had died in battle or been hunted down. And what followed was a landgrab by the colonists.

Military leader John Underhill, responsible for the massacre of Pequot women and children fleeing their burning village, then came to Dover, where he was briefly governor of the upper province, meaning Dover.

Bluntly? From the colonists’ perspective, a bad white man was worth more than a noble Native.

~*~

SLAVERY WAS PART OF NEW ENGLAND from the beginning.

When David Thomson settled at Pannaway in 1623, he had a Native as a slave, presented to him by an Indian leader. Yes, there was slaveholding among the Indigenous, too.

And whites could be enslaved as well, as was seen in threats to sell Quaker children in the late 1650s.

A key turn in the emergence of Merrymount in 1625 was the sale of some of the project’s indentured English male servants to Virginia and the impending sale of more to the tobacco estates, where death within a year was likely. Thomas Morton used the situation to rally the remainder to resist and stay put, leading to his libertine colony south of today’s Boston.

The origins of African slaves in New England are murky, but Pequots were exported so that they could not escape and return to their families or be freed in retaliatory raids. Instead, they were exchanged for Blacks, who could be held at less risk.

Natives labored in Barbados and the West Indies after being exchanged for Africans as slaves.

In 1637, during the Pequot War, the first American-built slave ship, the Desire, was constructed in Marblehead, Massachusetts, outfitted with leg irons and bars, and armed. She set sail to the British West Indies carrying Boston rum, dried fish, and captive Pequots, and returned seven months later with tobacco, cotton, salt, and enslaved Africans from the Caribbean plantations.

Thomson’s friend Samuel Maverick bought two Blacks as slaves in 1638. Another prominent slaveholder was John Winthrop.

In 1641, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties document included a formal recognition of slaveholding.

~*~

UP TO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, despite opposition, some Quakers held slaves, and Dover was not exempt. Up to ten were manumitted, likely with the equivalent of a year’s wages. There’s more on this in my book.

~*~

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400th anniversary.

 

She was truly one of a kind

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In reflecting recently on the Quaker tradition of creating memorial minutes for “weighty Friends,” I was surprised that one example I had never posted was of another clerk of our Dover Meeting. She was struck down by a particularly virulent, fast-moving cancer, and it’s hard to me to see that nearly five years have gone by since her passing.

There’s much more that I could tell, but the approved minute will give you a good sense of her vibrant character.

Jean V. Blickensderfer

November 11, 1946 – June 16, 2017

Among Dover Friends, Jean was the flash of gold in the morning, a welcoming soul others naturally confided in, a faithful worker who eventually filled nearly every organizational position – from children’s teacher and treasurer, to co-clerk and finally presiding clerk.

Raised Unitarian-Universalist in Methuen, Massachusetts, she came to Friends in the early ‘80s after she and her first husband, Dean L. Davis, had settled in Eliot, Maine, and were seeking the right church for a family that included daughters Thaedra May and Sarah Joy. They were quickly entrenched among us.

Jean was twice widowed.

She married Dean the day after his graduation from the Maine Maritime Academy in 1967, and then managed their home during his long assignments at sea. During his interludes ashore, they built their own post-and-beam house on the banks of the Piscataqua River and could often be found boating, sometimes to visit other Quakers upstream, or on his motorcycle, which they rode to Meeting in good weather. He died in a freak automobile collision in 1992, an accident his wife and daughters survived unscathed.

In 1998 she married Del Blickensderfer and worked as his partner at Del’s Service Station until his passing of lupus in 2006.

Deeply grateful for the mentoring she received from seasoned Friends, Jean was a stickler for Quaker process and, over time, became the memory of the Meeting’s business itself. She sought to walk a line between holding her tongue and being direct, when needed. A witness to the movement of Christ in our midst, Jean’s infrequent vocal ministry could be powerful. Her skills as a professional typist assured the Meeting’s minutes were of archival quality and, combined with her business-school training, led to the Blue Books for committees and their clerks detailing their responsibilities. She was particularly fond of drawing on the Advices and Queries from London Yearly Meeting’s 1994 edition of Quaker Faith and Practice as guideposts for our own action. An avid knitter, she took comfort in seeing others do needlework during our business deliberations, their patience reflecting the work before us. In time, a midweek knitting circle became what she called a “wicked good” time of refreshment, nurture, and fellowship.

More pressing obligations had precluded her attending yearly meeting sessions, a “bucket list” item she resolved to achieve. All along, she warmly welcomed the wider world of Friends to Dover.

Other delights in her life were yoga, visiting with neighbors, shopping and dining with dear friends, walking the beach, doting on her Pomeranian Sumi, and especially being with her grandson Jonah. His living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, did not prevent her from accompanying much of his childhood and youth, from celebrating birthdays and holidays to attending his piano recitals to cheering him on in mountain bicycle races, whenever she could.

In all, her presence, generosity, and deep and lively spirit were a gift.

With loved ones at her bedside through the final days of her cancer, she passed at age 70, peace and grace abundant.

APPROVED by Dover Monthly Meeting July 16, 2017, Charles Cox, clerk

 ENDORSED by Dover Quarterly Meeting July 31, 2017, at North Sandwich, Erik Cleven, clerk