The act of tedious revision can lead to some favorite lines

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My novel What’s Left, was in no rush for completion, contrary to my own desires. Still, I wasn’t going to artificially pressure this one.

As for my personal surprises this time? Some of my favorite lines popped up while swimming my daily laps in the city’s indoor pool.

Here’s one of Cassia’s outbursts that almost prompted me to change the name of the novel itself:

Oh, my, am I torn! I’ll tell you this, though. Buddhism comes in very handy when other kids are giving you so much grief you threaten to cast a spell on them and break out chanting Su To Ka Yo Me Bha Wa repeatedly and then just watch them back away. Oh, I tell you, it’s so satisfying!

What’s that do?

You’ll find out. You better be good to toads.

You get lots of respect for doing that.

~*~

Which title Do you think’s better — “What’s Left” or “You Better Be Good to Toads”? Or have I overlooked something even better?

~*~

Think of it as a cool Christmas present for somebody really special. Available at the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Smashwords, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook distributors and at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback.

Within a daughter’s own living Greek drama

Anyone else feeling a bit dizzy?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Let me admit that looking at the Red Barn posts as they popped up during the past year often left me feeling a bit schizoid.

As this blog has evolved over its nine years so far, its revolving categories run like a merry-go-round, and that’s led me to plan far ahead and schedule accordingly. If I tried to post right as things unfolded, I’d never have time to write anything else. Besides, this way allows me to get in a groove with each of the categories and explore them in more depth as a series rather than one-offs.

Two things I wasn’t expecting at this time last year have intervened with what I had scheduled and uploaded.

The Delta variant of Covid was one, leading to renewed closures and limitations. For me, the jolt came in bits that included seeing pictures of me standing in Canada from a few years earlier. Well, it was a reminder of what we’re fondly looking forward to doing again. In case any of you were wondering.

The bigger jolt came in the posts of Dover and our usual rounds there, especially in the garden. The problem was that I was no longer there, not after we closed on the house sale back in April – the event that sent me off to Eastport and a lot of our possessions into storage. I really didn’t expect the seller to accept our offer, but we bid in good faith and some hard budgeting and a shared dream.

That’s meant I’ve been exploring an exciting new place and learning about it, which I’ll be showing you through the coming year. What I saw on the Red Barn, on the other hand, was what I would have been experiencing through my old routine. And I must admit I’ve really, really missed those heirloom tomatoes. They just don’t grow up here, much less ripen. (Sigh!)

For the most part, my attention has been consumed by the revisions on my upcoming book – one based on a contrarian history of Dover. So I’ve been connected to the old community anyway, along with Zoom meetings with its neighbors and Friends. Be warned: I’m very much looking forward to sharing a lot of the outtakes and thinking with you through the next year. I think it will change your understanding of New England.

During much of the year, I’ve felt slightly AWOL when it comes to social media. I’m really happy to be getting back.

Some breathtakingly beautiful places I’ve been

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. Mount Rainier, Washington: Not just its high country and flanks (I’ve been as high as Camp Muir, 10,188 feet elevation), but also the valleys and surrounding ridges. Living four years to its east allowed me many opportunities to see aspects many of its more urban neighbors rarely encountered. (I’ll let this one stand as a representative of what could easily become a Tendril of other Cascades Range experiences.)
  2. West Quoddy State Park, Maine, after a big storm: Like a smaller scale Acadia, but far less crowded and more intimate.
  3. Outer Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on the Atlantic side: Especially pleasant in the shoulder season, when we were staying at Grandpa’s Jim’s place. The beach and dune just run on forever.
  4. Mount Cochura, New Hampshire: Not one of the state’s higher peaks, but a strenuous and varied ascent all the same, with fantastic views from the peak. Noted in Native lore even before the celebrated lovers’ leap.
  5. Stillwater Quaker meetinghouse, Barnesville, Ohio: Built in 1877 along timeless classical proportions and designed to house yearly meeting sessions as well as weekly Meeting for Worship, the site always felt much older and more hallowed to me, even after living in New England.
  6. Music Hall, Cincinnati: Some of my greatest concerts in my memory were in this large, horseshoe-shaped Italianate auditorium. The acoustics in the second balcony were razor-sharp. (Gilded Severance Hall in Cleveland deserves an honorable mention.)
  7. Hancock Tower observation deck, Boston: The panoramic view from the top of the city’s tallest building was amazing. Alas, it has been closed for security reasons since the 9/11 flights took off from Logan International Airport across Boston Harbor, a very prominent feature in the view.
  8. Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island, British Columbia: This flower-lover’s 55-acre paradise attracts more a million visitors a year for good reason. The blooming beds are perfection of horticulture and color, but there’s no preparation for the stunning sunken garden in the former limestone quarry just beyond.
  9. Roan High Knob, North Carolina-Tennessee: I was a 12-year-old Boy Scout nearing the end of a week’s backpacking on the Appalachian Trail when we came upon this 6,286-foot-high mountain crowning a nearly tree-barren highland punctuated by rhododendron in full bloom. I’d never before seen a rhododendron, as far as I know, but have always associated the shrub since with that unanticipated, perfectly timed encounter.
  10. Ohio Caverns, West Liberty: You just don’t expect the crystalline underground wonder to exist under an otherwise pedestrian Ohio landscape. (Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, is grander and more spectacular, but sometimes, as the saying goes, Small Is Beautiful.)

~*~

Your turn to pipe up!  

How can I not be delighted by this?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Writing often feels like working in a vacuum. Believe me, feedback from real readers – positive or negative – makes a huge difference.

How can I not savor a review like this by Girlpower at Amazon:

You’ll enjoy reading all of Jnana’s books, you won’t be disappointed.

Her reaction to Daffodil Uprising continues:

Jnana draws me back into the counterculture past we have in common. The book flows and takes you back into everything hippie during the seventies where most of the baby boomers found themselves. It was an exciting time, a revolution, fueled by peace and love, we were very different than our fathers and mothers.

His characters are people who reminded me of friends during that time. We experimented with drugs, and had more than one partner but it was an empowering time for women. Our fathers were of the silent generation who kept their heads down, we were no longer. We allowed ourselves the time to have a little fun. [It was also] the birth of organic food, which is now coming to bear fruit. The progressive generation gave birth to many of the things today that started back during those days.”

She turns to Kenzie’s days at Daffodil University, where he finds his bearings and has more than a few relationships and that unique casual sex that lived for itself and asked for nothing more.

Jnana in his free-flowing style gets down to it, explaining relationships. Kenzie got caught up in an affair with a woman who’s cheating …It took me back in time on a magic carpet ride. … Many generations are interested in how the hippie generation lived back then.

The making of a hippie

Available at the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Smashwords, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailer and at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback.

You were just getting to know the place, in a way I never will

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

losing everything would have been a disaster (fire, the author’s deep fear, can engulf a building in five minutes – thirteen, we counted) and then once outside, realizing smoke in a neighboring apartment was turning to flames within the building no explanation why the threat of losing my worldly goods didn’t upset me as much as the basic ineptitude that causes delays like that to happen goodbye, manuscripts, notebooks, early drafts, letters, addresses . a writer’s constant fear  against the slow art itself, you know, civilly

A few more of my favorite art museums

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Let me say the big Metropolitan in Manhattan is not on this list for a reason. It’s too big and too crowded, OK? I’ve never felt so claustrophobic as I did the last time I visited.

Also, I see I did a rundown on New England museums and college galleries back in 2015, so you can go to the Red Barn archive for those.

With that, let’s turn the spotlight.

  1. Cleveland: The city was once the home of some powerful industrialists, including the Rockefellers, and this collection reflects that. It has some stellar old masters and a leading Asian collection. Plus, admission is free.
  2. Chicago: Masterpieces by the mile. A muscular feast for the eyeballs.
  3. National Gallery: The third of the truly encyclopedic collections on my list, I always feel it should have been built in Pittsburgh, where Andrew Mellon amassed his fortune. Still, it feels more leisurely to me than many others, and the Rothko court is my favorite. But don’t overlook the two rare Vermeers.
  4. Phillips Collection: Also in Washington, D.C., this assembly of old houses in the Dupont Circle neighborhood has an intimate feel and some stunning Impressionists and modern works, including major Americans.
  5. Dayton: I grew up with this then-free collection at hand. What makes it remarkable was the astute decision to go after masterworks by lesser known painters rather than third-rate works by the big names, a strategy the New York Times hailed.
  6. The Taft: This modest collection in the family homestead just off downtown Cincinnati is a disarming salute to personal collecting, one strong on period French like Corot.
  7. Baltimore: The famed Cone sisters’ collection of Impressionists and early modern masters is featured at the Baltimore Museum of Art on the edge of the Johns Hopkins campus. Don’t confuse it with the Walters, down by the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon Place, which goes more for antiquity and doodads. My bedroom in Bolton Hill looked out toward the apartment building where the sisters once crowded their assembly into a few rooms.
  8. Brooklyn: Way too overlooked, even with its major Asian galleries, among the best in America. Check the schedule before you go, since its budgeting closes halls on a rotating basis.  
  9. Victoria, British Columbia: The Royal BC Museum, situated downtown by the ferry landing, focuses on natural history, but its presentation of indigenous culture is stunning. Pacific Northwest Native totem poles, lodges, clothing and costuming are reverently displayed, gallery after gallery. Tell me this isn’t a visual masterpieces experience. It really is a vast art installation.
  10. MOMA: Don’t know what it’s like now, but I did get to view the panoramic Monet, back before the fire, as well as Picasso’s Guernica, now returned to Spain. All this was before the Museum of Modern Art expanded its home.