How does the rest of the family face up to the challenge?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Family-run businesses present their own unique operating models.

Under the ideal version, the members have an understanding of each other and their mission along with a loyalty that’s unrivaled. The business is part of their identity. Each member of the family understands his or her abilities and place in the enterprise. Often, they learned the operation from childhood on, starting at entry level. For their employees, however, that can come at the price of exclusion and upward mobility.

Sometimes the organization is headed by a patriarch or matriarch with the authority to make and enforce difficult decisions. In this model resentments and perceived sleights can mount over the years before erupting. Or the family head may no longer fit the kind of executive the company needs at a particular stage of its growth; a founder, for instance, may have technical expertise but not the people skills for marketing or adapting to a changing market.

What have you seen or experienced?

 

Bringing the price per serving down

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

What do asparagus stems and lobster shells have in common?

They typically go in the trash, while the tender asparagus heads and the claw and tail meat go on the plate, maybe accompanied by melted butter.

I our household, though, we freeze the stems and turn them into cream of asparagus soup later.

And the shells, often roasted, though it’s not necessary, are simmered down into a lobster stock, which can hold its flavor for up to three months if frozen.

The stock makes for a great lobster bisque or lobster butter or fish chowder.

In essence, we wind up with more meals than one out of each ingredient – and thus getting more for our money.

What strategies like this can you share?

 

Favored cousin

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

as for the cure to feeling oh so blue center (as in meditation or prayer) untangle knots or go out weeding by the kitchen (see the worshiping community as a kitchen, too) go off to any place where there’s nurture and a certain kind of warmth then prepare a decent meal, slowly concentrate on digging out, one emotion at a time, not just feelings or thoughts on the run before my flight from the opera

 

Some similarities between Quakers and Zen

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Quakers (aka the Religious Society of Friends) stand at one end of the Christian spectrum, while Zen Buddhists also stand at one end of the Buddhist spectrum.

As I’ve been discovering, Greek Orthodox (and the other Eastern Orthodox churches) stand at the other end of the Christian spectrum, much as Tibetans do in the Buddhist world.

Has me recalling a comment by Gary Snyder when he noted, arms outstretched, how one branch starts at one end and, as a practitioner advances – raising his arms in an arch overhead – they eventually pass each other to end up at the opposite end.

That said, let’s look at the Quaker/Zen starting point and what they have in common.

  1. An ethereal ascetic. Strip away distractions, down to a stark black-white dichotomy. Maybe with distinctive Quaker dove gray.
  2. They’re both minimalist.
  3. Use of questions to guide aspirants. Queries, for Friends. Koans, in one branch of Zen. No easy answers, in either.
  4. Worship as “just sitting.” OK, few Quakers focus on their breathing and most are sloppier in the posture. Even so …
  5. Emphasis on the here-and-now, rather than the afterlife.
  6. Concentration on daily practice and awareness.
  7. A practical outlook. As they teach in Zen, “Before enlightenment, chop firewood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop firewood, carry water.”
  8. Direct personal experience focusing on the inner self. As in experimental, by trial and error.
  9. Sin is not discussed. Well, among Quakers, rarely, as in “missing the mark” rather than a human defect.
  10. Both originated as reform movements and are open-ended.

Their turn is coming up

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In my novel What’s Left, her generation of the family will face some crucial decisions that resemble those their parents were charting when her father-to-be showed up in the household.

In a passage I cut from an earlier draft, she wonders:

What would you do?

While Dimitri and Barney have niches in the business, Nita has her chosen career. Tito, meanwhile, will likely have his hands in both the Zap enterprises and an independent law firm.

That leaves Manoula, who hopes to head off in a literary direction, not necessarily as a writer.

~*~

As I’m revisiting this, I’m getting a bit steamed. I realize how little guidance I had regarding my future. We didn’t talk much about it at home, and even college was somehow mostly off the table. The so-called guidance counselor at my large high school was mostly a disciplinary officer and military-draft registrar. College? No help from him!

I got more from the editor of the first newspaper that hired me as an intern. He had a knack for nurturing talent. I just wish he hadn’t retired when he did.

Dimitri seems to possess much of that skill, perhaps even more than Nita. They’d likely ask:

What would you really like to be doing with your life? What do you need from us to help? So what do you really want to do with your life? And what do you need to get there?

~*~

It doesn’t get more Greek than this.

Bewildered by the big real estate bubble

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Admittedly, it’s a national problem, but one that’s especially acute here in New England. Home prices are soaring. Wannabe buyers far outnumber sellers.

For once, my wife and I hit this one right.

The place we just bought, as I’ve been saying, is in a remote location, and it needs some work. There are reasons potential buyers passed on it. As one I’ve met reacted, “It was more than my husband and I wanted to take on.” But thanks to our elder daughter, we have a vision, and, as we are finding, the place feels right. Besides, the bones are good. To our surprise, our bargain bid was accepted, so here I am.

And then, the city farm we just sold is in a very hot market. Readers of the Red Barn have been following some of the reasons – small-town pedestrian-friendly scale and New England character combined with proximity to Boston in one direction plus beaches and mountains in the other directions.

We watched as real-estate prices kept rising, buffeted by only one big downturn, and wondered how young couples and families could pay the mortgages. Well, rents were going out of sight, too, as are mobile homes. Around the neighborhood, the running joke was that none of us could afford to buy our own residences at the current prices. Only it wasn’t funny.

Covid, however, ramped all that up. Many people with professional jobs found that in working from home, they can live anywhere – and in working from home, they need a home office.

The real-estate collapse I had expected didn’t happen, thanks to the federal stimulus checks, extended unemployment compensation, and anti-eviction laws. Not to say there won’t be a delayed reaction.

Still, with Covid limiting a lot of ways to spend money – dining out, movies, travel, athletic events, concerts and theaters, for starters – there may be a lot of cash in reserve. Who knows if that’s a factor.

We had nine bids in five days, all above our asking price. Some were accompanied by love letters, even an excellent loaf of homemade bread, and selecting just one from that array was difficult. As was the disappointment of those who wondered what they’d done wrong.

Some of the push is coming from people from other parts of the country, who are buying sight-unseen, like the Texans with two Mercedes whose bid for a smaller property down the street was $65,000 more than the original asking price. That had a positive influence on our own property when it officially went on sale three days later.

So where are most of the hopeful buyers in Dover coming from now?

New York and California, we’re told.

Did anyone see that one coming? Or have a clue just where it might lead?

Up under the roof these days

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
It’s hard to believe how much I had shoehorned into my attic studio. It’s the space where I’d spent so much personal time writing and revising over the past 21 years, but looking at it when it’s stripped down to this is really difficult.
Ditto when I think how much we had in the other half of the attic, a combination of guest room and crafts-projects storage once it stopped being a bedroom for one or the other of our daughters.