Some house maintenance that remains to be done

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Good luck to the new owners. They’ll have their plate full. As I’ve said, we bought the place as a fixer-upper, and two decades later, after a lot of big work, it’s still a fixer-upper.

  1. The roof, again. If they’re really ambitious, they’ll go for standing seam rather than asphalt shingles.
  2. Replace the upstairs windows. Winter gets cold.
  3. Paint the exterior. We had a tradesman lined up, but he backed out after his wife died.
  4. Scrape and paint the hallway. Caulk the floor, too.
  5. Repaint the floors. The interior rooms could also use refreshing.
  6. Retackle the mother-in-law apartment. When we added it when we first moved in, it was the nicest room we had. But a two-pack-a-day habit took a toll.
  7. Downstairs toilet. Minor, but annoying.
  8. Regrade and repave the driveway.
  9. Minor landscaping issues, but they add up. I’d start by felling the trees next to the house.
  10. Improve the insulation. Seriously.

According to some owners, a boat is a hole in the water where you pour endless amounts of money.

In the same vein, an old house is a hole in the ground where you pour endless amounts of money.

 

Truly subversive

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

After his conversion in prison, Charles Colson held aloft Francis of Assisi and the early Quaker George Fox as his two examples of what happens when a person devotes his whole life to Christ.

Earlier, when Colson was in the White House, he oversaw the FBI creating subversives’ files for Fox and fellow Quaker William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and anybody else whose name they found on public Quaker Meeting newsletters.

Yes, beware of true religion.

 

With open arms, uptown

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

what upset me was the basic ineptitude that causes such accidents and delays to happen, still, if it hadn’t been for a couple of foolhardy neighbors one-thirty a.m., fire alarm, dashing outside before smoke in a neighboring apartment turned into flames, only then did I think who brought the blaze under control with fire extinguishers while eating way too much smoke, the fire trucks would have arrived to an attic entirely aflame so I should have carried my computer files out, too, but why the fire department took thirteen minutes to respond from a station just five blocks away is inexcusable

Ten big things to tackle right away in our new project

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The Cape we bought was listed as circa 1865, but from some of the detailing, we’re guessing it was more likely around 1835. A bird’s-eye view map from the 1835 shows a house on this site, though maybe not this one.

Many potential buyers passed on the place, for whatever reasons. It is definitely a fixer-upper, but it feels good, and we like its in-town, close-to-the-ocean location.

One chimney was in peril of collapse, and it’s already been removed. The fuel-oil tank had to be replaced. Also done.

We’re looking at the work ahead in two stages.

The first, of course, is more essential. The second, renovating the place more for our dreams.

Not that I especially wanted another This Old House kind of series, but this time we think we can tackle the project more comprehensively, rather than piecemeal.

Here’s what’s on our plate as soon as possible:

  1. Insulate exterior walls.
  2. Repair foundation and cellar. Work from the bottom up.
  3. Level the flooring.
  4. Rewire, to accommodate more electronics and appliances, especially, and add grounded outlets.
  5. Replace windows.
  6. Straighten and fix gutters.
  7. Touch up and repaint exterior trim.
  8. Add a garden shed. We really miss our barn and need more storage space.
  9. Remove the old fireplace iron insert (now sitting in the middle of a room) and the big wood cookstove.
  10. Remodel and update kitchen.

 

Looking at highly motivated people for inspiration

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Do you ever look around and see people who seem to get a lot more done than others? I could tell you about some of the lifeguards at the indoor pool where I swim, the ones who do their school homework when they’re not watching us splashing around. Uh, swimming laps — something they can do four times faster than us geezers.

Well, in my novel What’s Left, the narrator has a similar question, one regarding many members of her family. (You won’t find it in the final version of the book — but it’s true all the same.)

I return to the question, How do they manage? All that they do?

~*~

Her aunt Nita, as we’re told, sticks to a routine and limits her evening activities. Her father could easily split his workweek into 20 hours of photography and 20 of Buddhist focus. Her mother would be putting in more at the press but still devoting considerable free time to practicing and rehearsing music.

Some others just seem to go without sleep or rise before dawn to get an early jump on things.

Tell us about somebody you know who seems to be super-human. Do they have some secret you see?

~*~

A fragile, old film negative sits atop a light box. Cassia had to learn how to handle these gently. Very gently.

Moving past Covid

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Yes, we were Zooming, as our monthly gathering of religious leaders in town has been doing for the past year, but the suggestion did come as a jolt.

For decades now, the largely informal group has been a way of supporting each other, clergy and laity, as friends and neighbors, and out of that has grown joint activity, such as our community-wide Thanksgiving, Blue Christmas, and Martin Luther King services or overnight shelter for the homeless in the depth of winter or recognition of challenges we face as congregations. It’s one of the things I will especially miss in moving from Dover.

“We need to think carefully about how we come out of Covid,” the Congregational pastor mused. “We need to give it the same attention we did going into the restrictions.”

We still haven’t had the conversation. Maybe we will on our next agenda. But she’s right. Our new normal won’t be the same as the old.

I’ve been hoping that when the restrictions are lifted and we’re all immunized, we’ll be hungry to be back in public get-togethers more than ever, including worship. But there’s also the reality that we’ve fallen out of social habits and may cling to our newer stay-at-home routines. There’s a recognition that for some, continuing the online connections may be beneficial – for invalids or people living at a distance, especially. In addition, a Zoom session can be more convenient than driving hours to a committee meeting, as we’re finding, though it also has drawbacks.

As organizations, we appear to have kept a loyal core but also seen, I sense, newer participants drift away. Can we find ways to lure them back or attract others once we’re “open again”?

~*~

You’ve probably already seen the report that for the first time since the figures were kept, church, synagogue, and similar membership in the U.S. has fallen below 50 percent. Some of the reaction has noted a difference between joining in a congregation in contrast to unaffiliated “spiritual” identity. Some other commentators have derided religion altogether, but we should also be aware of declining membership in various associations across the board. One of the things that struck Alexis de Tocqueville about American society in his travels in 1831-1832 was the degree to which we were joiners. Not just in churches but also trade and economic associations, fraternal societies, political parties, lodges and clubs, sports teams, choruses, bands, and theatrical groups, and more.

While I don’t consider myself to be especially “social,” I’m still a member of a half-dozen groups, and I’m not counting those that are essentially an annual donation and a membership card or magazine in return.

Not so for the younger generation. One daughter does belong to the county beekeepers’ group, but that’s it.

As others have noted, that’s not a good sign for building democracy or community.

~*~

But folks are understandably restless. Already, everyplace seems to be booked up for vacation travel. (Glad we have a place that’s suddenly “in.”)

That transition from lockdown to normal now promises to transpire over the summer, giving organizations a chance to anticipate the changes and readjust more slowly. There’s so much we don’t know, after all.

And we haven’t even touched on the future of retailing and other local business.

What are you looking forward to post-Covid? And when?

Think you’ll miss Zoom?