Consider the Theotokos in the Nativity events

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to the mother of Jesus, Eastern Orthodox Christianity has developed a perspective that differs in subtle ways from the Roman Catholic and Protestant streams. Much of the teaching is not found in the standard Bible but does round out a broader understanding.

Here are ten points from the Orthodox tradition without getting to some very fine hair-splitting.

  1. She is called the Theotokos, Greek for “God-bearer” or “God-birther.”
  2. In her full title, she is referenced as the “all holy, immaculate, most glorified and blessed Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary.”
  3. Elsewhere in the liturgy, she is called the Mother of God, though the theology does but put some limits on that, as in “Mother of the Incarnate God.”
  4. She was the only child of an elderly couple, Saints Joachim and Anna, mentioned in the New Testament apocrypha Gospel of James. Their childlessness was a cause of shame, as the drama goes, until their big surprise. Their festival day is July 26.
  5. The Orthodox celebrate her nativity on September 8. Fittingly, that’s a week after the beginning of the Orthodox liturgical calendar year.
  6. Her presentation into the temple is celebrated on November 21. According to tradition, she was taken at age 3 and left there, consecrated to its service, where she remained until age 12 in preparation for her celestial role. The feast day comes about a week after the beginning of the 40-day Nativity fast, the Orthodox parallel to what Western-Christianity observes as Advent.
  7. The annunciation, where Archangel Gabriel appeared with glad tidings to inform her of her surprise pregnancy, is celebrated on March 25, nine months ahead of Christmas.
  8. On her death, or Dormition (Falling Asleep), she is believed to have been ascended into heaven. The event is celebrated on August 15. In support of the argument, the faithful are reminded that no bones remained behind. Thank “doubting” Thomas for that, when he arrived late for the occasion. Had there been any bones, they no doubt would have been highly regarded wonder-working relics preserved in a famous church or monastery.
  9. Her icon is displayed on the iconostasis that separates the sanctuary (altar) from the nave in an Orthodox house of worship. She stands holding the child Christ on one side of the Royal Door, through which only the priests may pass, while Jesus is depicted at the other.
  10. She is also referred to as Queen of Heaven and Mother of the Church.

 

So many threads have led to here

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

This pause in our renovations seems like an ideal time to reflect on the ways this project builds on much earlier dreams and becomes, perhaps by default, their culmination.

My junior high art teacher instilled in me a love of 20th century contemporary architecture as well as Japanese and Scandinavian art and culture. That dovetailed into Shaker traditions that had once existed just down the street from us and a county or two south as well. Plainness, exemplified by Quaker, Mennonite, and Brethren history is in my blood and bones, as I’ve learned digging into genealogy.

Add to that an appreciation for William Morris’ arts and crafts movement, which infused the bungalow I eventually owned in the Rust Belt, and my exposure to historic New England styles, including Queen Ann.

And then a sense of neighborhood, too.

Had you asked me at the outset where I wanted to live, I would have responded central city, perhaps in a high rise, or out in the wilderness, perhaps beside a mountain lake or stream. What was clear that suburban was nowhere in my preference.

So here I am in a historic sea captain’s home a block from the Atlantic yet at the edge of a funky downtown and arts scene and – utterly amazing, to me – within minutes of forest, lakes, and streams.

When I sit in our second-floor rooms, the heart of our renovation project, I have moments of feeling the best of both worlds. In following the new roofline for our ceilings, we’ve avoided creating boxes as the rooms. One criticism of so much architecture objects to “boxes with holes cut in them.” Rather than boxiness, sometimes I’m reminded of the contours within a ship’s hull or a sail overhead.

This time of year, I’m reminded, too, of the flurry of work just before the previous two Christmas celebrations. It got chaotic, up to six tradesmen at one time. We were tripping over ourselves as the rest of the family started showing up.

Throughout it all, we had the ongoing Viking Lumber deliveries, mostly with Tim driving. And our wonder at having the right contractor after all of the delays.

So here we are with the continuing surprise of the historical significance of the house, not just that it was 80 years older than it had been claimed, but that it had been so central to what has evolved here.

As our mason once asked, “How much is enough?”

For now, let’s leave it at that.

Yes, follow the money

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Here, should you be curious, is the conclusion of my working paper about the future of publishing as seen about 50 years ago.

~*~

As I wrote at the time:

Another aspect is that many publishers have turned toward the textbook market, which is basically a monopolistic. As a result, textbooks are generally high-priced, & in hard-cover, which increases the cost.

It is cheaper for many libraries to buy the soft cover edition (if it is sewn & not glued) & to have their own binding put on than to purchase the over-priced, & profitable, hard-backed version. hard published guarantee a market of say 2,000 over two or three for the university (or

This takes us back to the early days of publishing (ie, pre-Industrial Revolution) when readers would buy their book in paperback & have their own, often elaborate, bindings secured at their own expense & taste.

Books in the mid-1700s in England were often published by individual bookstores & sold exclusively at there. Of course, this was a period in which the realm of lettered men numbered only a few thousand in the country. Have we returned to this kind of situation, in our own unique way?

Book clubs: eliminate the middle men: find an audience.

Distribution again. Is there sufficient range of former students & others so aligned that we could years for the students of these students? We could distribute informally, at a lower cost: we could have an official cost, with a built-in mark-up, bookstores. (IU charges Workshop an additional 50 cents for special ordering a book: we could do it cheaper.)

~*~

Storage & secretarial: additional infrastructure costs.

[There was nothing more here.]

~*~

To sell to students, we must keep the cost below 5 cents a page (or 2½  cents where pages are around 5 ½ by 8 inches .2 .5 cents) to beat many Xeroxes; in some places, the machines cost 10 cents.

But our recent experience in MAXing our newsletter at a cost that  rivals off-set presses makes me wonder if we beat pirating.

On the other hand, potential pirates must first be able to get their hands on the original material before it can be copied. Hence, some publishers may be planning to sell only library editions, in a fancy hardback, from which students & scholars will make their own copies at a lower cost. Maybe it takes us on to cheaper ways for publishing our own material, with the additional hope that a second photo-copying may be of such low quality that the user depending upon photocopy sustems will require two to four impressions a page, with careful glueing afterwards, to reconstruct the original in his own reproduction. This implies a non-photocopied original.

~*~

No labor union in this visual can guarantee a creator a decent return on his labor.

[And this was way before AI].

~*~

In drawing these diverse thoughts and problems together, it seems that the problems of distribution & the declining base of broad areas of literate concern go hand-in-hand. The rise of increasingly specialized audiences has failed to acknowledge the changing economics of publication & distribution, or the increasing difficulty of policing artistic property rights.

Linked with this has been an author’s work (Xerox, magnetic tape), which with it the paradox of filling specialized markets while undermining the very royalties that make it possible for most artists to work at all in these specialized endeavors. To reap the just rewards for his own labors, the artist is now required to seek means to reproduce & circulate his own work at lower cost than is possible for the pirates — a situation that I would assume, by definition, is impossible. However, there may be a can guarantee any artist a decent living, nor a thoughts together, it seems increasing ease of pirating carries few strategies left to the artist by which he can circumvent the pirates. These are a few areas of our concern.

~*~

What are the that artist/editors can form legal co-ops to ensure the protection of their own property rights?

What are the possibilities & realities that artists/editors can form legal coops to ensure the protection of their own legal property rights?

~*~

One solution to the royalties problem could be derived from the action taken by musicians to deal with the spread of recorded music, especially on the airwaves. (We must remember that through most of the thirties, the radio networks, at least, were required, by either competition or internal decree, to rely upon only live music; changes in the economics of radio, however, brought about an onslaught of use of music.) The musicians formed two unions — ASCAP, or the Association of Songwriters, Composers, Artists, and Performers, and a rival BMI, Broadcast Music Incorporated; collect a flat fee from every station in the plays any of their works. Since policing the airwaves or relying upon station logs to determine music has been played would be prohibitive & encourage stations to falsify their records, a station plays a flat percentage of its gross or a negotiated fee, I’m not exactly sure which — but it pays that amount covered by the organization or plays nothing but its records. The collected fee is then divvied among the members.

The musicians had earlier formed the Fund or Performers Trust Fund or some such organization to counter the original inroads of records the creation of live music throughout the country. The funds collected on recording sessions (beyond the performer’s royalty) go into a fund that is distributed across the country to support concerts in the parks & so on.

A similar fee could be imposed upon all photocopying machines in the country, based on the assumption that every machine will be used at least once to copy material that is covered by copyright. The amount of the fee could be based upon the amount of usage recorded by the machine (Xerox, for example, keeps tabs on this), or on the amount of special supplies like ink or paper purchased.)

The collected fee could then be distributed among special groupings to support, physical science, and fine arts/literary journals. Poetry & fiction, by way of explanation, already receive some support from the Coordinating Council of Little Magazines, backed by National Endowment for the Humanities funds.

Although there would be the obvious difficulties in determining who would get what, at least somebody would be getting some return on their labor & a source for encouraging the unknown writers, the unknown researchers, could be established.

The courts, in several recent decisions, have said in effect that the decision is up to the legislatures and not the courts. Pending Congressional legislation would allow libraries to make one obviously not alleviate the difficulties of selective piracy.

This is where my ramblings end now.

~*~

Or so I said a half-century ago.

~*~

My, if I only received minimum wage plus interest for all the hours I’ve put into literary writings since then, I’d be rich.

You can find my works in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain them.

Reading a history with your own hand in the game

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Here we are, Thanksgiving Day, and I’m finally getting around to my reactions to Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2006 hit, Mayflower: Voyage, community, war.

Admittedly, having examined some of the period he covers, from the origin of the faithful and their sailing in 1620 through their struggles up to 1677, but from the settlements north of Boston, I come at the book from a different perspective than most readers. I appreciate his efforts to present the Separatists – the term he settles on rather than “Pilgrims” – as distinct from the Puritans who would invade New England a few years later. I also appreciate his emphasis on the non-members of the faith who participated in the Plymouth Colony settlement as well as the heavy financial burden the enterprise carried, which are details I develop more briefly in my own volume, Quaking Dover: How a counterculture took root and flourished in colonial New Hampshire.

What struck me in my reading was how little awareness Philbrick conveyed regarding the activities not just on the Piscataqua watershed, the center of my book, but north of Boston in general, including Salem, especially in the years before the Puritan influx. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, whom I see as the godfather of New England, is not even mentioned, though he and his investors were active behind the scenes in England. The Piscataqua venture was a source of food for the desperate Plymouth settlement and provided twice as much funding for anti-piracy efforts, among other things.

Philbrick, not surprisingly, takes a conventional gloss on Thomas Morton and the Merrymount settlement without noting that its roots were in Devonshire folkways, not just in personal eccentricities. Dismissing him as “a jolly down-on-his-luck lawyer from London” overlooks the argument that the settlement was thriving and apparently more successful, economically and as an attraction, than Plymouth.

Philbrick’s examination of the attempted Wessagussett settlement as a Plymouth satellite clarified some of the events for me, since it falls between Plymouth and Dover as the oldest permanent settlements in New England. I am also glad that he included the struggles and near devastation of the Jamestown settlement for perspective. The Virginia colony, like the Mayflower, tends to be romanticized in the public eye. The gritty realities need to be spotlighted, too.

He acknowledges the second ship to the Plymouth settlement, the Fortune, in the fall of 1621, which doubled the population of the colony as well as its growing pains. The next ships, the Anne and Little James, arrived in the summer of 1623, but only one is named, briefly. I follow their impact through immigrant William Hilton, the brother of the founder of Dover, New Hampshire, and a Fortune passenger. His wife and children came on the Anne. Though he’s often erroneously identified as co-founder, he didn’t arrive north until he was ejected from Plymouth after he and his wife had a child baptized by the Anglican John Lyford, an event that triggered events that Philbrick briefly notes. I am now wondering if Lyford later, in 1628, performed the first Anglican wedding in New England, the one uniting Samuel Maverick and the widow Amias Cole Thomson on an island in Boston Harbor. That, too, weaves back to my book.

Within the period covered in Mayflower, Quakers were making inroads into the Plymouth colony, though Philbrick makes only fleeting reference to the persecutions led by the Puritans.

While he goes into great detail regarding the Pequot War and the one after, known as King Philip’s, he makes no mention of the mock war games in Dover in 1676 that sent an estimated 400 or more Natives into captivity and is often credited as bringing the King Philip’s conflict to an end. Some were hanged but many, women and children, especially, were sold into slavery and exported.

Still, he develops a much more complex understanding of conflicts among the varied tribes and their leaders than is usually seen. The concept of a unified “Indian” front quickly crumbles away.

I’m also interested in the Winslow lines that left Plymouth, including those who came to the Piscataqua region about the time William Hilton did and others who joined with Dover Friends in establishing a Quaker presence in what eventually became Greater Portland, Maine.

For southern New England, the closure of King Philip’s War, where Philbrick’s book ends, essentially ended the conflicts with the First Peoples. Not so in the north, where fresh outbreaks would hammer on for decades, abetted by the forces of New France, ending only with the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

Gertrude Stein could quick to the cut 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

She does show up in my sets of art gallery poems, accompanied by Norman Rockwell, for good reason, if only a fictional role.

Here are ten things she really said.

  1. “We are always the same age inside.”
  2. “Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?”
  3. “It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
  4. “The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.”
  5. “A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”
  6. “Literature – creative literature – unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.”
  7. “I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading it never can do.”
  8. “It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.”
  9. “Money is always there but the pockets change.”
  10. “America is my country, and Paris is my home town.”

For the art gallery poems, go to my blog Thistle Finch editions.