People of today I admire

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 10 Comments

OK, I’m counting couples as one here. And I’m excluding some nominees I celebrated earlier in the year in my ten fine couples list. Here goes:

  1. The Obamas, of course.
  2. And my wife and daughters and the two guys they bring into my life. Natchurally. Think of this as a team.
  3. Noah Merrill, the ever patient and faithful field secretary of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends.
  4. Brown Letham, energetic painter and activist and father of one very fine author.
  5. Jim and Eden Grace, holy peaceniks on a global scale.
  6. Timothy and Nijmeh Curren, Orthodox priest and presbvtera.
  7. George and Althea Coussoule, welcoming stalwarts of Dover’s Greek community.
  8. Sherry Wood. See my dedication in Hometown News.
  9. Jay O’Hara, free-Gospel minister and Quaker activist.
  10. Gary Snyder, American poet and Zen Buddhist.

~*~

So what if this adds up to more than ten individuals in all?

Who’s high on your own list?

Also on the plate

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Why does the restaurant business sustain so many immigrant families? Just look at all our ethnic options in dining today, even in small cities. Not just Greek-American, like the one in my novel What’s Left.

What’s your favorite food stop? Is it run by a single family? Does it have an ethnic identity?

~*~

Look at all these Greek specialties!

Bienvenue, Val

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

the one who pushed has a brain tumor on top of four or five years of chronic, debilitating, undiagnosed intestinal pain, only in her late thirties I agonize over how to respond, wanting to run up to the coast and bring her back where she would at least have someone to offer care, while from the green valley a letter saying another’s on the way to Old Order Mennonite (unless, maybe, I’d go into dairy farming? Nah!)

 

Just look at Upstate New York

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

You say “New York” to someone and the first thing they think of is Manhattan. Not even the rest of the city, where most of the population works, studies, and sleeps. Or Long Island, as an extension of The City.

Easily overlooked is the sprawling region of Upstate New York, with a population of more than six million people and the cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, and more. A population that would make the region itself the 18th largest state in the U.S.A., if it were independent. Larger than Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, or a host more.

Besides, it’s a lot like the place where Kenzie alights in my novel Pit-a-Pat High Jinks.

Here are ten more facts to consider.

  1. Upstate starts right outside New York City, at the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River, where you can still see the towers of Manhattan when the pollution-induced haze abates. OK, the boundary is debated, let’s not argue. Maybe it’s just upriver at the Bear Mountain Bridge.
  2. The region has two major mountain ranges, the Catskills and more impressive Adirondacks, plus a lot of Appalachian foothills. It is largely rugged terrain.
  3. It was largely uninhabited by whites until after the Revolutionary War, when the Iroquois natives were pushed out. What it means is that the bulk of the region was then settled about the same time as much of the Midwest.
  4. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 turned the region into a hotbed of manufacturing along its route, as well as religious upheaval, leading it to be called “the burned-over district” because of its zealous waves of missionary activity.
  5. Many of those companies led to giants including General Electric, IBM, Kodak, Xerox, Bausch and Lomb, Carrier air conditioning, Endicott Johnson shoes, Gannett newspapers – manufacturing enterprises heavily hit by Rust Belt devastation in the past five decades. The region is still hard-pressed to recover economically.
  6. It gets a lot of snow. Nobody accepts the crown of the snowfall capital, which seems to shift each year.
  7. The Mormon movement took off when Joseph Smith reported having visions while living in the Palmyra area in the 1820s and ’30s.
  8. The Shakers first settled at Watervliet, near Albany, in 1776.
  9. The Catskills supply New York City’s water via an elaborate pipeline system.
  10. Welch’s makes a lot of grape juice in Chautauqua County, while the Finger Lakes Region is noted for wine making, including Manischewitz sweet kosher wine in Canandaigua.

In case you’re not conversant in Tibetan

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Having Cassia cast a Buddhist chant as a spell in my novel What’s Left, is a bit of an inside joke. She may be trying to intimidate her middle school classmates, but what she utters, Su To Ka Yo Me Bha Wa, translates as “Grant me complete satisfaction” or “Grant me complete satisfaction within me.” Not that they have a clue.

Besides, I feel a shade of Harry Potter here, without an ominous wand. These words can simply feel magical.

By the way, Cassia’s chant is one letter off from Su Po Ka Yo Me Wa, “Grow within me” or “Increase the positive within me,” which also fits.

Just in case you’re wondering.

~*~

Think of some word or phrases you repeat often.

Do you have your own “mantra,” a word or phrase to raise your spirits?

(My favorite 9-year-old introduced me to “Yay!” So yours doesn’t have to be the least bit exotic.)

~*~

Cassia’s aunt Pia came from a family that owned places like this. Not far from Lowell, Massachusetts, where she grew up, for that matter.

From a Jungian interpretation of the Holy Grail myth

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

So I lost the source, this still applies: “One of the first characteristics of a mood [the author distinguishes feeling, emotions, and moods] is that it robs us of all sense of meaning. Relatedness is necessary if we are to have a sense of meaning or fulfillment. If something is wrong with one’s ability to relate, the meaning in life is gone. So depression is another term for mood. … So a mood is a little madness, a slight psychosis that overtakes one.”

Also: “A woman is much more in control of her moods. She can use them. She tries them on and sees which one she is going to wear. A man doesn’t have as much control over his moods; in fact, he has almost no control. Many women are masters of the whole feeling department as few men ever are. Much difficulty arises because a woman presumes that a man has the same kind of control over his mood that she has over hers, but he doesn’t. She must understand and give him time, or help him a little bit. …

“There is a fine but important difference between mood and enthusiasm. The word enthusiasm is a beautiful word. In Greek it means ‘to be filled with God.’ . . . If one is filled with God, a great creativity will flow, and there will be a stability about it. If one is filled with the anima [a man’s shadow side, his feminine aspects; in a woman, it’s the animus, her male qualities] one may also feel creativity, but it will probably be gone before nightfall. One must be wise enough to know the difference between God and the anima; most men aren’t. … Laughter is positive and creative, unless it comes from a mood.”

Among the points the writer in question raises in that section is one noting the danger of a feminist stance pushing women into their animus side, which gives men no refuge. “In some respects this is necessary, but in some other respects it could be nearly fatal. Each [man and woman] should serve the other. This is the ideal. We can’t do without it. One cannot live without the service, without the love, without the nurturing and service of the other. Parsifal understands this …”

No wonder I’ve been going out of my gourd!