As for those dreams

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My wife’s long dreamed of living on an island and had come close to making that a reality. She’s still pained by the way that came apart, back before she met me. Well, indirectly it’s a reason we came together.

So here we are, finally with a destination that’s technically an island, one connected to the mainland by a causeway rather than a ferry.

As for me, Downeast Maine – the lands and waters east of fashionable Acadia and Bar Harbor – reminds me of the Far West, with its long distances to anywhere, the wilds and wildlife, and opportunities to explore nature. But our destination also has a lively arts scene, one that reminds me of Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula, back in the early ’80s.

Leaving the Pacific Northwest crushed a passion and way of life, something I’m feeling rekindled in this new setting.

No, it’s not Alaska or the coast of British Columbia and there are no glacier-glad mountains, but the vibe’s right. For that matter, I’m not up for that degree of isolation in my life at this stage.

Somehow, though, this is exciting.

~*~

For us, it’s not quite as simple as packing everything onto a boat and landing at a new dock.

Instead, we’re relocating in stages, eventually merging two households into one. Two households with barns, to an old Cape without one.

Whatever we keep will be strategic, for sure. And yes, it will still be lined with books, lots of them.

Manic Mitch is also lurking from the past

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

In my novel What’s Left, a seminal figure in her father’s past is Mitch, who introduced him to her aunt Nita as well as Nita’s roommate Diz and then, let’s just say hippie highs.

It’s possible Nita and Cassia’s father never would have met on such a large campus without having manic Mitch in the story. It would be a tighter plot, but how much vibrancy would we lose? I’ve seen him pretty much as a catalyst, modeled loosely on a real-life figure from my past.

Well, he’s more of a key actor in in Daffodil Uprising, where Nita’s also important.

~*~

Just how do friendships begin? Not all of them originate through introductions by mutual acquaintances. Sometimes you just bump into someone and sense a connection.

Was there an accidental way you met someone you now consider a great friend?

~*~

In the family, Cassia may have had food like this. Nut pie and fried apple with ice cream at the Ammos restaurant, Perivolos beach. (Photo by Klearchos Kapoutsis via Wikimedia Commons.)

~*~

 

One more thing on the plate

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

Covid caused us to put off last spring’s anticipated yard sale, which was to help us reduce some of our excess possessions. Now we realize if we sell this house before May, when the yard sale seasons begins, we need to choose whether to move our excess items to our daughter’s and have a yard sale there or to take them to Goodwill or the dump instead.

Quite simply, do we feel we’re up for investing the time and effort in preparing and conducting a sale? (As well as the tedious job of cleaning up afterward?) How much do we want to reasonably rake in if we do?

In either case, I don’t want to pack up a bunch of stuff “to get to later,” meaning sometime after hauling it five hours northeast. Or wherever.

Note to self: Energy applied now saves double or triple that amount later.

Ever been out on the Plains?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My novel Nearly Canaan starts off in a railroad crossing called Prairie Depot, and my story The Secret Side of Jaya returns there.

Prairie can be found as far east as Ohio, but it’s more extensive out on the Great Plains.

Here are some tidbits about the landscape.

~*~

  1. It’s bigger than I thought. The region runs from the Rio Grande river bordering Mexico all the way to the Arctic Ocean in Canada, and along the Rocky Mountains to the west. Its width is about 500 miles and it covers about a seventh of the continental U.S.
  2. Rainfall ranges between 13 and 20 inches a year, too little to sustain trees.
  3. Its natural vegetation is a variety of grasslands. And it’s flat or gently rolling.
  4. It had immense herds of bison as well as pronghorn. Prairie dogs, coyotes, prairie chicken, and rattlesnakes remain prominent.
  5. Native American tribes included Blackfoot, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Comanche. The nomadic tribes followed the bison migration through the year.
  6. The introduction of the horse from Europe dramatically changed the Native culture.
  7. The rural Plains have lost a third of their population since 1920. Ghost towns, which have lost so much population they’re considered extinct, are the most common category of towns.
  8. The climate includes cold, harsh winters and very hot, humid summers.
  9. Without natural trees, hills, or mountains, there’s no protection against wind and erosion.
  10. The region includes Tornado Alley, based on the frequency and intensity of the twisters generated in its open spaces.

~*~

What surprises you here?

Facing up to downsizing

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

After nearly 21 years in the same house – the one with the small red barn – we’ve come to a difficult decision.

It’s time to move on. Not only is the place too big for just the two of us – remember, there were once five us of living here – it’s also eating up too much of our retirement budget and time. We can’t continue to watch our meagre savings shrinking. For that matter, we can’t even keep up with the gardening and cleaning routines, not if we’re going to indulge in the other desired things on our proverbial plate. An estimate for reroofing the house may have been the tipping point.

We’ve run the numbers of having others renting space here or trying to swap what we own for something smaller close by, and we do love the community, as you’ve gathered from reading the blog, but no enticing alternative has jumped out. Dover’s simply a very hot housing market at the moment.

What has caught our fancy, thanks to a daughter’s investigation, is a small down-on-the-heels city on the ocean at the other end of Maine – one with an active arts community and a nearby Quaker meeting. It is as far from where we are now as is Manhattan in the opposite direction – a five-hour-plus drive. Half of the townships you pass though in the last two hours of that route are uninhabited, except for the black flies, mosquitos, and moose.

Even without that prompting, we still need to sort through our possessions and cull what we can. It’s not just clutter, either. So much of this is essentially frozen time – things we thought we’d want to get to someday or debris from the past, souvenirs we probably won’t ever revisit again. (There’s more on decluttering on my Chicken Farmer blog.)

The key question we’re asking ourselves, “Is this something I’ll need or use in the next five years?” Or, for that matter, really miss.

And so, independently, we’ve started. No matter how liberating the task ultimately becomes, getting there is often painful.

In our case, it’s a multistage process, as I’ll discuss in future posts.

We’ve started with the books, mostly, because there are so many of them and they occupy the most space. They’re also heavy to move.

After that we get to clothing, kitchen goods, garden and home maintenance tools, our personal collections.

For me, that leads to writing supplies and files, concert program notes and playbills from events I’ve attended, my vinyl, CD, and tape recordings.

 

About that feminine point of view in my novels

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Why a young female as my protagonist? Fair question. Since my novel What’s Left began as an attempt to answer a younger generation’s questions about the hippie movement, I felt a girl would be more receptive to its issues and sensations. Many girls have, after all, continued the identity, while it appears that boys have largely become more militant or even sullen.

As the novel developed, Cassia’s parents and their values retreated into the background. Far more compelling is Cassia’s own identity, development, and confrontations. Hope you agree.

My new series focuses on Jaya and her evolving awareness. Yoga is part of it, along with career issues and close relationships. She has a richer encounter with the events, I’d say, than Joshua does – there are many points where he’s largely a reactive or passive presence. Ultimately, The Secret Side of Jaya has no parallel in his more limited vision or imagination.

I have to confess the story didn’t start out to be told from her side, but it does feel much more fitting this way.

But I am speaking as the author. Readers and critics are open to their own takes.

Care to weigh in?

The Secret Side of Jaya

Here’s another consideration of your worldly possessions

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

If your house caught fire, what would you miss most?
Or, if you had time, what’s the first thing you would you save?

You know, that Dolley Madison thing of grabbing the portrait of Washington when the White House was burning. (OK, a slave actually deserves the credit, but back to the point.)

I have to admit that having so much of my work now backed up in the cloud, rather than on paper, greatly refocuses my response here.

My journals would be a big loss – there are too many to take them out all at once.

Other people would top the list, and after that, whatever’s closest at hand, probably starting with my laptop.