The clock’s running down – Don’t miss this deadline

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Time’s running out. The one-month-only sale where three of my novels are available for free is coming to a close. Remember, that’s FREE. And two more titles are half-price.

They’re designed for Kindle, Nook, laptop, tablet, or smartphone – any digital device where you’re reading.

All you need to do is hop on down to Jnana Hodson at Smashwords.com.

I think you’ll be happy you did.

 

 

They sound like happy fireworks

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
The street drum band aNova Brazil joined us last fall to help celebrate the cleanup of the Charles River two decades earlier. Here they are warming up for the Boston Revels’ equinox RiverSing last fall at the Herter Park amphitheater along the Charles River in Allston. They later fired up the procession down to the stage and performed several unbelievably complex and infectious numbers. They’re a hard act to follow, but we did it. Boston Revels hosts events throughout the year to enhance community through folk traditions.

The changing face of downtown Dover

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My small city is the seventh oldest settlement in the continental United States, not that there’s a lot left from its first century, when the place was largely on the sometimes troubled frontier of English dominion.

As a working-class mill town, it developed more modestly than more prosperous harbor towns like Portsmouth to the south or Portland to the northeast or Newburyport to the southwest.

Our downtown is catching up, though. A small but significant building boom is under way.

Continue reading “The changing face of downtown Dover” →

Filling shelves with cookbooks and food perspectives

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the expansion of the family restaurant in my novel, What’s Left, her father proposes an office for her uncle Barney that includes a wall-length bookshelf for his cookbooks.

At this point, of course, I could have been led to page after page of a bibliography! My wife would have Anthony Pellegrini’s pioneering volumes right up there. And I’d go for Julia Child, not that I’ve ever followed one of her recipes to a T. I just love her descriptions.

Now let me ask, what food books would you put on Barney’s shelves? And why?

~*~

Waitress in unidentified diner, Pike Place Market, Seattle, Washington, 1981. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

In my novel, the family restaurant could have been like this.

Ten points about Brooklyn

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Brooklyn has long been overshadowed by its more commanding neighbor, but it is undergoing a renaissance among trendsetters.

Here are ten random bits about the borough also known as Kings County.

  1. If New York City were dissolved and the borough became an independent city, it would be the nation’s third largest, after Chicago and Los Angeles. It was merged into New York City in 1898.
  2. Forty-five percent of the population speaks a mother language other than English.
  3. The Brooklyn Museum houses the city’s second-largest public art collection. It is especially renowned for its Asian collection. At least on the days when those galleries are open. There are serious budgetary problems.
  4. The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, founded in 1899, is the oldest such institution in the nation.
  5. Coney Island on the Atlantic has undergone a rebirth an amusement park. It’s also famed for Nathan’s hot dogs.
  6. Prospect Park, 585 acres, was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux. It includes a zoo and a 60-acre lake.
  7. The Pratt Institute, one of the leading fine arts schools, is situated in Clinton Hill.
  8. Subway stations: 157.
  9. Public schools: 540.
  10. Crime: The acting district attorney declared 2017 the safest year in the borough’s history in terms of homicides, shootings, and shooting victims; 101 homicides occurred in the year. (If Dallas, Texas, were the same size, the figure would have been 332.)

 

Netting around the blueberries

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
In previous years, the netting we’ve used to keep birds and squirrels off the blueberries simply sat on top of the bushes. It tangled in the plants, and resourceful critters could still get at some of the berries. Last year we used fallen branches to create this rig, which kept the netting further from the plants. It made harvesting much easier, too – just lift one side as needed. How do you think it looks?

Time to think of a Japanese touch

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the (highly unlikely) movie version of my novel, What’s Left, who would you like to see as her best friend, cousin Sandra?

Of course, that also means thinking of her blended genetic heritage and who could embody it.

~*~

A large Queen Anne-style house with a distinctive witch’s hat tower something like this is the headquarters for Cassia’s extended family in my new novel, What’s Left. If only this one were pink, like hers. (Claremont, New Hampshire.)

Ten points about New York City

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s not all Manhattan, you should know. Most of the population sleeps in the other four boroughs. And then for even more bodies we have Long Island to the east, Jersey to the west, and Westchester-Rockland to the north.

By the way, Brooklyn – not Manhattan – is the most populous borough.

Now, for ten more bits.

  1. Ethnic diversity: It’s 44 percent white, 25 percent black, and 12 percent Asian descent. Hispanics claim about 27 percent. The city has the largest number of Italian-Americans in the nation (nearly 700,000), the largest Jewish population outside Israel (1.5 million), and the largest Chinese population of any city outside Asia (573,000). About 800 languages are spoken in the city.
  2. Open spaces: About one-fifth of the Bronx is given over to parkland, including the New York Botanical Garden. Staten Island has thousands of acres of parkland and about 2,000 wild whitetail deer.
  3. Largest borough in size: At 108 square miles, the Queens wraps around more populous Brooklyn. Its population of 2.3 million is the second-largest in the city – nearly half of them foreign-born.
  4. Smallest borough in size: Manhattan. Its 22 square miles are dwarfed by Staten Island’s 58 square miles.
  5. Restaurants: The city has an estimated 24,000 eateries – including delis, pizzerias, and take-outs. As for sit-down-and-be-served, the number’s closer to 8,000. One enterprising guess says that at one a day, you’d need 22½ years to hit them all. By the way, a fourth of them are in Manhattan. As for home cooking? We’ll have to ask a greengrocer.
  6. Runways: You think people fly straight in Manhattan? Think again. Most domestic flights work out of Newark Liberty International in New Jersey, serving nearly 44 million passengers a year. JFK, on the Atlantic shore of Queens, gets the bulk of the international flights, nearly 30 million passengers a year. LaGuardia, in a tight corner of Queens, is the most convenient option and serves nearly 30 million passengers annually. MacArthur in Ronkonkoma, Long Island, serves about two million passengers a year plus commercial traffic.
  7. Housed animals: The Bronx Zoo and Staten Island Zoo, plus Tisch Children’s Zoo in Manhattan’s Central Park, house a world of animals. Brooklyn is also home to the New York Aquarium. Brooklyn Wildlife Center and Queens Wildlife Center also offer displays. That’s in addition to rats, pigeons, and endless humanoid varieties.
  8. Stage life: The celebrated Great White Way on Broadway has 41 theaters as the heart of live American theater. Manhattan’s off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway stages offer more offbeat fare. Not all actors and actresses are working as restaurant wait staff.
  9. Professional sports: Both football teams play in New Jersey’s swampy Meadowlands. The Yankees still play baseball in the Bronx, while the Mets remain in the Queens. The Knicks basketball team and the Rangers hockey team both perform in Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, but the Brooklyn Nets basketball squad and Islanders hockey team both call Barclays Center in Brooklyn their home. So it’s all over the place, not just Manhattan.
  10. Parking tickets: UPS, FedEx, and other delivery services receive up to 7,000 parking tickets a day, contributing up to $120 million in revenue annually to the city. The tab on unpaid tickets by United Nations diplomats, meanwhile, was put at $16 million, with Egypt as the worst offender, $2 million overdue.

~*~

Oh, yes. One out of every 21 New Yorkers is a millionaire. Or so I read. Did they mean just Manhattan? Or the whole shebang? Either way, it’s a lot.