No, tomatoes don’t all taste the same

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The first year I witnessed the gardener in our household sprout and then transplant a dozen or so varieties of tomatoes, I was perplexed. Foolish me, I thought tomatoes were pretty interchangeable. Not so by the end of summer, when I had discovered how much each variety had its own identity. Some ripened earlier than others, a major consideration in our short growing season. Some were firmer while others were juicier. Each variety matured in its own size and shape. Trying to describe the range of flavors could soon sound like a wine tasting commentary. So far, we’ve had nothing that has delivered a hint of slightly warm asphalt, which seemed to be a plus for one wine critic. We’ll save you our own take.

Also important to us is disease and blight resistance. New England can be a difficult region for tomato growers.

Here’s a sampling of what we’ve cultivated, eaten, and even dried, canned, or bagged frozen.

  1. Goldie: A large, deep orange, slicing beefsteak fruit. “The perfect tomato,” as I blogged back on August 26, 2021, touting it for its starring role on my beloved sandwiches. This heirloom variety is one of the last to blossom and bear harvest for us, but it’s definitely worth the wait.
  2. Pruden’s Purple: Valued as being one of the first large tomatoes to mature (72 days), this firm wonder has a distinctive deep pink, ridged appearance. It also contains few seeds. The flavor is described as nicely balanced between sweet and tart.
  3. Brandywine: A very popular large heirloom, this one generally matures in 80 to 90 days. Many folks consider it the tastiest of the lot. Its leaves resemble potato plants more than tomatoes, and the heavy fruit means the plants need a lot of support.
  4. Yellow Brandywine: A gold-yellow variation created in 1991 from the famed Brandywine heirloom, this beefsteak weighs in at up to two whopping pounds a globe.
  5. Sungold: These tangy sweet golden orange cherry-size tomatoes are among the earliest to arrive for us – within two months, supposedly, though for us that meant early August last year – yet continued to deliver through September. Harvesting at peak can be tricky, though: a shade too early misses the glory, but a shade too late and they start to spoil. Their flavor is described as intense and sugary-sweet, a delightful addition to salads. They form in clusters of ten to 20 tomatoes on a vine. Add to it the red Glacier, another cherry tomato that arrives early and continues valiantly into autumn.
  6. Juliet: This small, elongated, prolific paste tomato has been a true workhorse for us. It freezes well, providing a foundation for soup and sauces throughout the winter. Lately, we’ve augmented this one with Plum Regal, primed for the end of the season; Amish Paste, a larger elongated plum tomato that also works well for soup and sauces; and Roma, an egg-shaped three-incher prized for making paste and sauces.
  7. Opalka: At the larger end of the paste tomatoes, this Polish entry grows up to five feet tall and has irregularly-shaped fruit up to six inches long. Tasters at Fedco Seeds described it as “an oasis of flavor in a desert of tomato hell,” “a pleasing texture and good aftertaste lingers,” “round and mellow flavor… full-bodied.” As I was saying about critical taste analysis?
  8. Cosmonaut Volkov: Back to the one-pounders I love for tomato-and-mayo sandwiches, this slightly flattened beefsteak is named for a Russian astronaut who died returning from space. It can go mushy if overripe, though.
  9. Omar: Or more accurately, Omar’s Lebanese, which was introduced in 1996 via a Lebanese college student named Omar Saab. Typically weighing in at up to 1½ pounds apiece, the fruit sometimes ambitiously reaches three or four pounds. The flavor is described as “multidimensional sweet.”
  10. Copper Beauty: An elongated and very tasty small tomato, this one still has lots of green in its skin when ripe, augmented by orange streaks, along with a dark red interior when sliced.

And we haven’t even touched on some fine “black” tomatoes.

 

Acid test novelist: Grace Metalious (1924-1964)

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of my colleagues at the New Hampshire Sunday News insisted that Metalious was a much better writer than the tabloid image that plagued her and her notorious book.

After reading Peyton Place, I have to agree. The realities it exposed are no longer scandalous but widely acknowledged. The novel, meanwhile, is skillfully accomplished and hints at more that could have been accomplished under other conditions. She certainly understood the unspoken skeletons of northern New England as well as anyone else I could mention, and she took the risks of admitting the dark undercurrents of survival in a small town anywhere in the country.

Her personal life, on the other hand, is an American tragedy.

My first nights out on the water

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

sleeping with the ocean
a mere foot from my head

the ship at port / anchored creaks, lines grinding / groaning
I hear the neighbors either side
Intimately

have you read
a common topic so uncommon
elsewhere

“I’m dying to be a better reader”

like digging a hole
I like going to bed
or lying on a beach

back below, in my berth
I hear steady breathing a few feet away
only a thin wall separating our heads

her boyfriend’s in crab school

yep, they giggle
unlike the couple with Southern accents
from Florida

the knitting picked up again

I’m going to sleep
[I’m falling asleep]
and so is most of the rest

finally

how many times will I be up
in the middle of the night
the head’s up on deck

I’m glad it’s not raining
or heavily foggy

though we’re sleeping at sea
it’s calmer than a water bed

creaking and thumps
more likely my neighbors
than the interplay of planks and sea

yes, somebody’s bones

now, for that damned mosquito
or some scratching overhead

who just dropped what
on the deck above me?

a shutting door
with a latch
and shuffling

who’s securing the gear
in the dusk?

what a still, calm spot she’s chosen
for the night

3:30 am, a nearly full moon
scattering sound of steady traffic
the other side of Isle au Haut
(the south)
may simply be the water motion

there’s definitely surf other side,
slight breeze, 1 mph?
to the west

can barely see Polaris
light cloud cover

only one plane overhead
on the European flight way

and the flash of a fishing boat
light array
in the gap of Deer Isle

what’s all the noise around me tonight
besides a stray cough
or zipper

are we really that restless

I have no idea what the Patriots
or Sox
did over the weekend
though they’ve been spiraling downward

light snoring in my ear last night

I had the most erotic dream
of someone who in reality was almost well

This could become obsessive.

It’s not like our project’s so unusual in the bigger picture

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Those of you who have constructed a house from scratch must be looking at our renovation like it’s peanuts. And, in many ways, it is. We weren’t starting with talks with an architect or even inspecting an undeveloped site beforehand. No, that must be truly thrilling. There’d be none of the frustration of trying to retrofit your dream into what others had done before you, either.

For the record, we did look seriously at a couple of undeveloped sites in town and played with the challenges, but they were beyond our means, leaving us to always lament the spectacular views that others now enjoy while also wondering how we would have managed the timing.

Still, to be fully honest, I have to say what’s unfolded before us is truly exciting, at least from our end. That kinda brings me back to that adage about writing about what you know, or at least what you find most fascinating at the moment.

But it’s also humbling. Just consider how much of daily existence we take for granted, at least in the so-called developed world.

The Isaac Hobbs mansion, off to the far corner of our block, is undergoing a thorough restoration. Half of it was about to cave in when we bought our property, but that’s no longer the case. The new owner wants to be historically accurate, as far as possible. In contrast, we want ours to be more livable. Besides, most of the period detail was ripped out decades ago.

A further block up the street, a more spectacular upgrade is being given to the circa 1807 federal house Aaron Hayden built and General Samuel D. Leavitt transformed into mansard mansion in the 1880s. It had fallen into foreclosure before its bold new owners came to town on the heels of Covid.

Leavitt was also Eastport’s first mayor.

Reader, beware, if you must.

What do you mean, how do I write?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Isn’t it obvious, one word at a time? Except it’s more complicated than that, and every writer approaches the deed differently.

I would like to approach a writing project the way Neal Welliver did his large-scale paintings, starting in the upper left-hand corner and finishing in the lower right. He worked with a tightly defined palate, too. Instead, I wind up more like Mark Rothko, painting over earlier parts, adding or scraping off layers – what’s known as “painterly.”

For novelists, the difference is posed as “outliner,” meaning someone who starts out with an outline and pretty much sticks with it, versus a “pantser,” going by the seat-of-the-pants with perhaps a vague sense of a destination, which may very well change en route.

You can guess which camp I’m in. As another artist put it, what’s the point of putting all that work in if you already know the ending?

For the record, I hated outlining when it was assigned as school homework. It seemed redundant.

~*~

I don’t like formal prompts, by the way. Instead, I often start with something that keeps nagging at me, the way the flash of a trackside worker in Brooklyn – a gandy dancer – turned into a subway line hitchhiker. (Maybe that third element, the unique word, turned the trick.)

As a project percolates, so do related ideas during the rest of my day, leading to piles of scribbled notes to weave in. When I lived in New Hampshire’s seacoast region and worked in Manchester, I had an hour commute in each direction, largely through rural country. I kept a notebook and pen at hand as I drove. Likewise, some of my favorite lines in What’s Left came to mind while swimming laps in the city’s indoor pool. As soon as I was back in the locker room, I was scribbling. Getting up from the keyboard every hour or so, sometimes adding a short walk, also works wonders. As a journalist, some of my best headlines came on my way to the men’s room or back.

Much of my writing then becomes the way of connecting two thoughts or flashes.

Outtakes from other projects also get recycled, though they rarely wind up quite how they began. I’ve drawn heavily from correspondence, maps, and photos as well, as well as silent meditation. As has been said, some of the best barns in New England were designed in Quaker Meeting, and it is amazing how many problems get worked out by stepping away from them.

~*~

As much as I’ve longed for an editor or a partner truly in sync with what I’m about, that hasn’t been the case, not since my first lover, back in college. Instead, I’ve been a lone ranger. It’s meant putting big projects aside for several months or even years before coming back to them afresh.

~*~

There are also the epiphanies when a character starts dictating the story, as well as the times of slogging through mud.

I should also mention learning from other writers, especially by example.

~*~

Determining when a work is finished is usually a mystery. My high school art teacher used to say I either stopped too so or else overworked a piece. I’d prefer too soon, since my usual taste leans toward austere. Think Quaker, Shaker, or Zen.

Another answer would be that I stop when I have nothing more to say on the project, for now. Or, as I’ve heard elsewhere, when the writer just gets tired of it.

As a newsman, a more common answer was the arrival of a deadline.

No time for extended deliberation

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most particularly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms an unusual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 74

In making public presentations about my book

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I came to love the question-and-answer period, but there would typically be one that threw me for a loop. Yes, the ones I wish I had answered better.

For example:

How could you sleep after writing some of the sections?

I did quip that a martini before bedtime helped. I could have mentioned the realities of working as a newspaper editor and having to face daily atrocities abroad and close at hand.

You developed ways of putting it behind a plexiglass shield, so to speak. Not that it always worked.

What was it about Quakers coming back for more trouble?

They had a lot more in common with the Puritans than we’d like to admit and no doubt saw them as falling far short of the goal they proclaimed.

The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut weren’t the worst, by the way. Historian John Carroll suggests colonial Virginia may have been even more severe but undocumented.

I wish I had mentioned that the concept of a loyal opposition springs from the Quaker Peace Testimony, and that the two-party system originated in Pennsylvania.

Do you need to be a protester to be a Quaker?

Nope.