Tag: America

PREPARING A SHROUD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

Paradoxically, to meditate on death and dying is to consider life itself in its manifold opportunities. The blessings of teachers and mentors, guides and ancestors, family and friends all spring forth.

~*~

WAY BACK

six blue ridges:
five valleys in between

a procession of black carriages
to white tombstones
in a coal-dust haze

scarlet, purple, and gold
fade into rusty wheat and gray

wind in birches:
water falling on rock

Poem copyright 2017 by Jnana Hodson
For more, click here.

Poetry
Poetry

DRIVING INTO THE SUNSET OF PUBLIC SERVICE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

When I first entered the newspaper business, profit margins of 20 percent to 30 percent were not uncommon. Some papers were even reported to take 40 percent of their earnings down to the bottom line.

Not that much of that income went to the reporters or editors, who as a group ranked at the bottom of professional categories. Below school teachers and ministers, in fact. In addition, we worked nights and weekends and holidays – no wonder the divorce rate was high. The field could be depressing, as other surveys acknowledged. Or maybe it just attracted depressed individuals.

When right-wingers rub their “liberal media” smear across us, they mock the sacrifices we’ve made in trying to serve the public. For accuracy, the mass media  are ultimately capitalist machines – or, as they used to say of newspapers when I began, they were machines for printing money. That’s anything but leftist. Can’t be more conservative than that money-grubbing side, can you?

Some of the more astute critics at the time argued that the industry wasn’t reinvesting enough in growth and development, that it was in fact “eating its seed corn” when it came to salaries and wages, especially. How could we attract talented minorities at this pay, for one thing, when there were far more lucrative alternatives such as law? How could we build new audiences and new products without them – much less support these as they grew?

In the past decade or so, the business model has essentially collapsed in the advent of the Internet. Why should anyone pay for something they can get for free? The need for detailed coverage of public affairs remains, more than ever, but there are fewer and fewer professionals on the job, and most of those who remain are approaching minimum wage. You can’t live on that, especially not if you have a family.

I keep thinking of a skilled colleague, one of the best, an editor who quit to become a bus driver. The shift had better hours and better pay, even for a college graduate.

LOUD IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

Notes from cleaning up after a big race at (what was then called) New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon:

  • The entire North American Quaker membership would fit in the grandstands and infield. Ditto, Mennonite or Brethren.
  • Baseball is akin to opera, in that individuals stand openly and perform – as part of a team or a cast. They are highly trained to do their job precisely, whether throwing a change-up or hitting a top note and then trilling.
  • NASCAR is akin to rock, in that individuals are stars first, surrounded by crews and sophisticated technical systems that do most of the work. In horse racing, the animal is celebrated for the victory; in motor sports, the machine earns no such respect. Why?
  • NASCAR – earplugs / the grandstands themselves rumbling.
  • This is religion, the drivers as saints. (The big race on the Sabbath.)
  • Their products purchased as acts of faith and obedience.
  • Death, always hovering, as a spectacle of feigned abhorrence.
  • Eyes on the spire, with its changing script. The lap count. The leaders.
  • Maybe the biggest difference between sports and the fine arts is that people bet on the outcome of the former.

WELL, IT REALLY WAS NEWS TO ME

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

This morning’s newspaper had a headline that sent an “Oh, gee, I haven’t seen that before” running through my head. As I mentioned the other day (Why Woodpecker Can’t Keep Up, June 14), so much of the news can be same-old, same-old variations on a theme. But this one really was new:

Motorcyclist Hits Bear.

As I also mentioned (Harley Heaven on Lake Winnipesaukee, June 16), we just had the nine-day Laconia Motorcycle Week, which attracts swarms of bikers to the Granite State, and racing along mountainous roads is one of their joys. Every year the event is accompanied by accidents and usually a few fatalities, but I don’t ever remember seeing one involving a bear. This one happened in the afternoon. Broad daylight on a perfect day.

Unlike moose, which are slow and dumb, convinced they can continue ignoring oncoming traffic, bears can be fast-moving, when necessary, and alert. Moose-car accidents are, in fact, commonplace throughout northern New England, while bear-car encounters are also a standard news item, though less frequent. I suppose I’ve seen a few moose-motorcyclist crash stories over the years, or at least should have.

This time I found myself recalling a report I’d edited and written the headline for back on my first news desk position right after college. We were Upstate New York, which has its own mountainous terrain. That time, a motorcyclist ran into a porcupine on a dark highway, and the results were fatal. As a city-boy, porcupines were still a curiosity, rather than a critter I often acknowledge in my journeys.

In this morning’s dispatch, the driver was airlifted to a hospital and reported to be in critical condition.

~*~

Another item making the rounds also seems to slip over from one of the routine categories — in this case, political survey results — into the I’ve-never-seen-that-before status. In the race for the White House, a Democrat, and a woman at that, is polling evenly with Donald Trump in the overwhelming Republican state of Utah.

~*~

This reminds me of another reaction I often have as a novelist: “This wouldn’t work in fiction.” Accompanied by “You couldn’t invent this if you tried.” Life really does take some bizarre turns if you look.

Really.

WHY WOODPECKER CAN’T KEEP UP

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Many days in the newsroom I had the feeling of same-old, same-old. I’d seen it all before. Another election, just different names and tallies. Another car crash or house fire. A store opening or a restaurant closing. Graduations or obituaries. It’s a long list. And then something refreshing would come along, something that prompted the exclamation, “I’ve never seen that before!” Contrary to the doom-and-gloom image of the business, many of us at the newspaper loved having something uplifting to present.

These days, though, it’s more likely to be along the lines of this couldn’t be happening, could it?

The American presidential campaign is just the most obvious. The Woodpecker Reports appearing at the Red Barn are supposed to be a reminder of the underlying currents we thought would be shaping this election season – the history and power-brokers moving behind the scenes, especially. Things we’d seen before, round after round, including the same players or their disciples. Woodpecker can hammer away in the infected trees, as he’s been, but when the forest catches fire, he’ll take flight. I know this: things are spinning too fast to keep up. And that’s before we get to the climate instability that’s more glibly called global warming.

~*~

I’m still aghast at the reports of Sen. David Perdue’s “joking” when he encouraged participants at a religious conference to pray that President Obama’s “days be few,” a reference to Psalm 109. The audience apparently picked up on the calamities to be inflicted not just on the transgressor but on his spouse and children, too – evil thoughts, without question. In the text, however, King David is pouring out his soul in response to political persecution, a situation the Georgia Republican blithely ignores. King David’s lines certainly fit as a cry for help from Obama: “Wicked and deceiving words are being said about me, false accusations are being cast in my teeth,” as verse 2 reads in the New Jerusalem translation. “In return for my friendship they denounce me. … They repay my kindness with evil, and friendship with evil” (verses 4-5) match the good intentions Obama had for reasoning with a Republican Congress. As for the evil man oppressing the king, “He had no thought of being loyal, but hounded the poor and needy and the broken hearted to their death. He had a taste for cursing; let it recoil on him!” (verses 16-17).

Taken in its fullness, the Psalm – perhaps even the Holy One – could point to Perdue and laugh, “The joke’s on you.”

Except that this is serious, deadly serious. Prayer is never a joke, not for the faithful. And the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:7) warns: “You shall not misuse the name of Yahweh your God, for Yahweh will not leave unpunished anyone who misuses his name.” (The New Jerusalem here gives quite a different insight than the more traditional take of “taking the Lord’s name in vain,” usually seen as colloquial cursing or words not uttered in polite company.)

In a broader context, we can remember that King David could be both passionate and brash, qualities that got him in deep doo-doo more than once, and thanks to Abigail, he even had to recant one of the curses he was about to impose on her husband and all the males in her extended household (I Samuel 25).

While we’re at it, we can also leap ahead to Jesus commanding his followers, “Love your enemies,” and to look for the plank in their own eyes when faulting the splinter in another’s.

Nowhere do I accept an argument that it can be OK to pray for evil.

~*~

Only hours later came the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the worst mass slaying by a solitary gunman in the nation’s history.

As I read a few headlines quoting people who were suggesting the sinfulness of the lifestyle was the reason for the tragedy, I once again found myself aghast. (When I reread the reports more carefully, this was not their argument; rather it turned against Islam and its followers. Still, I have no doubt the original line of anti-LGBT argument is circulating through many circles.)

What angered me in my reaction was the notion we see all too often of blaming the victims. If their lifestyle were to blame, how then do we align that with shootings in churches, schools, even movie theaters, as we’re seeing? You’re going to blame Amish children or their parents? Come on, now! Or is something else the cause? At the moment, the United States has more guns per capita than at any previous time in its history; firearms were relatively scarce, even on the frontier, as you’ll discover reading wills from the period.

Let me suggest another calculus:

The more guns, the more murders. Period.

~*~

I just wish that mass shootings weren’t becoming same-old, same-old news in America, with only the numbers and frequency rising. Or that the anger weren’t fueling hatred.

Maybe I need to head out to the garden to see what’s new there. Even picking weeds might be uplifting.

SPARED, FOR NOW

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In a same-day announcement, Donald Trump cancelled a rally planned for late this afternoon or early this evening about dozen miles from us. (These things never start on time.) Said he had to work on a speech. Something more than a tweet?

We’re relieved, for several reasons.

First, it’s good to know he won’t be stirring additional pollution into our local air. There’s enough toxic bigotry, self-delusion, horse hockey, cruelty, and hatred gushing out from his mouth as it is. Reasoned criticism is one thing, but that’s not what we get with this candidate. Won’t ever be, either.

Even if it weren’t Trump, we already know how these campaign appearances snarl already congested rush-hour driving. What was he thinking when he picked rush hour, anyway? Real people — the kind who have to work jobs for a living — know about this, unlike Trump and his supporter Chris Christie. Living in the Granite State, you soon discover how the enhanced security force can muck up traffic at any hour, clustering around intersections, especially, even before halting a freeway for the comic-opera parade of motorcycle cops, candidate in his limo, staff in theirs, Secret Service, and trucks of news media in tow. We’d already changed our plans to avoid all that. I even visited a clinic down that way to pick up a prescription first thing this morning, thank you.

Now, thankfully, it looks like we’ll have our highway connection running normally after all.

Another conflict, though, is more existential. Did I want to join in a short-notice truth-witness vigil near the event site? Conscience said yes, but a look at my to-do list (including the garden) said not really. To venture forth to the protest line would mean entering all that traffic I’d resolved to dodge, while the to-do would mean staying home, maybe grilling dinner to soothe my aching muscles while failing to respond to the call of Liberty. Looked like I’d feel a pang of misery either way.

Well, we’re off the hook for now – all of us. As for the next question, will I be more in gear for the next opportunity?

TRANSPLANTED

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

Did I ever mention that if you examine the headstones in many cemeteries in Montgomery County, Ohio, where I’m from, the names are identical to those in a typical Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, graveyard? Turns out half of my dad’s ancestry is Pennsylvania Dutch who continued in western Ohio from the early 1800s.

World War I, of course, obliterated any awareness of that German connection. But we weren’t alone. Not just the first wave, who arrived before the Revolutionary War in their desire for religious freedom, either. The more urban wave of the mid-1800s, with all of its high culture, also vanished from public awareness.

These are histories that need to be restored. They helped build America, urban and rural, and they were a sizable part of the population.

HOW MUCH WEIRDER CAN THIS GET?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

After the political campaigns moved on from New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, I haven’t blogged much about the races themselves. In part it’s a reflection that there’s no front-line experience to convey, not from my perch in the Granite State. In another part, though, it’s a fact that I can’t keep up with the escalating developments, which are becoming increasingly surreal – unimaginable things you’ve already read in the news. I mean, Bernie Sanders having a good shot at winning Utah in November? Has Hell frozen over?

Well-heeled Jeb Bush crumpling, and then Marco Rubio malfunctioning as a robot or Ben Carson losing his virtue creds by endorsing Donald Trump and now unlovable Ted Cruz accused of multiple extramarital affairs? And when all of the GOP candidates promised to support Trump, the man they’d just accused of being unfit, as the TV cameras witnessed, well – so much for their integrity.

(The possible Cruz retorts could get even weirder. I’m not even going there, not in public.)

And then Mitt Romney’s clumsy but brief ricochet into the spotlight? Anyone remember him?

If anything, what’s apparent is that the Republicans have no viable candidate. Their well’s dry. Caput. Empty. They’re zooming toward a stone wall or even their own train coming from the opposite direction. (Well, after all of their denial over global warming, we just had our warmest winter on record. For what that’s worth.)

The Democrats can’t get too complacent, either, not with some pundits seeing frontrunner Hillary Clinton “a hairline away from federal indictment.”

Months ago I raised the possibility of the Republican Party’s actually splitting, and that talk’s now common – however speculative. Will it actually happen or will everyone simply fall in line behind Trump, even if it means walking off a cliff?

And I also wondered about winding up with a brokered convention, albeit with Favorite Son candidates. The latter part hasn’t jelled, but the former just may be in the works, if party establishment can pull enough strings. And that raises the possibility of House Speaker Paul Ryan stepping up as the white horse. Or white elephant, depending. (One rumor has him writing his acceptance speech as you read this.)

Now come rumors of mounting a desperation third-party run headed by Retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, which presents all kinds of fairy tale appeal at this point. Well, as they say, Dwight Eisenhower came late in the political season and look what happened.

A three-way race? Well, that also points us back toward the possibility of the winner being decided by the House of Representatives, as if that body can agree on anything these days. Very scary indeed.

As would a tied up Supreme Court, thanks to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Since when has the National Rifle Association — a special interest group if there ever was one — had the right to choose a high-court justice? Want to talk about protecting the Constitution? (As I recall, the Founding Fathers were also aware of the threat of a tyranny of the minority, as well as a tyranny of the majority. McConnell should listen to their wisdom, rather than his own self-deluded ego.)

As would the scenario of having events spiral out of control altogether, leading to a (hold our breath) military coup. Keep this up, I’ll be afraid of going to bed. The nightmares could be truly spooky.

Meanwhile, the punch line comes back to the promise of making America great again? It’s a bad, bad joke, indeed.

TWO MORE SIGNS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

While flipping through the Burpee seed catalogue, my wife came across the chart of frost-free dates.

She realized that the longstanding cutoff in autumn has shifted from September 15, where it was when we moved into the house and no doubt forever before that, to October 15 now. We’ve picked up an additional month of garden harvest that way.

But that’s not all.

The spring date has shifted from May 15 to April 15, meaning we can plant everything a month earlier.

Think of it – our growing season is now two months longer, allowing us to consider a much wider variety of varieties to choose among.

It’s one more piece of evidence for those who have scoffed at the scientific predictions from the mid-’60s on. And, in the bigger picture, it’s scary.

TILTING THE SCALES OF JUSTICE?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

While the right-wing has been howling its belief that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the victim of a conspiracy – claims the judge’s son has had to refute – a more disturbing question has emerged over Scalia’s ethical standards. Just how neutral and impartial was he in some of his court rulings? What impacted his decisions apart from the law itself? Should he have recused himself?

When he died of a heart attack in his sleep, Antonin Scalia was staying at the 30,000-acre Cibolo Creek Ranch resort owned by billionaire John B. Poindexter a few miles from the border with Mexico.

Blind justice for all, a keystone of American jurisprudence, demands its jurors avoid the slightest appearance of partiality. This would seem especially true for a high court that has repeatedly sided with the super-rich in its decisions.

Alas, as the Washington Post reported last night, “Why Justice Scalia was staying for free at a Texas resort,”

One of Poindexter’s companies was involved in a case that made it to the high court. Last year, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving an age discrimination lawsuit filed against one of these companies, court records show.

I find it hard to look at this as anything other than a gift. It’s hard to be objective when you have friends on one side of the case. Looks like a favor returned for a favor, even if perchance it wasn’t.

And so we’re free to start wondering about many other decisions. It’s bound to happen if you hobnob with billionaires.

It’s cause for Lady Justice to weep.