Tag: America

TOMBSTONE: THE PREMISE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One late October afternoon, after most of the foliage had fallen, Randy Kezar and I simultaneously looked up from our pathway and beheld a large red maple fully aflame in sunlight as we strolled through the burial ground behind our Quaker meetinghouse. It was the embodiment of the single detail that says everything, the flash of perfection; this individual tree expressed the season as much as all of the previous color change and shifting light we had savored in the previous weeks. “I suppose if we were Japanese, we’d sit down and write a haiku on the spot, in celebration,” he said. Later, I took up the challenge and came up with a few lines I hope come close:

Somehow each New England autumn
comes down to boughs in a graveyard

– a common of stone and bone –

But my provocation and observations kept ranging wider, invoking a calendar not just of the place across  a year but also the epochs that fill what went from a boneyard and burial ground to a Victorian cemetery to the present, as well.

The winged death's head is a common gravestone motif in New England. This example is in Watertown, Massachusetts.
The winged death’s head is a common gravestone motif in New England. This example is in Watertown, Massachusetts.

The poems that resulted have one foot in Portsmouth and Dover, New Hampshire, and another in Portsmouth and Newport, Rhode Island, where I quote from the 1664 will of Alice Shotten Cowland and some of the activities of her son-in-law, Robert Hodgson – sometimes spelled Hodson, as well as Hutchin. (I detail what is known of their lives in my genealogy blog, The Orphan George Chronicles.) She was part of the early dissent against Puritan authority, first with Samuel Gorton and then as one of the first Quakers in the New World. I love Robert’s memorial minute, which calls him “an ancient traveler in the Truth.” He arrived in America on the historic voyage of  the tiny Woodhouse, causing turmoil in Manhattan and Long Island before heading on to Boston. As far as I can determine, he was no relation to my line, no matter how much many have tried to find the link.

~*~

Winged Death 1To see more, click here.

THOSE FIRST BLUSHES OF AUTUMN COLOR

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Last weekend, we got away to the Northwest corner of Vermont for a lovely, make that magical, gallivant enhanced by a Friend’s gracious hospitality.

The jaunt began with a long overdue stop at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire. Admittedly, sculpture – especially public statuary – has taken a lower rung on my visual awareness to painting, drawing, and printmaking. Let me say simply that this visit to the home – originally summer residence – of the American genius Augustus Saint-Gaudens was a revelation. The National Park Service has done a remarkable job in preserving not just his house and studio but in displaying his studies and castings of his memorable monuments. The glade devoted to the “Shaw Memorial” alone was worth the visit. And, let me add, the floral displays in the gardens at this time of year, when relatively little is blooming, were delightful. As for his work designing American currency, at the invitation of Teddy Roosevelt? The short take is we’re ready to return, soon.

That was followed by a late afternoon jaunt across the Cornish-Windsor covered bridge spanning the woefully low Connecticut River, due to an ongoing drought, into Vermont and eventually through the Green Mountains, taking a questionable route our host suggested through Rochester Gap and Middlebury Gap, one I doubt we would have found via GPS but altogether perfect. This was the real Vermont, not just twee but also working-class hanging in there, apparently happily so. We’re still wondering how many of these folks get to work through the winter.

Not much later we were sitting on his deck, sipping hard cider we’d brought from the Granite State and munching some amazing cheese from his locale. Oh, yes, while watching a feathery sunset stretching toward us from the New York State’s jagged Adirondack mountain range. Does life get any better than this?

The next morning brought my reason for being here, a committee meeting an hour to the north, and the first of two breath-taking mornings with a drive that included Adirondacks in the distance on one side of the highland farm country I traversed (with its seemingly contented dairy cows and huge barns), and the Green Mountains, a wall on the other side, along with glimpses of long Lake Champlain far below to the west.

Still, we weren’t seeing what we’d anticipated: signs of frost. Not all that long ago, northern New England – especially this far north – would have had a killing frost by mid-September. Instead, where we live, we’ve been able to get to the end of October with an occasional throwing blankets over the garden. In other words, global warming is real. And that frost, by tradition, is essential to the famed New England fall foliage.

Leap to Sunday morning, when we ventured off to Appalachian Gap in a second crisp, dewy morning with the mountains veiled in a haze – breathlessly, as it were. What surprised us the most was how quickly some trees were already in prime foliage, albeit surrounded by green. The color comes in waves, actually, and much of the glory depends on the ephemeral angle and quality of light more than the leaves themselves. So the autumn foliage was beginning to arrive. Just like that.

In the week since, it’s starting to appear where we live, too. And, to heighten our awareness, we know all too well what will follow, just a month hence.

~*~

My essays and photographic slide shows on New England autumn foliage are available in the archives of my Chicken Farmer I Still Love You blog. Take a peek!

WITHDRAWAL AND INTEREST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I wrote at the time …

Remember when all the banks were centralizing? This was bad news for most cities, taking our money someplace else. You could see it in the way they put the screws to us. Overdrawn? Need to talk to a teller about your account? A safe deposit box? Here are our new fees, and they’re going up sharply. Pure economic theory pointing toward monoply. What happens as competition diminishes. Nobody’s explained why this had to happen. The legislators should have known better. They owned too many shares to be disinterested.

The insurance companies, too. When juries began handing out awards that few individuals could afford to pay, the insurance companies must have been gladdened, for it meant none of us could afford to be without their policies. Now, however, none of us can afford their policies, either. And they dare cry out for relief from a problem they encouraged for so long?

Where does that leave us? My auto insurance costs more than the car. Back in Maryland, a friend tried calling her company after it cancelled her auto policy when it refused her check and then, in cahoots with the state bureaucracy, she was being told to return her auto tags; the bastards at the insurance company were all snippy, even the operator; they wouldn’t even return the inquiries of her agent.

Just sign on the line. “But I refuse to swear or affirm. It’s against my religion. See Matthew.”

“Look, don’t make waves. Just sign it, OK?” So they want me to sign something that says I live up to my word, but for me to do that means I have to violate my principles.

My Bible has a story about Goliath …

NOT REALLY JUST FOR THE TAKING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The concept of community gardens, where public land is made available to individuals and families to raise produce and flowers, is a noble one. When it works as envisioned, gardeners get to know and respect one another while swapping advice and their harvests, families eat healthier and tastier, and a piece of ground is simply put to good use.

Of course, there are spoilers, as we hear.

One year, for instance, all of the purple cabbage heads kept disappearing from the different families’ sections at one site, at least until a restaurant owner was caught in the act.(The audacity!)

Another year, I think, some of the garlic was raided.

This year, a large blooming tithonia plant was dug up and taken. It’s a big plant!

And more recently, as one man worked his plot, he observed a woman going through the neighboring sections and filling bags. Excuse me, he said, those aren’t yours.

But it’s a community garden, she retorted.

You’re stealing, he said, dialing his cell phone. I’m sure the police are perplexed by this one.

She was well-dressed. Her Audi was full of produce. She’d driven more than 30 miles from her home.

Does she really have no awareness of all the work that goes into ordering seeds, starting them indoors, transplanting, weeding, watering, weeding, watering, weeding, watering, staking some up … oh, well …

I’m waiting for the rest of the story. For now, I just can’t wrap my brain around this one.

A QUESTION OF INTEGRITY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

The New Hampshire Republican Party’s recent reiterations claiming the centrality of integrity have me looking at the party’s record of the past few decades in national elections.

Just where does integrity fit in the win-at-all-costs school of politics manifested by Karl Rove and his kind? And where has it been thrown overboard, especially?

Put another way, and not just with politics: Where do words and actions converge? And just where do they diverge?

Integrity, of course, demands convergence – of the head, hands, and heart, as well. Here’s hoping …

TWO ENDS OF THE SAME BUMPER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

At the left side of the bumper was the sticker
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.

On the right side
TAX IT ALL

presumably as a protest.

I doubt the driver made the connection – and these two are closely related – that the overwhelming preponderance of federal debt and tax money goes to the military for current and past expenditures. I just wish those who support the first connect it to the second. That awareness would cut through a lot of political rhetoric and posturing and maybe lead to some real reductions.

Think it will ever happen?

TRUMPED BY … McCAIN?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

Is the Donald about to go Missing in Action? Or is he just a Prisoner of Wordiness?

Or, more critically, did he just misjudge his fan base … and their power to fire him?

We didn’t expect anything this damaging to Trump’s White House campaign this early in the race. He already has the largest paid Republican staff in the state. Who knows about real grassroots volunteer motion. But I, for one, expect a new frontrunner each week on the GOP side … a lot like the last time around. And maybe the time before that.

Who will be the next to implode? Please stay tuned. And it’s just beginning to be summer, heating up, in New Hampshire. It really can be a sport to watch.

WAKING UP, AT LAST, TO REALITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Gee, it’s rather incredible to hear all the new voices finally recognizing that this Supreme Court, with its longest members and majority appointed by their side, is indeed running wild.

Activist? Where were they when the high bench, for the first time in history, crowned a president? Or later transformed our republic into a government by the super-rich, for the super-rich, and of the super-rich, as it has in Citizens United?

Utter silence.

But now, with a few recent flukes in its record, just listen to the outrage. If you’re trying to make sense of their decisions, good luck.

You can count me among the outraged, long ago – when our cries were ignored. When esteemed law school deans and professors warned of the top justices’ threats to our very legal system and its foundations. When we scratched our heads for any underlying sustained rudder in their course from one ruling to the next.

I’d crow now, except that the problem remains.

In its polarized atmosphere, the question keeps coming down to the swing vote — and it’s like watching a pinball machine. Which flipper will sway the course of action? The question everyone asks is who was the swing vote this time?

Who, even before Why.

With every ruling, we watch, often with horror. Will it be on the side of broad justice or instead on the side of big money? Will it be for the common American and justice for all? Or for something else, however vaguely defined?

My conclusion? What we’re seeing is not so much a matter of deciding case by case on its merits as it is an imposition of personalities from the bench. An opinion that includes “just ask a hippie” is hard to take seriously, no matter if you agree or disagree with the vote. America needs more judges of the people, for the people, and by the people throughout its ranks — more humanity and compassion rather than pompous circumstance. Not more political ideologues for the wealthy, as Republican senators have been doing in asserting privilege to obstruct presidential nominations. They even cloak themselves in anonymity in doing so without any grounds whatsoever.

When a Senate majority seeks a rubber-stamp to endorse one side only, perhaps an activist court is a foregone conclusion. And as long as we’re stuck with a Supreme Court lacking a stable center, we’ll have to wonder where the real authority is. The kind that endures rather than sways in the wind.

Maybe, in the new outcry, we in the public can come together. Wouldn’t that be something?