Tag: Community

Digging in at the shack  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

 Never met an ex-farmer who left the land by choice.

I think it’s the taxes, ultimately, that swayed their decision. Or more likely, offers too good to turn down from developers.

 So many places sell expensive recordings or stereo gear but no needles or other support items …

Ear of Oats, from Book of Signs. Which I now read as Earl of Oats.

Saturday, starting to install plastic around doors and windows on the back porch — our new winter room, with plastic under the rug, too …

Calling for a blessing

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

So just what if?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

It’s a fair question to ask in looking back at this period. What were the possibilities and consequences if something had turned differently? For instance, what if?

I had found a girlfriend? Someone more supportive of me and my direction than I was finding in my tenuous marriage?

Agreed to a divorce? At the time, it was out of the question on my end, at least in my strict upbringing, but she clearly wasn’t committed to us. Or, as I’m sensing, even what she saw as her calling of fine art.

Where would Kitty have turned/gone if we split? Not my problem, apart from the ways she was relying on me for financial and emotional support – something I could now argue was draining me.

We had children? It would have meant less time to write for me for certainly demanded growing maturity. Would I have resented their intrusion and limits? I was yearning for something more than sex in our connection.

Moved to Ellensburg and commuted? I would have been physically and mentally exhausted. There would have been less time for writing or anything else, actually. I saw that in an esteemed coworker.

American Olympus been published by Copper Canyon? It would have been a breakthrough possibly out of my journalism career route. But poetry, as I’ve since seen, is a precarious life route.

There had been no circle of Quakers? Trying to bridge the distances between my “worldly” endeavors in the newsroom and my spiritual support in my private life was difficult enough. Unitarians might have inspired intellectual and even social progress visions but missed the essential intuitive grounding. Zen, as I’m seeing now, had its own limits. Living in isolation in the secular world, I would have been crushed.

A local poetry circle actually existed other than the rhyme tasters? I was truly in a wilderness here, chiseling away on a number of fronts, clueless about what was actually working apart from the reactions of a few editors off on the fringe.

I had not gotten the newsroom promotions? They did give me four weeks of vacation each year, which I’m seeing as the high points of my Yakima experience. But they came at a steep price during the rest of the year and gave a false promise of professional glory off somewhere later.

Had I followed Gil to New Jersey? He would have created me a step up the career ladder, though in the end, the route crumbled under him, too. There would have been no wilderness at hand for me, though a promise of reconnecting with the ashram. On the other hand, there were major Quakers and cultural activities. As for Kitty in this leap? It would have been one more upheaval before completing her degree, though maybe not all that different from the route that ultimately opened.

~*~

Once again, in reviewing these volumes: How much my sense or memory of the timeline of these has been off and now stands corrected.

In Zen Buddhism, so I’ve been told, engaging in “what if” speculation is considered a waste of time and attention. What do you think?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Gaining wider exposure in the news world

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

By now, our changes in the newsroom were in high gear. We had a young, aggressive, talented core of reporters, our photojournalism was outstanding, our crisp visual design included a unique style for headlines. Our circulation was even growing, not a given considering the population limits within our area.

6 sept, wed

SK popped his plan that I go to the UPI regional meeting in Portland this Saturday in his place … so Friday night, Celeste and Neville were at our place without me, and I had been unable to reach them beforehand to alert them to the change …

Seems so long since I’ve flown anywhere. [I didn’t drive? Guess it was because I was working Friday?]

Vol. 52, 9 Sept.

(“Portland — Didn’t I start another journal in this town?” Rain.)

UPI meeting, arrived last night, Jantzen Beach Red Lion Inn.

Flew in on Cascade [a puddle-jumper] through gray soup, my ears plugging as we descended. Takes four hours for my hearing to defog.

Crazy American airport hotel air again syndrome: all cities look the same, more or less.

“Hospitality suite” last night, others getting too drunk. Jacuzzi with a color TV above the water, a telephone in the toilet room within the bathroom.

What am I doing in a $35-a-night single with a bed big enough for four? Four pillows side by side across the headboard, two sinks, a bank of lights over the bathroom sink, AM-FM-alarm radio etc.

Meeting dull-eyed, weary-eyed news executives with so much “police-mentality,” crude, insensitive to other ways: “suppose he’d want an avocado sandwich.”

One young managing editor critical of UPI, whispering behind one of its workers: “Why don’t you quit and go back to the other outfit?”

But a chance to meet some sensitive journalists, too, including the Seattle and Portland bureau chiefs and some top Oregon Journal editors.

And then somebody from NYC trying to sell everybody DataSpeed, going from 1,200 to 9,600 wpm.

“Bring me a lemon with bitters on it.”

On my return:

“Hey, Steve, you want to get off UPI faster?”

“Eh?”

“Well, next year’s meeting is Washington’s and with only Chris Anderson from the [Seattle] Times and me there — Centralia had snuck out and Bremmerton, no way — they were zeroing in on me, so I nominated you. Congrats.”

Meet in Yakima? Would it push our publisher to pull the plug beforehand?

~*~

Saturday, landing in Yakima in rain, DC9 flight from Portland via Pasco, some clearing in the clouds to see Tri-Cities amid circular cornfields and later, Konnowac Pass on the Moxee side of the ridge. Kitty met me alone at the airport, no Iris or Neville (they hadn’t arrived). Kitty was delightful.

Getting home, somewhat dizzy from flying, they were there. “We have a surprise,” meaning she was expecting in April. However crazy that is.

He’s quite laid back — little talk, little motion, strange little throat laughter mostly. Records demo tapes for rock groups, mostly, in Seattle, stays away from radio spots …

Don’t think she knows what she’s getting in for (diapers, expenses like cribs, high chairs, or playpens) much less the 20-year-commitment (my biggest Q, is he ready for the long stretch?)

All this to watch ahead, though Kitty tells me my wife is more ready to be a mother than Iris is …

[So I met Neville … contrary to my later recollection.]

24 Sept Sunday

Thinking now I should have sent out the color art for farm mag and TV booklet last week, as well as ordering B&W from fair board. No wonder my horoscope has Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday looking bad (“unfavorable”)

Kent gone for the week, regional APME meetings in P’land, the publisher meddling in the newsroom, telling Wallace, “I can get a new m.e., a new city editor, a new copy desk, a whole new set of reporters if I want” — a room full of whores, including myself … what kind of living is this?

At work, everything going wrong. Hamilton on vacation, took color cover art with him. Farm stories fell through. Goz called to jury duty. Daly a daddy, today perhaps. A phone caller last week repeating, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

24 Oct ‘78

Back on city desk, night shift …

Let me now confess that this matter of directing reporters on hard-news beats and seeing that they meet deadlines was never my forte, even before getting to the fact that it involved answering phone calls from readers and other strangers.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

With something uneasy in the air

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

 That time of the morning when there are neither stars nor sun and you wonder if it’s going to be cloudy.

THE CONFLICT
You will not forget
or learn
without forgiveness

HIGH COUNTRY
we don’t have to cross those glaciers …

the sharp air of clear feathers

Majestic Mount Rainier was the iconic center of the state. Photo by Kristen Ann via Pexels.

~*~

As I noted concluding another spiralbound of journal entries: Subterranean passages open only when it’s time or seeds sprout calling for blessing.

OK?

~*~

Something’s moving. Something’s always moving.

Often, you’re unsure of quite what.

How these journals begin is important. Each volume is seldom “ended” but rather trails off, running out of space or simply, somehow, sensing it’s time to pick up anew, afresh …

 

Photo of Yakima by Steve Groom via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

TEFLON STREET

These people aren’t connected.

Materialism? “If you’re looking for someone with a perfect body, you’re never gonna get laid.”

Sometimes, if you listen
Frogs sing.
Depending.

20:V:79

Why is it called Dog Lake?

“Look at that face!”

Vol. 51, 21:VI:78

Another tall, tan-covered volume begins. A Progress “Big Un” from Bradner Central Co., Chicago

21:V:79

Looking back through these journals, how little office data I include: no dates for promotions or pay levels, for instance. Only the exhaustion. Perhaps that’s the real office.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

How deeply were we, as a worship group, committed?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In reviewing these journals, I’ve been surprised how much earlier spring came there than it does in northern New England where I’ve lived the last four decades.

4:VI:78

While the rest of Friends were off camping, Kitty and I spent Saturday at home: sunbathing nude in our yard. Then Sunday, off to join them at McDaniel Lake / Meeks Table.

Ward raised the question of where our Meeting’s going and why it seems lacking … and became clerk, with a desire expressed for weekly worship … and discussion …

So that we may all grow together, share together, focus together, learn together \ Sangha de Sacre Sangre.

Ward admitting that in trying to live life fully, deeply, he has so much trouble in knowing and expressing his deepest self clearly …

Ivar hoping the men of the Meeting can get together once a month or so for a meal or whatever to share ourselves as men and get to know each other far better (the women, said he, seem able to do this where men usually don’t) … perhaps a work party, rotating among households?

Going up to the Table, Nancy asked about my beads, opening up a whole ashram rap … [was I still wearing these to the office, under my tie?]

 Near Horseshoe Bend (something becoming 1/3 of the horseshoe it was before the highway department cut it short), there clumps of blooming prickly pears were blossoming — incredibly beautiful — thin, waxy, pale yellow large petals enclosing large red stamins having yellow tips = amid flat-leaf oblong cacti with long spikes “deadly as a rattlesnake” — the buds are pink, for some reason. [It remains one of my favorite flowers.]

After a year of drought — driest year on record — rains came and the desert bloomed brighter, deeper than anyone could remember …

~*~

Sunday night, Quaker Meeting at the Grows’. Ward wondering if he can take on clerk responsibilities now that he’s been named chief-of-staff at the hospital. Today Kitty sez she thinks I’ll wind up as clerk this year. [Which is what happened. The only technicality was that I’d have to be a formal member of the Society of Friends, a step I hadn’t yet taken.]

In the latest 4th New Age Directory, I found nothing listed for Stroudsburg PA — is the Poconos Ashram experiment over? Old New Age people get thrown out or for a loop? Or has the ashram closed to outsiders (as per plan)? Now is not my time to break the silence with Swami. Or had I been ostracized?

Trying to write a Crossroads piece on Quarterly Meeting realizing how many simple words have taken on complex meanings only Friends can understand, including the overtones of “Meeting” or “Friend”

That session of QM was then held at Clear Lake, on our side of the Cascade Crest … first time ever that far east.

When the decision was made with trepidation to hold the QM session outside of the Puget Sound area, they feared low turnout — instead, had the largest attendance yet: 150 in a camp with 92 beds …

Kitty remarking later how many people she met shined.

~*~

Rippled by reaction to movement toward preparative meeting status. We’re been crying out for help but only to ourselves. We’ll see if I become clerk, as Ward has proposed. (Kitty wishes someone would simply take charge and do it.)

The QM gathering gave me faces for names I had heard.

~*~

Sunday, I was approved as clerk … still as junior swami, right?

~*~

Zenny, visiting over the weekend with a cider press: “salvation” akin to Zen “kensho,” a rebirth of spirit or awakening.

Next QM at Fort Warden: should I arrange a reading that Saturday night in Port Townsend?

 

The state ferries on Puget Sound were a highlight of many of our trips to the “wet side” of the Cascades, especially when we were going beyond Seattle. I’ve long considered such ferry rides as a “poor man’s cruise.” Here’s one with the Olympic Peninsula’s Mount Pershing, Jefferson Peak, Mount Cruiser, Mount Skokomish and Mount Stone in a photo by Tiffany Von Arnim. Often, though, clouds, rain, and fog obscured their appearance. Port Townsend was a repeated destination.

~*~

How hard it is to dwell in my own heart, keep peace, radiate from there. How hard to “know my own landscape,” my own resources, to “live at home” and not “go to town for stimulation.”

Or is it simply that I’m trying to cover too much ground?

~*~

Mtg, First-day, seems we’re getting a “2nd group” in contrast to the original “evening group” — morning core of Truebloods, Jean, Barbara Rankin, Becky, Cathy, Eric, and me. Perhaps now our “Brothren” Friends Emily and Roger, too.

We were on a schedule that alternated Sunday morning worship at the YWCA, same time and place as the Unitarians on one week with Sunday evening gatherings in homes the next. The morning’s were downtown, easily accessible for newcomers. The evenings included potluck dinners and a more social setting that also gave us the earlier part of the day to explore the outdoors, as we were inclined to do. Or, if needed, to sleep in late.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Apart from fame or fortune

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Found myself thinking about pastors laboring much of Saturday to craft a sermon heard by a congregation and then likely forgotten, something that was a more common occurrence when I was growing up and everybody went to church on Sundays, back when Blue Laws were in effect. It was “important” and discussed over the dinner table.

It also had me also thinking about long letters, back in the day, the kind that are more likely to get published as a book today.

So here we are in an era when going viral or having blockbuster sales or ratings is the goal of so many. What a contrast to work that’s done in loving detail for a limited audience. Not just that Sunday sermon. A passionate teacher within a classroom. A doctor, just one patient at a time. A concert performed for a few hundred people. (Perhaps after months of rehearsals.) A single piece of art, to be prized by a single collector.

It sets a different measure of success, along with self-worth.

Now add to that jobs done one-to-one, say caretaker in a seniors residential facility. Or even gardening, with only the universe as a witness.

These don’t reflect in economics reports or, when they do, they’re discounted as marginal. Not so, I’ll argue. Besides, how much does joy weigh?

We weren’t fresh off the boat, as it were, even in a desert

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

From a conversation with reporter Charlie Lamb:

Most of the Indians around here believe in Bigfoot. They all say they know him. My neighbor’s kids were fishing by the river in a January fog. They never go there alone. None of the Indians do. A big dark form came charging, rustling in the brush. They shot at it — the one kid’s gun backfired, burned his face. They threw their guns down and ran. Next day, a cow was found with bullet wounds in a pasture by the river.

Indians won’t camp near Satus Pass: the Stick People will stab them in the middle of their sleep. In the middle of town, they’ll steal your beer. Watermelon, too.

This is all I know of this.

In my journal entry, just noticed, my library book was overdue. [Only one?]

~*~

How to Survive

  • Use your hands.
  • Learn to fish. Garden.
  • Mechanics are always needed. Welders, too.

~*~

The city sat in the Upper Valley, separated at Union Gap from the Lower Valley. At the time, I was living near Wapato in the Lower Valley and commuting between the two. Photo by A. Balet via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

First whites in the region arrived mostly as American stock. Most recent immigrants mostly from Netherlands and Scandinavia. Generally, little personal ethnic awareness.

Unlike the Midwestern Germans, or Irish, Italian, German, and Scots elsewhere.

~*~

American values

  • Money rather than happiness
  • Automobiles above holiness
  • Television rather than poetry
  • Supermarkets rather than gardens

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Walking the tightrope … to where? Deadline after deadline

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As the new year opened, I had been in Yakima as long as any of my other locations since graduating from college. There was no sense that this would be “it” for the rest of my life, but there was a sense that I was on the right track for a big move within a few years, likely to Seattle, the Queen City not just of Washington state but the entire Northwest.

I was still enthralled by the wilderness at hand and my explorations on trails or logging roads. Our Quaker worship group kept the spiritual flame alive that had been nurtured through the ashram, but this time with a peace and social justice awareness that the yoga center strictly avoided. My poems were finding publication in small-press periodicals, the way writers build their reputations. My wife was back on track toward earning her college degree, no matter the larger questions regarding our marriage. Despite its primitive condition, our shack in the orchard was a better fit for us than the quasi-suburban style of our previous duplex, and our landlords, Ivar and Phyllis, and their two sons also served as family.

All in all, I had much to feel excited about.

The key to all this, admittedly, was my income from the newspaper. Still low, compared to other professions, but higher than what I’d earned elsewhere. Credit the Newspaper Guild union for that, even if I was on a management track.

Quite simply 1978 would be a huge year for me as a journalist.

~*~

Soon after New Year’s, Kent posted Day News Editor spot for application, now that Maury had retired.

As I noted, Gil says from within, Kent’s leaning but not committed to me. My element of independence is a complication.

Feel myself in limbo again. By working as a cutting edge, have I cut myself and ended my usefulness here?

Am I just tired, tired of being “asst.” — desiring, perhaps, to just ride rim and rest yet also afraid to stop, afraid of destroying “my career.”

“Go after it aggressively,” Gil’s advice — letter, plan, etc.

What would it have been like working, say, as a plumber for my dad, knowing that someday the business would be mine? Fitting pipes together rather than lines of poems … Would their church have been sufficient?

~*~

In the end, I landed the position but had to keep it under wraps for a while. The biggest gain for me would be having four weeks of vacation a year, rather than two. I could still bank holidays and paid personal days, as I had previously, for getaways. And, yes, there was a bump up in salary.

~*~

Friday, watching Gayman [Frank was our Night News Editor, a step up from me] and Kent size up our new man — an expensive dinner at T’bird [I hadn’t gotten that royal treatment]. Earlier, announcement of staff changes was posted: Belcher reacted, “I think I’ll send flowers to Tippet.” Snickers in the newsroom, no congratulations from anyone except city editor Jim Wallace on my promotion.

3 May: Gayman off on vacation, two rough weeks for me as I filled in for him … 10 extra hours at the office last week …

Indian fishing platforms at Union Gap … salmon dip-netting seen during my commute to and from the office.

Another rough week: Gayman and the Spulers (Phyllis and Dean) all off. Whiz, Macknicki, Kent, Wallace, [Rob] Tucker, and me — downcast, our publisher on Kent’s back over irrational matters … [see in his obituary he had dropped out of school at 15 and later lied to get into the Navy WWII … later earned a BA in business, University of Washington].

Tippet, noting an active Mormon friend’s remark that when a couple marries at the temple, they must consummate the marriage before assembled church elders. Is it true?

The AP dispatch of Donny Osmond’s wedding mentioned that Mormon’s are forbidden from discussing what occurs in the temple but the couple did come out smiling. (Read what you want between the lines.)

Phil Spuler, remarking on a story we did about local official George Eastman: “A lot of people in this town won’t believe he’s had threats on his life. They think this is a friendly town. It’s not.”

And I thought of Fostoria, “home of hospitality,” yet a strange place, as I came to see.

Phil said Eastman’s quotes sounded familiar; many people coming here have said the same. Then Kent said he’d felt the same things, both as a top editor and as a parochial school board member.

“Swami Jnana sez it’s hard to be both a newsman and a poet.”

17 June: I’ve been a full-time professional journalist ten years now — how long ago and faraway that summer internship at the Journal Herald seems now. Met Nikki ten years ago this coming December. Gran has been dead and Kay gone from my life, too. The searching and suffering intensified — God, how did I survive that?

Five years now, out of the ashram. Or the Shankaracharya Pitham, as it’s now known.

Work today frustrating. Farm mag dummies late, then a two-hour meeting telling us we’re coding wrong (the codes keep changing). Me angry over Perth’s “There’s only one person around here dumber than Kent and that’s Hodson.” Let him sweat the copy flow Wednesday night (tomorrow) …

Vacations are hitting the news desk and all these damn computer shutdowns. I spent 7 a.m. till midnight Friday at the office, then noon till 7 Saturday. Still so far behind.

Anything to make the 5-star edition easier on me, so that I can address my other sections.

JMack handles the shop’s interruptions so well, as well as Purdy’s foot-dragging, when it occurs.

5 Aug, a Saturday: Company picnic tomorrow, “strongly recommended”

Completely exhausted, damn office, I’m trying to cover for three vacations without any assistance, and it’s simply too much.

Carol and Phil will have new responsibilities when they get back. I’m cutting Home, Entertainment, and the TV mag free …

Another 10-hour workday — still trying to get weddings etc. in the tube — 20 done today, 20 to go …

12 Aug, Saturday: Workt at office yesterday from 7:15 a.m. till 9 p.m., exhausted, ready for Marriott to be back on Tuesday (will give her the TV and Entertainment sections to dummy, and put more controls on Femme).

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Looking at the notebooks themselves, beyond their content

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

My journaling in college-style spiralbound notebooks would continue for another seven years before getting interspersed with hardbound sketchbooks. I wouldn’t move away from them altogether until mid-’87.

Some of the habit no doubt was reenforced by the fact the notebooks were cheap. Money was always tight for me. I also enjoyed picking them up casually in bookstores, especially in and around university campuses.

They’ve always been workbooks for me, something of the moment. Frankly, I never expected to live this long, and any posterity was intended for my published poems, fiction, histories, and essays.

Look at how some of mine opened in this period.

Vol. 49, 1 July 77 / day after the full moon: blue Western College Bookstore Association, 100 sheets, usual size

Vol. 43, Turns out to be the second a spiral-bound Strathmore Sketch 400 series, 9-by-12, 100 pp, fine arts paper. Cover in Cordoba Brown (First of three in series.) Entries in large, black, chancery-cursive script. Quite elegant.

Vol. 43, 1 Sept. 77, Orchard Shack. (Numbered out of order.)

 Vol. 42, 1:X:77 Orchard Shack. So this is really out of sequence! Covers just the month of October …

The first of my beloved longbooks was not from Cornell in ’71 ….

Now they morph into long unruled sketchbooks … or so but rather a spiral-bound Strathmore Sketch 400 series, 9-by-12, 100 pp, fine arts paper. Cover in Cordoba Brown (First of three in series.) Entries in large, black, chancery-cursive script. Quite elegant.

Vol. 44, 1 Nov. 77, Orchard Shack, the third of the Strathmore sketchbooks

Observing seasons
in one place

Note the impact on Hometown News, Nearly Canaan, and Secret Side of Jaya. Also the poetry, especially American Olympus …

Each journal volume somehow opens anew, yet usually fades off at the end.

~*~

I wonder how others approach the practice. I’ve heard of using loose-leaf pages and binders, to facilitate reordering of pages. An alternative is to have several volumes at a time, each devoted to a different subject.

Use of writing instruments can also be considered. Ballpoint pens gave way to felt-tips, for instance, and much later fountain pens. As for journaling exclusively on a laptop or smart phone? The plot thickens …

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.