Tag: Counterculture

AFTER MANY INTENTIONS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

Aha! Thanks for both your latest edition and the letter. So I finally get down to replying, after many intentions to do so … and wind up with writer’s block instead! Last night, all fired up to get this piece down, I instead encountered a message from my Norton Utilities warning me that my PC was on the verge of death if I didn’t defragment the hard drive immediately … which took up the next hour. In the portion of the evening remaining, I wound up replying to my honey’s last email, which naturally took far more time than I had expected … and then went to bed without a real dinner because, well, time was up and two martinis were kicking in.

Yes, so much has changed since we last communicated in any depth. I know how unsettling it is to move and then be living out of boxes. Roommates, too, can unsettle any routine/rhythm in your life – and it’s so crucial to find ways of maintaining those quiet times/spaces in our individual lives if we’re to nurture our own vitality or at least any depth in our experience and outlook.

In a nutshell, I’m preparing for a major move in the next several months. Get out your atlas and notice where Manchester and Dover are situated in New Hampshire. While my job is in Manchester, the Quaker Meeting I attend is in Dover – a congregation founded in the early 1660s by three traveling English women. John Greenleaf Whittier, whose parents married in our meetinghouse, has a long poem about the persecution of those fearless visiting ministers (and so, you know my outlook on the failure of many denominations to recognize the ministry of women). In the best of conditions, the trip is 40 minutes each way, but the route is quickly being built up and will no doubt be heavily congested in the next half-dozen years. At any rate, because of the social life of our Meeting – between committee functions, workshops, presentations, dinner invitations, even parties and picnics – I’ve been considering moving in that direction for some time, but the idea of a commute, plus the further distancing myself from Boston, now an hour away, kept me in place here where I am.

That is, until things began to connect.

You mention “being single for two years now,” and that rather parallels the way my life had been going. I realized there was no point jumping into a relationship if it wasn’t going to have a chance of continuing for the rest of my life. For so much of my life, it has seemed that when I finally did connect with someone, she could offer only half of what I needed, and my love-life history appears as a zig-zag course between two polarities.

Jump ahead again, and I’m now spending half of my free time living out of a duffel bag and half trying to catch up on things here on the hill – and feeling not totally in place in either location. The relationship itself is incredibly solid, in ways I’ve not experienced before. This is the woman I’ve dreamed of, one who could go to the symphony with me or to the mountains (we’ve done both) and felt equally at ease. Someone who could understand the importance of Meeting – both as worship and as a community – in my life. Who could enjoy a whale watch (throw up three times and still smile) and Canobie Lake amusement park down the road. One who owns as many books as I do – and perhaps a larger vocabulary – while maintaining both girlish delight in life and an earth mother ability of keeping a household afloat. One who can be intensely intellectual and also viciously humorous. As well as compassionate elegantly frugal. The upshot is a recognition that we will marry – just when is the question, depending, in part, on the reality of college aid for the elder and health benefits for the younger child.

What we are looking at now is the move – whether to leap straight into the purchase of a home, or to find a large apartment first. I’d love to skip the apartment step, having packed and unpacked too many times already. But I’d like to have more in hand for a down payment, and prices are ballooning again. I’ve already seen that bubble burst, cutting some valuations in half. Fortunately, we recognize we have no reason to rush … and just beginning to dream about some of these matters has both my imagination and hope reawakening.

I realize that even as we piece together the essentials for this move, there’s more discussion – and give and take – than I had experienced in marriage when purchasing a house. A place, in fact, that would be perfect for this set-up if we could only find it, and afford it, here.

Or, as the elder one and her boyfriend call all this, Geriatric Love. Never mind that her age and her mother’s combined finally surpass my own – by one year!

Now, of course, for the Geriatric Love poem all this brought about:

Imagine double-dating
with your sixteen-year-old daughter
and her twenty-year-old boyfriend

their shock
realizing
our tongues meet.

That, actually, inspired from events while watching a video of The Full Monty together nearing midnight.

Or her revenge, in the conclusion of a long bit of verse concocted at Ogunquit beach in Maine, July 5, air temperature 100, but the ocean 56 F, and 20 mile-an-hour winds blasting sand:

Somebody, come rescue me, please!
This is all the fault of my mother’s Main Squeeze!

As I’ve said to others, we had a choice between Hell or Hell Froze Over – and all the Novocaine delights of being pushed into the frigid Ogunquit River as the icy tide rolled in. Egads! Only a week before, arriving before low tide (the timing, it seems, makes a huge difference), we had floated blissfully more than a mile down that river, on our backs, along the dunes and beach, only to run back upstream and jump in again.

Well, you get a sense of how the summer is going. Add a bit of Junior Chautauqua at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth (a collection of antiquity along the lines of Williamsburg, Virginia, but covering a wider time span and less contrived in its presentation) and British Coaches’ Soccer Camp. Many new experiences for me, to put it mildly.

~*~

Rat Tat 1For another take, click here.

 

PICKING THE RIGHT, RIPE WILD BERRIES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I keep thinking about the stories children are taught, especially here in America. Carol Bly once wrote of the Scandinavian tales the descendants in Minnesota never heard, unlike the mass-media mishmash they were served. I’m left wondering if Ohio ever had anything like Kokopelli or Coyote from Native American lore and wisdom. I can keep hoping.

The fact is, most Americans are estranged from their roots. We don’t even know where we live, not really.

Forget the Zombie Apocalypse, we rarely know how to select the healthy wild berries. Leave it at that.

As for the hornpipe? It’s a Celtic dance, faster and more complicated than a jig – or gigue, if you insist. But I also like the vision of a pipe carved from a horn and played.

Care to join me for a dance?

Kokopelli 1~*~

For your own copy, click here.

 

LIKE A SALMON

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Much of the time, the character of Jaya in Promise seems to be swimming upstream. Against the current. Toward higher and higher goals.

Sometimes, she just might wonder if it’s all worth it. Or what her alternatives are.

But she continues, just like the migrating salmon in the Katonkah Valley where she finally settles. Maybe it’s just a natural impulse, after all. Her legacy will be what it is.

Promise

~*~

For your own copy, click here.

 

DON’T BLAME EVE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

You know the usual slant on the Garden of Eden, that it’s all Eve’s fault.

Look more closely, you’ll see it’s the Apostle Paul and Augustine’s reading.

That’s it, blame the woman.

But it’s wrong.

Give me a breather. There’s Jewish tradition, after all. Listen up!

For all of its brevity, it’s a complex story. It’s where humanity – and history – begin.

For my part, I believe it’s only one of many similar gardens – where else do you think their sons found their wives? The only one we’re told of, all the same.

Eden 1

~*~

For more on my book and others, click here.

WITH GRATITUDE FOR THE INSPIRATION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

You know the disclaimer, “Any resemblance of the characters to real people living or dead …” Something along the lines of purely unintentional.

But let’s be frank. The fiction is that you can create a character without having someone real in front of you, somewhere in your past or present. No, you need flesh and blood somewhere. Anything else would be a caricature.

It’s a special problem when you’re composing in a semi-autobiographical vein. You’re trying to be true to the dictum, Write about what you know. The details, especially.

(Oh? What, then, makes it fiction? Other than changing a few dates?)

Admittedly, the personalities work best when you take your inspiration and abstract it, so that a real individual would no longer recognize himself or herself – or those who were no way involved will imagine they, themselves, were.

And, by way of further confession, I’ll note that my most recent outings have led me to new characters lacking immediate introductions for me – but I’ll know them when I meet them if I haven’t already come across them here and there in pieces.

But back to the argument at hand.

I have one character, Nita, who runs through four of my five Hippie Trails novels and is a major character in the new one I’m writing, set years later. She was inspired by impressions I had of a friend’s girlfriend – or more accurately, mostly his impressions conveyed to me at the time – as I sat down to draft a half-dozen years or so later. She becomes a catalyst for much that happens around her.

In reality, we all drifted away.

And then, a few years ago, I met her again.

Nothing like I’d remembered. Or the idealized character in my fiction, now infused with another two or three people I’ve met. The lines blur.

I can say this person never did X, Y, or Z, unlike the character. Or that these two worked together on a controversial project or became known for certain accomplishments. In fact, she doesn’t resemble the other one at all, not anymore, if she ever did.

Still, it’s an eerie feeling. Something other than deja vu. Something still spurring gratitude for the inspiration.

For more on the series, click here.

~*~

FAREWELL AND BEST WISHES TO GEORGE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

For the past four years I’ve been a member of the bass section of a remarkable community chorus in Greater Boston. We rehearse weekly through much of the year and find ourselves performing in public when occasions present. Most recently, it was as part of a summer solstice event hosted by the Harvard University museums of science and culture.

Known as the Revels Singers, we’re under the umbrella of the Boston Revels organization, which is best known for its annual Christmas productions at Harvard’s Sanders Theater.

George Emlen, the Revels music director for the past 32 years, founded the community chorus four years ago as a way to keep much of the Revels’ repertoire and spirit more active and visible throughout the year, augmenting the pub sings, concerts (spring and fall equinox and summer solstice are duly observed), educational outreach programs, harbor cruises, and the like.

And now he’s retired. How do you replace a skilled and enthusiastic conductor, one who reaches out to know his performers and their families as well? How do you replace an insightful composer and arranger or a collaborator on creating a new show every year for Christmas? (The last one was set in Wales. The next has a Cajun-Acadian base.)

It’s been an emotional year for us. At the final show of the Wales production, George was given a curtain-call, something the directors never do, preferring the applause be for the cast of singers, actors, and dancers ranging from very young to, well, admittedly old. The well-earned roar that greeted George matched what James Levine might hear at the Metropolitan Opera at the conclusion of a Ring Cycle. It was amazing. He’s touched a lot of people over the years.

For me, every rehearsal has brought new perspectives on music and music-making, from his improvised warm-ups (they’re never the same, and I wouldn’t want to sing without them beforehand) to the discoveries and interplay we share in pieces that range from the 12th century to the present, spanning more than two dozen languages and both classical and folk disciplines. How does a conductor remain patient while incrementally yet continually raising the level, anyway? We were good to begin with, but now? It’s a much higher standard than we would have had any right to imagine.

One eye-opener for us was the opportunity to audition the four finalists from the applicants to succeed him. Each was assigned three pieces to introduce to us in an hour-long rehearsal – one from the Renaissance or earlier, one from the American shape-note tradition, and one from world folk. As we found, each conductor was quite different, having something unique to bring to us. We could also sense how the fit might or might not work, which in itself was a revelation.

What I can say is that we’re excited to know that what George has established will continue and grow. We’ve had an opportunity to rehearse a full session with our new music director, Megan Henderson, and it feels like a match made in heaven. But then, as she says, we all share one thing in common: we all love George. She understands what she’s inheriting.

He plans to focus on composing, but I can’t imagine he won’t be in demand for guest conducting or teaching or travel in the arts. We all wish him and Jan all the best.

~*~

To view a video tribute to George by Michael Kolowich, including an interview and footage of productions George conducted, go to Revels.org.

MEETING IN THE MIDDLE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The prose-poem presents a subtle challenge. In theory, it should be a natural fit for the English language. In practice, however, what I see all too often is simply wordy prose. Somewhere, the poetry gets trapped or tangled or loses its spin.

Coming across a guideline to keep a prose-poem under a hundred words spurred my thinking. As I considered revising a clutch of drafted poems, a sensed an opportunity. Recast without line breaks, they flew – especially when I removed the punctuation that pushed them toward prose.

I’m satisfied with the results, which I feel are more powerful and vibrant and authentic than either a straight-prose or straight-verse version would present.

Take a look for yourself. Just click here.

harbor cover.jpg.opt370x493o0,0s370x493~*~

 

HARLEY HEAVEN ON LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

Laconia Bike Week – more formally, the 93rd Laconia Motorcycle Week – comes to a climax this weekend, and in New Hampshire the annual event opens the summer tourism season. Even where we live, more than an hour away, you can hear it in the air, especially if your windows are open at night. Let’s call it a buzz. Everybody who can wants to be out on the road with the wind in their hair – New Hampshire is, after all, one state that does not require helmets be worn by either the driver or the passenger. Some wags do, however, suggest the state motto should be changed slightly, to Live Free and Die. A bit of risk does have its attraction.

Always scheduled to end on Father’s Day each year, the legendary name Laconia lands somewhere between Daytona, Florida, and Sturgis, South Dakota, both on the map and on the calendar of avid motorcyclists. The Weirs Beach landing in the small city of Laconia is the centerpiece of the gathering, promptly teaming with black-clad riders and vendors of all sorts. Since local schools are usually making up for days that were closed for snowy weather, families don’t arrive for vacation any earlier than the Fourth of July anyway, and any earlier than mid-June, the weather can be a tad too cold or wet for other folks. So the thousands of bikers who show up are a welcome boost to the hospitality industry, not just in the mountainous Lakes Region but across the state as they seek meals, entertainment, and lodging in the midst of roaming the wooded landscape.

It wasn’t always so. Before motorcycles became respectable, fights and even riots could break out. I’ve heard plenty of stories.

Now, however, things have mellowed out to the point many of the activities are labeled family-friendly. A majority of the iron horses seem to carry two, one clutching the one proudly clutching the handlebars. That, in itself, may have a calming influence. And then there are others who simply want to show off their impeccably polished machines. We were passed on the highway this morning by a small trailer carrying two such Harleys from New Jersey. The owners obviously weren’t going to subject them to the long road itself.

Unlike many of the names in the region, Laconia is not one given by the Native peoples. Rather, it’s originally a city in Greece. That might not be the only reason for the New Hampshire city’s name, though. In 1629, a partnership called the Laconia Company organized to prepare much of colonial New Hampshire for development; while I’m finding much of that history hard to follow, it does appear that one of the partners soon became a pirate. Really. I’m sure you can find many pirate flags and images at Weirs Beach this week, so maybe there’s an underlying connection. Who knows?

For those who do ride into the Granite State, a reminder: when you’re on your way home, be sure to pull over and put your helmets on before you cross the state line. It’s a safe bet the Massachusetts troopers will be waiting for those who don’t.

Let summer begin.