Tag: Culture

THIS MATTER OF BRANDING AND SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The Mixmaster is back.

When my first novel was published, back in 1990, I was described as “a mixmaster of ideas, images, jokes, philosophy, and nonsense that defies categorization” – as well as “very eclectic and ebullient.”

I’m realizing how much that still fits, and so I’m returning to it as a core of what some might call branding.

As one longtime friend recently described me, I’m “an eclectic human being with a funky sense of humor and a large perspective.”

That’s what I like to do as a writer and thinker – toss a wide range of colorful things together and concoct fresh and exciting connections.

So if that’s what I do and, as I hope, do well, that leads to a new label: Mixmaster Supreme.

Now, where are the frozen strawberries?

Remember, the drink is shaken, not stirred. As for the emotions? Let’s go for both. 

PLAYING WITH CROWNS, LIKE IN CHECKERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Last week, I wrote about relearning Spanish and the tree of Crowns the online Duolingo course uses.

As I’ve been earning Lingots for rebuilding those, I’ve had a series of sessions where I’m presented with a sentence or phrase to translate and a set of mosaics or buttons to choose from, one word on each. It’s kind of like a Magnetic Poetry Kit, except that you have to click on the word you want.

In the first hour of my day, my mind wants to run off in whimsical directions.

Here are a few examples.

Approved answer: The girl wants sugar on her apple.

Rejected answer: The girl wants sugar on her husbands.

(Or just a sugar daddy?)

Approved: Are you going to school today?

Rejected: Are you going downstairs today?

(There are days we don’t want to get out of bed, right?)

Approved: I want to go to the movies with my friends.

Rejected: I want to go to the movies with my girlfriend.

(Except that she doesn’t like the action-adventure stuff we do?)

Approved: I always go to work by bus.

Rejected: I always go to work by duck.

(There’s an opera about a guy who goes to work on a big swan. I’d settle on a big yellow duck, wouldn’t you?)

Approved: Do you have to work today?

Rejected: Do you have to speak today?

(Some days simply speaking is a lot of work … especially if it’s in Spanish. That’s the polite explanation. The other one is “Firme la boca,” I think.)

Approved: We don’t open the messages.

Rejected: We don’t open the refrigerator.

(You never know what’s inside.)

Approved: We are buying a car.

Rejected: We are buying a brother.

(Hope he’s worth it.)

Approved: My husband never gets up with me.

Rejected: My husband never gets up on me.

(That would lead to a lot of words we haven’t learned yet.)

Approved: I want a modern kitchen.

Rejected: I want a modern husband.

Also rejected: I want a modern dog.

(Oh, don’t even try to make the connection. Puleeze!)

COMMEMORATING 250 YEARS IN THE QUAKER MEETINGHOUSE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Dover Friends Meeting where I worship is the fifth oldest congregation in the state – and the first that was not part of the governmentally sponsored parishes that are now affiliated with today’s United Church of Christ.

Our meetinghouse – the third we’ve had, in fact – is the oldest house of worship in the city, and this year marks the 250th anniversary of its construction.

It went up on a single day in 1768, much like an Amish barn raising in our own time. There were likely 150 men and boys at work on the construction itself, plus an equal number of women and girls preparing food and the like.

To commemorate the occasion, we’re holding an open house at 2 p.m. There will be tours, a reading of John Greenleaf Whittier’s “How the Quaker Women Came to Dover” (his parents were married in the meetinghouse), presentations of activities we’re involved in, light refreshments and conversation, and a closing concert by musically talented members and the audience.

All are welcome.

I START MY MORNING WITH SPANISH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

For the past two years, a daily online language class has opened my day. The practice began shortly after the annual sessions of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, where repeated happenstances with our guests from Cuba had me realizing how much of my high school Spanish I’d forgotten.

Well, a lot of my recall also got tangled up in my college French, but that’s another story.

A conversation with my elder daughter, the linguist, convinced me to try a free online refresher course via Duolingo, which some of you probably know of. The high school text I’d carried since 1964 soon went into the trash – it was terribly dated.

So I rise, usually before dawn, brew some full-bodied, fair-trade Cuban-style coffee beans we get at Costco (they’re like espresso but better), and head off to my laptop in the attic for a half-hour of language learning. Let’s say that at that hour, I make a number of stupid mistakes. I’m still groggy.

A few months ago, the powers-that-be behind the free course decided to alter a few things. It’s inevitable when it comes to anything computer, isn’t it? So instead of seeing something like “You are 67% proficient in Spanish” on the home page, they were taking a different tack. Most startling was that my Crown Level had decreased significantly. Look, that was something that would occur if I missed a few days of practice, but I had been faithful. I felt robbed.

That’s when I started thinking about some of the motivating factors the Duolingo brain trust applies.

The first is something they call Lingots – kind of like Monopoly game cash you can hoard, like me, or spend on things like commentary or idioms. If you do 10 uninterrupted days of study, you’re awarded Lingots – one point when you hit the first 10 days, two more at 20, three at 30, and so on. You can also wager some of yours for other accomplishments. Look, it’s stupid but highly addictive, especially when you reach 150 straight days. That’s 15 Lingots, hombre.

The Crowns, meanwhile, are part of a “learning tree” Duolingo has for advancing. When you start a language, you begin by clicking on a little button labeled “basics,” do the required number of lessons within it, and it soon turns color. You earn a Lingot or two and move on to the next, maybe “articles” or “vocabulary.” Eventually, all of them – 30 to 50, maybe? – change color and you go back to raise each of them to the next level.

Or from that point you can simply do a random set of practice questions. Oh, but that option doesn’t win you a lot of Lingots.

What I really want at the moment is to hit a thousand in my account. Hoard them, in fact. Es muy loco, verdad, but it keeps me going.

And then I move on to the latest manuscript in progress or check up here at WordPress. Both in American English.

TIME TO BLOW THE DUST OFF A FEW STACKS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

As my wife and I started listing what’s keeping us busy these days, we were both surprised to find that one thing – one important thing – was missing.

What we both realized is that regular reading … as in books … had been pressed out of our schedules.

Instead, we’ve been doing bits and pieces of reading online. It’s just not the same as luxuriating in a deep volume.

How about you?

THE IMPORTANCE OF SMALL TOUCHES OVER TIME

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

From our perch today, it’s hard to believe that a Broadway musical like “South Pacific” could have been a bold statement on behalf of racial tolerance a half century ago.

I’m encouraged, of course, to see a Quaker connection.

First, even though the novelist James A. Michener, whose book was the basis of the show, had served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he was raised by a Quaker adoptive mother and attended Quaker-affiliated Swarthmore College. In other words, he had been exposed to both pacifist and racial equality values.

Second, as Vanity Fair writer Todd S. Purdom notes in “The Road to Bali-hai,” is that librettist Oscar Hammerstein’s wife’s niece Jennifer attended the George School, another Quaker institution, one where Michener also taught briefly. The Hammersteins’ own son Jimmy also went there, as did a young family friend named and future Broadway great Stephen Sondheim. (And to think how vigorously earlier Quakers denounced theater as vain entertainment!)

Purdom’s article contains another telling point. The hit song “I’m Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair” was originally a flop. In the preview performances before the Broadway opening, director and co-author Josh Logan was perplexed to see it wasn’t connecting until he realized that star Mary Martin had the women in the audience so abuzz about whether she was actually washing her hair onstage that nobody ever heard the lyrics themselves. He fixed that by having her belt out the first stanza before working her hair.

I wonder about how many other small changes in any art form spell the difference between boffo hit and mundane shelving.

A similar tweak in “Wonderful Guy” changed the song to a soliloquy with the word “you” substituted for “they.” As Logan recalled, “That night they tore the house apart.”

As I was saying about small changes or a simple touch? Never underestimate the importance of revisions in art. Or maybe life itself.

~*~

Michener, by the way, wrote of his experience on the Electoral College elections with the telling title on his political science volume, Presidential Lottery: The Reckless Gamble on Our Electoral System.

He was so prescient there.

AND NOW FOR THE FIRST EDITION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The cardio incident in January threw off my planned marketing campaign to support the Advanced Reading Copy availability of my new novel, What’s Left, but maybe that’s a good thing.

Instead, “laying low” meant I had time to read all of the frothy Richard Avedon bio I’d been given at Christmas, and that had me rethinking the particulars of the life of a photographer. Remember, in the novel, Cassia’s father is a famed photographer, though nothing like Dick. The negatives and glossy prints her Baba leaves behind establish the foundation for much of her own recovery and growth.

At the time, I was already planning to revise the four novels that form the backstory to What’s Left – my Hippie Trails series – but had no intention of becoming as immersed in that project as I did. Well, it’s one of the big reasons I’ve been AWOL or missing in action the past five months. I’ll leave that for an upcoming post.

One critical reaction to the new novel, however, sent me back through the story to make some crucial changes.

The Advance Reading Copy used no quotation marks. Not one. Since the story is being told by Cassia, who’s to say she’s quoting others exactly or is instead paraphrasing what she remembers hearing them say? That is, filtering them into her own voice? The quotation-mark-free approach, I hoped, would present the tale as her own rich interior experience, but it was unconventional and apparently a challenge for some readers to follow. Since engaging everyone in this story is far more important to me than my personal pursuit of a literary technique, I yielded in preparing the first edition. Yes, I have to admit, judiciously adding quotation marks here and there does clarify the flow.

The revision also had me simplifying much of the grammar and syntax. As much as I love long, complex sentences, not everyone is comfortable reading, say 17th century literature. Besides, this novel is being told by Cassia, not me.

Well, this official version, the first edition, is now available. I think the tweaks make a huge difference, and I’m grateful for those who’ve given me feedback.

Hope you enjoy it.

TEN HOT HISPANIC MUSICIANS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

According to one amiga and her buds:

  1. Dulce Marcia.
  2. Jencarlos Canela.
  3. Rolando Polo, pop-opera tenor.
  4. Moneda Dura.
  5. Balvin.
  6. Willy Chirino.
  7. Shakira. (And here I’m trying to keep this to performers new to the rest of us. So be it.)
  8. Manolito Simonet.
  9. Gilberto Santa Rosa.
  10. Myriam Herandez.

Admittedly, this list is biased in a Cuban direction. But it’s a start.

~*~

Digame más. I’m all ears. Any other world music talent we should know about?

A whimsical fence. Warren, Maine.

Of course, this is totally unrelated to the theme. Just another thing on my mind.

OH, THE FINALS WEEK ORGY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Among the gifts I received at Christmas was a tablet laptop, with the expectation I’d be using especially for Kindle editions – including my own ebooks.

But so far what I’ve really appreciated is its ability to stream music.

For me, that’s meant Q2’s New Sounds and Operavore from WQXR in New York and WHRB from Harvard University in Cambridge.

With solid jazz from 5 a.m. till 1 p.m. and some adventurous classical continuing till 10 p.m., plus the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoons and another opera on Sunday night, my listening is mostly on the Harvard station. Admittedly, the student announcers can be unintentionally amusing in their pronunciations and amateurish touches, but I usually find that more amusing than annoying.

This spring, though, I finally got to experience an amazing tradition on the station – the finals week Orgy, when the regular programming is set aside for in-depth presentations of specific composers or performers.

Continue reading “OH, THE FINALS WEEK ORGY” →

TEN REASONS ‘CITIZEN KANE’ IS THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

While Orson Welles usually gets the genius kudos, much of the creative brilliance in this 1941 masterpiece arises in the seasoned experience of his collaborators Herman J. Mankiewicz and Gregg Toland.

  1. The nature of the story itself. It’s not exactly likeable. We want to befriend Kane but can’t. He starts out as charming but more and more becomes a sphinx. The newsmen themselves are nobodies. As for his wives and lovers? And yet there’s something gripping in the rise and fall of this spoiled rich boy turned tycoon and populist turned brutal cynic and failure, plus his times. (Sounds topical, considering the White House now, doesn’t it?) Pulling this off is much more difficult than it sounds, and yet we’re swept along throughout. In short, anything but a conventional screenplay.
  2. The soundtrack. Welles and Mankiewicz were grounded in radio drama, not filmmaking. And so they brought to Hollywood a revolutionary ear for not just dialogue but everyday detailing background sounds like footsteps and doors. Their radio perspective also meant they could envision a scene from the way it unfolded within a viewer’s head and not just how it might appear on a stage in front of us, the way directors and writers had framed movies before this.
  3. Cinamatographer Toland. In his work with Hollywood great John Ford, Toland had begun exploring a new technique called deep focus, which allows multiple things to be present within a single shot. In Kane, this comes to full fruition. Tons have been written about what’s happening in the background or how multiple items come together to make their own statement or put everything into a fresh comprehension. And it holds opportunities for emotional depth previously absent in cinema.
  4. Optical illusions. Again, give Toland credit. They serve as guideposts, according to film critic Roger Ebert in his lovefest to this film.
  5. Visible ceilings. You never saw these in a movie before. Sometimes it required cutting a hole in the floor. But it made for some much more dramatic visuals. Again, Ebert has much to say about this, for good reason. I think the ceilings are an emblem of many other similar breakthrough touches that advance this movie light years ahead of convention.
  6. The blending of drawings, real sets, and wipes. Welles was surprisingly economical in obtaining some of his spectacular impressions and moving the story across time.
  7. The witness. Always in a corner, observing or even commenting. A great storytelling device.
  8. Complete artistic control. RKO executives agreed to make no cuts in the footage. In addition to writing, directing, and taking the starring role, Welles had unprecedented complete artistic control. Amazing. The one compromise was forced by the film board, which nixed the brothel scene. Alas.
  9. Common misperception. Unlike the widespread tale, the story’s not even about William Randolph Hearst, whose opposition undermined of its chances for commercial success.
  10. Kane prompted Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel in homage. Not that I viewed them in chronological order.

Oh, yes, if you want to know about “rosebud,” you really do have to look up Ebert’s take. We do miss him.

~*~

What movie and its special effects have especially impressed you? These days we practically take them for granted.

~*~

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