LONG TIME PASSING

March 6, 2014March 20, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Thinking of people I’ve known over the years, I keep coming across memories of individuals who blazed intensely, almost compulsively, for a period – say as a poet or in a religious practice – and then vanished. And then there are others who have faithfully stayed the course.

It comes down to those who blaze for a season versus those who keep growing and deepen.

We could look at flowers and vegetables that are classified annuals, of course, or to the orchard and vineyard.

Still, I miss the ones who’ve vanished. Their loss reminds me of winter.

BEWARE OF SURVEY CONCLUSIONS

February 28, 2014March 19, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Relying on survey results alone can be dangerous. One paper I worked for launched a very successful Sunday edition after a survey had told them, Don’t do it, it will be a disaster. Instead, the publisher trusted her gut – and won.

Around the same time, when Doonesbury was the hottest comic strip across the country, another paper’s survey told them it was the most hated item in the paper. Fortunately, another survey found that it was also the most popular.

I’ve learned to regard an intensity factor – not just whether something is popular, but how high in ranks on a scale. Yes, in those days, everybody read Peanuts, when you were looking at your top ten comics, but when you weighted for top-three intensity, it was easily topped by Garfield, Far Side, and Cathy.

So when it comes down to most hated or most loved, if you listen to the complaints, you turn boring and bland. There’s nothing to excite anyone.

I can look to symphonic programming with the same message. Yes, works by living composers upset a lot of listeners. But when you rely on the chestnut classics, you quickly turn stale.

REGARDING A GRANDFATHER CLOCK

February 24, 2014February 21, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When I was growing up, “going to the farm” meant a trip to my grandmother’s sister and brother-in-law in the other corner of our county. One of my memories was of the grandfather clock that stood at the top of the stairs and Aunt Edna’s mentioning that it had been carried over the mountains in a Conestoga wagon “from the place where Conestoga wagons were made.”

As a history buff, I eventually realized that was Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, now famed for its Amish population. The plot thickens, as I explain at my genealogy blog, The Orphan George Chronicles.

Decades after the farm had been sold and I began working on the genealogy puzzle, I received a few photographs of the clock, and a few days ago I scanned them into my computer. You can’t see many of the details, but I remember the small moon and sun that would rotate in the clock face. A few years ago, back in Ohio, I was surprised by how short the clock itself is. We think of grandfather clocks as large, but this one is probably shoulder-high to me.

Most amazing, though, is the sweet ringing it issues in singing its quarterly rounds. Not a gonging sound at all, but more like the clinking of crystal stemware.

And to think, the clock itself had been rediscovered, hidden away on its side in a loft of one of the barns. Just goes to show, you never know quite what to expect when you go rooting around in an old barn now, do you?

BEWARE OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

February 18, 2014February 2, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Reporters and editors live in dread of accidentally publishing a lewd expression. It’s not just the list of four-letter words themselves or the inevitable typographical errors. (You know, the embarrassing “pubic” for “public.”) The innocent double-meaning can be the worst. The famous “Colonel Screws guest at banquet” headline that went through five or six editions before getting caught. Or the caption for the Supreme Court justice about to climb the staircase to a second-floor dinner: “Justice Douglas prepares to mount women” instead of “mount stairs with women.”

As one of our colleagues would remind us, quoting one of his mentors, “It takes a dirty mind to put out a clean newspaper.”

(Oh, the stories we could tell.)

BOBHOUSES

February 16, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

When they lived way up in Maine, with a large lake just down their road, I remember hearing Eric tell about the morning he looked out the window and saw a traffic jam. Miles and miles from the nearest traffic light, here were bumper to bumper pickup trucks heading to and from the lake. Soon, he realized they were removing their bobhouses before the ice melted.

Bobhouses, of course, are part of the male culture of northern New England and many other frozen parts of the world. Since I don’t fish, no matter how much I admire fly fishermen and their skills, I really don’t appreciate the special savvy of landing one’s meal from under the ice. You can do it, of course, by drilling a hole in the thickness underfoot and then sitting or standing out in the cold. But the really serious guys build or buy their own little houses for the tradition – some are quite basic, while others, I’m told, come with TVs and Web connections. Still, I’m curious about what draws men from their warm homes to spend long days or evenings in a very cold environment. One of the answers is that it’s an excuse to drink with your buddies. Another is that it’s just to get away from the women. Except that it turns out some very adventurous women join in on the expedition. Are the fresh fish really worth this much effort?

Even so, that afternoon, Eric looked out again and saw another traffic jam, this time with trailers hauling their boats to the water. Presumably for more fishing.

How did they know this was the day the ice would go? What clues am I missing?

DEAREST MADAMOISELLE, LOVELY AND EVER CHARMING

February 14, 2014February 2, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time: Hey! Somewhere along the line, the Postal Service lost a letter, it seems. At any rate, I’ve been wondering about you, how you’re doing, whether you decided to run off to New Mexico or Arizona and start having babies one-two-three or whatever. Even whether I’d said something that offended terribly. (So much for self-esteem, right?)

At least, thanks to the wonders of Computer Era (or, too often, Computer Error) I be able (that, I’m told, reflects Chicago schooling regarding the conjugation of the verb to be) to resurrect my last letter to you. Is this the one you responded to, meaning I never got your last letter? Or did you not get this one? And the poems in the new Indigo, um, are they the two you didn’t know you had or, surprise, are they the ones I sent in July? Mysteries, mysteries!

At any rate, I’m anxiously awaiting the new issue – and all the news – and maybe even the missing letter!

On this end, to update from what’s there: Am still waiting for the chapbook … the usual unexpected delays and complications; in this case, a near-fatal blood clot suffered by the editor’s wife.

As you can see, I’m in the midst of a major computer conversion – from a fourteen-year-old XPC II system and nearly 300 five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks (Word Perfect 4.1) to a 6.4-gigabyte Pentium II Windows 98 Word 97 unit with both HP scanner and inkjet printer. It’s taking much longer than I anticipated; am still not on-line (one step at a time!) It’s like household he-man repairs and remodeling: everything takes three times longer than you believe it will, should, or can. Just ask your Italian father: if he’s anything like my ex-father-in-law, the one I miss greatly, these jobs are just that. (One of Sam’s great lessons to me, by the way: be sure to leave something undone for tomorrow!)

So I built, from kits, a new credenza and hutch, plus a “utilities cart,” projects that proved the timing theory: the credenza that took the salesman two hours to assemble took me six or eight, in part because the instructions are written in three languages but proficient, from what I could determine, in none. Ditto for the printed illustrations. Then, when the electronic goodies came, there were all the boxes to unpack and the new wiring to figure out (and whatever you need for the big rebates seems to get lost with the trash). Guess I’ll never purchase again where there’s a rebate involved! Just give me the discount, now! To say nothing of the software to install, nearly wrecking my Windows 98 in the process. (A Sunday morning phone call to Hewlett Packard nearly averted that!) At least much of the software installation is so much easier than it was a decade ago! My computer guru, the one I’ve “hired” for a bottle of Jim Beam or Jack Daniels, has been a big help, dropping on me a stack of magazines that could be used instead as the coffee table; his real challenge is in rigging the system that will allow me to convert and transfer a dozen or so novels and tons of other writings from the old system to the new. All this must seem foreign to you, who appear so much at ease with stylish desktop publishing! (So when did you first delve into cyberland – and desktop and all of the great touches you display?)

Hmm, that’s interesting, the date on the page break and all. One more thing to figure out, eventually – modifying these damn templates to my own style! (Spent a couple of hours a few weeks ago trying to do that, only to finally learn I couldn’t do it – see now there are other ways to go about it, thanks to a $40 book that tells me what Microsoft’s can’t.)

Did get away for a week in a small cabin in the Maine woods – no heat and no glass in the windows, but there was a fireplace as well as sliding shutters across the screened windows: good thing, too, with the nights getting down to freezing! Snuggled in with a stack of novels to read, learned to canoe solo on the five-mile-long lake and winding river, and even drafted some decent poetry.

* * *

How long ago all that seems! Well, it does come from a few years before I acquired the barn and everything that’s gone with it … including a great wife and family. Which makes it ancient history, indeed, even without the computer updates.

A SINKING FEELING

February 10, 2014January 28, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

This is not where I envisioned sinking roots after so many years adrift.

Sinking, as a feeling of being lost or losing, after so many of feeling being lost or losing (or at least losing out). It’s not that I don’t like where I’ve finally landed – far from it. Rather, the sinking feeling comes from the battle with rot and squirrels and flaking paint and plumbing and, well, all the stuff about home ownership you never hear from a Realtor. All the stuff, too, that comes on top of what you’re supposed to be saving by owning rather than renting. (Ha!)

Still, there are other sides. For instance, at last, after so many years, I await asparagus and ferns rising from beds I’ve built from detritus. It may still be the depth of winter here, but I can practically hear what’s already happening in the soil, especially as our years in this spot gain layers.

I think, too, of the generations of families we follow, as if walking on a mosaic of bones.

ANOTHER PROMISCUOUS READER

January 31, 2014January 21, 2014 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

I had thought the phrase “promiscuous reader” originated with Virginia Woolf to describe someone who reads widely and passionately – even the sides of breakfast cereal boxes – but now fail to find it. (So much for relying on memory.) Instead, she left us The Common Reader, itself drawing on Dr. Samuel Johnson’s phrase in his “Life of Gray,” where he bellows, “I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honors.” Woolf, of course, takes Johnson to task as she peruses her own wide range of literature, while Johnson, in that cruel twist of fate, exists almost exclusively in the realm of university English literature departments.

I think, too, of a girlfriend’s reaction the first time she entered my apartment and saw the rows of peach lugs displaying my collected books along one wall: “Wow, you’ve read all these?” Well, mostly, I probably replied, silently realizing there would be some serious differences here. Looking back, I see how many more volumes had slipped away – in the divorce, to other lovers – or simply been borrowed and never returned. (The lugs, by the way, were inspired by a description in Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums – the orchard no longer used apple crates, but the wooden peach lugs were still available.)

On the other hand, you may be one of those who enters a home and immediately heads for the shelves to see what the host reads – or even plays on the CD or phonograph. As my ledger of readings demonstrates, the spines of the volumes can say a lot about a person. Besides, the paradox of books and magazines is that they dwell in our private experiences, yet also engage in a dialogue, often across decades or even centuries. Sometimes we even find others whose readings overlap and can speak together of our travels. At the moment, I’m beginning to feel like an open book.

All the same, here’s hoping you enjoy my shelves, such as they are. And thanks to those of you who have already weighed in.

FROM ONCE UPON A TIME TO HAPPILY EVER AFTER

January 30, 2014July 3, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

Maria Tatar, ed.: The Annotated Brothers Grimm. As one who’s come to treasure the grittier sides of both Native American mythology and Biblical texts, I’ve long wondered about the earlier versions of the stories collected by the Grimm brothers and, as the notes to this volume also discuss, their French parallel Charles Perrault, especially with his Mother Goose. At last we’re getting glimpses into those unsanitized roots, in large part thanks to the work of Tatar and others. The introductory pages by her and A.S. Byatt make the volume worthwhile on their own, as they examine the fine line between folktales and mythology and recognize that these are really wonder tales, full of magic and harsh reality, a kaleidoscope of rapid presentation where fairies rarely have a role. The mentions of versions having Gretel as a trickster, Rampunzel as not realizing her weight gain is pregnancy, Little Red Riding Hood performing a seductive striptease, Snow White’s pricked finger blood as her menstruating or deflowering all add powerfully, as does the sense of polyphony in the overlapping voices. Although reading all of these close together can be a bit much, it does allow the patterns to emerge: sibling rivalries where the youngest and seemingly dumbest child is in reality blessed, and so on. As for the surrounding forest, where is it in the urban reality? The ghetto? The cellar under the apartment house? The subway? Another volume I’ll be returning to frequently.
Philip Pullman: Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm. Reading Pullman second gives the astute reader a sense of what a translator can add or omit. As a famed writer himself, he admits to taking liberties at times, drawing on similar tales and the like. You can see the differences from the very outset, with “The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich,” which Tatar begins, “Once upon a time, when wishes still came true,” versus Pullman’s “In olden times, when wishing still worked …” His translation is often more direct and less tradition-bound, and often has a deft detail or insight that is simply brilliant.
Nicholson Baker: The Size of Thoughts, U and I, and A Box of Matches. Back in high school, hearing a teacher proclaim that all fiction is based on conflict, set a challenge for me: can a novel work without any essential conflict? Baker comes close here with his Box of Matches, set as daily reflections before sunrise one January, as he lights a fire in his fireplace (hence the matches) and drinks coffee — the closest he comes to conflict, in fact, may be the struggle of making coffee in the dark, a consequence of his decision to keep the lights off. Lovely meanderings through the minutia of daily living. U and I is his notorious paean to John Updike, full of deliberate misquotes that reflect the ways of time on the memory and wonderful confessions on the joys of reading and the trials of writing. (I’m happy to see I’m not the only writer who has a lifelong admiration for a great model, or at least an adult lifelong admiration.) The Size of Thoughts, meanwhile, is the perfect volume to end this month’s collection of readings. Each of its quite varied essays follows a topic through a wandering net based on thinking itself. Of special importance are his pieces on the loss of learning that occurred when university libraries junked their card catalogs and his 148-page investigation of the other meanings of “lumber” as they evolved in the antiquity of English poetry. As the second essay begins, “Each thought has a size, and most are about three feet tall, with the level of complexity of a lawnmower engine, or a cigarette lighter, or those tubes of toothpaste that, by mingling several hidden pastes and gels, create a pleasantly striped product.” If you’ve sensed something similar emerging through this month’s discussion, just remember, The Size of Thoughts mentions many, many fine books in passing. Just in case you’re ready to read more.

FROM A WEED LECTURE AND WINE TO SOME WILD COOKING

January 29, 2014July 3, 2013 ~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

Martha Paxson Grundy: Quaker Treasure. Having known Martha since we were both active in Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative), and watched her subsequent service in the broader Quaker organizations, I find my admiration upheld in this 2002 Weed Lecture given at Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston. As she observes, unlike evangelical Protestantism, where the emphasis is on personal salvation, the Quaker treasure is its emphasis on the shared experience of the Prophetic Presence. In that, we nurture and guide one another in a living faith.
Jancis Robinson: How to Taste: A Guide to Enjoying Wine. Designed as alternating pages of Theory and Practice, this volume was a 2000 update of a 1983 book by a British wine authority. She does a clear job of introducing the differences in the ways we taste, and of linking that to the language of wine, complete with a decent glossary. Also helpful is her survey of grape varieties and the wines they produce, both in France (where they assume geographic names) and around the world. As she speaks of international wines, however, the book dates quickly – Washington State and Argentina, especially, have come a long way since. Even so, an excellent reference book.
Kim Stafford, ed: William Stafford on Peace and War. A profound and moving selection of poems, journal entries, interviews, and published excerpts focusing on Stafford’s pacifist faith and witness. Well worth returning to repeatedly.
Sheldon Morgenstern: No Vivaldi in the Garage: A Requiem for Classical Music in North America. In this rather strange memoir by an orchestral conductor best known for his role in establishing the Eastern Music Festival on the campus of Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, some of the best pages examine the strengths and weaknesses of boards of trustees in the non-profit world and, at times, the ill-informed consultants they sometimes hire. Yet he doesn’t shy away from gossip, skewering some of the big names and their inflated fees while lavishing praise on his buddies and students. While he repeatedly dismisses his teacher, Thor Johnson, I suspect he overlooks positive aspects; in contrast, one friend of mine, who had been a regular substitute in a major symphony orchestra, said Johnson was the best prepared conductor he had played under. And while Morgenstern has little fondness for contemporary music, which is the core of American classical composition, he appears ignorant of our rich Romantic-era legacy, which I think is essential for American repertoire in the future. I’m left wondering just how much of this is sour grapes from an almost-ran.
Tamar Adler: An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace. After living more than a decade with a wife who’s a cooking genius and two daughters who follow in their mother’s wisdom there, my own kitchen skills had largely atrophied. To be honest, I’ve never had her knowledge and seemingly intuitive sense of using herbs and spices, and preparing anything I think they’ll be eating becomes inhibiting. Still, now that I’m freed from the office and commuting routine, the time has come for me to pick up some of the meals preparation each week. Nevertheless, it feels like learning from scratch, especially after the Pellegrini readings. So when Adler begins with a chapter “How to Boil Water,” I thought I’d be on the right track – like Yehudi Menuhin learning to play violin all over again as a young adult. Wrong! She quickly veers off into a much different realm of cooking, one loaded with onions, anchovies, and beets (three of my least favorite ingredients ever), and soon seemingly slapdash in all directions. This, from a woman who admits ineptitude when it comes to making bread. In the end, though, this will likely be the volume I keep returning to as we make the best of our garden produce through the season. She has me largely rethinking meals and routines – this, coming from a Midwestern kid whose idea of dinner revolves around a slab of meat, or some substitute in the vegetarian variations. Rice, anyone?