Tag: Funny

Ever really look at those playing cards?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Yup, there are 52 in a deck, plus one to six Jokers, at least if you’re looking at what’s considered a standard commercial deck. There are, however, other traditional, and often older, suites to consider. Today we’ll put those off for another time and stick to the French-suited cards that are almost universally found in English-speaking countries. Got that?

To continue:

  1. The deck has four suits (clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts) that come in 13 ranks, starting with the ten numeral or pip cards – if you’re wondering why there’s no “1,” it’s actually the Ace, despite its usual power. And then there are the three ranks of royalty, the court or face cards we know as Jack, Queen, King.
  2. Each numeral card displays the appropriate number of pips (the suit images) as well as the numeral itself.
  3. Early cards were single-headed, or single-ended, but that changed around 1860, when the double-headed versions appeared. These could be read without having to turn them to an up-position. Corner indices were added around 1880.
  4. The Jack of spades and the Jack of hearts appear in profile and are thus known as “one-eyed” Jacks. Likewise, the King of diamonds is depicted with one eye. The rest of the royals are shown full-face or oblique.
  5. Suicide kings appear in hearts, where he usually has a sword behind his head, as if stabbing himself, and in diamonds, where he has an ax pointed blade-down toward him. Adding to the nickname is the blood-red color on the card.
  6. The Queen of spades, holding a scepter, is also known as the black lady or bedpost Queen. She’s the only Queen facing left.
  7. The Ace of spades is sometimes called the death card. Those printed or sold in England from the reign of James I until 1960 carried an indication of the printer and that an excise tax on the deck had been paid.
  8. The 52 cards are said to represent the 52 weeks of the year, with 13 cards for each season or the 13 lunar cycles of the year.
  9. Possibly originating in China or India or Persia, the cards arrived in Europe from Egypt in the 1370s, perhaps in the hands of Crusaders. The first cards were hand-printed, limiting them to the wealthy classes. That changed with the arrival of the printing press at the end of the 15th century.
  10. Originally, the suit symbols were taken from everyday objects, which may have had any symbolic meaning: flowers, animals, birds, shields, crowns, pennies, rings, even pomegranates. I rather like the possibilities there, “King of bears” or “Queen of bananas.”

Skillsets that became useful in my non-fiction book

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Returning to that adage, “Write about what you know,” I realize how some work experience from my past gave me a unique edge in drafting Quaker Dover.

For instance:

  1. My journalism career included an early gig of pure research for a daily Action Line column. (We had an editor/writer, a secretary, and two researchers – big time!) Writing and editing, of course, were the staples of the rest of those years.
  2. From writing and then revising the novels, of course, I had explored the dynamics of building a large book and then the distinguishing qualities of fiction in contrast to journalism. I even learned to excise a hundred or more pages from a manuscript and not weep.
  3. My long service in Quaker meetings, as presiding clerk in addition to committee work and visitation, steeped me in the decision-making process and culture of the Society of Friends, past and present. Along the way, I gained familiarity with our peculiar customs and historic language, ranging from liberal “unprogrammed” worship at one end and old-order conservatives at another to pastor-led evangelical at the other extreme.
  4. Genealogy research accompanied much of those discoveries, especially as I gleaned the old minute books and journals. (Many of my findings appear on my blog, Orphan George.)
  5. Triangulation of three or more differing versions of an event, as I encountered especially in material and correspondence regarding my grandparents, became helpful in considering Colonial history in New England. I could live with the ambiguity while letting the conflicting accounts still add to the bigger picture.
  6. My long interest in geography – maps, especially – came to play in placing Dover in perspective with the rest of New England as well as Devonshire in England itself.
  7. My training as an artist in high school and my work with photojournalists in the years after came in handy in examining portraits of Quakers (once those were permitted) as well as related locations. Sometimes I could see where an individual was in regard to changes affecting Quaker practice and the world around them.
  8. Online sleuthing, rather than archives (which I had explored in the genealogy), came to the fore during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Somehow, I think my experience in formatting my novels as ebooks, fed into this, but I had already devoured many digital texts by the time I became amazed at the number of rare old, arcane books I could download for free.
  9. Despite the fact that Quaking Dover is a history involving political conflict, I was surprised to find that my political science degree didn’t add that much, though the way Vincent Ostrom had taught us to closely read an argument came in handy, especially in looking at a system from the ground up rather than top-down.
  10. Moving to Maine before the final revision and publication also added to my perspective as I settled in. Dover, like much of New Hampshire, gravitates toward Boston, as did much of the Dover Quaker history. Little did I suspect just how much Dover Friends and the broader community influenced the growth of Maine to the east and northeast once the territory reopened to English settlement once the conflicts with the French and their Native allies wound down – earlier than I had presumed, in fact.

Ten random questions

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. So what if it’s NOT historically true?
  2. Is there any egg in a Chinese egg roll?
  3. Who was Jack Russell?
  4. Has anyone used “Jack Russell Terrier” as a nom de plume?
  5. Can brilliance compensate for lack of depth?
  6. Enemies? Present within? Or without?
  7. How are you supposed to answer, “How ya doin’?”?
  8. What’s that noise?
  9. What do I have to do to get my books banned?
  10. Is it better to have no taste than bad taste?

Things we still need a can opener for

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

I don’t eat canned soup anymore – can’t stand it, not after being upgraded at home.

Beer, meanwhile, has a tab or comes in a bottle.

So here are my reasons for not throwing our can opener into the trash:

  1. Tuna fish
  2. Tomato paste, as well as whole and diced tomatoes
  3. Sweet corn
  4. Sweet condensed milk
  5. Garbanzo beans (already softened)
  6. Pumpkin filling, not just for pies
  7. Coconut milk
  8. Chipotle
  9. Pineapple (not fresh)
  10. Baked beans

If we only had a dog or cat and their cans of pet food. 

Among trendy folk

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

I’m really in the dark about what’s “in” these days, though I do get some glimmers through family.

So let me ask.

  1. Are Carhartt pants continuing to overtake blue jeans?
  2. Is Apple still preferred to Android?
  3. Depop for second-hand clothing. Is it the next eBay or etsy?
  4. Are Gmail addresses still tops? Or is email essentially going over to texts?
  5. Wraparound sunglasses? I’m finally noticing them.
  6. Paypal for online use rather than cards themselves? What about Venmo?
  7. I’m finally aware of Reddit. But what about Twitch?
  8. As for snacks: Doritos chips and salsas? Goldfish crackers? Oreos?
  9. Are Ugg boots and Crocs really making a comeback? As for Vans shoes?
  10. How long can vegan hold on?

Here these go again

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The random notes in no particular order continue:

  1. Did college recruiters ever come to my high school? We weren’t elite and we weren’t any of the other demographics they were hot for. How about yours?
  2. Our high school guidance counselors did little more than sign you up for a draft card, as far as I can see.
  3. Genji was a definite historical character.
  4. Argentata chard … doesn’t taste like chard … hardier and cleaner than spinach.
  5. Gentrification versus decay.
  6. An inept lover, too charming by his very incompetence, unintentionally funky, nothing more than some everyday world seen through myopia. So why am I bothered?
  7. I love some of the drone videos filmed around here. But definitely not all.
  8. And then we learn that the mayor’s involved. As we said in the news biz, this story has legs.
  9. Yes, I remember Hudson, it’s up in the Cuyahoga Valley, a lovely New England style village not far from the Cleveland Orchestra’s summer home.
  10. Some writers place most or all of their plots in a particular locale, usually a big city or perhaps a state. Just never mine.

 

Here’s what bugs me about ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

For reference, I’m focusing on the Amazon Prime video series, not the earlier books.

  1. Pop songs as a running commentary or an alternative dialog. This isn’t opera.
  2. The lack of positive male role models.
  3. The maudlin playing of the brothers’ mother’s death, especially after she’s gone. It definitely reduces her to a two-dimensional character.
  4. The fact it wasn’t filmed on Cape Cod, contrary to the story. The color of the water is wrong and the McMansion is so out of place, ultimately. Even the beaches are wrong. Where are the lobster boats?
  5. The way the story keeps evading the richer possibilities of polyamory or outright incest, which it keeps skirting. Instead, if the projections are correct, season three is going to veer off into one brother or the other, but not both together. That’s why I’m thinking I’ll be tuning out.
  6. Superficial treatment of so much.
  7. The flashbacks feel like a riptide. Just where are we at this point?
  8. The presence of a commercially published novelist as a major character. (I would object if she were a successful painter or actress or other fine artist for that matter – it’s simply rather incestuous creatively.)
  9. The way our Ugly Duckling’s mother, the writer, has so many lines of wisdom. She could be speaking in paragraphs.
  10. The difficulty I have in following slang, even when it’s the difference between “big bitch” and something else as an equivalent of beloved girlfriend.

Some things I’m anticipating in the year ahead

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. Sitting beside our newly installed wood-burning stove on otherwise chilly mornings and evenings.
  2. Completing the second phase of our upstairs renovations along with moving into the back half up there, including my book collection when it comes out of storage.
  3. My second week on the water in the schooner Louis R. French.
  4. Revisiting my journals from the Baltimore years on.
  5. A magazine orgy.
  6. Renewed time with the Bible.
  7. Using my passport. We do live right next to Canada, after all.
  8. Events at the arts center.
  9. Continuing Quaker worship face-to-face rather than Zoom.
  10. Scallops in season as well as local blueberries, cranberries, lobsters, and crab.