Tag: Home

Which door is the real one?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Don’t know about where you live, but in New England, the front door typically is rarely used.

That insight was confirmed when I was canvassing for the Census and we had to leave a notice behind when nobody was home. Often, the real door is the one at the rear of the house.

It’s a curiosity that reminds me of something I once read about Zen temples in Japan, which were initially copies of ones in China.

The Chinese loved symmetry, which the Japanese detested, and so when the imported designs were expanded, they grew to one side or the other. Many old New England houses also have many additions, most famously the connecting barn.

Well, for the record, our back door is where the action is, and it runs through a mud room addition from the kitchen.

Now I’m starting to think about trying to enter by the right door as a metaphor for life. Like maybe there’s a hidden key, even. The one others know about, but not you or me?

 

It may be a stool but it’s not for sitting

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
When I’m working at the laptop on my real desktop, having the stool to my right comes in pretty handy. It’s the right height for papers I need at the moment or even something to sip. Not that I planned this shot, which accidentally exposes a bit more of how I really live. The lower milk crate, by the way, serves as a cell phone recharging station while keeping the bunnies away from the sensitive wires plugged in behind it.

Chief Doe-Wah-Jack’s pride and joy

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Comedians Bob and Ray had a regular schtick involving a radio advertisement for Monongahela steel ingots as home décor. You know, “Hey, ladies, are yours getting rusty,” sort of spiel. Usually, it was sitting in the living room.

Having lived in the Rust Belt not far from the Monongahela River, I knew about the massive pig-iron ingots riding flatbed trailers from one part of town to another. Who knows how much they weighed – the trucks carried no more than two at a time – the beasts looked deadly foreboding.

Our equivalent was in the kitchen, though better dressed and somewhat smaller.

The Classic Round Oak Chief was a top-of-the-line cooking stove that ran on firewood, coal, or kerosene. After 1898, they were manufactured by the “estate of P.D. Beckwith” of Dowagiac, Michigan, and featured a popular mascot, fictional Native American Chief Doe-Wah-Jack – a sly way of teaching the pronunciation of the town. They’re highly collectible in restored condition, but that means getting to a buyer in some other part of the country.

I’ve used wood cooking stoves, back in the ashram, but I wasn’t so sure about this one. I didn’t like the way the stovepipe ran somewhat downhill – smoke rises, after all – or the way it vented into the same chimney the furnace uses, something that’s against building code today.

Besides, the weight of this one was definitely stressing the house structure.

Worse yet, it occupied the center of the small kitchen, and in our life focus, we need more space there – as well as a working oven, year-‘round.

Quite simply, it had to go. And it did.

We’re happy it found a new home – one being built, as it turned out – as well as a crew that knew expertly how to get it apart and out the door.

As for wood heat, which we truly enjoy, we’re planning on a Jotul in the front parlor and a new chimney or pipe to vent it.