Tag: Inspiration

MORE GREETINGS FROM THE PAST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

As I wrote to a long-lost friend at the time …

Maybe it was the James Tayler concert broadcast from Tanglewood at the end of August, as I sat in the newly accessible and lighted loft of my barn and sorted through some files that had been long packed away. Maybe it was the martini that accompanied it. Or maybe it was simply an aspect of a larger interest these days, of simply trying to figure out how I wound up here after what’s often seemed a zig-zag journey through some rather disparate circles across the continent – a route that’s included divorce, a broken engagement, and finally a second marriage approaching 10 years now.

What I felt was a keen appreciation for you, especially, and Maggie and Ise, wondering how your life has prospered and, hopefully, deepened. Glenn got in touch with me a few years back, when he and Mary moved to a cabin in the New Jersey woods … and she didn’t drive. Am not sure she does yet, either.

At any rate, thanks to the Internet, I find two versions of your name both at the same address – can’t be too many who earned their law degrees where you did or started practice in that year. So here’s hoping.

If nothing else, I ought to thank you for introducing me to The River. Or should I say the ritual of repeated returning to The River for periods of introspection and, pardon the pun, reflection? That year of the Susquehanna; later, the irrigation canal bank in the desert orchards of Washington State and then three years along the Merrimack here in New Hampshire. Or the Cocheco, with its waterfalls that drop down just before passing through a stone arch in the big brick mill in downtown Dover. These days, it’s also the Atlantic, especially when my older one’s managing the seaside motel. This has been my summer for discovering the night ocean in all of its moodiness and mystery.

And now, revisiting my journals (which didn’t even start out to be journals, as I discover) as well as letters from the period has been eye-opening, and often delightful. What I remembered as being an essentially depressed period for me was filled with a lot of wonderful encounters and growth. To say nothing of humor, especially Maggie’s. And there’s so much I had forgotten, or that turns out to be different from my memory. More than ever, I think our Hawley Street (and subsequent apartments) would have made a better sitcom than Friends. Nor could anyone have played you better than you. Maybe Cosmo Cramer would have portrayed me. As for Glenn?

Life these days is, I must admit, even fuller, but that’s a long story. My wife’s an incredible woman who’s off seeing an architect at the moment about moving a charter school to the ground floor of one of our old mills, a lovely space overlooking the bend in the river where ships used to dock. (Right now the school’s on the fifth floor next door, with some amazing views of the town.) It’s just one of her (unpaid) jobs as chairman of the board. … Such as it is.

I’m hanging on, glad to have a union card, and wondering how much longer the entire industry can continue to give away the product online. Professionally, it’s been grim all over. Without planning to do so, about 24 years ago I made the decision not to continue in the management ladder but return to the ranks – something that’s allowed me to focus instead on my own writing, Quaker practice and leadership, and a personal life, including New England contradancing and choral singing, on occasion. And homebrewing, at least until we redid the kitchen. Etc.

Well, that’s a sketch from this end. I hope you’re in good health, feeling accomplished and fulfilled, and maybe even content. I would love to hear from you, however briefly – and maybe even give my wife an independent account of our by-now ancient history.

Best regards …

EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

If you want a clue to a person’s educational achievements, don’t ask about degrees or where they went to college. Rather, ask, “What are you reading now?”

The answer will tell you whether the individual has curiosity and intellectual growth, and where those are occurring. Having no books on the list, for me, would be reason for concern. Where are their horizons and challenges? Or even their guilty pleasures?

I’ve met too many people having a slew of degrees who are still unimaginative hacks, whatever their field. And I’ve met people having nothing more than an elementary school education who are well read and have minds to match.

Reading, I’ll insist, is a discipline that needs to be engaged if one is to have credibility as a thinker. Any idiot can have opinions, but a reasoned analysis, well, that’s a much different matter.

By the way, just what are you reading these days?

HOME SCHOOLING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

I married into it, the homeschooling. Expected the kids would be hunkered down at their own desks a certain number of hours each day, the clock running. But that’s not how it was. No, the version (and there are many, I’ve learned, spanning the range from strict fundamentalists to loose unschoolers) I married into had piles of books and academic exercises and online resources and, well, I was surprised by the end of my first year to find out how much of what we’d told the local school superintendent we’d cover, we actually had – just not on the schedule we’d intended. Sometimes it came about as an impromptu trip to a museum – an outing in Boston, for instance.

I was also surprised how many group classes homeschoolers actually take. The taekwondo, for one, or the weekly White Pine outdoors lore, for another. Music lessons, anyone, or soccer?

Another component came on Thursdays, when the Dover Homeschooling Resource Center convened in the Quaker meetinghouse – about 100 parents and children – for a range of activities my wife dubbed “lunch-hour” or “recess for the homeschoolers.” It wasn’t all fun and games, either, despite some intense chess matches. Some of the older kids formed a science fiction group that read, wrote, and discussed the field.

My kids have some fond memories of their experiences across a number of activities.

Much better memories, in fact, than I carry from my public school days.

OUT INTO THE WORLD OF READERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Poking around in the barn, as it were (actually, it was several folders in my computer, if you insist on being accurate), I wound up reopening collections of my poetry – and to say I’m astonished by their range, variety, and depth is not a matter of boasting. You’ve already sampled some of that here in my postings, not all of it “finished” work, either.

At the same time, as I survey the literary scene today and its opportunities, I’ve decided to issue as much of it as I can now (while I’m still ticking) rather than continue to seek piecemeal publication.

The upshot has been the resurrection of Thistle/Flinch editions, my personal imprint, as a free bookstore venture here on WordPress. Each month, it’s offering a new work as a PDF file to read on your computer or print out to paper.

In some ways, it’s like tucking a print shop into a corner of the barn. I rather like that image.

As an introduction, may I suggest:

Returning 1Or the rocky shores of my latest:

Winged Death 1

Hope you enjoy what you find there. And as always, here’s to happy reading.

 

 

THERE’S NOTHING EXALTED ABOUT THE ‘WRITERS’ LIFE’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Not infrequently, fellow bloggers will begin a post by apologizing about not writing for a spell. The fact they feel they have to apologize bothers me. Nobody’s obligating any of us to produce, and we all have regular lives to pursue, or at least lives we ought to engage. After all, that’s where so much of the grist for writing originates.

Besides, there’s no shortage of good reading in the blogosphere. Take a rest or catch up, and feel good about. Heavens! If we need anything regarding the written word, it’s more conscientious readers … ones who will encourage a wider audience for deserving work, especially.

Somewhat related, and just as disturbing, are the giddy proclamations of joining in the “writers’ life,” as if it’s some carefree club out there free of everyday obligations and cumbers. Maybe they’re envisioning the legendary Dorothy Parker and her Algonquin Round Table, or even the martini named after her, or some other crossroads in literary history, but let me proclaim that’s largely an illusion or mirage, especially in today’s publishing reality.

It’s one thing to be a casual writer and quite another to be a serious practitioner, and for the latter, the only shared lifestyle I’ve seen is a dedication to hard, daily work that includes not just writing but research, reading, and correspondence as well. It’s not glamorous, for sure, and in the current literary scene, you won’t get famous. Not compared to any of those so-called celebrities.

So if you must, then write. And then, because you must, revise repeatedly.

And if you aren’t so obliged, then read … for pleasure as much as anything. And maybe that’s where you’ll really find the “writers’ life,” one you might even share with others over coffee or cocktails.

Now, for me, it’s back to work. And thanks for listening.

FEED THE BEARS NO MORE THAN YOU MUST … AND THAT GOES FOR MOOSE, TOO

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

There are good reasons, of course, for the resemblance between bears and people. But it’s smart to respect the difference.

Still, they have their role in the poems of my In a Heartbeat poetry volume. As do moose and whales.

Here's the cover.
Here’s the cover.

This 35-page echapbook is available free from the Barometric Pressures author series at Kind of a Hurricane Press. The trail to your own copy opens here.

ROAD WORK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’ve spent a lot of my life behind a steering wheel, and that’s where a number of my poems originate.

From this, I can look at a concept. Lines from the road. Basho? Brautigan? McCord?

Flight or escape remains a central theme in American literature. Kerouac’s On the Road and Hunter Thompson come to mind, along with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Blue Highways. Of course our two greatest American novels also reflect this action, often with its male bonding and fields of discovery – Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn. It’s not just some vague sense of the liberty of a frontier to resettle, but with wheels, there’s the thrill of speed more destructive than hiking or canoeing or sailing. As for hobos and the rails? Another era. Outlaws more than vagabonds? As for the Gypsy, there’s an entire community to consider. As well as flights with a destination, in contrast to those lacking.

GUERRILLA CHRISTMAS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

No other time of the year opposes our testament of simplicity as much as the Holiday Season. Here widespread expectations of generosity and excess counter our Quaker discipline of frugality and moderation. The situation becomes especially complicated for individuals like me who find themselves lacking in gift-giving savvy.

Even when Friends formed a sizeable community, they found standing apart from the surrounding society on these activities became impossible over time. Quakers eventually yielded to giving the children an orange or two the day after “the day the world calls Christmas.” We can see similar struggles among Jews regarding Chanukah, where its essential message from 1st and 2nd Maccabbees – to withstand pagan demands, no matter the cost – instead begins to mirror the activities of the general populace. Add to it our mixed families, coming from many different traditions, and any distinctive witness falls by the wayside. In my case, having a wife with a German mother, I’ve learned just how much compromise is required in these decisions.

Actually, she’s taught me a lot about ways to wage a Guerrilla Christmas. Yes, there’s the battle with consumerism, but most of us – and most of the people we know – don’t need more “things.” We have enough clutter already, thank you. So preference is given to gifts that can be used up – food or tickets to an upcoming cultural event or a promised action on behalf of the recipient. Whenever possible, small local enterprises are favored over “big box” retailers. Some of you know about our family tradition of making gingerbread houses, a bit of silliness that accompanies our observation of Advent. As for Advent itself, when you remember that the Twelve Days of Christmas begin the day the advertising ends, you’re liberated to enjoy a less frenetic round of being with those you love.

It’s not what earlier Quakers would have expected from us, but it’s still a witness. Maybe it’s also a way for us to expand our understanding of simplicity and joyfulness, too.

So here’s to the First Day of Christmas. Remember, the season runs all the way to January 6, so enjoy.