Tag: Life

Well, they couldn’t wear nametags

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One approach I employed may help readers keep track of the spreading number of family members.

In drafting my novel What’s Left, I envisioned each chapter as a module that could stand alone from the rest of the book. Think of it as a short story. That way, the number of characters in each chapter is more focused.

And while first names are usually repeated frequently in a Greek-American family, I limited this to just one great-grandmother and one descendant, and used a nickname for the elder one. Neat, eh?

Yes, the family members do show up in other modules and there is continuity over the whole, but at least you don’t have everyone in your face at once.

When you go to a social event and are introduced to many new people, are you able to remember their names and faces? Or do you go into a blur? How do you cope with this challenge?

 

Communion with strangers

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

the mailman didn’t leave the stack in the hallway, as I had worried, but rather held it to give to me today (twenty-four pieces, which included one personal letter to me, from somebody amplifying on our Seventh-day conversation in North Carolina, or as he pronounces it, Nor’car’l’na, a personal letter to Iowa from another in Pennsylvania who must have his addresses mixed up, I’ll forward adding my own greetings; three magazines; my union newspaper; six bills; unsolicited junk including offers of wild credit lines if I accept more I’d be rich if I could reach the right country without extradition

Places I’ve enjoyed dancing

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Look, I never have figured out what passes for “popular” dancing, but I am grateful a few forms of folk versions have come to my rescue.

I could mention those times I’ve been moved while watching others dance, like at the Tinowit on the Yakama reservation or maybe at a ballet, but this list is places where I’ve done the steps, too.

  1. The Rockwells’ apple barn in Barnesville, Ohio. My introduction to contradancing, despite my initial resistance.
  2. Scout House, Concord, and VFW, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mecca. The latter was also known as the Rocket House, ‘cuz of its mock-up Nike missile out front.
  3. Town Hall, Nelson, New Hampshire. Mecca again. Plus the legendary sloped floor.
  4. Dublin Academy, New Hampshire, for Bob McQuillan’s CD release party. I wound up waltzing with an Amelia when I mentioned the tune we were dancing to shared her name, she said calmly, “It was written for me,” back as a toddler.
  5. Town Hall, Bowdoinham, Maine. Always fun and lots of kids out on a Saturday night out.
  6. Town Hall, Kingston, New Hampshire. Smokey of the band Old Wild Goose shucked fresh oysters at intermission one night, and I really pigged out as most folks turned up their noses, not knowing what they were missing. This was November, and the shells were fattened to perfection. There was another night somewhere when he was both the caller and musician, who knows where the rest of the band was, but everything certainly was fun.
  7. City Hall, Dover, and the Oyster River Band, bringing with it memories of times when they starred in Madbury and Lee and even the Kittery, Maine, Grange Hall.
  8. The Star Grange, Greenfield, Massachusetts. They dance wild out there in the Pioneer Valley. Plus I thought I was engaged to be married, and she was a great dancer. Whole other story.
  9. Our wedding, Dover, New Hampshire. The reception featured national treasures Dudley and Jackie Laufman at their best, getting even beginners moving elegantly on the old one-room schoolhouse floor.
  10. Greek festivals at the Hellenic Center in Dover and a big tent at St. Nicholas in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Feels great learning a new talent, even at this age.

~*~

Gee, how could I overlook the big Ralph Page Legacy Weekend at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, just a dozen or so minutes from us? Maybe because it’s always on the Martin Luther King weekend, when my schedule is pressed by other demands.  This gets serious.

When flights intersect or move on 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Just what was I thinking? Was this supposed to be a philosophy class moment? A reflection on time versus space? Or fate versus free will? No wonder the paragraph failed to take root in my novel What’s Left.

History is filled with unique moments when something flashes up and takes hold. Or a singular intersection of trajectories appears in the universe of motion.

~*~

The novel, by the way, has many of these situations, just as life itself does. We just didn’t need to get preachy.

I suppose this just might fit a story about baseball. Or think of football. The great play no fan will ever forget.

There are also those accidents, seemingly chance encounters, like the late-night crash that kills Cassia’s grandparents or the avalanche that claims her father. A few moments one way or the other, and her story would be much, much different.

I was more likely reflecting on those seconds where you have to make a decision one way or another. Say something. Do something. Yes or no. The beginning of a romance, for instance, once you’ve introduced yourself. Uttered the joke that could have as easily fallen flat.

Can you recall a significant moment in your life when something had to happen right then — or never at all? One with no second chances? Please share it! Be bold!

~*~

Cassia learns to “read” strips of photographic negatives like this as she looks for clues to her father’s life journey.

Maybe it’s not really news but it counts

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Heyduck

In my novel What’s Left, Cassia’s aunt Nita writes a daily newspaper column focusing on local people and their real interests. It’s not all that different from CeCe Cobb’s in my earlier novel Hometown News, but Nita’s is far less corny and far newsier.

In Dayton, where I grew up, it was Marj Heyduck of the Journal Herald. Her mug shot on her daily column featured a new hat each week as a signature touch. And in Cincinnati, it was TV host Sally Flowers.

But I can think of others who just seem to know everybody.

Does your community have a local voice? A minor celebrity or just a naturally curious friend of all?

As a zealous professional

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

so pleased entering my apartment to see everything tight, still in place, no vandals, though the temperature was 89 degrees, apparently the maintenance crew had come in and set the thermostat at 80 to get the radiators going and then left while ignoring repairs to one of those single joy-stick faucets that takes an eight-dollar washer kit to repair, I know, because the three-dollar one I bought had the wrong kinds of springs and plugs and doodads, and none fit

 

A few random notes found while cleaning up

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. Everything was going too fast to keep up and has only gotten worse.
  2. Have I always been trying to get by on the cheap? To my own impoverishment?
  3. “Higher truths” an interesting concept.
  4. Falling icicle at the mill crushed a parked car.
  5. Momento Mori: “Remember you must die” or “You are mortal.”
  6. Language has a terroir in it … a taste of the earth and its blood.
  7. By coincidence, reading “The Last Temptation” during Great Lent.
  8. How radical to see individuals as the foundation of society, rather than the state, which has been unstable, often with military imposition to the next.
  9. Facing too much of a good thing.
  10. Flatbed Ohio was my original title for the poetry collection Rust and the Wound.

Maybe it does run in the blood

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I heard it twice, miles apart: “I have retailing in my blood.”

Both headed family businesses – one, a supermarket chain, the other a small-town restaurant.

The grocer worked with three of his brothers and a brother-in-law, though another brother instead became a respected physician.

The restaurateur worked alongside his only brother and their wives.

Both enterprises were founded by their fathers.

It’s a lot like the family enterprise in my novel, founded a few generations earlier.

Do you know anyone like that?

~*~

My novel is available at the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Smashwords, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook distributors and at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback.

Within a daughter’s own living Greek drama