Tag: Life

Get ready for another turn here  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Here we are again, another new year, another new calendar to fill. As if that should be any problem? Let me guess that you, too, never seem to have enough time to do so much of what you’re hoping to accomplish, day, week, month, or more. Right?

No matter. This time of the year is typically a moment for reflection of what’s happened in the previous 12 months of our lives and also for planning for our next 12.

Blogging, and my writer’s life in general, are no exception.

Blogging was, I believe, envisioned as a place for “live” journaling, or logging, in a ship captain’s sense, though my flagship Red Barn and four affiliated sites over the past 14 years have always put twists on that by scheduling long in advance. Even with that, each year has somehow always taken on a fresh emphasis.

The Barn started out with a huge backlog of previously published poems and related pieces to share, giving the blog essentially a literary focus. To my surprise, digital photography, especially once I retired from the newsroom, came to the forefront, too. As the pace picked up, marriage, family life, and our “city farm” in Dover provided fresh waves of inspiration, and there were files of unpublished poems and essays to add to the mix. Excerpts from my widespread correspondence and my Quaker writings also came into play. On top of that, publication of my novels and their subsequent revisions widened the perspective, including outtakes, as did my history Quaking Dover and the spirituality investigation Light Seed Truth.

More recently, the focus shifted to Way Downeast Maine where I’ve resettled.

So far, that adds up to more than 6,000 posts.

~*~

In addition, we’ve had the emergence of my quartet of affiliated WordPress blogs, which have undergone their own evolution.

Much of my Quaker-related writing led to establishing As Light Is Sown.

The photography has joined the Talking Money and New England Spirit entries at Chicken Farmer I Still Love You.

Poetry in chapbook presentations, especially, now appear at Thistle Finch editions.

And Orphan George Chronicles make my research findings available to genealogy investigators who share some of my linage.

It’s a lot, but it’s not sitting in dusty files or some editor’s sludge piles.

~*~

In the year ahead here at the Barn, you’ll be seeing excerpts from my physical journals, which started nearly six decades ago. Last year, having wound up on this remote island in Maine, I finally hunkered down revisiting the earliest decade of the books and found much of merit that hadn’t been distilled into my novels or poetry, so we’ll give them a final airing here.

It has me thinking of a poet I’ve dearly loved and his remark that nobody since could pursue the life he did. That remark came after he saw recent real estate prices for marginal properties around the lands he and his cohorts had purchased dirt cheap decades earlier in the Sierra Nevada range of California and then built upon and then realizing they couldn’t afford to buy their places now.

I wish I could advise kids today setting forth some advice for moving ahead.

All I can say is I’m glad I’m not in their place.

Looking back, though, I’m seeing ours was often a difficult journey, too.

Here’s how things unfolded for me. It really was a merry-go-round, something of the continuing nature of this blog.

Much of what’s ahead promises to be more confidential, subjective, off-guard than what you’ve seen from me before.

As always, I do enjoy hearing your comments and sharing your company.

 

In case you want one more excuse to celebrate a new year

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Just consider:

  1. New Year’s wasn’t always celebrated on January 1st. The earliest New Year festivities date back about 4,000 years. At that time, the people of ancient Babylon began their new year in what we call March.
  2. They would have an 11-day festival to acclaim the beginning of spring. It also celebrated that crops were being planted.
  3. What we use today is known is the Gregorian calendar, introduced 443 years ago by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 as a revised version of the Roman emperor Julian’s version. Gregory declared once and for all that January 1st should be New Year’s Day.
  4. Since then, most of the Western world marks the start of the year just like you and I do — on the first day of January.
  5. Still, it took almost 350 years for the world to get on board. Turkey didn’t make the switch until 1927. What was their objection?
  6. Ours is a solar new year, unlike the ones based on the moon – a lunar (Chinese) or lunisolar new year. The Islamic, Tamil, and Jewish calendars are prime examples of working around the moon. And India and Nepal are among nations that observe the event on a more fluid calendar, so we’re told.
  7. In Eastern Orthodox countries, January 1 is a religious holiday marking the circumcision of the Baby Jesus, seven days after his birth, rather than the beginning of a new calendar. The Orthodox religious calendar starts on September 1.
  8. Bulgaria, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Romania, Syria, and Turkey hold to a revised Julian calendar that observes January 1, but in other nations and locations where the Orthodox churches still adhere to the Julian calendar, including Georgia, Israel, Russia, the Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Ukraine, the civil new year is observed on January 1 while the religious feasts occur on January 14 Gregorian (which is January 1 Julian). Got that?
  9. Nobody celebrates a new fiscal year, do they? That date can vary, depending on the organization, but for the federal government, it runs from October 1 to September 30.
  10. And the income tax year, with its April 15 deadline, is a race to the finish line rather than a party.

There’s more, should you be interested. Like Ethiopia on September 11, with its 13-month calendar descending from the Egyptians.

Let’s leave it at that, for now. Instead, you may want to chill the bubbly.

This renovation project has been a huge learning curve for me

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

While I had once considered architecture as a career, I’m surprised how little I know about what makes a home work or, through the eyes of my coconspirators in this venture, how much a few imaginative strokes can transform an existing structure. Not all of them are budget-busters for folks in the lower half of the income bell curve, either.

It’s a long way from my ingrained tastes shaped by the clean 20th century lines of the Bauhaus school of design as well as my admired Shaker and Zen aesthetics. Historic New England home styles have come as a more recent appreciation along the lines of an “This Old House” public television series dimension. Still, after owning a traditional New Englander described in many of the earlier blog posts here, I had jokingly promised myself that the next house would be concrete, glass, and steel – nothing that would rot or need maintenance. At least, with the move to Eastport, it wasn’t in the pine box I had once jokingly expected at the end of my Dover sojourn.

At least I’m no longer left with a state of anxiety each time a nor’easter barrels our way. Despite all the asphalt shingles on the sidewalks and streets I had found after each of those, fortunately most of ours stayed in place. As we’ve since discovered, the biggest wonder was that our roof itself had withstood so much for so long in its condition.

But I’ve also been haunted by an “This Old House” series that followed a renovation of a Nantucket Island home, if I recall right, and the way it overran budget and led to its sale shortly afterward.

You would have thought we would have had our plan down pat long before the renovations began. Maybe it was a good thing we didn’t.

I mean, with three years of looking for a contractor, there was lots of time for planning. Except that we kept it in the nebulous dream stage rather than some hard decisions.

And then, once we found one, we had hoped to have the entire roof component buttoned up before last winter but had to settle on getting the back half done first and then tackling the front come springtime, as you’ve seen in these weekly posts. So here we are, more than a year later.

We’ve made some mistakes, of course. We spent money on CAD specifications in a design done through a local lumberyard only to find out what our contractor needed wasn’t what we thought he was looking for. Looking back, I’m not sure they could have delivered, considering what we were really facing and then revised as we went..

And the wood stove’s metal chimney didn’t have to go up next to the brick chimney, meaning that it had more bending than was necessary. Oops. At least it draws the smoke well.

On the other hand, much of the rest has been pretty straight-forward.

We even know that it will never, ever, really be finished.

Some final shots for the year in my writing life

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Sometimes my own writing goes beyond anything I can explain. For instance:

  • My Kinisi here at the Barn? Prompts, yes, if you want.
  • But firing them into full blast?
  • Much less igniting a conflagration?
  • We do what we can, each one on the edge.
  • I keep shooting what I think are some good ones at you, hoping someone will take it the next step.

Meanwhile, over the years:

  • I’ve attempted to walk in the Light daily, though fallen far short.
  • Ridden the uprising Spirit.
  • Found silent meditation crucial to writing poetry.
  • Uncovered 12 generations of my Hodgson ancestors.
  • Returned unknowingly to the faith of those ancestors.
  • Survived a shrinking profession to reach retirement.
  • Sought an incandescent language.
  • Still need a champion.
  • Never taught creative writing.
  • Found literary writing can resemble prayer.
  • Am perhaps best known for my Mixmaster approach to poetry and fiction. Or maybe it was my radical history of Dover along with uncovering an alternative Christianity in the Quaker metaphors of Light and Seed
  • Prefer a religion that relies on questions more than answers
  • Think we’re confused enough, already.
  • Store bath towels in a basket.
  • Wear reading glasses, more and more.
  • Have become uncomfortable around smokers.
  • Had hoped to reclaim my social activist witness, after years of journalistic neutrality.

Remember, you can find my works in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain them.

Things I hate about Christmas

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments
  1. House cleaning. It won’t stay that way long, no matter how hard we try.
  2. The frenetic schedule. Nothing else gets done in the month.
  3. Parking lots. Really packed parking lots. And all of the accompanying traffic.
  4. Retail music. Really!  You can’t escape it.
  5. Nobody’s that happy. Or relentlessly chipper. And don’t try to goad me into it. Or guilt me, either.
  6. Cardboard boxes. Stacks of empty ones take up too much space, there’s rarely one that fits your need, and then all the wrapped ones soon won’t be, meaning trash to haul out.
  7. Pine needles everywhere from all the garlands around the house. They really start dropping overnight.
  8. Piles of dirty dishes. We do eat well, though.
  9. Waiting for everyone to get up on Christmas morning. Unless I’m really asleep.
  10. Having to wait for the cookies to finally become fair game.

Technically, most of this is actually Advent. The real 12 Days of Christmas are another matter, something I’ve thoroughly come to appreciate.

 

Our winters from the perspective of neighboring St. Croix Island

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The French learned some harsh lessons in their attempt to establish their first North American settlement on a small island perhaps ten miles north of where I know live.

“It was difficult to know this country without having wintered there; for on arriving in summer everything is very pleasant on account of the woods, the beautiful landscapes, and the fine fishing for the many kinds of fish we found there,” Samuel Champlain wrote. “There are six months of winter in that country.”

I’ve previously contended that New England has a five- or six-month winter, so that passage offers me some confirmation.

As that winter dragged on, however, more than half of the men and boys developed what Champlain called a “mal de la terre,” or “land sickness” – scurvy, a disease caused by Vitamin C deficiency. It was common among sailors stuck on ships for months at a time, and many captains knew to keep citrus fruits on board, or beverages made from evergreen tree needles. During the European Age of Sail between 1500 and 1800, it was assumed that half of all crews would die of scurvy.

It wasn’t pretty.

“Their teeth barely held in place, and could be removed with the fingers without causing pain,” Champlain wrote of the horrific suffering the settlers endured over the winter of 1604-1605. “This excess flesh was often cut away, which caused them to bleed extensively from the mouth.”

Eat your apples and oranges and grapefruit, then, as well as lemons and limes.

Time to kick back and enjoy all the comforts of home

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

This Christmas is shaping up to be picture-perfect. Well, make that better than in previous years. Nobody will be sleeping on mattresses on the floor, as has usually been the case when the rest of the family or guests show up. But the still not remodeled kitchen lacks a full-size oven and, glory be, a dishwasher. Living here feels much less like we’re camping.

By taking the back wall up and turning the two small dormers in front into one long “dustpan” dormer, we gained more than 320 square feet of additional space in addition the parts where I’m now able to walk around fully upright. The two back bedrooms allow much more than a bed and dresser. Even though we still don’t have a second bathroom and laundry area, these are First World problems. Welcome to the 21st century, you old house, with your two centuries-plus already behind you.

You’ve earned some much overdue tender care.

You’ve really become part of the family.

Religion turns off readers, and yet …

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

That’s an advice given to authors, though it’s something I cannot avoid in my own novels and even poetry. Where else can we fully address the deepest values we hold?

Politics doesn’t seem to be working that way, for sure.

Is science fiction the best we can do for now when it comes to grappling with philosophical issues?

Still, I’ve dug in, ranging from the spirituality of yoga and Buddhism in Zen and Tibetan traditions to Quaker and Mennonite Christianity to Greek Orthodoxy as well as Indigenous strands.

I tackle this most directly in Light Seed Truth, an ebook that includes four earlier booklets investigating the revolutionary impact early Quakers found in applying the metaphors of Light, Seed, and Truth. To that I add examples of the power of metaphor in modern secular society, just for balance.

My goal is to raise readers’ awareness and sensitivity rather than convert anyway to a particular faith.

With religion, I want to hear how faith is experienced by different individuals, rather than what they speculate they should be experiencing.

The best mystics I’ve known have surprisingly practical and humorous.

~*~

You can find it and more in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain it.

Sounding so dated now

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

RETAIL THERAPY: used books or classical/jazz/folk CDs.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE HOTEL? To date, Omni, Providence, Rhode Island. Yes, over Boston, Chicago, and New York.

I’LL KNOW I HAVE IT MADE WHEN: I can rent a cottage by the sea or a mountain lake. Or I have grandchildren.

WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT PROJECT? Creating an author’s website and blog.

WHO WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO INVITE TO DINNER? My agent or publisher. If only I had one.

UPCOMING: Retirement.