Tag: Life

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.

Looking forward while looking back

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Somehow, each year here at the Red Barn has taken on a special spin, despite the merry-go-round sequence of postings, categories, themes, and tags. Or maybe because of that.

While I keep looking forward to “retirement” of some kind, new material for this blog hasn’t let up.

Last year, many of my recorded dreams became a regular presentation, but I’ve run out of those. Previously, prose-poems had their run. Newspaper Traditions are now far in antiquity. And many of my poems are available at my Thistle Finch blog for reading or download. Yet I’m living in a newer, much different, world, lucky me.

Many of this coming year’s postings are shaping up as once-a-week series.

Now that the house renovations are actually happening (Huzzah! Huzzah!), you’ll be seeing that progression on Saturdays. I mean, how many times do you get to watch an old house be torn apart and rebuilt while the residents are still within it? As we were or let me say are.

My week out on Penobscot Bay in a historic schooner provided enough text and photos for a series on Sunday mornings. For me, it’s still dreamy. Hope you see it that way, too.

With a presidential election coming up, I’m returning to a clearer understanding of what’s at stake based on the Federalist papers through excerpts you’ll be seeing on Thursdays. It was that or some childish and more current quips of my own. I see this as more principled.

As a break in my Quaking Dover book reflections, I’m turning to a series looking at what’s behind my published novels. See that in contrast to “what they’re about.” That series of posts is set for Fridays.

Add to that is a series on Mondays, looking at authors who have influenced me one way or another. They’re not necessarily my “favorites,” but definitely ones I want to revisit in my years ahead.

Meanwhile, the Tuesday Tendrils, ten items about whatever strikes my fancy, will continue, as will the Sunday night Kinisi.

I promise you these posts will encompass another full year. Please stop by often, and leave comments, especially. I still think your contributions are the best part.

Happy New Year, dear readers.

A few things I’m grateful for in the past year

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. A second presence in the house year-‘round. Plus our guests.
  2. Seeing the home renovations finally under way. And how.
  3. My maiden voyage in a ship overnight. As you’ll be seeing.
  4. A steady supply of real tomatoes, once they started arriving at the beginning of September, thanks to a serious, raised-bed garden already featured here at the Red Barn.
  5. Our new choral director. We may be a small community, but there’s some deep talent.
  6. The resurrected film society. The showings are followed by some serious discussion into the wee hours.
  7. Contradances, too, both here in Eastport and at the Common Ground Fair.
  8. My appearances resulting from Quaking Dover. You can still find some of them online.
  9. Scallops in season. (And local blueberries, cranberries, lobsters, and crab.)
  10. All the eagles I observed during the alewives’ run and additional encounters after. Always inspiring.

Like those Christmas shopping receipts piling up

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Now that our house renovation has begun in earnest (you’ll be reading about that in upcoming posts), the delivery order invoices are creating a file.

I do wonder if I’ll be able to make sense of them at some future time. They’re more cryptic than many of my poems.

Consider “¾ T&G Advantech 4×8.” What? That’s tongue-and-groove plywood. Forget the price, per unit or all together. They do make those martinis in Manhattan look cheap. Not that I’m going there.