Tag: Life

Losing a reclusive neighbor we never really met

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Moving to a new community three years ago meant meeting new neighbors, and Eastport, as we’ve found, can be a friendly place, even for us who are “from away.”

But one of our abutting neighbors was very-hard-of-hearing, as my wife discovered in attempting to talk to her, and ignored my attempts of waving in greeting. In many ways, she resembled my late asocial mother-in-law, not only physically but also in a heavy cigarette habit. Don’t know if she rolled her own, though. Still, she seemed to relish her independence and had a support system that included a few handymen I could approach with problems to address. Which they did.

We did worry about her occasional drives to the grocery or doctor or wherever. She could barely see over the steering wheel while puffing away, for one thing. And her backing out of the driveway did appear questionable. Still, she eventually returned home, apparently unscathed. I did see her one day in the IGA parking lot receiving a lot of help packing her trunk with her purchases.

I did wonder about her living in a big house all by herself, though that’s not uncommon in a town that’s largely elderly.

So flash forward to a day before what was left of Hurricane Lee was to hit town and I looked out the kitchen-sink window to see a police officer nosing about, checking her car, knocking on her door (and receiving no answer). No surprise there, her lawn-mowing and snow-removing crews got much the same.

Still, he was persistent, making repeated calls from his cruiser after trying all doors and walking around the house.

The next thing I knew, an hour or two later, was a white glove through her apple trees and the black SUV before the blanketed gurney came into focus.

Even before the obituary, an online search gleaned details that she had been born in Eastport to the manager of the local Newberry’s store and, when it closed, moved by stages to Upstate New York, and then, after college, to San Francisco before the Summer of Love and a career in banking.

And then, in retirement, she returned to her roots – from the City on the Bay, as we say, to the City in the Bay.

Her maternal side ran back to a family of Loyalists who fled to St. Andrews, a neighboring community in New Brunswick, before relocating to Eastport early on, while her paternal line was Pennsylvania Dutch by way of Virginia.

The family’s eventual obituary adds details.

~*~

In the aftermath, masked family and friends have been working steadily over two weeks to collect bags of trash and purge the house, including a colony or two of rats. (The rodents, it turns out, are well established in our end of town today – one more challenge to address.)

This also raises the question of just how much I leave to others after my own passing, and how much I need to clear out before then.

In the meantime, other questions loom, including the meaning of life for each of us.

We do wonder who will be living there next – hopefully not one more Airbnb but a real family with kids.

Onward! As I like to say.

Not that I wouldn’t love hearing the rest of her life story.

Sometimes I’m accused of acting squirrely

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Back in New Hampshire, I was often engaged in a losing battle with squirrels. We had them for a while in the wall of the house and in the bay window, found they’d chewed into the attic through the flashing around the chimney, and were never able to eradicate them from the Red Barn, where they pretty much devoured a 20-foot strip of crown molding. They were always digging up bulbs or taking chunks out fruits and vegetables in our gardens.

At least we eventually got a birdfeeder that would send them falling off, an advance that left us endlessly amused, especially when we noticed the obsessed critter as a new kid on the block.

One good friend, an avid gardener, aptly dubbed them tree-climbing rats with big tails.

Here are a few related facts.

  1. They eat their own body weight every week, typically 1½ pounds.
  2. They can find food buried under a foot of snow or, for males, smell a female in heat a mile away.
  3. Their front teeth never stop growing, even when they eat right through wood.
  4. They can climb about anything. Yes, metal poles are no problem. Plus they can rotate their front feet 180 degrees.
  5. To elude predators, they run in sharp zigzags. They also have a way of moving to the side of a tree trunk opposite the side of a human, keeping themselves out of sight.
  6. They can leap ten times their body length. But not quite that much straight up, which I think is only five lengths.
  7. They can fall 30 meters without injury and run sprints at 20 miles an hour.
  8. They can travel as much as 100 miles in a day. So much for all those Havahart trap runs I took across the state line, just to add a river between us and the liberated rodent.
  9. By chewing electrical wiring in the walls and attic, they’re a major cause of house fires, perhaps 30,000 a year globally. They’re also responsible for an estimated 20 percent of electrical power outages, including knocking out entire transformers and leaving towns in the dark.
  10. Chipmunks are a kind of small squirrel with a prominent stripe rather than a big fluffy tail. They may be cute, but they may be the most destructive of all of their kin.

At least we don’t notice them around our current home on an island in Maine. Instead, we have deer.

Various lifestyles I’ve lived

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t have selfies through most of it. Most of those shots would have no doubt been embarrassing now.

So here’s how my life’s shaken out in terms of lifestyles.

  1. Straight ‘50s middle class: Growing up in the Midwest.
  2. Hippie: From college to Upstate New York and various moves thereafter, including my first marriage to an emerging visual artist. Well, this does fuel my novels Daffodil Uprising, Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, and Subway Visions.
  3. Monastic: The rogue yoga ashram in the Pocono mountains. See my novel Yoga Bootcamp.
  4. Ascetic: In many ways, this was still hippie as I lived in a loft in a small downtown in a place resembling what I’ve called Prairie Depot.
  5. And back-to-the earth: The next move was a return to my college, this time as a research associate position before leaping on to the interior Pacific Northwest, one with my personal life filled with growth as a published poet, a shift to Quaker spiritual practice, and immersion in backwoods and wilderness wonder. These inspire my novels Nearly Canaan and The Secret Side of Jaya.
  6. William Morris: Steel mill region in what one called the Near East, aka the Rust Belt. Included a divorce and rebound. Hometown News arises in that experience.
  7. Nearly Plain Quaker slash Muppie: The Mennonite Urban Professionals I was hanging out with in Baltimore were the less expensive version of Yuppies. Living in a federal-style brick rowhouse in the Bolton Hill neighborhood was the culmination of my big-city dreams. During the week, I was often on the road with a company car and expense account. This was a rich mix for me, a time of much personal growth, ending in a self-gifted sabbatical year hunkered down in a suburb in which I drafted early versions of much of my fiction.
  8. Yuppieville on the Hill: Relocating to New Hampshire, I wound up living in a complex where I rented a small townhouse. Back in the working ranks rather than management, I was freed from long unpaid overtime hours and the neckties and suits of my earlier professional situations. Contradancing, especially, steeped me in Boston, an hour to the south, while I immersed my personal writing in poetry circles. My love life had many ups and downs.
  9. City farmer: Remarriage prompted my move to the New Hampshire Seacoast, where we bought an old house within easy walking distance of downtown and the Quaker Meeting. That “farmer” label actually befits my spouse, the avid gardener. The property also had the small carriage house you know as my Red Barn. Retirement included serious choral singer and daily swimmer roles.
  10. Island author: We needed to downsize, which led to the remote fishing village with a lively arts scene you’ve been reading about here.

Pumpkins are no longer just a Halloween and Thanksgiving thing

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

At least in New England, pumpkins have become a ubiquitous autumn flavoring, from bread and doughnuts to muffins and classic cheesecakes and pies. I still balk at beer.

Here are some more facts to chew on:

  1. They’re actually fruits, though I’m glad they don’t grow on trees. And, yes, they’re technically also vegetables, something they share in common with watermelons.
  2. Each pumpkin contains about 500 seeds. For the record, many birds love those. Roasted, for humans, they’re low in calories and rich in iron.
  3. Some varieties can grow 50 pounds a day.
  4. Every part of a pumpkin is edible, including the blossoms – well, they share that with other squashes.
  5. As pie, pumpkin is America’s favorite Thanksgiving dessert.
  6. For the record, small sugar squashes are superior in taste to pumpkins for making those pies or also soups.
  7. The orange color comes from the same chemical that gives carrots and sweet potatoes their distinctive look. It’s good for Vitamin A, which in turn aids eye and skin health and supports your immune system.
  8. The first Jack o’ Lanterns weren’t carved from pumpkins but rather turnips. The practice arises in an Irish tradition regarding someone who tried to get the Devil to cover his bar tab and failed. Irish emigrants to America found the pumpkin superior to a turnip for those carvings.
  9. Illinois produces more than twice as many pumpkins as its nearest rival in the USA.
  10. The heaviest pumpkin grown in America was by Steve Geddes of New Hampshire in 2018 – a 2,528-pound monster.

 

The one place I’ve never wanted to live was the suburbs

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I love big cities, even have a certificate in Urban Studies, but can’t afford them, not for long.

Internet, at least, allows me some important virtual connections that way, not that it includes strolling into ethnic restaurants or great museums.

On the other hand, I’m living in a place others consider ideal for a vacation.

And for me, it’s an ideal writer’s retreat or de facto arts colony.

The ability to walk to so much of what I want in daily life is a huge consideration.

Time in the creation of poetry and much else

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Robert Bly once said that to write a line of poetry requires two hours. Not so much for the actual writing.  Not even for the inspiration. Though certainly for the revision.  As well as compression and redistillation. And more revision.

His estimate, to me, seems quite optimistic.

I’m thinking it can be applied to many more examples of where human creative action is involved, too.

Go ahead, name one where you wish you had more time for the project.

Now for Machias

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The governmental seat for sprawling Washington County is the town of Machias, or “bad little falls” in the river where it meets an arm of the Atlantic. Well, others have suggested the Passamaquoddy term would be more accurately rendered as “nasty” or something I suspect is much worse. From what I’ve seen, going over the cataract at the tidal line in a canoe or any other kind of boat would have been fatal. Not that I want to tempt anyone to prove me wrong, like those who have actually gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

That said, let’s look at some more facts about the town and its neighboring East Machias, Machiasport, and related neighborhoods.

Centre Street Congregational Church, erected in 1836.

~*~

  1. It’s pronounced “maaah-chEYE-us,” the central syllable running along the lines of a hardened SHY.
  2. Washington Academy in East Machias is not only among the oldest boarding schools in the country, but thanks to publicly-funded tuition students from neighboring towns, it’s also the largest high school in the county. It does attract an elite from abroad. Go Raiders.
  3. The state university branch campus is often ridiculed but definitely working toward an upgrade.
  4. An initial English attempt at settlement in 1633 was rebuffed by a French attack, creating a gap of more than 120 years.
  5. Machias is the birthplace of the U.S. Navy, and its inaugural victory was won, in part, with pitchforks. I’m not kidding. Look it up. I’ll even suggest it as a plot for a comic opera. Notably, Passamaquoddy Natives were instrumental on the colonists’ side.
  6. It briefly flourished as a lumber exporting center in the late 1800s.
  7. ATV riders will find a great entry to the Downeast Sunrise Trail here. The path follows an old railroad line.
  8. The flea market atop the causeway on U.S. 1 can be delightful, especially Earle’s fresh seafood truck toward weekends. I do have to wonder how the reconstruction of that crossing will affect tradition.
  9. Its emergency room and hospital are often favored over those in Calais. I won’t get into the details.
  10. We do love the general store and natural foods emporium. As for the tiny movie theater? Still on our to-do list. Best wishes.

 

As I wrote to somebody, somewhere

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

“Gimmicks” is, of course, a loaded word, pejorative, “cheap tricks,” say in contrast to “devices” or structural support or a Greek chorus or some such. In Vonnegut’s day, his repeated quips made him hip, sassy, cool, droll, fun to read, on the same shelf as supercharged Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson. They were never dull, archly serious, overtly pedantic. Oh, maybe strike the last item, in retrospect. But somehow we always wanted another hit. I don’t mean that in the best-seller sense. No, that would be a sell-out. (Maybe that’s the crux of the issue you’re raising.)

As much as I loved Vonnegut’s work, especially Rosewater, I’m surprised how little I remember all these years later, apart from the asterisk, just don’t ask me which novel that punctuated.

By the way, I am taken with the ideal of a short novel, though obtaining that can be elusive.

One facet to consider is the way Vonnegut spoke from the Midwest, a region largely ignored or overlooked in American literature, in contrast to New York City mostly Manhattan but rarely Queens or the Bronx. That in itself was a major accomplishment, even if it was from his firehouse on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. So it goes.

Well, his father did run a hardware store and had to sell, uh, useful gimmicks. Drain stoppers, screws, nuts, hammers. (Bang, bang, expletive.)

It is amazing how much “bad writing” fills “great literature,” or even the New York Times Magazine, as one of my ambitious writing teachers led us to see. (He, too, had his own addiction to cool as in gimmicks.)

One question you stir up is how much a piece works for the time when it’s published and how much will still work (function) in later eras? And why?

What did your daughter think of the book, anyway?

The Pine Tree State was a shipbuilding mecca

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

You wouldn’t believe how many incredible seagoing vessels were built in the Pine Tree State. Maybe it’s because we have thousands of miles of coastline and tons of trees.

Just consider:

  1. The first ship built in Maine was at the failing Popham colony in the winter of 1607-1608. Where did they even get the sails? Yet the pinnace, the Virginia of Sagadhoc, was not only the first ocean-going ship built by English in the New World, but it returned to Jamestown the following year.
  2. In colonial days, the tallest, straightest trees were set aside as King’s Pines, reserved for the masts of the Royal Navy. Conflicts with the French kept many of them from being harvested before the American Revolution.
  3. From the 1830s to 1890s, Maine built more ships than any other state. More than 20,000 ships were launched from Maine shores, many from impromptu shipyards built along tidal rivers.
  4. Bath, with more than 22 shipyards at one time, was arguably the center of action. The town isn’t far from the former Popham colony, where the first ship had been built.
  5. During the Civil War, Confederate cruisers captured more than 100 Maine-built or Maine-owned vessels.  Coastal forts built during the war included Gorges at Portland, Popham at Phippsburg, and Knox near Bucksport.
  6. In 1862 the screw sloop-of-war U.S.S. Kearsarge built at Kittery sank the C.S.S. Alabama in a crucial naval battle.
  7. Maine accounted for 70 percent of the ships, barks, and barkentines built in the U.S. between 1870 and 1899. On the East Coast it also could claim to have built half of the three-mast schooners, 71 percent of the four-mast schooners, 95 percent of the five-mast schooners, and 90 percent of the six-mast schooners. I’m guessing a lot of those tall, straight pines could still be found.
  8. At one time, tiny Shackford Cove here in Eastport had four boatyards. And nearby Pembroke was also prolific.
  9. The shift to steel vessels largely decimated the yards building wooden ships, which capitalized on the state’s deep forests. Unlike most of the state, the shipyards at Bath, Kittery, South Portland, Woolwich, and East Boothbay successfully converted to metal at the end of the 1800s. 
  10. Today the state has an estimated 200 boatbuilding firms, most of the small and working with composites like fiberglass, laminated wood, and resin-based composites.

 

I’ll be missing the ship commissioning in town

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s a big deal, I’m told, and will bring a flock of bigwigs to our tiny but fair city. We got a taste of U.S. Navy presence over July 4th, but this is more uppity.

A state-of-the-art trimaran hulled stealth vessel of war, the USS Augusta (LCS-34), will ceremonially go into service. I guess it’s like a grand opening celebration.

Since the independence-class littoral combat ship is named for the city in Maine, the second vessel to carry that distinction, the Navy wanted to uphold a tradition of performing the ritual within the state being honored.

The event’s not to be confused with the christening, which happened with a shattering champagne bottle across the bow or some equivalent in December last year in Mobile, Alabama. Nor is it to be confused with the launching, May 23 last year.

So instead of witnessing the infusion of three thousand guests to Eastport for the day, I’ll be out on the waters of Penobscot Bay, two-plus hours to our west, sailing and sleeping in the oldest active two-masted schooner. Definitely more my speed.

Given the two first-time experiences before me, I think I’ve made the right choice, not that the other was an option at the time I made my reservation.

Isn’t that so emblematic of life?