Tag: Life

How can anyone ever read all of what’s pouring in?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

There’s just so much out there, in print and especially online, and it keeps proliferating daily, even hourly, and I don’t know about you, but I’m in the camp that finds it truly overwhelming.

Everywhere, each minute, make that second, we’re expanding outward, away, from any notion of a renaissance man, and woman, who could possibly be well informed on every facet of a civilized society.

Even in science – or maybe, especially in science – it’s become impossible to keep abreast of the flood.

Interdisciplinary collaboration has become more essential than ever, but also more elusive.

Is this leading toward disintegration?

Is this, in fact, the root of the reactionary backlash around the globe, not just the Trumpian cultists?

Yeah, the folks who rely on Fox TV biased “news” in the USA.

I look at the crises facing our children and grandchildren, and these are critical, but there are so many it’s mindboggling trying to decide where to pitch in taking a stand. Climate change, population explosion, racism, corrupt politics, the one percent and injustice, environmental protection, medical systems, education … Hey, I’m back to hippie era causes on steroids.

How are we supposed to preserve our sanity and still press toward a better future?

We still have to be informed, right? And thinking clearly?

Signs we’re reverting to ghost-town status

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The indicators started showing up by the last week of August but are inescapable now. Eastport’s locking up for the winter.

As evidence?

  1. The passenger ferry to Lubec has already been hauled out of the water and is up on props in the boatyard for annual maintenance.
  2. The Tides Institute Museum is closed for the season, with the Eastport Art Gallery set to do likewise at the end of the month.
  3. I trot down to Horn Run Brewing and find it closed today. Gotta check the new schedule. Not that I expected its popular deck to be open all year. And other restaurants have curbed back as well.
  4. Nobody’s out on the Breakwater.
  5. Rosie’s hot dog stand is closed and its sign thanks us for a good summer.
  6. I haven’t seen a super yacht for a month, much less tied up at the dock.
  7. Most of the out-of-state license plates are gone, along with the luxury car models. It’s mostly Maine and New Hampshire now, and soon it will be about all Maine.
  8. Well, there is a sole convertible stubbornly zipping about – but just one, with its driver bundled up.
  9. There just aren’t as many folks around, period. At least the dog walkers are holding up their end.
  10. There’s an uptick in the number of houses for sale as some Summer People realize they can’t keep up with another year. And the places are staying on the market longer.

Which door is the real one?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Don’t know about where you live, but in New England, the front door typically is rarely used.

That insight was confirmed when I was canvassing for the Census and we had to leave a notice behind when nobody was home. Often, the real door is the one at the rear of the house.

It’s a curiosity that reminds me of something I once read about Zen temples in Japan, which were initially copies of ones in China.

The Chinese loved symmetry, which the Japanese detested, and so when the imported designs were expanded, they grew to one side or the other. Many old New England houses also have many additions, most famously the connecting barn.

Well, for the record, our back door is where the action is, and it runs through a mud room addition from the kitchen.

Now I’m starting to think about trying to enter by the right door as a metaphor for life. Like maybe there’s a hidden key, even. The one others know about, but not you or me?

 

Hey, Zuckerbug, you there?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Looking at Facebook, too many ads. Getting harder to file through to the posts by people I know or sites I follow.

In the past, I had largely ignored FB, returning sporadically, but after moving up here, where it’s like a telephone party line, back when people had landline phones, I’m finding more reasons to check in.

But not everyone, by a long shot, is hanging on to hear the gossip.

Too many ads. And maybe too much chatter.

The return was also prompted in the past year by an opportunity to catch up on a host of classmates I’d lost contact with in my moves across the continent.

That part’s been helpful.

But I’m also encountering too many folks who haven’t posted anything in three or more years. Likely haven’t checked in since then, either.

Hello! Anyone home there?

Can’t tell. Too many ads.

What’s your take?

 

America’s largest cities in 1850

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The development of the West – meaning out to the Mississippi River, mostly – propels changes in the balance of population by 1850.

  1. New York (515,547) is without question the largest metropolis, boosted in part by commerce via the Erie Canal, transporting goods to and from the Great Lakes and Midwest.
  2. Baltimore (169,054) has leapt to second-place. The growing Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is a factor. The city takes advantage of being the closest Eastern Seaboard port to the Ohio Valley and its agricultural abundance.
  3. Boston (136,881). The textiles mills of New England have to be a factor in the city’s prosperity and position.
  4. Philadelphia (121,376). Its clout would be enhanced if its three suburbs in the Top 20 are tallied in, pushing it to second place.
  5. New Orleans (116,375). The nation’s center of gravity has shifted. Nearly as large is
  6. Cincinnati (115,435). Migrants from urban Germany make a difference.
  7. Brooklyn (96,838) is a thriving independent city just across the waters from booming Manhattan.
  8. St. Louis (77,860). Not just the gateway to the Far West, it’s also a center of urban German migrants.
  9. Spring Garden district, Pennsylvania (58,894). Adjacent to Philadelphia.
  10. Albany, New York (50,763) is active on the Erie Canal.

The next ten are also illuminating: 11, Northern Liberties district, Pennsylvania (47,223); 12, Kensington district, Pennsylvania (46,774); 13, Pittsburgh (46,601); 14, Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky (43,194); 15, Charleston, South Carolina (42,985); 16, Buffalo (42,261); 17, Providence, Rhode Island (41,513); 18, Washington, District of Columbia (40,001); 19, Newark, New Jersey (38,894); and Southwark district, Pennsylvania (38,799).

Altogether, six of the 20 largest cities are west of the Appalachians. Three of those are on the Ohio River. And, in contrast, New England has just two.