Tag: Life

Care to boogie?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In my novel What’s Left, Cassia’s family turns an old church into a hot music center. It seemed like a natural extension from their restaurant.

Where do you go to hear live music?

~*~

Well, when an old church something like this came up for sale next door to their home, how could Cassia’s family resist? They weren’t about to turn it into a parking lot, either.

We don’t see love but what love does

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I mean, focusing on material goods!  very atypical for us, you and me, not philosophy or fine arts or even dramatic late fall weather we’re having we really show ourselves at our crassest but as long as I’m being confessional, let’s continue in the vein: last week, at our Guild meeting, we voted to accept the company’s latest final offer for our new contract, which means I’ll be getting a big retro check covering the wage difference from Jan. 1 till now

 

Glorious auditoriums in my life

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Often, the halls where I’ve encountered the most incredible musical performances have been pretty utilitarian. Some were cramped, others had questionable acoustics or sight lines, and many were bland to the eye. Something, quite simply, was missing.

The big auditorium at Indiana University comes to mind or the related high school where the weekly Saturday night operas were presented or my hometown’s Memorial Hall and National Cash Register Company’s venue. (NCR’s back in the day before naming rights.) Even Philharmonic Hall in Manhattan, as it was known then, or Chicago’s.

Here are ten I remember quite differently, with fondness.

  1. Music Hall, Cincinnati. The acoustics up in the second balcony, where I usually sat, were crisp and clear. The two-tier Italianate horseshoe balcony looked timeless. And the proscenium was encased in a lacework of small golden lights. Yes, it was a large hall and still is, even after some judicious trimming. Home of the Cincinnati Symphony, as well as the opera and May Festival. My favorite of all time.
  2. Musical Arts Center, Bloomington, Indiana. Designed primarily as an opera house, it has some of the best technical support for creative stagecraft in the New World, and acoustics to match. It’s a small theater by American standards, a plus for the singers and audience alike, and its three-tier balcony makes you feel like you’re onstage when it comes to observing the action. The hall’s still flexible for orchestral and ballet performances by the world-acclaimed Jacobs School of Music students and faculty and guests.
  3. Sanders Theater, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s like an indoor version of Shakespeare’s Globe, with plenty of glowing wood all around. It’s a small stage, although the Boston Symphony used to play there in its early days. For us, it’s the home of the Boston Revels’ Christmas productions, first and foremost.
  4. The Meyerhoff, Baltimore. Opened in 1982 in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, the hall is a delight that includes clean sight lines throughout the auditorium and wonderful spaces for audiences before, after, and during intermissions. When I lived just up the street, folks in the know were still lamenting the orchestra’s move from the Lyric Opera House a block away, but I never had an opportunity for comparison.
  5. Symphony Hall, Boston. For many, this is the ideal hall, rich in history. Two-thirds the size of Cincinnati’s, its acoustics are often praised, but I sense it’s a case of the sound onstage, where musicians can hear each other with ease, versus what’s heard in the audience. (Carnegie Hall in Manhattan is a similar situation.) I’m hoping to get back, maybe taking the train down for a Friday afternoon BSO concert.
  6. Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory, Boston.  Having undergone an expensive restoration, it’s a jewel of a historic concert hall. Just the right size for performers and audience alike.
  7. Severance Hall, Cleveland. It’s like being encased in pearls, the best I can explain it. The orchestra’s summer home, the Blossom Music Center, has a similar feel, except it’s in glowing wood and open on all sides – I’ve always heard the concerts while sitting on blankets on the sloping hillside.
  8. The Peristyle, Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. The open space is more like an Italian garden without the greens. The idea of attending concerts in an art museum leads to other memories, especially Dayton’s delightful hall with tapestries on the wall or Manchester, New Hampshire’s, before the additions.
  9. Akron Civic Theater, Ohio. A wonderful example of preserving an old movie house.
  10. Music Hall, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A small horse-shoe balcony type house built in 1878 for vaudeville and lovingly restored, it’s home to everything from live music and dance to lectures to classic movies and the Met’s Live-in-HD series.

~*~

Let me add honorable mentions to Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Faneuil Hall in Boston. I’ve been inside both and am impressed but have yet to hear a live performance in them.

 

Moving on in your life, hopefully to something better

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

In my novel What’s Left, Cassia’s father is from Davenport, Iowa. Maybe via Tibet, in a way. And later, Cassia makes her own move.

What’s your biggest relocation been from your own hometown?

~*~

Gyro with fries. Cassia’s father is a vegetarian when he arrives in the family, but you can be sure he never ate this before then. I prefer my fries on the side, rather than in the wrap, but it is an option.

A sampling of my favorite reporters

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

This post intended to focus on national, even international stars, but I quickly realized how many masters I’ve seen and even worked with the local level.

Here’s a mix of ten.

  1. Hub Meeker: fine arts reporter at the Dayton Journal Herald. I’ve mentioned editor Glenn Thompson before, and he had an eye for talent. Hub covered everything from architecture to opera to even the zoo with his State of the Arts column and daily reporting. His writing shaped much of my artistic sensibility when I was a teen, and I always wanted to have my own column like his.
  2. The Yakima Quartet: Their names slip away from me at the moment, and besides, I couldn’t pick just one over the others. We had attracted four hotshot young reporters who were aggressive and yet soon admired each other’s work. One was even honored one year as the best arts reporter and the best business reporter in the Northwest, beating out the pros in Seattle and Portland.
  3. Jim Gosney: Also in Yakima, he switched from sports, as I recall, and launched a daily column that profiled regular folks who made the Happy Valley a more interesting place to be. It was a harder assignment than you might assume, and he had a knack for it.
  4. David Broder: The Washington Post’s top political writer, he was deeply informed, clear, and a paragon of objective observation. I remember watching him stride tall and self-composed across our newsroom once, and unlike most of the other celebrity journalists, print and broadcast, who showed up with entourages, he was solo. That alone says tons.
  5. Richard L. Stout: Christian Science Monitor writer and author of the weekly “TRB from Washington” column, he was considered the dean of Washington reporters. His coverage of Watergate had an added twist, since he had earlier covered the Teapot Dome scandal. His strategy for the column was to find something to get mad about and then sit down on Wednesday and pursue it.
  6. Mike Royko: A product of the rough-and-tumble Chicago school of journalism, especially the independent City News Bureau, before becoming a columnist for the Chicago Daily News, the tabloid Sun-Times, and finally the Trib. He knew the streets and could be tough, despite his reputation as a humorist. He was also fiercely independent.
  7. Jimmy Breslin: At his best, as in his days at the Herald-Tribune, he was the epitome of the “new journalism” as a columnist who covered live news rather than reflecting on what others had reported. His career had its ups and downs.
  8. Ted Bingham: The opinion page editor of the Dayton Journal Herald, he also researched and wrote the bulk of its editorials. They were short and to the point. The ones I remember, though, were humorous, usually the bottom one of three or four on the left-hand side of the page. These often commented on news that hadn’t otherwise made it into the paper – say the return of the starlings to downtown or the manhole cover thieves in Karachi.
  9. Roger Talbot: He was a master at the carefully researched in-depth article, not that he couldn’t cover breaking news expertly, either. At the New Hampshire Sunday News, he often tackled a fat state agency or legislative report and dug up enough hot material to play big on the front page and then have the rest of the media chasing the rest of the week. It was kind of the approach that had made I.F. Stone famous on the national level a generation earlier.
  10. Jeanne Morris: Another S’News colleague, she was great at researching and pursuing an offbeat front page report that no one else would have come up with. The most creative, as far as I remember, was the one where she took one car to 20 state inspection stations to see how they compared. Somehow, she had to keep removing the new sticker and replacing it, a feat that still confounds me, before taking it to the next shop. Half passed the vehicle, and half failed it, for varying reasons. And then, for a baseline, she took it to the state police garage, where it was impounded for its numerous defects. Her report wound up saving old-car owners and inspectors a ton of grief.

~*~

Well, that’s a sampling. I could keep going on, but it’s your turn.

Who would you hail as a fine reporter?