Tag: Memories

Some things I thought I’d take up in retirement but didn’t

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Looking back on my pre-retirement visions, I’m facing the fact that much of what I had anticipated has instead fallen by the wayside.

Here we go.

  1. Meditation: First thing in the morning, just like the ashram. Instead, I go pretty straight to the computer and start writing or revising. The clarity of those early hours is treasured for creativity, rather than the wee hours of my earlier years.
  2. Hatha yoga: Along with chanting, hymns, or even Bible study that I anticipated in the calm of early morning. Nope, none of these have even made into the afternoon or evening, either.
  3. Fasting, mauna observance, retreats: Again, this would have sprung from my ashram roots. Fasting had been a one-day-a-week routine – no food, rather a restricted diet. Mauna was a period of non-speaking, which could initially be very difficult before turning liberating and enhancing. The idea of getting away from it all for a week at a time definitely deserves renewed consideration.
  4. Tennis: I never have figured out the scoring, but there were a few friends who seemed willing to teach, if I ever had time, so, hey, why not? . Alas, fate intervened and they were no longer able once I was open.
  5. Bicycling: My original regular-exercise option, this was about to take off (pardon the pun) just about the time our younger daughter decided she wanted her long-neglected, high-quality wheels to join her in Greater Boston. Here, I had just paid to have it tuned up and ready, too, and even purchased a helmet and lock. Admittedly, all those gears – which we didn’t have back when I was a kid – were rather intimidating.
  6. Camping: I had purchased a tent and stored it in the loft of the barn, but when I finally pulled it down, it wouldn’t open – the weatherproofing had melted over the years.
  7. Hosting a monthly Poetry in the Meetinghouse series: There would have been a featured reader followed by an open reading.
  8. Travel: This fell away largely because of our budget but also because of the other things impinging on my time – the writing and revising, especially. Destinations would have included the annual Friends General Conference, writers’ conferences, Tanglewood concerts, as well as a return to the Pacific Northwest and then on to Alaska. There might also have been England, Ireland, Scotland, Alsace, and Switzerland, for genealogy. Italy, for opera and cuisine. Spain, Morocco, Japan, utter curiosity. Macedonia and Greece, retracing the trip my wife and elder daughter made a few years ago. More likely is visiting Quebec City, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia, all neighboring my current home.
  9. Boston weekends or midweek jaunts around New England: Again, mostly budget, even when it involved little more than an Amtrak senior-discount ticket. I could add visiting old friends around the country.
  10. A regular deep-reading routine: I am a booklover, after all, but am not checking off a book or two each week, much less one every day or two.

~*~

There are some other, more general, things I could add, such as taking up a social activist role after all those years of being stifled as a journalist, or specifics, such as getting serious about getting back to making and baking bread, as I did in the ashram, or forcing bulbs to bloom in the depth of winter.

And I likely won’t ever introduce my wife to the mountain laurels in full bloom along the Merrimack River at Newburyport, Massachusetts, or the springtime wonders of the Garden in the Woods in Framingham, west of Boston, now that we’re centering ourselves at the far eastern fringe of Maine.

One item especially amuses me – “second home (mountain lake or Maine island)?” The turns in our budget wound up ruling that out, but I am living on a Maine island now. You never know what might happen when you start sky-lining.

 

She was truly one of a kind

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In reflecting recently on the Quaker tradition of creating memorial minutes for “weighty Friends,” I was surprised that one example I had never posted was of another clerk of our Dover Meeting. She was struck down by a particularly virulent, fast-moving cancer, and it’s hard to me to see that nearly five years have gone by since her passing.

There’s much more that I could tell, but the approved minute will give you a good sense of her vibrant character.

Jean V. Blickensderfer

November 11, 1946 – June 16, 2017

Among Dover Friends, Jean was the flash of gold in the morning, a welcoming soul others naturally confided in, a faithful worker who eventually filled nearly every organizational position – from children’s teacher and treasurer, to co-clerk and finally presiding clerk.

Raised Unitarian-Universalist in Methuen, Massachusetts, she came to Friends in the early ‘80s after she and her first husband, Dean L. Davis, had settled in Eliot, Maine, and were seeking the right church for a family that included daughters Thaedra May and Sarah Joy. They were quickly entrenched among us.

Jean was twice widowed.

She married Dean the day after his graduation from the Maine Maritime Academy in 1967, and then managed their home during his long assignments at sea. During his interludes ashore, they built their own post-and-beam house on the banks of the Piscataqua River and could often be found boating, sometimes to visit other Quakers upstream, or on his motorcycle, which they rode to Meeting in good weather. He died in a freak automobile collision in 1992, an accident his wife and daughters survived unscathed.

In 1998 she married Del Blickensderfer and worked as his partner at Del’s Service Station until his passing of lupus in 2006.

Deeply grateful for the mentoring she received from seasoned Friends, Jean was a stickler for Quaker process and, over time, became the memory of the Meeting’s business itself. She sought to walk a line between holding her tongue and being direct, when needed. A witness to the movement of Christ in our midst, Jean’s infrequent vocal ministry could be powerful. Her skills as a professional typist assured the Meeting’s minutes were of archival quality and, combined with her business-school training, led to the Blue Books for committees and their clerks detailing their responsibilities. She was particularly fond of drawing on the Advices and Queries from London Yearly Meeting’s 1994 edition of Quaker Faith and Practice as guideposts for our own action. An avid knitter, she took comfort in seeing others do needlework during our business deliberations, their patience reflecting the work before us. In time, a midweek knitting circle became what she called a “wicked good” time of refreshment, nurture, and fellowship.

More pressing obligations had precluded her attending yearly meeting sessions, a “bucket list” item she resolved to achieve. All along, she warmly welcomed the wider world of Friends to Dover.

Other delights in her life were yoga, visiting with neighbors, shopping and dining with dear friends, walking the beach, doting on her Pomeranian Sumi, and especially being with her grandson Jonah. His living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, did not prevent her from accompanying much of his childhood and youth, from celebrating birthdays and holidays to attending his piano recitals to cheering him on in mountain bicycle races, whenever she could.

In all, her presence, generosity, and deep and lively spirit were a gift.

With loved ones at her bedside through the final days of her cancer, she passed at age 70, peace and grace abundant.

APPROVED by Dover Monthly Meeting July 16, 2017, Charles Cox, clerk

 ENDORSED by Dover Quarterly Meeting July 31, 2017, at North Sandwich, Erik Cleven, clerk

 

A few things I actually took up in retirement

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Most of these weren’t on my radar, back when I was planning.

  1. Singing in the bass line: On the eve of the big change, my wife the incredibly insightful gift-giver presented me with a choral workshop session with the Boston Revels. Though I could hold my line in Mennonite four-part, a cappella hymn-singing circles, I was intimidated – the Revels Christmas production’s chorus was one of the best in the city. This all-day event led to the formation of the organization’s amazing community chorus, Revelssingers, with me as a charter member. Other singing opportunities have included Dover’s annual Messiah Sing and a world-premiere for a music director’s 50th anniversary on the job.
  2. Swimming: Taking after her mother, our elder daughter (the next Christmas, I think) gifted me with an annual pass to Dover’s indoor pool. Again, I was intimidated but ventured forth, embarrassingly, truth be told, by how out of shape I was. The only swimming I’d done lately was in the ocean. Had I even been in a locker room more than once or twice after high school? But swimming those laps soon anchored my weekday routine, and I patiently worked up to a half-mile a day.
  3. Blogging: Again, credit our elder daughter, who suggested a blog when I was considering establishing a Web site. It started out modestly, but you can see where it’s led.
  4. Photography: As I realized the need for visual support for the blogging, digital photography soon followed. Back in high school, I had considered a career as an artist – and the protagonist in three of my novels is a photographer – so I now had a way of visually showing much of the way I see the world around me. The camera I’m now using, and the cell phone that will likely supplant it, are later gifts from the said Mother-Daughter duo.
  5. Spanish: My first Spanish teacher, back in high school, was great, and we became pretty proficient. Not so, the second. So I switched to French in college – a big mistake. They rather wiped each other out. Flash ahead and trying to communicate with visiting Quakers from Cuba. As I was thinking about a refresher course, the said daughter – a linguist by nature and training – suggested Duolingo, the free online program. Now my daily routine had a second anchor.
  6. New England Yearly Meeting Ministry and Counsel committee: Think of Yearly Meeting as an archdiocese, if you will, and ours covers all of New England, tending to about 5,000 Quakers. My work schedule had precluded my serving on M&C, a big committee with big responsibilities, requiring attendance at its retreat and full-day meetings through the year around the region. It’s also meant getting to know and work with some amazing members.
  7. DARLA: This informal fellowship of religious leaders in Dover, both clergy and laity, meets once a month, serving both as a support group for its members and as an information swap for their congregations. It also presents some community-wide events, including a Thanksgiving service that’s turned into a festival of choirs and readings. Again, I can tell you of some amazing folks I’ve come to admire as friends and colleagues.
  8. Dancing: I had planned on resuming New England Contras, now that I had my evenings free. The Greek dancing was what was new, thanks to the Dover Orthodox church’s annual festival. Well, that led into experiencing their worship and fellowship, too, even if it is quite a leap from my Quaker base.
  9. Reading the Bible straight-through: You can follow the experience and my reflections in the archives of my As Light Is Sown blog. What I came away with is nothing like what you’d hear from a Fundamentalist.
  10. Writers’ circles: The first was the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, before my retirement focus shifted away from the poetry and over to book-length fiction. Still, for the first several years I was active in the Granite State group’s meetings four times a year and other readings. Their schedule, unfortunately, clashed with Ministry and Counsel’s, and something had to give. The second was Writers’ Night Out, usually on the first Monday of the month, when many scribes of all sorts around the Granite State get together at any of ten or so locations to socialize. For me, it was in Portsmouth, just down the road from Dover. While some of the groups had pretty big agendas, even programs, our joy came in schmoozing and swapping information. It’s where I learned about Smashwords, for one thing, where my novels then appeared as ebooks.

Since moving to Eastport, hiking has also resurfaced. It’s taken a while to get back to this, but relocating to the wilds of Downeast Maine leaves me no excuses not to. I’m just not going to be back to the distances or speeds of my Boy Scout days, OK?

What new activities are you up to? Or perhaps hoping to engage?

Whatever happened to my silk scarves?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The first college I attended had an excellent writing program, and somehow most of the kids in it began wearing scarves as a kind of identity badge. I posted on that back in 2013, but am now reflecting on a later incarnation, once I had relocated to New England.

In the intervening years, I had discovered the glories of silk, a fabric I had been taught was expensive and somehow beyond our means. What I found instead was how marvelous it felt to the touch and how warm its lightness could be in winter here or how well it breathed in warmer weather. And then I picked up a few brightly patterned ones that were scarves. They were a stylish touch to my otherwise nearly Plain wardrobe and made a definite impression, often eliciting favorable comments.

But then, when I remarried, they vanished into my stepdaughters’ collections. Fine enough.

The other day, though, I flashed on the thought I could really use those again – they do hold the heat in cold weather – or cold rooms, especially.

So I’m on the lookout. This should be fun, picking up a couple or more.

Now, as for my necktie collection? When’s the last time I’ve even worn one? Will I ever wear one again?

 

Keeping a clean desktop?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Here’s one filing system I used, back when dealing with piles of paper:

File

Toss

Act

Delegate

Haven’t quite figured out an alternative for online “piles” yet. Guess they’re “files” on the screen that’s erroneously called a “desktop.”

Last time I looked, my laptop was sitting on the real desktop.

And I’ve still been getting by without a printer.

Any ideas on how to keep those incoming emails and texts from getting lost in the clutter?

 

A big comfy place for reading?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As we anticipate the renovations to our new old house, one of the big touches I realize I’m missing is a really comfy place to sit while reading. I’m admitting I never really had that in our old place, not until we got the lights above the pillows in bed, but even those were too hot for comfort and the lack of back support took a toll.

So here are the specifications:

  • The seating has to be comfy, for starters. A puffy chair with good backing heads the list, likely with an ottoman.
  • It has to have a small table or other service to hold a cup of coffee or glass of refreshment, plus pencils and maybe a notebook.
  • Lighting is crucial – my wife hates table lamps, at least the ones with lampshades, as well as floor lamps. I hate overhead lighting, in general. So I want something that brightens the page while making the space intimate. We’ll see what we come up with.

I’m assuming it will be in the parlor where the wood-fired stove will sit. The big question now is just, where, exactly they’ll fit.

~*~

I do wonder, by the way, why nobody sells dental chairs as home furniture. These days, they’re quite cozy and seem to contort themselves to everyone’s fit. Any ideas? I’m not sure they’re exactly what I envision for reading, but in front of that giant home screen? Or just for a snooze?

Looking at the closet

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

First off, I should explain that few old houses in New England actually have much by way of closets. So I’m actually talking today more about personal wardrobe and style.

One of my long-term planning notes was this, for my shift into retirement:

Focused look: new jeans (black/green/gray); sandals (fewer socks; also, they travel better); blazers for the pockets.

What actually emerged was quite different.

I shifted from denim jeans to tan cargo pants, for their pockets, especially.

Instead of my customary oxford shirts, I wore turtlenecks in winter, and Aloha shirts in summer. (I still largely avoid T-shirts.)

Instead of that blazer, I rely on a messenger bag to hold my reading glasses, cell phone, emergency cardiac prescription, choral music scores, and so on.

My style, such as it is, has emerged from yard sales, mostly. These days my focus is on wearing them till they give out while also downsizing. You’d be surprised how many compliments I get.

So much for one game plan

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I’ve been revisiting my earlier planning for retirement, I started to scold myself for not looking more carefully at finances. Then I remembered something I had anticipated but never noted: adding an overtime shift or two each month during my final five years of employment.

For years, management always seemed to have those openings, and the pay was good – time-and-a-half, often with a nighttime or weekend differential.

In the last five years, the kids would be on their own, for one thing. We would really build up our savings – by 25 to 50 percent, as I’m now calculating.

What happened instead was that the newspaper found itself increasingly financially strapped, to the point our pay was actually being cut. Officially, I was the copy desk chief, except that in the end there were no longer copy editors. They were all wearing other hats as positions consolidated. As for those overtime hours? We agreed to allow the hiring of part-timers.

So much for the big plan.

At least the stock market hadn’t crashed when my wife and I closed out our IRA to purchase the house in Maine.

How else do you manage your time?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

One of my pre-retirement exercises involved trying to envision a routine that would help me meet my dreams – or at least some ambitious goals. It meant considering how many hours a day and week I would devote to each segment of my life – what percentage of my time I’d devote to Quaker, to literary pursuits, to being outdoors, and so on.

This is what I came up with, though I have to confess it’s far from where I wound up.

  • Meditation, hatha, scripture reading: 1½ hours a day (except for Sunday, when it becomes Quaker Meeting).
  • Writing/revision/submissions: 3 hours a day.
  • Outdoors &/or household care (including gardening): 3 hours a day. (Note: These two might float, so that a trip to the mountains is balanced by a longer day keyboarding).
  • Reading & personal correspondence: 2 hours a day.
  • Cooking, cleanup, errands, dining: 3 hours a day.
  • Personal hygiene: ½ hour a day.
  • Social (dancing, concerts, plays, film, community affairs): 3 hours a day.

~*~

Putting it together on a daily clock led to this:

  • 5 a.m. rise, meditate, exercise (hatha or short walk), read Bible (break for coffee/light food – yogurt, fruit, toast).
  • 6:30 a.m. write & revise.
  • 9:30 a.m. outdoors &/or household care (bicycle ride, walk).
  • 12:30 p.m. lunch.
  • 1:00 p.m. nap.
  • 2 p.m. personal hygiene.
  • 2:30 p.m. reading/correspondence (including submissions?).
  • 4:30 p.m. errands, cooking, cleanup.
  • 7:30 p.m. social.
  • 10:30 p.m. sleep.

~*~

It was awfully regimented, even for someone used to “living on the clock,” as I had in the newsroom. Worse, it still didn’t fit everything in. I wondered about something more flexible, perhaps alternating a month of intense writing/revision with a month of other activity. Did I need to specify reading or rereading one novel and one other book each week? That sort of thing.

~*~

Arraying them over a full week led to this:

SUNDAY: Quaker, with visitation to other Meetings once a month. Family and friends in afternoon or visits to museums and galleries. Possibly an evening movie.

MONDAY: My normal disciplined schedule (see above).

TUESDAY: Normal disciplined schedule. Take the trash out.

WEDNESDAY: Option for travel, mountaineering, hiking, swimming, etc. (may actually float in the week, depending).

THURSDAY: Normal disciplined schedule.

FRIDAY: Normal disciplined schedule.

SATURDAY: A real weekend break, for a change. “Simmering” abed. Brunch. Opera broadcast. Weekend trips. A “date” night. Dance/concert/theater/party.

~*~

Let me repeat, that’s nothing like what actually emerged. If anything, I wound up spending too much time “up in my lair” at the keyboard, at least before moving to our new old house.

The new exercise, when I remember to apply it, has me waking up with a question: What do I WANT to do today?

Deciding I want to do certain chores or tasks, knowing how I’ll feel when they’re accomplished, is a much better approach, than performing them with a sense of duty or obligation.

Or I can decide I want to do something else more … and can put them off because I want to.

How do you decide to best spend your time? And suggestions for the rest of us?