Tag: Midwest

Carpooling

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Bob Stratton tells of driving home from work in Lordstown when a thunderstorm rolled up:

“One of the fellas in the car said, ‘Hey, the car behind us is sure coming comin’ up fast with its brights on.’

“It was no car. It was rolling lightnin’ that hit us.”

They drove on to a diner. “I smell something singed,” the waitress said.

“If that’s all it is, we’re lucky,” they laughed, and then told her what had happened.

Several weeks later, stopping there during another storm, the waitress was now telling them their story.

“You must not recognize us,” they laughed. “We’re the fellas it happened to.”

Inside Charles F. Kettering’s mind

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The prolific inventor, entrepreneur, and civic influence Charles F. Kettering was still alive in the Dayton community when I was an aspiring chemist in my youth.

My career in science never materialized, but his influence as an inspired ideal of leadership remains.

You may recognize the name from the famed Sloan-Kettering cancer research hospital in Manhattan or from the city in southwest Ohio named in his honor. He also led the research teams that invented the electric cash register, the automobile electrical self-starter, and no-knock gasoline. Other work made the diesel engine practicable as well as the refrigerator and, in time, air conditioning. In all, he had 186 patents, second to fellow Ohioan Thomas Edison. He was a founder of Delco (Dayton Electrical Laboratory Company) and from 1920 to 1947 was head of research for General Motors.

As a power in the new General Motors corporation, he aligned with management pioneer Alfred Sloan – as in that Sloan-Kettering Hospital in Manhattan,.

Let me repeat, there’s even a city named in his honor.

Today we have another Double Tendrils.

Get ready to know him better. Let’s start with his perspectives on the creative process and problem-solving, especially as they apply to engineering and invention.  Here’s what he said:

  1. If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.
  2. I don’t want men of experience working for me. The experienced man is always telling me why something can’t be done. The fellow who has not had any experience is so dumb he doesn’t know a thing can’t be done – and he goes ahead and does it. … The person who doesn’t know something can’t be done will often find a way to go ahead and do it.
  3. Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success. … 99 percent of success is built on failure.
  4. An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
  5. Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need. … A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.
  6. All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise, we would never have anything new.
  7. A problem thoroughly understood is always fairly simple. Found your opinions on facts, not prejudices. We know too many things that are not true.
  8. Research means that you don’t know, but are willing to find out.
  9. We work day after day, not to finish things; but to make the future better … because we will spend the rest of our lives there.
  10. If I want to stop a research program, I can always do it by getting a few experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it was a fool thing to try in the first place.
  11. When I was research head of General Motors and wanted a problem solved, I’d place a table outside the meeting room with a sign: “Leave slide rules here.” If I didn’t do that, I’d find someone reaching for his slide rule. Then he’d be on his feet saying, “Boss, you can’t do it.”

And now for his perspective on life itself.

  1. There is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything.
  2. The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
  3. If you’re doing something the same way you have been doing it for ten years, the chances are you are doing it wrong.
  4. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.
  5. My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.
  6. If I have had any success, it’s due to luck, but I notice the harder I work, the luckier I get.
  7. The whole fun of living is trying to make something better.
  8. No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.
  9. You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
  10. Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.

He really was one who made America great.

Hello, readers!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to announce that my lineup of ebooks is available as part of a promotion on Smashwords for the month of July as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale. This is a chance to get my novels, poetry collections, and Quaker volumes, along with volumes from many other indy authors, at a discount so you can get right to reading. Some of mine are even free, as you’ll see.

The sale begins today, so save the link:
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/

Please share this promo with friends and family. You can even forward the news to the avid readers in your life.

Thank you for your help and support.

And happy summer reading!

It’s a heavy awareness to carry, but it’s one I’ve shared 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Indiana sometimes shows up as a symbolic state. It’s not just a “crossroads of America,” as it likes to tout itself, a blending of North and South or balancing East versus West. It’s an anomaly even in the Midwest, where it’s the only state not bearing an Indigenous name yet it’s named in supposed homage to the Original Peoples – INDIAN-a.

With a capital called INDIAN-apolis. Or Naptown, as it’s known in other parts of the state.

Not that there are any tribes remaining within its boundaries.

It’s not as industrial as Ohio or Illinois nor as agricultural as, say, Iowa or Minnesota – feel free to counter that with hard data, I’m just running on gut feeling here.

And just what is a Hoosier, anyway? There are theories, but it’s certainly not like a buckeye or hawkeye or badger or the Bluegrass State bordering its south or Prairie State on its west or Great Lakes State on its north. You can get a picture in your mind with those.

In short, it rather strives to appear just average, or maybe a level just below. Somehow, that’s what fuels its role as a symbol of America itself, especially the Bread Basket sprawling largely westward, even though it’s rarely in the spotlight, except for Indy 500 week, and even that reflects an earlier glory.

That wasn’t always the case, though. The place gave birth to some leftist progressives over the years as well as some vital inventors. It also gave us the likes of journalist Ernie Pyle, jazz lyricist Hoagie Carmichael, actor James Dean, radio storyteller Jean Shepherd, basketball great Larry Bird, rocker John Mellencamp, late-night host David Letterman. But no U.S. president.

Early on, it had a heavy Southern influence, especially as Quaker families fled the slaveholding economy of North Carolina, as I learned after taking up genealogy and uncovering my roots.

It also has some distinctly different regions, including the once dominant steelmaking crescent along Lake Michigan adjacent to Chicago; the hardscrabble rolling forests and quarries of southern Indiana; and the flat agricultural belt in the middle.

I got to know it first by family camping trips and Boy Scout overnight hiking excursions. Yes, in the southern tracts of the state. We also had journeys when my great-grandmother decided to visit from Missouri or central Illinois; her son and his wife lived in a dreadful corner of Indianapolis and served as the relay point. Later, I finished college, again in the rustic south, and returned four years after as a political science research associate.

I must admit my angst at what’s been happening politically and socially, even though the Indianapolis Star was always a pretty dreadful archconservative voice, proof for me that “liberal” journalism has always been in the minority.

~*~

Not that the state hasn’t had an artistic presence. Just think of the artist Robert Indiana of the iconic LOVE image (born in New Castle).

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut nailed the state for me, though other writers of note include Booth Tarkington, Theodore Dreiser, Ward Just, New Yorker regular Janet Flanner (from Paris), and young-adult superstar John Green. The poets Clayton Eshelman, with his collection Indiana, and Etheridge Knight also have had strong careers.

For my part, my novels Daffodil Uprising and What’s Left are both based in an imaginative reworking of Bloomington – I do play with geography, making the Ohio River a lot closer to Indianapolis, for one thing. My novel Hometown News could also be placed in the upper half of the state, though its setting is more generalized.

My poetry chapbook Leonard Springs definitely reflects the cave country around Bloomington.

I anticipated remaining there much longer than I did, but fate intervened. And after that, I’ve never been back, except in my memories.

 

Pick up your free copy now

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Celebrity writer Tom Wolfe lamented that nobody had written the big hippie novel, something akin to the Great American Novel, but he was wrong. I’ve said so in some previous postings here.

For my part, let me invite you to Daffodil, Indiana, as its tranquil – some might even say dopy – campus goes radical. No outside agitators are needed in the face of the ongoing repression. The Revolution of Peace & Love is its own calling.

Daffodil Uprising is one of five novels I’m making available to you for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale. The ebook is available to you in the platform of your choice.

Think of this as my Christmas present to you. Or, as we used to say, If it feels good, do it!

For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.

The making of a hippie

In the revisions, the plot of our shooter’s college years ominously thickened

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes, in writing, at least, starting at the end and moving forward is the way to go. Now that I had What’s Left as the ending of my hippie series, I could revise the earlier books to provide a more uniform development. I had hoped the process would involve simple tweaks.

I was wrong. A thorough overhaul was ahead.

Crucially, Cassia gave me a clearer idea of her father, the aspiring photographer. And in filling him out in the revisions, he went from being known simply as DL to Kenzie, to conform with What’s Left as well as present a more substantial figure.

She had also grown up at the edge of the campus where he had come to study. (Just as I had.) In my return to the university as a research associate, I lived at the far fringe of the college town and saw faces of the community that were quite different from my undergrad experiences.

Some of these played into her story, What’s Left, but others were woven into the transformation of his undergraduate years, what would emerge as Daffodil Uprising rather than Sunrise.

This time, it was more character-driven rather than action.

It’s also darker, including an ominous air and an admission that the hippie movement was often drab rather than psychedelic. Drugs and sex could have serious downsides, and Vietnam weighed heavily on the spirit.

Yes, Bloomington was a gloomier place than I had wanted to paint it, but now, thanks to Cassia, I could acknowledge Gothic and tragic sides – even a paranormal streak.

The plot was restructured into a full four-year chronology, and the hippiedelic excesses, as well as Kenzie’s situation of being a reincarnated Tibetan monk, were toned down or erased.

Age differences, from freshmen to seniors, took importance in the nurture of a student community. And there were significant new characters, including Lee Madbury, named after a New Hampshire highway exit sign.

The college dorm of the first half of the book was loosely modeled on the Men’s Residence Center, which was suffering from neglect on high. I am happy to see via Internet that what I call Mulberry Row in the book has been renovated into the Ralph L. Collins Living-Learning Center, one that’s not all males, either. Sometimes hard reality follows the dreams of fiction.

In moving the second half of the book more off-campus, I imported a large and once-impressive Victorian apartment house from my upstate New York hippie experience after I had graduated. Instead of having the Susquehanna (as well as the Upper Mississippi from yet another one of my personal relocations) just a block or so away, we now have the Ohio River. The distances do create a bit of a joke for folks closer to the action.

I originally thought Daffodil was about hippies. It’s really about the rise of the modern mega-university. David and Goliath with a dash of counter-culture in the face of the military-industrial complex. Really sexy stuff, right? Except that our kids and grandkids are burdened with huge debts in the aftermath of seeking its credentials. I’m thinking of it more as tragedy, with the focus essentially on Cassia’s future father, lost as he was. It might even be seen as a critique of the hippie outbreak. And did my failed engagement a decade and a half later also seep into the story? I was now looking at these events about a half a century later.

~*~

Cassia also gave me a clearer understanding of her aunt, Nita, who had functioned as guardian angel for her father in the campus years. In the revisions, Nita becomes a more central thread through the entire series.

And, thanks to What’s Left, Cassia was freed to comment on her father’s college years life. Why not? She had the advantage that looking back that history allows.

~*~

Cassia even had me adding subtitles to my novels. They’re commonly used for nonfiction, but somehow rarely for fiction. Well, why not? Adding “the making of a hippie” does give a browser (meaning a human rather than an online device) a clearer idea of what might be inside the covers. Should I have used that for the title, rather than what I did?

I do like the colorful batik flowerbed by MsMaya that now adorns the cover, even if I miss the bold single daffodil of the earlier version. To me, it more aptly conveys a sense of the era.

Daffodil The revised story now carries more heft and is, to my eyes, something of a baroque book.

Well, if Kerouac thought his experiences were remarkable, why shouldn’t I, looking at my own? And he did write in big bursts that released a lot of pent-up energy.

Finally, I turned the camera on the newsroom

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My novel about small-market journalism originated as an experiment on my first PC, an off-brand back in the days before hard drives or the Internet. In this case, I decided to build a book as a series of variations on a theme relying on a template chapter that I then copied and pasted for development. Set in a newsroom, each day was the next day’s edition but sampled months down the road. Some of you may think of the movie Groundhog Day, but that was still seven years in the future. The key to the book’s development was a set of seemingly random search-and-replace possibilities I then ran through the manuscript – on both of the 5.25-inch floppy disks that were required for the full book. Other variations required physical input, one by one. Either way, think of Mad Libs with seemingly random repetitions popping up like loose threads through the entire tale.

The basis, of course, was a composite of several of the newspapers where I had worked. By extension, it could also represent offices anywhere, but I found myself thinking about how little we usually know about our coworkers. Often, it doesn’t go much deeper than a phrase they repeat all the time or a piece of their favorite clothing or some annoying habit they have. It was enough to sketch each of them through the rounds of the book.

And then I put it aside to season before tackling it again.

When I returned afresh, I had to admit that the variations were insufficient. The loops were, uh, loopy. By then, the revision was turning into a kind of paint-by-numbers to flesh out the bones.

The tale still needed more work. So much for my pioneering experiment with A.I.

~*~

Hometown News did take my fiction in a fresh direction. It wasn’t exactly countercultural, for one thing. And it took place largely within a workplace, with day-to-day drudgery many people might identify with or at least recognize.

While Kenzie in my hippie novels labored as a photographer on his campus newspaper and then on a small-town daily chronicle, he did move on to higher pursuits once he married. In contrast, when my savings ran out, I was back in the newsroom.

Another surprise as I look back. This manuscript was also in the works before my Baltimore sabbatical big writing spree opened.

I have memories of jotting down notes while driving Interstate 95 between sales calls in Connecticut. My time on the road and in motels left me plenty of opportunity for uninterrupted thinking.

Even with TV shows like Lou Grant and Mary Tyler Moore, the public had little idea of what really happens in a newsroom. At the time, the job carried some prestige, if not outright fear.

There was an adage that every newsman had a novel waiting to be born, and there was the cliché of the crusading reporter battling corruption and crime. Even Clark Kent and Lois Lane of Daily Planet renown. Mine wouldn’t be anything like those. The villains weren’t politicians or mobsters but, in the ultimate view, capitalism itself. And here I was, cheering for small, local enterprise.

For me, what emerged is the most problematic of my published novels, yet one of the most fertile. It certainly has the darkest humor and a large dose of dystopia.

I do recall one newspaper editor who candidly admitted to having taken a popular genre novel and essentially written over it to launch his own successful line of commercially published successes. Should I note that the owners of his newspaper also had one of the top book publishing houses in the world? Connections? Don’t discount them. Just don’t think of them as literary success, which I was aspiring to.

Rather than having the high drama of big bad guys somewhere outside of the newspaper company, mine were more insidious. In my experience, though, a more pervasive conflict smoldered behind the scenes within the business itself between the journalists, on one side, and the bean counters and their bottom line of obscenely rich profits, on the other. As the saying went at the time, many newspapers were a means of printing money for their owners. Not that much of it ever got down to the workers.

Let’s just say, too, that some papers were more competitive and innovative than others.

In my job of calling on editors across the Northeast, I heard personal stories that added to my own insights from working within two dailies that had undergone major transformations under inspired leadership, as well as lessons from leading a small paper in the town I call Prairie Depot and some stints elsewhere. Let’s skip the rest of the resume and get on with the book.

It was a world all its own. Or so I thought. And yes, it was set vaguely somewhere in the American Midwest.

Check it out at my Jnana Hodson author page at Smashwords.com.

Memories of Cincinnati

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As I mentioned in a previous Tendrils (June 10), Cincy was the “big city” of my youth, an hour drive to the south once Interstate 75 opened.

Here are some memories.

  1. Music Hall:  Completed in 1878 and newly renovated, including a meticulous shrinking of the breathtakingly gorgeous main auditorium, this Venetian Gothic classic is the home of the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops orchestras, May Festival Chorus, and opera and ballet companies. I treasure the concerts I’ve heard there, often from the second balcony. It’s certainly among the oldest concert halls in America, with the Central City Opera House in Colorado being the closest rival for the title I’ve found so far.
  2. Carew Tower and Fountain Square: The observation tower 49 stories above the downtown, accessed by a “rocket speed” elevator, was my introduction to skyscrapers. It’s architect, William Lamb, went on to be one of the chief designers of New York’s Empire State Building, completed the following year. Fountain Square, in a dark canyon when I knew it, has since been given an airy plaza and become even more of a gathering place.
  3. Taft Museum: This small art collection celebrates one of the residents of the historic 1820 home at the edge of downtown, Charles Phelps Taft, half-brother of President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft, who had accepted his nomination to the candidacy from its portico. The house fronts Lytle Park.
  4. Mount Adams: With the major art museum, repertory theater, Mahoghany Hall bookstore and jazz bar, a family-run Italian sub shop, and a once-famous Rookwood pottery operation at its edge, this was a bohemian center when I knew it.  
  5. Izzy Kadetz: Legendary Jewish delicatessen downtown where customers obeyed the owner’s orders, including, “Eat and get out!” He also charged customers based on their ability to pay.
  6. Zoo: I mentioned the opera in a previous post, and it’s no joke, but there’s more to the zoological and botanical garden. Home of the last known passenger pigeon, the institution has since pioneered species preservation and been a leader in creating habitats shared by various species.  
  7. Union Station: I vaguely remember a childhood train ride from Dayton and our late-night return. The grand 1933 train terminal was considered a masterpiece, one of the last, and today stands as the Cincinnati Museum Center, including the historical, children’s, and natural history and science museums. I think we went to the zoo during the day.  
  8. Riverboats: Several times during my youth, I found myself part of a group taken out on the Ohio River for a paddleboat trip. I heard a real calliope in the process.  
  9. Shillito’s: Cincy’s oldest department store was boldly art deco when my paintings and designs were included in the annual Scholastic Art competition displays on one of the upper floors. It was quite an honor and thrilling. Pogue’s, a somewhat more old-fashioned department store, was also fun to pass through. Shillito’s, Rikes of Dayton, and Lazarus of Columbus eventually became Federated Department stores, which ultimately took over Macy’s, including its name. Got that? Macy’s headquarters wound up in Cincinnati, returning to Herald Square in Manhattan only in 2020.
  10. King’s Island: The amusement park famed for its huge wooden roller coasters is my most recent encounter with the Queen City of the West, as Cincy had become known by 1820.  I remember the park’s earlier incarnation as Coney Island – or Coney Island of the West, to distinguish it from the tip of Brooklyn – where it was prone to flooding from the Ohio River. I did, in fact, visit once on a riverboat outing that originated and ended downtown. I’m surprised to see the first site survives as a water park. The visit to the current operation came while visiting my hometown. Accompanied by my two daughters, we ventured forth to the outskirts of Cincy facing Dayton and had a most memorable day.

Memories of places in the town I grew up in

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned a few others, such as the art museum, in other posts here. Now, to add a few more, in no particular order. Again, I’m looking at Greater Dayton rather than strictly inside the city limits.

  1. NCR: The National Cash Register Company’s world headquarters looked more like an open college campus with linden trees and pristine lawns than an industrial jumble behind barbed wire and hurricane fencing. It even had a fine auditorium and pipe organ, used for its gatherings of salesmen but also the concerts of the Civic Music Association – I heard a number of famed musicians there. And I was awarded my Eagle Scout badge and later my high school diploma on its stage. And, oh yes, I can’t overlook Old River, the employee park with the lagoon and boating, a fine miniature golf course, and a huge outdoor swimming pool – when one of my buddies whose father worked at NCR and thus had a pass to the park asked if I wanted to go, there was only one possible answer. Please!
  2. The corner display windows at Rikes department store: The pioneering retailer was the place to shop in town, and anytime we took the bus, say to the library or a movie, we’d wind up checking the latest display – especially at Christmas. During my senior year, some of my art work was used in the background of the featured fashion.
  3. The YMCA: I learned to swim at the indoor pool and sometimes applied my allowance to a grilled cheese sandwich later, over on the men’s side. And then, little kid that I was, I enjoyed the freedom of taking the bus home on my own.
  4. Frigidaire employee park: Thanks to my best friend’s father’s employee pass, we spent many summer nights enjoying free Starlight movies. My dad worked for another General Motors division in town, one that had no such benefits.
  5. Troop trails: My Boy Scout troop had a long hike one Sunday a month, in addition to a primitive camping weekend. Our routes often followed a river or crossed farmlands or even trekked along railroad tracks. I remember especially a few that traced the abandoned Miami-Erie Canal with its mule bank and its eerie remains of limestone locks left in vines and trees.
  6. Suicide Hill: A decent snowfall (quite modest by what I’ve experienced since) meant sledding at Hills and Dales Park. How insignificant the slope looks now, but there were some serious injuries. I had a near call.
  7. Memorial Hall: It really wasn’t designed for concerts, but it’s where the Philharmonic performed, and since my dad had access to tickets, I heard many top soloists. Hard to believe now, actually.
  8. Our big ugly high school: built in the 1960s and long since torn down. In my memory, I recall it more than the older but equally ugly elementary school.
  9. Yellow Springs: Once I got my driver’s license, the bohemian town in Greene County, home of Antioch College, became a welcome retreat. Its funky stores, before funky was a word in my consciousness, were mind-expanding. Nowhere else could we find Earl Grey or gunpowder tea or sticks of incense or perfumed soaps. Then there was the professional summer theater series at the amphitheater, itself a revelation. By that time, I was in love, at last. And that leads to mention of a covered bridge by moonlight: Yes, making out afterward in the moonlight at a covered bridge that’s no longer existent down an unpaved road.
  10. The Art Theater: Where I first saw foreign films, black-and-white alternatives to Hollywood’s commercial concoctions. And then there was the Lemon Tree coffee house next door with its folk music and blues.

My, all that was a world ago in my life.