Tag: Musings

LOVELY LEEKS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 20 Comments

Unlike the rest of my family, I have an aversion to onions. Or maybe it’s the other way around. It’s not pretty. I’ll spare you my rant. Likewise, I could cite a long history, with heavy childhood quagmire, but we’ll just leave it there.

Leeks, on the other hand, create no problems. They’re marvelous and so beautiful in and out of the garden. So it’s a glorious compromise, all the way around. (Shall we say that potato-leek soup is one of my favorites?)

And I’ve developed quite the love for garlic. In and out of the garden.

FACING THE TECHNOLOGY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Shifting to the world of epublishing has stimulated a gentle learning curve for me. Maybe because my to-do list has always been much longer than I can manage or maybe because I felt I already had too much detailed work at hand, I’ve tried to avoid becoming a computer geek who spends all his time in the technical minutia. Actually, it’s the same way with my cars – I don’t want to spend my mornings, afternoons, or weekends under the hood or on my back under the chassis; I just want to get in and drive. As for high tech, I’ll wait for all the bugs to get worked out before I buy the updated version, thank you, especially since I’ve always been on a very limited budget. And for the record, I hate Windows 8, which is always interrupting my work by blowing its apps in my face or requiring me to log on again throughout the day.

On the other hand, keyboarding on a computer has been a vast improvement over a typewriter, at least for klutzes like me, and the ability to correct and revise as I go or rewrite and edit later is, well, divine. Sometimes progress really is progress.

And sometimes it isn’t, as we seemed to discover at the office each time we moved on to a new system whether we wanted to or were instead forced to when our current equipment was declared obsolete. (I’ll let others relate those nights of terror when they pulled the plug on what was finally working as promised.)

Participating in the small-press literary scene has been another matter. When I first ventured into email, thanks largely to my now-wife, well, let’s say broadband’s been a huge improvement over those telephone connections and leave it at that. Still, cutting and pasting poems into the email and having them accepted within hours rather than be rejected months later was quite an eye-opener. These days, with most of the liveliest literary action happening in online journals, the process has taken leaps forward; typically, you use a submissions program, upload your file, insert your cover letter, and follow the pieces through the editorial process, if you wish. For a long time, I tried to maintain two sets of files – one for journals that still used, or even required, submissions via the Postal Service, and those that took them online. This year, finding that too complicated, I decided to drop the postal-only journals altogether. (That move, let me add, was hastened by problems with our computer printer as much as the much higher rejection rate on the envelope entries.)

The 2005 publication of my second novel, Ashram, as an ebook was another eye-opener. I was surprised by how easy its preparation was, how quickly it went from acceptance to general availability, and how pleasurable reading a long work on my computer screen could be (even if the work was issued only in PDF format). Unfortunately, we were also a bit ahead of the ebook reading trend and many would-be readers told me of their difficulties in downloading the volume. The other snag was getting the work reviewed at all – even online critics stuck solely to paper editions.

Blogging has revolutionized much of this world, probably more than we realize. For me, avowed neo-Luddite that I am, WordPress has been heavenly. It’s allowed me to take a model “out of the box” and run with it without modification, even if I do admire the customized tweaks many of the rest of you add apparently without hassle. The Blogs That I Follow, searching by topical tags, and Freshly Pressed streams have introduced me to many wonderful voices around the globe for my daily perusal. In fact, I’m still struck that in its first year, the Red Barn had readers in 72 countries. Amazing.

These days I’m learning again. The opportunity to publish my novels to be distributed across a variety of platforms (as they say) has meant following a new set of directions to strip out all the hidden codes (we hope; some of mine go back to the first versions on WordPerfect4.0) and set up the work to flow smoothly in a reading device. (I started to say “reader,” but for me, that will always be a person, not a machine.) I’ll admit that adjusting to the concept of considering a long work as a continuous text, rather than pages, has been major, as has the matter of inserting hyperlinks. Remember, I’m someone who loves the art of printing from its very origins. (How many Gutenberg Bibles have you seen?)

Even so, I’m excited by the new opportunities and the new visual dimensions.

Here we go, again.

ON THAT COMMITTED JOB, TOO

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

You can name those who jump in quickly, volunteering to tackle any new task their supervisor proposes. (“Sure, Boss, we can do it.”) And you can name those who are more cautious, evaluating the time commitment and resources.

I’m thinking, too, of all the people who join a committee and then fail to follow through.

Or the coworker who’s muttering under his breath once we’re overloaded with the additional project. Or all the other tasks that get slighted.

How many others do you know?

A TINY DETAIL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

We’d get the phone call. “You promised a story.” We knew we’d been very careful not to do that. Instead, it was, “I’ll look into that” or “I’ll pass that along to the appropriate editor for a decision.”

My favorite was the caller who claimed to be good friends with the publisher, who had promised the coverage. Followed by our response, “You know she died twelve years ago?” And their embarrassed silence.

Of course, it’s not just stories.

People read into the most carefully crafted texts and then respond to only the parts they want to hear while tuning out the rest. Or they just plain tune out. It’s called the theory of cognitive dissonance. If they think you’re agreeing with them, they’ll bend the message their way. If they think you’re critical, they’ll shove you out altogether.

Often, all tripping over a tiny detail or two.

~*~

Oh, how I came to hate the telephone when I worked in the newsroom! If you want further proof, just go to my novel Hometown News.

Hometown News

 

 

MAYBE WE’RE ALL TEACHERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

We’re well into the back-to-school swirl. Considering how many Friends teach for a living, it’s a wonder we don’t talk more about what Quakers used to call Sound Doctrine.

Not dogma, creed, doctrinaire, or even indoctrination, mind you. Doctrine, meaning teaching. The essentials for practicing our faith, just as certain skills are needed in mathematics or foreign language. Or, for that matter, for good cooking or carpentry or sewing.

It’s not just the children, either. Some messages arising in worship are basically teaching, and some are admittedly sounder than others, the latter including those that George Fox derided as mere “notions.” (Consider the Quaker who preached that Friends should not disturb the ground to obtain well water, until another spoke out during worship, “And Abraham digged a well,” citing Genesis 21:30 and apparently settling the matter.) Our own reading and inquiry, meanwhile, can be pretty much hit or miss. Who knows about other sources? Film, television, radio? And, as with all teaching, how strict should one be – and how flexible?

If we were passing a hat to collect slips of paper suggesting what should be included in our own “sound doctrine,” what would you write on yours? For that matter, how much would be a matter of content – and how much, process?

Sometime, perhaps, we’ll even have a session to hear our teachers talk a bit about their teaching – both content and method – and a continuing awareness of learning. Or maybe another, to consider all the ways we have learned from each other – and not just matters of faith, either. The progress of my compost bins, after all, is guided in part by eavesdropping on a few after-meeting conversations and their lessons of patience, humility, and renewal.

~*~

This has me wondering, as well, how we might extend a pursuit of “sound doctrine” into our secular circles. Economics, politics, education, even entertainment could all use a dose of what Friends used to call “close labor” – the effort of living with ever greater integrity. Any ideas?

 

CORKING THE STATE LIQUOR COMMISSION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

For all of it reputation as the “tax-free state” and “live free or die,” New Hampshire has some pretty convoluted ways of making ends meet. True, we have no sales tax and no income tax, but that simply means finding a lot of nickel-and-dime ways of raising public revenues, starting with a hefty property tax rate. (Renters, of course, get no break on their federal taxes there, either – as I said, convoluted.) And if you dine out, even for breakfast, there’s another big hit, eight percent or so, one of many others. Eventually, it all adds up.

New Hampshire also has a reputation as the go-to state for cheaper liquor, compared to the rest of the Northeast. For all of the official conservative rhetoric of free enterprise, the state clutches its monopoly on the sale of hard liquor, unlike, say, neighboring Massachusetts, with its liberal tradition of neighborhood mom-and-pop “package” stores.

The conflict I see comes in the fact the state is both the regulator of alcoholic beverage sales, ranging from bars to groceries and wine stores and home consumption, and also the distributor. That is, the same agency, the State Liquor Commission, is both the policeman and an active dealer in what it is policing. It’s a situation rife with the potential for favors, favoritism, and outright bribery or corruption. As the Founding Fathers were well aware, whoever polices the police should not be the police. You separate them – the classic separation of powers, each keeping jealous watch over the other.

Not so here in New Hampshire. When it comes to alcohol, the only line of defense might be the Legislature or the Governor and Executive Council as the counterbalance, but that’s not the way it should be, especially when we factor in the possibilities of hefty campaign donations. The enforcer and distributor should be under separate agencies – then, if conflict arises, they appeal to higher authority. As it is, they’re likely to squelch any complainer … or else.

In addition, when it comes to wine, all the supermarkets, grocers, and independent wine shops face a double whammy. They’re required to buy their wine from the state (through the one and only licensed warehouse dealer), even though the state also sells directly against them. In fact, it’s the same agency they must apply to for their very permit to do business in this field. And then the agency adds its own percentage to the product, even if it’s from a winery the state wouldn’t otherwise stock except for the retailers’ order. As I said, convoluted and rife for abuse.

I first noticed this when I found a certain label for sale much cheaper in Massachusetts. Seems the Bay State has one less layer of middleman in the process. So much for the “Taxachusetts” tag we Granite Staters so often brush on our southern neighbor. Tain’t always so.

More recently, I found an example of the state’s monopoly bully at work when a local supermarket was out of several of its more popular varieties. Could it be someone had said something that miffed somebody in the state agency that was supposed to deliver the product, which now was just sitting in the warehouse? Who do you complain to, after all? You can’t switch to a different supplier, either. Where’s the free market free enterprise in this case? The official line may have been that the state was in the midst of shifting from one licensed warehouse operator, which had held the contract for decades, to a new one. But, as the old contractor miffed, the situation “is just the latest example of many where the the commission has cut a special deal” with the new licensee.

For years, I received the weekly release of which bars, restaurants, and convenience stores or supermarkets had their liquor licenses suspended by the State Liquor Commission, usually for underage sales of beverages. Not once did I see a State Liquor Store in that list. Not that they weren’t as prone to violations. As I said, who polices the police?

Yes, New Hampshire gets the revenue. As long as I’m not forced to go to Maine or Massachusetts to get the wine I want, where it’s available, maybe even more cheaply.

Any future MBAs interested in doing a case study? This one could be a doozy.

COUNTING TO SEVEN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

Dover, where I live, is proclaimed as the oldest permanent settlement in New Hampshire and the seventh oldest in the United States.

Counting gets tricky, because there were earlier settlements that were abandoned. As best as I can determine, then, here’s the list the counts to seven:

  1. St. Augustine, Florida, 1565
  2. Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1607
  3. Newport News as Hopewell or Elizabeth Cittie, Virginia, 1613
  4. Albany, New York, 1614
  5. Jersey City, New Jersey, as Pavonia, New Netherlands, 1617
  6. Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1620
  7. Dover, New Hampshire, 1623

While I found Weymouth, Massachusetts, as Wessagussett, 1622, the town itself notes 1630 as its settlement. And Taos, New Mexico, 1615, was abandoned by its Spanish missionaries in 1640. As I said, counting gets tricky.

SPACE FOR DECOMPRESSION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

It’s hard to believe five years have passed since we made the loft of the barn much more usable.

When we moved here, the loft was accessible only via a second-floor catwalk from the master bedroom, and getting there and back could be tricky, especially when snow was piled on the deck.

I’ll save the home renovation project description and photos for another time, and just mention that it involved removing the catwalk, deck, bedroom doorway, and barn loft doorway, installing stairs inside the barn and lighting in the loft.

What it essentially did was give us another 450 square feet of usable work and storage space – especially once we replaced the leaky roof two years ago. (Gee, I think that’s the size of some of those Ikea model apartments.)

Admittedly, it’s not someplace you linger for much of the year. It’s not insulated and there’s no heat, so you do little more than dash in and out in January-February or July-August, but for me it’s been a huge blessing.

As I wrote in August 2009, an “especially humid Tuesday: No Rick yesterday or today.” Our carpenter/master electrician was “off on another project.” We were in no rush, anyway. Still, enough of the project had progressed for me to note, “Having the top of the barn – the Squirrel Piss Studio or Jnana’s Red Barn or the Summer House – finally available as usable space is mind-boggling. At last! Ten years. A time for decompression, unpacking. The difference in scale as a result of the larger space (framed posters, for instance, now appear so much smaller).” I detailed more effusively in my journal. What I noted was “t

he array of items: places I’ve gone off to, to live. Sometimes unwillingly. The skulls – steer, horse, dog. Elk bones. Shells.

“So much to discard, too. My burgundy valet bag, an artifact of the past (after 9/11, nobody travels with one). Burgundy, LAL’s color. Same as the Chevy. The specially designed coat hangers, with their folding hooks – open for the hotel, closed to slide into the bag. Those two years, a ‘backpack for business travelers.’

“A Quaker altar: a candle on a piece of squared birch firewood, the side with bark facing the sitter; incense; in time, flowers or dried arrangement; Bible, Gita, notebook?

“I sit in the space and recall how Roger Pfingston could sit for hours in front of a blank piece of paper without writing a word. Maybe smoke a cigar. Now see it as his way of meditation and self-collection.”

The space also gave me a place to resume hatha yoga exercises after way too long a hiatus.

I love having large surfaces where I can spread out the pages for a poetry collection and rearrange the sequence. I’m not one who works easily with a crowded desk, unlike many of my colleagues. No, it’s Zen order or Quaker/Shaker simplicity I desire.

The loft is far from the year-round office studio I’d envisioned when we moved here. To get there, though, apart from the money, we’d have to cover the wooden underside of the roof I’ve come to enjoy viewing. The feel would become much different than the funky, well, summer cottage I so much enjoy now – even when it’s fall and spring rather than summer when I most use it.

Besides, to be candid, as I’m able to clean out and dispose of more and more, and as I move increasingly to online, paperless writing and submissions, I don’t really need the big office of those earlier dreams. At least that’s what I’m thinking now.

Who knows what’s really ahead.

NOT WHAT YOU THINK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

I’ve always been a visual person. Had even considered a career in art before the writing took over. As further evidence, remembering a story or argument I’ve heard has always been more difficult to recall than one I’ve read. As for names, I’m hopeless unless there’s been a name tag.

Somehow, though, I can remember a musical line much more than I can any lyrics, including those we’ve been working on in chorus. So I’m not memory deaf, exactly.

As a visual person, I’ve found the point-and-shoot digital camera entries you’ve seen posted in my blogs to be a wonderful way of sharing the way I look at the world and many of the details that catch my attention.

But there’s another range of experiences I can’t begin to describe. Often, especially while watching people, my vision shifts from photo-realism to real-life cartoons. I hope I’m not staring, but the transformation is incredible. R. Crumb had nothing on me, other than technique. Sometimes they’re squiggling black-and-white line drawings. Sometimes, baroque etchings. Other times, wild blobs of color.

Even before they start moving.

GODDESSES IN SUBURBIA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I mentioned to her sometime back, I’d spent much time in a recent year reflecting on the jagged pathway that landed me here. Often I’ve felt I took one took many turns somewhere back there, and on some mornings after we moved into this house – well, some moments in my homes before that, too – I’d find myself wondering just where the hell I was, after all. In a bigger sense, I’ve been trying to envision how it all adds up. Guess it’s another version of the old “What is the meaning of life” conundrum. At least I finally figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up … retired! Meaning free to concentrate on the Real Work. (Now that I’m there, I’m finding more questions.)

In the round of reflection I’m discussing, I concentrated on high school and college – the emotional side, especially – meaning the time before I actually started keeping a journal, and a period that’s largely been a fog in my memory. I uncovered some wonderful prompts for revisiting this, especially letters from the sophomore high school English teacher who put me on the writing/strict grammar path, as well as a confession that despite all the contrary efforts, high school was a bummer. Unlike yours, my public school system was geared largely toward instilling conformity and retarding the growth of gifted students, unless you were a male athlete. Still, much has come back, making me wonder how I survived at all.

This round, I kept asking “What if” … for instance, one of those I saw as goddesses in high school had swept me away (or, more realistically, if I’d been able to say something close to what was really on my heart, or hormones, leading to some, shall we say, quality time together). Would I have continued at Wright State, rather than transferring to Indiana, and eventually stayed in Dayton, maybe even as a Republican? Or if either of my two girlfriends through the college years had led to marriage and home … both of them from Dayton, though neither ended up dwelling there, from what I can tell. Most of those goddesses wound up settling into mundane adult suburban lives, as I find from the class website and Internet – including our online class reunion site. I’m not kidding. (Who are all those old people in those silly photos? The ones holding beer bottles, especially.) (Note to self: Do not allow yourself to be photographed holding a beer bottle. Ever.)

On my part, what I keep finding is a sense of inevitability. Or, as Friends say, “As way opens,” if we’re faithful. There are good reasons I’m where I am, and for that I’m grateful, after so many seasons of sojourning. Even so, when your note arrives, there’s a tinge of sadness or gentle envy, as you live out what appears to be so close to what I had desired when I dreamed of being an independent writer living in my Promised Land, with a house full of my children and visiting friends and a quiet studio hut on the ridge behind. (My wife finds that vision humorous, by the way – finds holes in it all the way around, beginning with who’s going to clean up after the big parties I intended.)

Still, looking back, there are many things I don’t understand, and too many points where I’ve looked away or accepted a glib answer, rather than probing. I’ve always been prone to seeing what I want to see and overlooking the rest – usually, the warning signs and difficult details. (Again, my wife is good at bringing me back to the wider range of questions.) I’d say that trying to answer the inquiry of why you and I didn’t wind up together would be one of those. The astrological answer that you and I would never wind up together but remain prime friends fails to ask why. I believe there’s far more to be uncovered there, if we’re willing. Just why have you always made me feel better, for starters. Or feel special and elated.