Tag: Musings

You don’t say, Charlie Brown

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

How about ten memorable quotes from the popular Peanuts comic strip character created by Charles “Sparky” Schultz? That kid really was a master of angst.

  1. “A friend is someone who knows all your faults, but likes you anyway.”
  2. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.”
  3. “Keep looking up … that’s the secret of life.”
  4. “My anxieties have anxieties.”
  5. “I’m already tired tomorrow.”
  6. “Be yourself. Nobody can say you’re doing it wrong.”
  7. “In the book of life, the answers aren’t in the back.”
  8. “What can you do when you don’t fit in?”
  9. “Whenever I feel really alone, I just sit and stare into the night sky. I’ve always thought that one of those stars is my star, and I know that my star will always be there for me. Like a comforting voice saying, ‘Don’t give up, kid.’”
  10. “Good grief.”

And here I had long dismissed him as somehow shallow, coming up with sappy lines like “Happiness is a warm puppy.”

Do kids today even know what a comic strip was?

A half-dozen unrelated quips

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Everything is theoretical until it happens to you.

Usually, everyone I see with a tattoo made a mistake.

In my eyes, my grandparents were always old. But now I’m so much beyond where they were.

Everybody’s fucked up. At least consider that as a starting point of observation.

Trying to deal with death before you’re really beginning to understand the mystery of life is out of sequence.

In the meditation of Quaker worship, a place I call the deep water. Only these days, I would also be concerned about sharks below.

When’s the last time you went bowling?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Well, the sport does figure prominently in the movie The Big Lebowski and the TV series Surreal Estate, a device that slyly dates the both stories.

That said, here are ten factors to consider.

  1. A realization that parking lots outside bowling centers were largely empty in sharp contrast to their crowded condition only a few years earlier prompted a landmark study by Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam. His 2000 nonfiction book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, expanded on his 1995 essay, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” examining the steep decline of in-person participation in group activities pf all kinds by adults across the nation. It wasn’t just bowling but civic clubs, social lodges, churches and synagogues, labor unions, political meetings and campaigns, even neighborhood parties.
  2. In America, the sport usually refers to indoor ten-pin bowling on polished wooden lanes, although lawn bowling is popular in across much of the rest of the world. Think of the places named Bowling Green as a referent. Bocce and curling are close relatives.
  3. The pins themselves come in differing sizes, which then have matching balls to be rolled at the targets. The most common in the eastern United States and Canada are ten-pins – tall, fat, and the heaviest, matched with a large ball about 8.59 inches in diameter, weighing between six and 16 pounds, and having two or three finger holes. Duckpins, invented in Boston in the early 1890s, are shorter and like candlepins, invented in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1880, are played with balls that fit in the palm of the hand and have no holes. Other varieties include nine-pin and five-pin.
  4. At its height of popularity in the United States in the years after World War II, hoards of players – men and women – participated in weekly leagues, wearing customized team shirts and their own bowling shoes and playing with their own balls. Non-league players could, of course, on a lark rent the shoes and balls, if they could find an open lane. For many, it wasn’t a bad date-night option.
  5. I won’t get into the intricacies of scoring – I never did figure that out, much less those for tennis. But I can admit that candlepins are tricky.
  6. Traditionally, the balls are constructed of blocks of maple glued together and then lathed into shape and covered with plastic, paint, and a glossy layer. Synthetics are now also allowed, depending, and rubber pins were once even in use.
  7. The sport has a long history in antiquity before some action moved indoors, as best as I can tell, in the mid-1800s. In 1875 in the U.S., rules for ten-pin play were standardized by the National Bowling Association in New York City, superseded in 1895 by the new American Bowling Congress.
  8. Chicago-based Brunswick Corporation was already well established as a maker of billiard tables when it began making bowling balls, pins, and wooden lanes to sell to taverns installing bowling alleys in the 1880s. The company became synonymous with bowling.
  9. The arrival of automatic pinsetter machines in 1952 eliminated the need for pin boys, a precarious and dangerous job for males who sat unseen above the pins to clear them and reposition new ones after each frame of play. (As I was saying about scoring?) The machines made by American Machine and Foundry of Brooklyn, New York, speeded the game and sent the sport’s popularity rocketing.
  10. The Golden Age of Ten-Pin Bowling took off around 1950, including weekly television coverage. Some professional bowlers earned as much as their colleagues in baseball, football, and hockey. The era ended in the late 1970s.

More bits from one writer’s journey

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I am one of the few poets and novelists who has spent the bulk of his career editing daily newspapers, rather than teaching literature or creative writing. Still, when it came to creating a contributor’s note for a literary journal, I had to think of myself in the third-person.

Here are some of those contributor’s notes I don’t think were published … until now.

  • In a typical year, Jnana drove enough miles to circle the globe, yet rarely ventured far from his relatively small state.
  • Jnana admits there’s something quite frightening in any occasion of encountering a dragon, much less being carried off by one. He’s been scorched more than once.
  • In his lifetime of writing, Jnana has found himself addressing issues of PLACE as much as character or social conflict or even religion and ethnicity. Place, of course, intertwines with history and the natural sciences. In examining where he lives – where we live – and have lived – he also examines movement, change, home, and community.
  • When Jnana graduated from college, the economy was in a tailspin. The hippie movement was flourishing. He was too skinny to be drafted for Vietnam.
  • Jnana once spent a week at an ecological workshop in Port Worden, Washington, where Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder, and Howard Norman were joined by biologists and anthropologists. It’s as close as he’s come to a writing seminar.
  • As copy desk chief, Jnana was a glorified secretary rather than the top grammarian.
  • Jnana began his professional journalism career as an Action Line research assistant.
  • As a homebrewer, Jnana handcrafted more than 2,500 bottles of fine ales and lagers.
  • Jnana’s elder daughter wanted to raise chickens, ducks, and bees at their small-city homestead. He wondered about the neighbors’ dogs and cats, as well as the possums, groundhogs, and skunks. He didn’t want the misery of another henhouse raid.
  • His wife thought Jnana would have fit the mid-1800s better than contemporary America. She wondered how someone engaging an Anabaptist religious line could be so unorthodox in his art.
  • As a daily newspaper editor, Jnana sensed he was among the last to uphold a vital blue-color trade. He wondered how democracy could survive without independent reporting or clear writing.
  • Considering the brevity of New England summers, Jnana had hoped to launch a line of Hawaiian sweaters.
  • Jnana hates onions but loves a good martini. (Gin, not vodka.) With or without olives.
  • As a journalist, Jnana lived in the trenches of community life – in the tensions of industry and finance, retail commerce, social inequalities and prejudices, and reactionary politics. He admires the progressive activists who have maintained their optimism in spite of it all.
  • In management and as an editor, Jnana had his head and heart handed to him on a silver platter more than once.
  • He hopes he never has to load or unload another U-Haul as long as he lives.
  • Jnana is quite grateful his younger daughter gave up rugby for crew as her first college sport.
  • Jnana senses rural values are rooted in his soul. His dad was born on a farm.
  • Jnana’s mother was born in St. Louis. She loved taking him to the zoo.

Meet patriot Lewis Frederick Delesdernier

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In researching the history of our house, I learned about many of its earlier neighbors as well. Of note to the south was one with a rather exotic surname. Turns out he was a rather influential figure in the establishment of Eastport.

Here are a few points about him.

  1. He was born as Louis Frederic DeLesdernier in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1752 to Gideon de les Dernier and Judith Marie Madelon Martine. As for that French surname? The precise location at that time could have been under either French or English rule – the conflicts are quite tangled. He was, however, a generation removed from Geneva, Switzerland, by then. French-speaking, all the same, however anyone wound up spelling it.
  2. His uncle Moses was the first Protestant to farm among the French Acadians.
  3. When the American Revolution broke out, Lewis enlisted in an effort to bring the American Revolution to Canada. The attack on British Fort Cumberland in Nova Scotia was defeated and then, in retreat, Lewis ultimately wound up in Machias, Maine, where he was charged with maintaining good relations with the local Passamaquoddy to assure that they didn’t defect to the British. During this time, in 1779 he married Sarah Brown, the daughter of a fellow garrison member. For a Frenchman, attacking the English makes sense.
  4. After the war, he resettled on an island in the waters either in today’s Lubec or Eastport, Maine, one called variously Fredrichs or De Les Dernier island. There he was appointed as the first customs collector for the district, possibly encompassing both today’s Lubec and Eastport, and, in 1789, when the first post office was established, was named postmaster. Could that island have been what emerged as Moose Island, today’s Eastport?
  5. In Eastport, he was not only the first postmaster but also the first collector of customs. Case closed?
  6. The first owner of our house did have a ship named after him. In those days, naming a ship after someone often obligated them to buy a share in it. Did this present a conflict of interest for the custom’s collector?
  7. After Delesdernier’s first wife’s death in 1814, he married the widow Sophia Fellows Clark in 1817. Trying to determine the number of children remains elusive, but I’m finding no descendants in the region today.
  8. When he died in December 1838 at his son’s home in today’s Baileyville, Maine, a warm friend, Alfred A. Gallatin, the fourth U.S. Secretary of the Treasury (1801-1814) under President Thomas Madison, said, “He is to me of all Americans I have seen, the most zealous and full of enthusiasm for the Liberty of his country.”
  9. An 1803 arrival in Eastport of Harvard graduate Jonathan D. (the initial for you can guess what) Weston was auspicious. Shortly before his death, provided details on much of the early settlement of Eastport in a history published in 1834 and later woven into William Henry Kilby’s 1888 volume. He also hosted famed ornithological artist John J. Audubon at his 1810 home at the corner of Boyden and Middle streets. I’m not finding any direct relationship, but will venture that the middle name was in honor of Lewis, perhaps even hinting at the reason for Jonathan’s moving to Eastport.
  10. Lewis’ circa 1807 house was eventually moved from down on the water to higher ground. The only remaining evidence of its original location is in the naming of Customs Street, far from the later custom’s offices. Today, the Delesdernier home on the south end of the island is proudly owned by symphony conductor and cellist Dan Alcott, who anticipates moving into it year-round. We can’t wait!

I prefer, should you wonder …

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

a shower to a bath, but indulge in hot tubs.

a hot tub to a sauna in the snow, not that I haven’t delighted in the latter.

religion that relies on questions more than answers.

discovery to fabrication. Accuracy more than cleverness.

Chocolate or candy?
White chocolate. Or dark, bittersweet.

Waffles or pancakes?
Either one, awash in melted real butter and local maple syrup. Better yet, a classic cheese omelet. Or baked pears or baked French toast.

To add the word ‘island’ to Grand Manan would be redundant

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Despite our many trips to Cape Cod back when I lived not that far away in New Hampshire, I never got around to visiting tony and history-laden Martha’s Vineyard or neighboring Nantucket. It’s an oversight I don’t want to repeat when it comes to Grand Manan, an impressive Canadian island we can see from some points here in Eastport, Maine.

I am hoping to get there this year. Even if I don’t, here are some high points:

  1. Its closest point on the mainland is the town of Lubec Maine, nine miles across the Grand Manan Channel. For mainland New Brunswick, it’s Blacks Harbor, 20 miles over the Bay of Fundy. Yet if you look at most maps of Maine, it doesn’t show up at all, despite its proximity. That part
  2. As the largest of the 25-plus Fundy Islands, Grand Manan is 21 miles long and has a maximum width of 11 miles, covering 53 square miles in all. (Campobello and Deer Island, which border Eastport, are the second and third largest, respectfully.) It’s home to 2,595 year-round residents.
  3. The principal way of getting there is by a 90-minute ferry ride from Blacks Harbour. Reservations are recommended, both ways.
  4. For comparison, Martha’s Vineyard is 20.5 miles long, covers 96 square miles, takes a 45-minute ferry jaunt, and has 20,530 full-timers; Nantucket covers 45 square miles, is a 2¼-hour commute by traditional ferry, and has 14,444 residents. Both of the Massachusetts towns are much wealthier than Grand Manon, where most folks eke out their living “on the water.”
  5. The economy is based primarily upon commercial fishing – lobster, herring, scallops, and crab – plus ocean salmon farms and clam digging.
  6. For the traveler, the island is largely a step back in time, with a single highway along the eastern half, where most of the modest residents live. That leads to the rest of the Grand Manan archipelago of nearby smaller islands such as popular White Head (reachable by a second ferry ride), Ross Cheney, and the Wood islands, plus countless surrounding shoaling rocks. Meanwhile, the rugged and forested western side, with 300-foot-high cliffs, high winds, numerous passages, coves, and rocky reefs, incorporates wildlife-rich preserves.
  7. Tourism, the second source of income, provides unspoiled ocean views, whale-watch cruises – rare right whale breeding grounds adjoin its waters – as well as kayaking, hiking, camping, photography, painting, and bird-watching with more than 240 species, including nesting puffins in season.
  8. Among the lighthouses to check out are Gannet Rock, Swallowtail, Southwest Head, Long Eddy Point, Long Point, and Great Duck Island. Not all of them are what you would call picturesque or prime condition. Not to slight them.
  9. Linguistically, “Manan” is a corruption of mun-an-ook or man-an-ook, meaning “island place” or “the island” in the local First Nations’ language. The suffix ook, meanwhile, means “people of.” French explorer Samuel de Champlain recorded the place as Manthane on a 1606 map and later changed it to Menane or Menasne – close enough in sound. So if Manan already means “island,” why be redundant? You don’t need to add “island” to the Vineyard or Nantucket, either – everybody knows what you mean without it.
  10. Grand Manan’s not for everyone. As one review said, “A long way to travel for nothing. Nice rocks but you can see those in Maine. Sea glass was hard to find and sparse. Very poor, depressed area. Lighthouses are ugly and there is nothing to really do other than hiking, which you can also do in Maine. Ferry stunk and was disgusting. Never saw any whales or seals. Nothing on the island except rundown shacks. All the online promotions are just hype. Waste of a day. … Go to Campobello island, it’s 100% better.” In short, sounds right up my alley for adventure.

The first permanent settlement, by the way, was in 1784 by Loyalists fleeing the U.S. at the close of the American Revolutionary War, a common occurrence across New Brunswick.

When elk move through my mind these days

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

They are a memory, more as an emblem and ideal than creature. I never tasted elk flesh, though I heard praises. Nor have I stroked the fur. What I’ve known has appeared only on the forest floor as track and scat – no ticks on the neck or patchy summer skin like the moose where I now live. That, and winter encounters viewed from a distance.

The deer who frequent our yard these days are so small by comparison.

Will I ever revisit the Pacific Northwest where I lived? Would I even recognize most of it?

Or was it all gone in the divorce?

She did have quite the tongue

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the official statement marking the death of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, President Jimmy Carter observed, “She had style, she had grace, and she had a sense of humor that kept generations of political newcomers to Washington wondering which was worse – to be skewered by her wit or to be ignored by her.”

Just listen.

  1. When her father was governor of New York, he and her stepmother planned to send her to a conservative school for girls in New York City. Curtly, Alice responded, “If you send me, I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will.”
  2. When her father became president after the 1901 assassination of William McKinley in Buffalo, she greeted the event with “sheer rapture.”
  3. She later said of her father, “He wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.”
  4. When a prominent Washington senator was discovered having an affair with a young woman less than half his age, Alice quipped, “You can’t make a souffle rise twice.”
  5. Most famously, “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.” She had that one embroidered on a pillow kept in her living room.
  6. On Calvin Coolidge: “He sprang from the grass roots of the country clubs of America.”
  7. Another quick character sketch: “He looks as though he’s been weaned on a pickle.”
  8. And one more: “Never trust a man who combs his hair straight from his left armpit.”
  9. As for Washington, D.C: “A town of successful men and the women they married before they were successful.”
  10. Through it all: “I’ve always believed that if you’ve got a good sense of humor, you can get through anything.”

Do note, her father was quoted: “I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.”