Tag: Musings

There are things about aging I really don’t like

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

Oh, my, facing this can be painful.

  1. My mountain climbing days are past.
  2. I’m not as flexible as I was, and my sense of balance is unreliable. It’s even led to feeling queasy on heights, a realm I once fearlessly loved. And a fall late at night can be terrifying.
  3. Along with spidery thin hair.
  4. As for the bladder?
  5. Slower mental recall, along with hearing.
  6. Declining mojo.
  7. Can’t get warm in winter. Or autumn. Or early spring. I’ve always been cold-blooded, but geez Louise!
  8. Being addressed as “Sir” by polite female teens. I am, after all, emotionally still 17.
  9. The shrinking horizon of life goals and dreams. Like is that best-seller ever going to happen, really?
  10. All the damned pills in the morning.

Gee, and we haven’t even gotten to an inability to understand pop “culture” or the appearance of varicose veins.

America’s most celebrated wildlife artist was a Frenchman

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Or more accurately, the bastard son of a Frenchman in Haiti.

Yet, despite the iconic honor given his name, few have seen his legendary work in its full glory.

I’m speaking, of course, of John James Audubon, in the anglicized version of his name.

While I had viewed his work behind glass framing in art museums, nothing prepared me for my hands-on encounter with the four folio print volumes. That happened in Indiana University’s rare book Lilly Library when a librarian interrupted to ask if I would help her return two of the volumes to the cart so she could take them by elevator back to the stacks.

Yes, they really did need two people to move. As I’m seeing now, the books measured about 29½ inches by 39½, otherwise known as double elephant paper, the 435 prints being the same size as the original drawings.

We decided to take a peek and were both blown away. It was as if the birds had been pressed full-size onto the plate. You could actually see the veins in each feather. And that was, it turns out, a copy of the original. Oh, yes, and each species was presented full size, with some favored vegetation.

As for the color? Unbelievable. You have no idea how much is lost through any glass.

We both admitted it was too much for a single viewing.

Well, we had an acquaintance who was terrified of blue jays.

Now, for ten more facts.

  1. As an 18-year-old, Jean-Jacques Audubon was sent to Pennsylvania on a false passport to avoid conscription into Napoleon’s army.
  2. A feud originating during his research in Kentucky closed off American support for young Audubon’s work. Instead, his backing came from England, where subscribers underwrote the classic Birds of America.
  3. One bookseller claimed it would never succeed because the book took up an entire table to view and would render other volumes useless.
  4. A reduced-size two-volume collection, a gift from my younger daughter, has me appreciating the radical design and style of many of the images. There was no way, after all, to approximate the original color, yet any approximation opened other dimensions.
  5. He worked from actual specimens he had shot and killed, arranged in lifelike settings.
  6. He did create a controversy regarding the smell of turkey vultures, or what some of us call buzzards.
  7. Some of the birds he discovered remain a mystery.
  8. He’s known mostly by copies of copies or even additional copies, each time diluting the impact of the originals.
  9. He had nothing to do with the national Audubon Society or its Massachusetts and New Hampshire spinoffs.
  10. He’s buried in New York City.

Forget what you think you know about pirates

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The popular image, shiver me timbers, comes straight out of Disney.

To set the record straight:

  1. They didn’t punish people by making them walk a plank blindfolded. Instead, the victims were killed immediately or keelhauled – tied to a rope and dragged behind the ship.
  2. They didn’t say “Ahoy!” or “Matey!” I’m not so sure about “Argh!”
  3. Female pirates had to disguise themselves as men to protect themselves. But, by some accounts, there were many of them.
  4. Forget the buried treasure. And their loot was often something other than gold or jewelry.
  5. In fact, maps and some books were more treasured as booty than gold.
  6. Captains were elected and could be removed. Who would have thunk?
  7. The eyepatch wasn’t to hide a missing eye but rather to allow for rapid visual adjustment between above deck and below. Anyone want to try that for verification?
  8. Conditions aboard a pirate ship were often more civilized than those on merchant vessels, where lousy rations and low pay were often common.
  9. The skull-and-crossbones Jolly Roger wasn’t the only terrifying pirate flag, by far. How about Black Bart’s one having himself holding an hourglass with the Devil? Or Captain Low’s blood-red skeleton standing at the ready?
  10. Pirates still flourish today, especially in the Indian Ocean and parts of the Pacific.

Well, Eastport’s annual pirate weekend festival’s coming up. We’re bracing for the invasion.

Calais, the one just north of us

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The biggest municipality in sprawling Washington County is the city of Calais, pronounced CAL-us, like hardened skin, rather than the French Cal-LAY, its namesake port on the English Channel.

Set north of Eastport and having a population of slightly more than 3,000, it’s the retail hub of the county and neighboring Canada and the principal international border crossing for traffic to and from the industrial port city of Saint John, New Brunswick, and other coastal points.

With that in mind, here are a few more facts.

  1. Thanks to the border traffic, much of it as Sunbury tractor-trailer rigs, Calais has all of the permanent traffic lights in the county. Three, make that four, if I’m counting right. Yup, pay attention.
  2. It’s the eastern terminus for the Airline Highway, a section of State Route 9 that connects those trucks to Interstate 95 in Bangor and all points south and west in the U.S.
  3. Calais abuts Saint Stephen in Canada, which has both a candy museum and manufacturer and the best health fitness center in our region. The Saint Croix river separates them before continuing upstream as the international boundary.
  4. Calais has the only new auto dealership in the county, as well as the only Walmart.
  5. It’s home to the community college.
  6. The first European to explore the place was Samuel de Champlain in 1604.
  7. That year he was one of two leaders in settling on an island in the tidal stretch of the river. That effort was abandoned the following spring after a brutal winter in which more than half of the colonists perished. Had the venture succeeded, it’s possible we’d all be speaking French here. Today the site of this first French settlement in New France is commemorated at the Saint Croix international historical park.
  8. While its name honors French assistance to the American Revolution, I should also point out that the original had also sometimes been part of England.
  9. It was first settled by Daniel David Hill of York County, Maine. He was likely a descendant from an old Quaker family affiliated with Dover, New Hampshire.
  10. In summer, it’s often much hotter than Eastport. In winter, it’s typically colder.

Oh, yes, there’s even a tiny movie theater we want to check out.

 

Attention, please!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Are you a fellow blogger? Or did something else grab your notice here?

Let me confess that in playing creating titles for posts at the Red Barn, I’ve undergone a shift from the strict rules of writing newspaper headlines back when I was a professional journalist. For the record, I wrote hundreds of thousands of those, even while fixing the texts that followed or placing stories on the many pages I designed, all under a ticking clock and backlog.

One of the things I’ve discovered in blogging is that the title can stand on its own without having to quote from the text that follows. Instead, it can be a tease or even the first sentence of what then follows rather than a summary.

For another, it can be as long as I want. Not just up to ten counts or so of lettering on each of three lines, for example, which might turn out to be three to five words. Haiku looks easy in comparison. In blogging, the title might even be longer than the text that follows. Could you even summarize your post in a handful of words and still seduce readers? That was the newspaper challenge.

What we’re doing here seems all rather liberating or even lazy.

Not that it’s any less difficult.

Now, what grabs you next?

The interior static continues

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Ten more random notes in no particular order:

  1. The “award-winning” writer or actor or whatever is such a cliché anymore I will assume everyone’s won prizes. It’s the ones with money that count.
  2. Jail visitation makes the inmates feel safe, gives them respect.
  3. A surprise way to increase your wealth. Hit square on the calculator! Beats the interest multiplier for sure. Could this be the secret of cryptocurrency?
  4. I see she’s moved back to Allentown from Rhode Island.
  5. Cops at the coffee shop. What an iconic image.
  6. Playing cards were invented during the reign of Tudor king Henry VII (1485-1509) and his wife, Elizabeth of York. Their portraits have appeared eight times on every deck ever since.
  7. New leap for storing leeks through the winter: peat moss! Rather than hay or straw or sand.
  8. Overhead light in the car interior … not just replacing a bulb anymore …
  9. The blue haze in the forests that gives the Great Smoky Moutains their name is actually a fog released by volatile organic compounds in the region’s vegetation.
  10. Marden’s Surplus & Salvage has 14 locations in Maine. As for Remy’s?

 

Urban deer, oh dear

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Eastport – centered on Moose Island – is one of many small cities being overrun by deer. You may have met some of the culprits here at the Red Barn.

Here are some random bits as a result.

  1. In the Wampanoag language, they’re known as “the ones with wet noses,” for the way they investigate the world around them.
  2. Why do fawns have white spots? I suspect it could be a good opportunity for a storyteller to develop. Along with the question of why fawns eventually lose them.
  3. They like apples. Man, do they. Some will dance on their hind legs in reaching for the branch overhead.
  4. They can destroy a garden overnight.
  5. That said, they’ll eat just about anything. One even swallowed a spigot on our bird feeder.
  6. Speaking of which, a bit of cayenne pepper in the feeder seems to repel them. As the adage goes, better late than never, regarding some lessons.
  7. They’ll eat out of your hand if you’re patient. Not that I advise that.
  8. Bucks get bumped out of the circle as they come of age.
  9. The most we’ve counted in our small yard at one time was ten.
  10. We’ve had an albino in the north end of town. I first thought it was a goat in the night.
Here’s a shot from our dining table. Or hers, as well.

Among the many mysteries of adult life

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I never understood how some people with a demanding career and a family or committed relationship found time to conduct an extramarital affair on the side.

I mean, just a primary relationship deserves more attention than it usually gets. Don’t they mix their communications? Which one said what or their preferences? As for names?

And yet some get away with it. Even habitually.

On the other hand, I doubt they would understand all the hours I’ve put into writing, either. What else am I missing? Dear?

 

I’ve been meditating for more than 50 years now

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Well, I haven’t been living as a monk in a Himalayan-mountain cave any of that time, but it does sound more impressive that being a “meditator” or someone who practices in a contemplative religious tradition that long even when it’s only once or twice a week.

The thought came to me in Quaker worship the other Sunday morning, the center of what has remained my spiritual discipline and community after the yoga-based version faded away over the years – even my rising before dawn to sit cross-legged in front of a small altar and its candle before I tackled poetry and then took off for the paying job for the rest of the day.

~*~

While I can no longer park myself on a cushion on the floor in the Asian style but rather settle in much more loosely on an old meetinghouse bench – do not call it a pew – the bigger change has been in the focus of my sitting.

The goal of the yoga exercise was to transcend, leaving behind mundane awareness altogether. Somewhere you might encounter your past lives, even. If not that, then a natural high, as an advanced version of a drug trip. At least an awareness of an altered state of consciousness that might even address authentic ethereal reality.

Instead, in the Quaker vein, what I’ve found is a time of being mentally and emotionally renewed and even gaining clarity into my daily engagements.

Or, as one quip goes, some of the best barns in New England were designed during Quaker Meeting. In this case, meaning the hour of shared and mostly silent worship.

~*~

The half-century mark also takes me back to my first Summer of Love, detailed my novel Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, a book that has scenes triggering the erotica filter, should you try to order a copy.

While I was preparing to live in the yoga ashram to our south back then, I experienced my first summer with a daily exposure to the outdoors, including swimming in mountain lakes, often naked, Upstate New York. It was a time of great struggle, discovery, growth, and redirection for me.

And at the end of all this, at the closure of our hour of silent worship here in Maine, one Friend (aka Quaker) voiced an insight from a Native perspective that when it comes to time, the focus is on the past – it’s the only one we can know. The future is the one behind us, rather than ahead. Not that there’s that much ahead for me in this lifetime.

~*~

Still, it’s was a kind of day that had me wondering, can life be any better than this? (Even with those aches et cetera of aging.)