Tag: Musings

DON’T EXPECT SYMPATHY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

With a cap placed on the city’s major source of tax revenue, Dover’s public services have been stressed. The library, for instance, is closed most evenings as well as early Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday. The public schools are in trouble, as you hear from parents, students, and teachers. Street repairs are often on a long list, along with other infrastructure upkeep and improvement. City hall had a leaky roof that went years to replace – there were buckets in the auditorium to catch the rainfall. You get the idea.

So City Council’s decision to accept a $240,000 Homeland Security grant to purchase the police department an armored truck – the description sounds like a flying saucer on wheels – does nothing to suggest common sense in high places. In fact, it’s salt in the wounds.

Does the police chief really expect public sympathy next time he’s trying to avoid staffing cuts and layoffs? Think again. And rely far more on those officers on the street than that armored truck, ever.

STRANGER THAN SCIENCE FICTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck my little city will be getting from Homeland Security – presumably to fight domestic violence and riots rather than international terrorism – is described as a personnel carrier that can transport at least 10 police officers (who knows about regular folks) and comes equipped with gun ports on each side and a rotating center hatch.

Get that, Darth Vader? I assume it has blinking lights all over as well. And maybe steam or fog pouring from under.

Yes, the Department of Homeland Security has been playing Santa Claus with its Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program.

This decision does nothing, of course, to make me feel any more secure. Quite the opposite, actually. I hate to think what might happen if this vehicle gets out on the streets. Or bullets start flying. Or worse, it falls into the wrong hands.

It’s enough to suggest that too many bureaucrats in some high places have been watching too many weird action movies. Or are they really just 14-year-old male adolescents?

PUSSY WILLOWS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Nothing has demonstrated to me how varied growing conditions can be, even in a small plot, more than the six pussy willows we planted our first year here. Some of it is the amount of light each receives, and some, how much water. The soil itself varies widely as well.

One of the sprigs died within a year. One, planted where we thought we had a natural spring at the head of the Swamp, has proliferated – so much, in fact, we must harvest drastically early each spring to keep it from becoming a full-blown tree shading the garden.

After a decade, two others, in the berm along the sidewalk, were finally established enough to begin lopping off budding branches.

The last one, close to the house, is no bigger than when it was first planted.

My wife is always elated by the soft gray budding. I remember both my third-grade teacher, who brought them into the classroom, and the Japanese artists and poets who laud the seasonal marker.

We have so many we give them away, at work, at school, at Quaker meeting.

One March, yes, I still remember so many crows in flight while I cut pussy willow against an incredibly blue sky. Those artists and poets are right.

BEAR CATASTROPHE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

Dover City Council voted, 7-1, Wednesday to accept a $240,000 grant to purchase the police department a BearCat.

This ‘cat, by the way, is not the least bit fuzzy – in fact, the name is an acronym for (get this with a straight face, if you can – its pomposity says everything) a Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck. That is, an armored vehicle for a city of 30,000 mostly average Americans.

More galling is the fact that the grant comes from the federal Homeland Security department. Are they trying to tell us international terrorists have put us in the bull’s-eye?

It’s really ridiculous.

A hearing Tuesday, with very little advance notice or public input, paved the way for Wednesday’s abrupt vote.

This is not how democracy’s supposed to work, especially at the local level. Some of us are feeling steamrollered by that truck. And steamed up, as well.

NEW ENGLAND CITIES AND TOWNS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

In New England, you live in either a town or a city. There are no townships or being “out in the county,” as I’d known elsewhere. And the counties are relatively insignificant, at least politically; they’re largely for a court system, jails, and record-keeping.

Part of my confusion when I first moved to this corner of the country was an assumption that “city” and “town” both meant “urban,” with some population density and a central retail and commercial district. But that’s not always the case. In fact, some seem to be entirely rural.

Additional confusion can be caused by looking at maps and seeing dots representing settlement and then assuming they’re towns. Gilmanton and Gilmanton Iron Works appear, for instance, but they’re both in the town of Gilmanton and are separated by miles of forest. The community of Groveton is in the town of Northumberland. The city of Laconia includes the enclaves of Weirs Beach and Lakeport. A city or town may have a number of distinct neighborhoods or villages, sometimes with separate post offices or Zip codes. And so on.

Our cities and towns are geographical spaces differentiated by their form of government. Cities are managed by a mayor and board of aldermen, while a town relies on a three-person board of selectmen. Population? Some of New Hampshire’s 13 cities are quite small, while a handful of its 221 towns rank among the largest localities. The form of government is a local choice.

Except for the towns that have opted for a ballot-based alternative known as SB 2, the residents of New Hampshire’s towns gather on the second Tuesday in March for Town Meeting Day, a celebrated exercise in democracy where everyone gets a say, at least if the moderator’s on top of his or her game. They’ll tackle the warrant articles – the agenda published in advance, including town and school budgets and bonding – and also elect new officials.

In a few towns, the entire event’s wrapped up in a half-hour, while others stretch on for hours or even demand additional sessions. The ones that get quite heated may explain why Town Meeting Day’s held in winter.

~*~

Winged Death 1To see more of the region’s unique character and calendar, click here.

EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL IN ITS SEASON

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’ve contended that locale can be beautiful. But the reality is that many are stripped of the opportunity.

As my wife points out, a town where the railroad tracks run down the middle of the main street through town is, well, bound to be ugly.

Put another way, the presence of beauty or ugliness is a reflection of other values. Is there a degree of generosity and restfulness, for instance, or is it more stingy and pinched? There’s rarely any financial return in planting flowers, after all, and even trees take years to mature.

Still, even when I lived in some pretty gritty factory towns, small corners of beauty could be found, even if they were the exception rather than the rule. And Dover, where I am now, has undergone a renaissance from its days of boarded-up abandoned textiles mills downtown only decades ago.

To have a sense of beauty and grace proliferate, I’m sensing, is really a matter of religion – or at least heightened spirituality. Where would a community be, after all, without artists and skilled crafters who embody their holy visions?

EFFICIENCY, PERCHANCE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I noted after visiting the super-energy-efficient home of Fritz and his partner, Will:

The pilot light on their amazing AGA cooking stove heats the entire house through our northern New England winters, essentially, but doesn’t overheat it in the summer.

(But that wasn’t all.)

Maybe Will and a widower I know could wind up traveling to the Met performances together. The one’s already remarked how difficult it is, down and back in a single day. After all, each way takes longer than the opera performance itself. Even when it’s Wagner.

From what I’ve seen, they’d both have a lot to talk about during the long drive. If only there were an easy introduction.

LIVING HISTORIES OF FAITH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the end, ours is a deeply personal faith. The best writing and best vocal ministry among us come from the well of individual experience, and even when it counsels us to a course of action, its voice seems to arise more in confession and self-discovery than from any outward agenda. What we have is both timeless and fresh.

Paradoxically, this has also called us to be part of a community of faith – individuals who also respond to this voice. The fact that we have come to sit facing one another in a circle – or, more accurately, a hollow rectangle or square – says something about the value we place on each other’s presence in this enlarging vision.

As Friends have long argued, there’s a big difference between solid doctrine, or solid teaching, which Quakers treasured, and dogma or creed, which they rejected. In asking “What canst thou say?” they sought answers that had been tested in the heart as well as in practice. It was much like taking up mathematics, for instance, with the question, “How do YOU solve that problem?” or going into the kitchen with a talented cook. No wonder queries have been such a central part of Quaker teaching!

I like a faith that’s not afraid to question. It keeps me going deeper. And going back for more.

AN ALL-STAR CAST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When I was working with the newspaper syndicate, I got to meet a lot of impressive talent. (That’s how we referred to them, too, as “the talent.”)

The other day I was thinking of a few of them – Mike Peters (Mother Goose and Grimm), Jeff MacNally (Shoe), Dick Locher (Dick Tracy), Doug Marlette (Kudzu) – all of them excellent editorial page cartoonists as well – plus Joe Martin (Mr. Boffo) and Kevin Pope.

For the most part, they were a serious lot. I remember one’s reverential mention of another, “He’s the only cartoonist who makes me laugh out loud” – only to hear, months later, the comment returned without prompting. Like, admiring like, with a twist.

I remember, too, one looking at the work of another and commenting, “This is really funny” – without breaking into the slightest evidence of even a smile.

As I said, a serious lot.

What I also found was that their work was much funnier than what turned up among the others who were more boisterous and comical in person.

~*~

MacNally and Locher were both employed by the Chicago Tribune and enjoyed a warm rapport. MacNally’s studio wrapped around the elevator shaft on the 35th floor of newspaper’s iconic tower and had large windows peering out across the city and into the infinite blue of Lake Michigan as it blended into the sky. How he could ever work in such a suite was beyond me. (The top floor, just above his, was filled with electronic gear. Microwaves and the like.)

Locher’s studio was one floor down, with small diamond windows and a rather Gothic feel. I joked that it was like dwelling in a gargoyle, and he agreed.

As we sat in that space, a coworker noticed two framed certificates and remarked, “That’s all a Pulitzer is? A piece of paper?”

And without missing a beat, MacNally, who had just won his third, chortled. “Yup,” he said quietly. “That’s about it.”