Tag: Nature

FROM THE WEATHER TO SUICIDE OR EVOLUTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Dave Thurlow and C. Ralph Adler, eds: Soul of the Sky – Exploring the Human Side of the Weather. A Mount Washington Observatory publication presenting literary writing about weather.
  • Milan Kundera: The Art of the Novel. Seven essays in “a practitioner’s confession.” From a peculiar Central European perspective, he admittedly stands at odds, as he points out, with contemporary French fiction. After a first read, I find it difficult to place my work in relation to what he argues, except to acknowledge the ways my work does what only a novel can do. On the other hand, I like work that conveys solid reporting as well – history, geography, geology, theology, and the like – something Kundera clearly disdains, except in a most generalized or abstracted manner.
  • Albert Huffstickler: Poetry Motel memorial edition (No. 32). Work that stays too close to daily journaling for my taste. I’ve seen other pieces by him that seemed to take flight.
  • Maxine Kumin: Jack and Other New Poems. This volume doesn’t go far beyond observations of a New England horse farmer, of the genteel sort.
  • Jeff Clark: Music and Suicide (poems). A controversial and often sophomoric collection (from the Academy of American Poets), yet parts of it catch fire – get the juices going. Coming after Kumin, this is poetry.
  • Patricia Fargnoli: Duties of the Spirit (poems). Centering on a quotation from Thornton Wilder, Fargnoli argues for the duties of joy and serenity – all too easy, methinks, for an old lady living in rustic retirement. These are all pale garden pieces, of the white linen sort – dirty fingernails being for the hired help. Righteous anger, like the social justice verses of Isaiah, are also duties of the spirit – where the red blood flows through muscle.
  • Ntozake Shange: The Sweet Breath of Life. A marvelous collection of poems written in reflection to inner-city photographs by the Kamoinge Inc. collective (and edited by Frank Stewart). An incredible match-up.
  • Jon Tolaas: Evolution and Suicide. A thin freebie, this work turns into a fascinating consideration of the meaning of consciousness itself, using Darwin and Freud as its starting points, pro and con. At the core, perhaps, is the insight that the central question is not, What is the meaning of life, but rather: What have you done (are you doing) with your life.

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FROM MATING AND DATING TO THE GREAT NORTH WOODS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries from my scroll as I kept it:

  • Andrea Orr: Meeting, Mating (and Cheating) – Sex, Love, and the New World of Online Dating. One journalist’s argument that matchmaking is what kept Internet companies afloat during the dot-com bust. Also interesting vignettes of the changing nature of courtship in America.
  • Nathan Graziano: Frostbite. Fine short stories in a Bukowski vein, set mostly north of Concord. Pessimistic, young adult outlook. Is title a pun on Robert Frost, for a Granite State writer?
  • Ray Blackston: A Delirious Summer. Frothy romantic comedy set in South Carolina. But ultimately sexless enough for Southern Baptist readership.
  • W.D. Wetherell, ed: This American River – Five Centuries of Writing About the Connecticut. Good way to begin thinking more pointedly about living in northern New England, where I’ve now been nearly two decades. (Compare what I’ve done here so far to my reading about the Pacific Northwest back in the 70s and my Olympic Peninsula longpoem.) From where I live and work, the Connecticut seems to be the backdoor of the house, with my orientation toward Boston and Maine. Yet it also leads up to the crown of New Hampshire, which I need to explore sometime.
  • W.D. Wetherell: North of Now. Some personal thoughts about living in Lyme and the changing character of rural New Hampshire.
  • Simon Ortiz: Out There Somewhere. Poems and journal entries by a major Native American writer. Found the paperback in Kettering, Ohio, and shared portions on the Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Manchester with a lovely Sioux across the aisle. Still, the collection comes as something of a disappointment: I expect work of the level of the piece Rachel had for class discussion.
  • Iris Moulton: A Thin Time. First volume by a young Utah poet who seems to be instrumental in a revival in Salt Lake City.
  • Stephen Gorman: Northeastern Wilds. Full-color photos with essays exploring the Great North Woods sweeping from the Adirondacks eastward across Maine. Suspect I’ve seen many of these in Sierra Club calendars, and the writing often seems pitched to glossy magazines, with three or four not quite continuous sections pieced together to create a single chapter. Annoying, saved mostly by some decent reference material. An Appalachian Mountain Club volume.

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FROM BIRDING BY EAR TO GROWING OLDER, WITH OR WITHOUT CHOPSTICKS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:

  • Peterson Field Guides: Birding by Ear (booklet and audio tapes). Tweet! (OK, I still can’t identify most birds by their singing. Maybe I just don’t know the words?)
  • Stephan Yafa: Big Cotton. Exploration of the impact of another major commodity on world economies and politics. In line with Salt, Cod, Honey, even the fur and tusks that Farley Mowett has pursued.
  • E. Digby Baltzell: Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia. A disturbing comparison of the legacy of two Colonial cities founded on faith. Baltzell’s reliance on High Society and family dynasties gives the work its own twist, so that families that moved away from either city vanish from sight, no matter their continuing contributions to society. Still, many of his conclusions are also disturbing, especially from a Friends’ perspective.
  • Henry David Thoreau: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. A surprising amount of bad poetry here, as well as very little observation of what’s right before him. I find myself dismissing Thoreau as a suburban naturalist, more an antecedent to Kerouac than, say, Snyder.
  • Tom Montag: Kissing Poetry’s Sister. Includes looks at creative nonfiction as a genre. He’s another middle-aged poet who has continued to write in relative obscurity while being employed in non-teaching positions.
  • Elizabeth Lyon: The Sell Your Novel Toolkit. Had this one sitting on my shelf all along, thinking it was another self-marketing guide for once the work was published. Instead, it turns out to have in-depth sections on query letters, synopsis/outline presentations, landing an agent, and the like. As a result, I have reworked all of my materials for the three novels I’m pitching – even renaming two of them. Now, let’s see if it does the trick.
  • Victoria Abbott Riccard: Untangling Chopsticks. A young woman from New England moves to Kyoto to master the cooking and presentation of food that accompanies tea-ceremony. Along the way, she becomes adept in a culture where she would always be an outsider, even after a lifetime. Includes recipes.
  • Tom Plummer: Second Wind, Variations on a Theme of Growing Older. Pleasant essays more appropriate to newspaper or magazine columns, by an understated Mormon.

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JUST FOR ADDED KICKS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Admittedly, we live in an area that gives meteorologists headaches. It’s one of those where several major weather systems collide. Not quite as bad as where I once lived in Upstate New York and we sometimes wound up with four completely different forecasts for the day’s four editions of the paper as the day wore on. But here, one winter, when one of the local websites had its own retired Air Force meteorologist providing early morning reports, he did note an ongoing line running from Concord, New Hampshire, to Portland, Maine, and remarked that if it shifted slightly north or south, so would the weather, depending which side you were on. That line held on most of the winter.

In the past week, we’ve just come through two “weather events” that provide some amusement in the iffiness of science department, even if it has meant more than 20 inches of snowfall to dig out. In the last one, the projected amounts of snowfall kept changing, sometimes with hourly revisions, or so it seemed, going from one to two inches and settling on two to four, at one service, to three to six at NOAA. We wound up with over eight. So they missed, one of them (the one that’s usually somewhat hysterical in its warnings) off 75 to 88 percent.

In the storm before that, I’m glad I decided to back out of plans to head to Boston for a working session with Friends. The heavier-than-expected snowfall was a mess, and I never would have made it there in time.

Now we’re looking at another weekend, one with a gathering halfway across the state tomorrow night, and the other Sunday morning, the one we rescheduled in Boston. And I have no way of knowing what to expect, other than it might be messy.

Without getting into the percent chances of precipitation but sticking only to the forecast, here are the options:

  • Saturday overcast, Sunday ice pellets, Monday rain.
  • Tomorrow wintry mix, tomorrow night and Saturday rain/snow, Saturday night and Sunday freezing rain continuing Sunday night, Monday rain/snow.
  • Tomorrow a few afternoon showers, Saturday cloudy, Sunday rain, Monday cloudy.

So Sunday’s the only day they agree on, and even that could be simple rain or really messy?

I guess if I had to choose one, it would be the third option, especially since Sunday has only the warmer rain. Or maybe, if I look around more, I might even find a fourth choice I like better.

Or should I just check my horoscope for a clearer idea, instead?

DREAMING OF A WHAT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Golly, it really is too early in the season for this much snow. I spent much of yesterday digging out from a foot or so of the stuff, our first real round as we plunge into another winter, even though it’s officially still autumn and we’ve had a blanket of white on the ground for a week now.

It’s also too early to be this cold, considering the minus-2 Fahrenheit forecast for tonight. That should seal in the snow cover, for sure.

My wife is no doubt anticipating sending me outside with a guest or two to harvest Brussels sprouts in a little over a week, when it comes time to prepare for our traditional Yule feast. Looks like once again we’ll be using an ax to break the icy covering and a shovel to locate the greens. I’ve previously posted about the way frost gives the sprouts and kale a wonderful sweetness, but the snowpack always thickens the plot. She finds it highly amusing, watching from the kitchen window.

Meanwhile, as I shoveled yesterday, I kept remembering that since this is just the start, it would be wise to make an extra effort to leave room for the next storm … or three or four or … Thus, don’t leave the pile at the end of the driveway so tall you can’t see oncoming traffic, be sure to push the icy wall along the driveway back so you won’t have to throw the next round higher than your shoulders, keep as much on the side away from the foundation so it won’t drain into the cellar, … Yes, there’s a long list, based on long experience living here.

Then I remembered something else. Last month, I finally got the bindings on my cross-country skis fixed – and new boots to go with them. Sure looks like a good day to go outside and try them out in a loop around the yard. Hope I keep my balance. Here we go, even before the latest forecast: With Christmas really just around the corner, we’re expecting another inch or two tomorrow.

Whee!

SOARING AND SWIRLING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In mid-March, the buzzards return, soon followed by hawks.

“Buzzards,” as one acquaintance long ago explained, “is what cowboys call turkey vultures.”

But buzzard is so much more fun to say, fast or slow.

Yes, a few linger around here all winter, along with a number of hawks. But one day, looking up, you realize the balance has changed.

They’ve mostly headed for Florida again. Along with the rest of the “snow birds.”

AFTER THE FROST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As everyone’s been saying, New England had a strange summer. It felt shorter than normal, and despite some uncommonly hot spikes, was overall on the cool side. June was drier than usual, while July was wetter. And we swimmers were finding the ocean already growing uncomfortable toward the end of August, rather than leading into the glorious days of September we often anticipate. (The Gulf of Maine takes time to warm, after all.) I barely got my value’s worth out of my season pass to Fort Foster beach, unlike last year, even though I’m officially fully retired now.

As the buzz went, the fall foliage was better than we’d had in years, although it seemed to run about a week ahead of schedule and then essentially drifted off. And, after a few near misses in September, we were finally hit with killing frosts before the last week of October.

Not that many years ago, I would have said that was the end of the garden season, but that’s no longer the case. The cold gives the Brussels sprouts and kale a sweet edge, the parsley hangs in well for a few more weeks, and root crops like carrots, parsnips, turnips, and leeks can stay in the ground until it’s too frozen to spade.

Maybe part of my sense of a shortened summer can be laid to my revived activity as a novelist, thanks to the Smashwords publishing. With Hippie Drum released at the end of May, I found myself busy getting the word out through June and then spent much of August and September revising and formatting more works. Unexpectedly, but with a renewed sense of direction, I even drafted large sections of new material. What all this meant, of course, was time at the keyboard instead of outdoors.

Now that Ashram is in circulation again, I’m once more reflecting on attempting to establish a right balance in my life – time for exercise and home projects, for instance, renewed cooking and expanded social activity. Who knows, maybe I’ll finally reach that sweet spot.

For now, that includes cleaning up the garden, removing the dead zinnia stalks, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes. Pruning the raspberries. Turning compost. And then there’s moving the fig tree to the cellar, putting the hoses and Smoking Garden lights away, dismantling the hammock, stacking the tomato cages.

Already I’m looking at the dandelion leaves and calculating how soon they’ll be emerging from winter and heading to our plates.

Just don’t tell me it’s going to be a hard winter or there will be tons of snow to shovel.

Balance means savoring just one day at a time, right? Or can it mean all of them?