Tag: Ohio

‘Big cities’ in my life

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’ve long been fascinated by major metropolises, or at least the concept of a downtown as a pulsing power center buzzing with fashionable activity. My hometown, while a thriving city at the time, never struck me as “big.” As for glitz? Forget it.

In the list I’ve assembled, each of the cities has at least one professional baseball team, and today also an NFL team, not that sports were a big factor for me. Great symphony orchestras and art museums, however, definitely were. And later, I came to see subway systems as another measure; the majority of the cities here have them.

All but one of these locations is somewhere I’ve been more than once, and we’re not even counting connecting flights at the airport. While I’ve resided inside only one of these hubs, I’ve lived within the gravitational orb of another seven.

That said, here goes, presented more or less in the order in which I experienced them.

  1. Cincinnati: I grew up about an hour away, and once I got my driver’s license, I got to know the place much better than just Crosley Field, riverboat rides, the zoo, or the observation deck atop the Carew Tower, destinations of family outings or school field trips. I’ll save the details for later.
  2. Chicago: The Loop, with its narrow canyons between skyscrapers, and the walkway along the Chicago River still embody the visceral excitement I identify as big city. An initial visit as a teen followed by visits to friends and lovers later culminated when I worked for the media syndicate of the Chicago Tribune and was whisked up high in its tower overlooking Lake Michigan.
  3. New York: I didn’t get to the Big Apple until the summer between my junior and senior year of college. I was living in a boarding house and working an internship about four hours Upstate, but after graduation I returned and had housemates and friends from The City. Visiting the place with them was delightful. Later, living in the ashram about two hours away or in Baltimore to the south, I got in for even more exposure.
  4. Seattle: During my four years in the desert of Washington state, an escape to “the wet side” of the Cascade mountains was a regular part of our existence. I’m not sure how much I’d recognize the place now, but we did have friends who’d put us up. Even then, people were worried the city would lose its charm, the way San Francisco had.
  5. San Francisco: In my one visit, there was still some charm left. Especially the affordable ethnic restaurants out in the neighborhood where we were staying, with our sleeping bags on the floor. The hippies had long gone to greener pastures, but City Lights bookstore was still packed.
  6. Cleveland: Living about two hours away, I got to know the city on Lake Erie mostly as University Circle, with its extraordinary art museum (free admission), famed concert hall, genealogical library, and Quaker Meeting. The downtown still hadn’t rebounded. I’ll also include the famed orchestra’s summer home south of town as part of the experience.
  7. Pittsburgh: Two hours in the other direction, we spent more time in Squirrel Hill and the university neighborhood than downtown. The steel mills were long gone, but major corporate headquarters still flavored the core, much more than they did Cleveland.
  8. Baltimore: Oh, how I loved the place. My first apartment was the top floor of a rowhouse within walking distance of symphony hall. The gentrified neighborhood was something like Boston’s Beacon Hill but pre-Civil War era rather than Colonial. Even when I relocated to a suburb, I spent a lot of time in Roland Park and a few other neighborhoods. The Inner Harbor was always a delight.
  9. Washington: Living about an hour to the north in my Baltimore sojourn meant I could head down easily, usually to visit friends in the Maryland suburbs. What surprises me on reflection is how little I made of the opportunity to do more. Yes, I did use the National Archive and Library of Congress a few times for genealogical research, and visited the imposing National Gallery and the Phillips more collegial collection, but I never got to the Smithsonian or White House tour or any of the monuments, really. Besides, there was nothing much of a downtown – charming Georgetown seemed to fill that function.
  10. Boston: It took me a while to warm up to Boston, but once I was living an hour to the north, my attitude changed. For more than 30 years, then, I turned to its museums, theaters, concert venues, bookstores, record stores, restaurants, and more, even contradancing two or so times a week, and that was before having a girlfriend or two in the suburbs or joining a suburb community choir just beyond Cambridge. In the end, though, I was still an outsider.

I realize how much the experience of most of these places is based on walking. Pedestrian-friendly was a key element separating them from others.

Honorable mentions: Worcester, Saint Louis, Toronto, Philadelphia, Montreal, Detroit, Providence.

 

 

How I slowly became aware of Greek-Americans

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Back in high school, my best friend’s mom was buddies with a Greek neighbor who used to proclaim, “Athens! She is beautiful! The rest of the country?” A spitting sound I could never ever spell out accompanied by the open palms of both hands coming down side by side from overhead.

His other best friend was Greek, too. A kind of philosopher, in fact.

My civics teacher was Greek, as was the drama and debate coach.

In college, a landmark restaurant just off campus passed into a new generation much the way the one in my fictional Daffodil did. Somehow, the details stayed vaguely with me.

Off in the Pacific Northwest, I became fond of souvlaki and spanakopita on our forays to the University District of Seattle.

On my return to Ohio, there was a delightful Greek bakery in a small storefront on a quiet residential street six or seven blocks east of our house.

In Baltimore, “All the pizza’s made by Greeks,” seemed wrong – where were the Italians? And out on the road, “All the diners are owned by Greeks.” Little did I know about flatbreads.

In New Hampshire, the Athens restaurant in downtown Manchester – popular but, to my senses, bland and tired – in contrast to one of my favorite takeout places where we ordered for the office – the menu that introduced me to gyros.

Add to that the cathedral’s big Glendi, which sent food to the newsroom in gratitude for our coverage, or the little frame St. Nicholas I’d pass on one route to and from the paper.

One of our older coworkers, a photo lab tech, was Greek – kind and smiling, though I got to know little else.

A sharp-tongued but very competent colleague in the composing room was also Greek. Named Pericles after his grandfather, though it was shortened for us.

All of this was fleeting and fragmentary but came together in Dover and its annual, free-admission Greek festival.

And then confirmed at Davos in Watertown Square, Massachusetts, a block down the street from our weekly choir practice. The food was great, though run by Hispanics.

Now I can tell you there are Greek-Americans almost everywhere. Opa!

A few things to do in Dayton

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The Gem City of Ohio has taken some hard hits since I left for other points as an adult. Even then, many folks said there was nothing to do or see, but that’s not what I find in return visits. Here are some things I’ll recommend.

  1. Carillon Park: This charming 65-acre historical park, originating with support from the National Cash Register company and designed by the famed Olmstead brothers, is somewhat like Henry Ford’s Dearborn Village but much smaller and less crowded. Settled in the shadow of a limestone carillon tower donated by engineer and industrialist Edward Deeds and his wife, the campus of small, often historic buildings at the foot of a wooded hillside showcases the region’s industrial innovations and contributions to world progress. One pavilion displays an early Wright Brothers’ airplane, while other buildings feature the automotive self-starter (launching the Delco division of General Motors) and indoor refrigeration (leading to Frigidaire), among the many contributions inventor Charles F. Kettering that advanced the lives of Americans and the rest of the world. John Henry Patterson’s development of the cash register changed retailing from cigar-box accounting while pioneering modern marketing and creating demand where none had existed. The displays have grown and become more diverse, and there’s even brewpub and festivals now. Still, it used to be free admission.
  2. Air Force Museum: My, this trove at the edge of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has come a long way from the old hangars it occupied inside the base when I was a teen. You can get lost in what’s billed as the world’s oldest and largest military aviation museum. Some of the Wright Brothers’ earliest work in human flight took place in this locale. Free admission.
  3. Cox Arboretum: New to me is this botanical delight on the former estate of newspaper publisher, governor, and U.S. Democratic presidential nominee James M. Cox. The floral displays and gardens at this 174-acre park can be stunning, the trails are gentle, and there’s even a butterfly house. Thank goodness it was spared from development.
  4. Dayton Art Institute: Some astute collecting over the years has resulted in a wide-ranging collection of masterpieces from both the Old World and the Americas. While others were bidding up prices on third-rate pieces by famed signatures, Dayton was acquiring first-rate works by lesser-known hands or rare pieces from Inca and Aztec traditions, among others. Now it even has extensive Asian galleries.    
  5. Paul Lawrence Dunbar home: The Black American poet is finally getting due attention. His neighborhood on the West Side, which he roamed with friends Orville and Wilbur Wright, is now restored and open to the public.
  6. America’s Packard Museum: New to me is the world’s largest public collection of Packard automobiles and memorabilia – more than 50 classic cars, thousands of parts, and a research library in a 60,000 square-foot facility that was built in 1917 as an art deco Packard dealership, the Citizens Motorcar Company.
  7. Miamisburg Mound and Fort Ancient: Many of my favorite memories involved hiking in the neighboring landscape. These two sites – one in neighboring Miamisburg, the other further south along the Little Miami River, give a clue to the wonders of the ancient peoples who constructed intricate earthworks we’re only beginning to comprehend – think Stonehenge, for an English parallel, only vaster. Miamisburg’s, for instance, rises 65 feet, has a circumference of 800 feet, and contains 54,000 cubic yards of earth, all built by hand.
  8. Clifton Gorge, John Bryan State Park, and Glen Helen: Upstream on the scenic Little Miami River, these three sites connect into one for the ambitious stroller. The gorge, or limestone canyon, was largely unknown when I explored it but is now more available to the public. The river then meanders through the state park and its trails. Glen Helen, in Yellow Springs, was part of Antioch College.
  9. Englewood dam: The largest of the five passive flood-control dams erected in the Great Miami River watershed after floodwaters in 1913 devasted the valley, Englewood’s is 4,716 feet long and 110.5 feet high, part of an innovative civic district and remarkable engineering feat that became a model for the federal Tennessee Valley Authority during the Great Depression. Here, as well as at the Taylorsville, Huffman, Germantown, and Lockington dams, the retarding basins on the upstream side and the wooded hillsides now form the Five Rivers Metroparks system. And downstream has never been inundated since.     
  10. Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm: Adjacent to Englewood dam is one more relief from the suburban sprawl that has overtaken much of Greater Dayton. This 200-acre sanctuary includes a nature center and educational farm, along with eight miles of walking trails.

Opera fans have their memories, but few are like this

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Thinking about arts performance scheduling and audiences has had me recalling some of the first operas I attended.

They were at the Cincinnati Zoo, at the corner of Erkenbrecher and Vine.

Don’t laugh. The performances were top-flight. The Cincinnati Summer Opera, as it was commonly known, was informally considered the summer home of New York’s Met, and it provided seasonal employment for members of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

The company had an impressive pavilion on the grounds, and visiting the animals before watching the singers was part of the experience, if you allowed yourself time. I especially remember being amused by the monkey island antics at intermission. And many of the singers, so I’ve read, humorously came to think of themselves as a special kind of animal.

Especially notable was the first time you heard a roving peacock screech. It sounded like somebody was being murdered and could happen at any time during a performance. Veteran singers used to wait to see if newbies could maintain their composure when the cry rang through the theater. In the opera world, this was an inside joke and a rite of passage, at least for those who passed the test.

I’ve been trying to remember how long the season ran, but there were usually four performances a week – one production on Thursday and Saturday, and another on Friday and Sunday, if I have it right. In the late ‘60s, that spanned six to eight weeks, best as I can recall.

Think of that – 12 to 16 different productions each year. Only a few big houses in the world surpass that.

But at its height, there were 18 different offerings over 61 performances in a ten-week season. Where did that many operagoers come from out in Ohio and neighboring Kentucky and Indiana?

The tradition originated in 1920, making the Cincinnati Opera Association the second-oldest opera company in the U.S., and continued until moving into the renovated and air-conditioned Music Hall in 1972, where the season still happens each summer, though on a much different scale.

‘It’s all fiction’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As my new book came together in its revisions, I began to feel some parallels to John Baskin’s 1976 New Burlington: The Life and Death of an American Village, a non-fiction opus based on what was then the new field of oral history.

The village he examined was largely Methodist and Quaker, the latter having come en masse from South Carolina as their rejection of living in a slave-holding countryside. In fact, when they relocated as a Quaker Monthly Meeting, they carried their treasured minute book with them and continued their records in Ohio.

His book became something of a classic and was even excerpted as a popular series in the Dayton Daily News.

While relying heavily on quotations from his sources, he did knit the interviews together with some heavy interpretation on his part. And here I was, becoming an active narrator in the action in my own work.

My book, as it stands, is heavily influenced by what I’ve learned writing fiction, in addition to my lifetime career as a newspaper journalist. I view the result as a story.

More to the point, when Quaking Dover came out, one longtime friend asked me if it was another novel. I bristled, I think, “No! It’s a history! Non-fiction!” While also thinking, “Didn’t you read the description? What did you miss?”

~*~

I am trying to remember the first time I mentioned Baskin’s book, probably in a Quaker circle in another part of the state, and hearing the response, “It’s all fiction.”

Huh? It seemed pretty solid to me, and the asides on Quakers were rather informative for a newcomer, as I still was then.

A decade or so later, visiting family back in Ohio, I ventured off to worship at the New Burlington Quaker church, which had rebuilt out by the highway after the village had been flooded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

At the close of the service, I was asked why I chose them rather than the more silent Friends in nearby Waynesville. Well, I had worshipped in that historic meetinghouse years earlier but, as I replied, I enjoyed visiting other branches of the Quaker world. And then I added, “Besides, I have the book.”

A moment of awkward silence struck the circle around me before the oldest person, a woman perhaps in her early 90s, softly pronounced, “It’s all fiction.” Obviously, they all knew what I meant by “the book.”

Oh? I was in no place to argue and accepted her verdict as literary criticism. In some ways, I took it as advice, not that anyone knew I, too, was a writer. Those of us in the news biz were already treading on thin ice in too many ways.

Still, as I retold the encounter to a reliable bud, he inhaled sharply and noted, “That’s strange. It’s the same thing Aunt Cecille said. Her words, ‘It’s all fiction.’”

Well, she did live in a town only a few miles up the road, one where the local Friends church had recently petered out. She, too, had Quaker roots and community creds.

~*~

As a journalist, I can relay one fine reporter’s observation that he knew he was on course with a controversial issue when he found both sides of the story were upset. Not that I want to go there. Still, I do know that we humans have a hard time accepting our own shortcomings and follies and that we view events through our own lenses.

I should add that Quakers, as a whole, write a lot. It’s a crowded field.

How crowded? The primary Quaker history journal takes this stand: if a book hasn’t been vetted by a peer review panel of historians, it’s taking a pass.

As they did on mine.

 

When you see someplace you’ve known now in the news

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, has me mentally revisiting a part of my landscape from forty years ago.

At the time, I lived two counties to the north but was a member of one of three old-style Quaker Meetings in Columbiana County, where the accident took place. So I was down there at least once a week most of the year. The county was a mix of industrial and suburban, especially where it bordered Rust Belt Youngstown, and rural Appalachia along with touches of New England. One corner abutted the Ohio River and West Virginia.

The rail line in the headlines was like those running through a small city where I had worked in another corner of the state, a place I call Prairie Depot in my fiction. And East Palestine itself could be adjacent to the city at the core of my novel, Hometown News.

Churches included Mennonite and Brethren, in the peace tradition, as well as Evangelical Friends at the other end of the Quaker spectrum.

Retracing the terrain via satellite maps, I was struck by how much I’ve forgotten, even parts I had known fondly. Others were pretty gritty, even back then.

From a distance now, it’s like encountering a ghost in a haunted house I thought I’d left behind.

Don Draper and the life I thought I’d be living

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

My first awareness of the Mad Men television series, about a decade ago now, came in my daughters’ outraged question – “Was there really that much sexual abuse in the workplace back then? They’re making that up, aren’t they?”

They were incredulous at the blatant sexism and racism of the time I grew up in, even after I confirmed it was there.

What they described was confirmed and more in my recent binge viewing of the series. Let’s just say I was quickly emotionally engaged in the show.

Growing up in the Midwest, I was repeatedly told I belonged in New York rather than in my hometown. Advertising was, in fact, one of the career paths I was considering, and like journalism and publishing in general, Manhattan was still the center of the universe.

Watching the presentations reminded me, to some extent, of the first offices I worked in, even in Ohio. And Don Draper, the advertising creative director at the core of the story (I started to say “heart” but he is rather heartless), reminded me of some of my livelier bosses as well as a kind of ideal of what I was aspiring to or perhaps was being groomed for, at least before the hippie influence kicked in.

Yes, there was cigarette smoking everywhere, and liquor – and functioning alcoholics. (Should I say “functioning alcoholics who smoked”? Or is that too redundant?)

There were also some incredible secretaries, who were far more than typists. The best held the office together, far more than the corner office they reported to.

Let’s just say that the workplace changed drastically in the years since, in part through the digital revolution.

~*~

The show also hit close to home through the father of my best friend in high school, who was a vice president in a boutique advertising agency, one titled with the initials of the three of the partners’ surnames. Not that he was anything like the ad men in the show. Through him, though, I learned of the intricacies of billing, production challenges, deadline crunches, marketing analysis, and purchasing print, broadcast, billboard, and direct mail access – things that were touched lightly on, if at all, in the plots but still a factor.

And during college and the first year after, I was exposed to families that could well have mingled with the Drapers – executives, attorneys, and politicians, plus their wives and children of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

~*~

My daughters were swept up in the show’s fashion mindfulness of the ‘50s and early ‘60s but unhappy with the styles as the chronology moved on in the final seasons. We can argue there.

My biggest criticism is of the cheap shots taken at hippies, falling into stereotypes rather than the more carefully crafted type studies up to that point. In doing so, the writers and producers lost an opportunity to more sharply critique the cynical, superficial world Draper and his colleagues inhabited. The tone of these segments, quite simply, was out of line with the rest of the production.

Even so, I was devastated by the final episode.

Could that have actually been me? Thank God, I escaped.

I’m East of Acadia, if not quite Eden

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I like to think that natural beauty can be found anywhere, but I have to admit that too often, what’s happened is that brute ugliness has prevailed in far too many places, typically as a result of greed. There’s no excuse for much of that, either. A little extra expenditure could have added grace to any development, created visual intrigue, lessened the harshness. Urban or rural or what’s in-between, alas.

Whenever possible, I chose career moves that opened me to natural or artistic settings and inspiration – along with opportunities to shine professionally. It’s meant avoiding suburbs, for one thing. Sometimes, though, it’s also meant invoking a sliding scale of value – you know, finding pockets of serenity within otherwise harsh localities. And then there were some other postings that principally industrial, even when it was mostly farmland. So it’s been a mix.

Still, as I’ve said, I came to realize that had I remained in my native corner of Ohio, I wouldn’t have been able to write poetry, the vibe was simply wrong. Or, if I had, it would have been much different from what I’ve done.

On the other hand, the four years I lived two hours east of Mount Rainier, back in the late ’70s, gave me repeated access to one of America’s greatest national treasures, often from lesser-known perspectives. What memories! And that’s before I turn to much of the back country and wilderness that was closer to our home. I even came to love the beauty of the desert where I was living, a landscape that initially struck us as hideous.

Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park, glimpsed from the east.

Now I’m finding myself dwelling two hours east of an even more popular natural park, Acadia. Already, I have glimmers of many backwoods and remote rocky shores to explore in-between.

Technically, all of Downeast Maine is also Acadia, the French name of the region. For most folks, though, Acadia means the park.

The biggest land mammal out west was the elk, while here in northern New England, it’s the moose. Just as the celebrated shellfish here is lobster, rather than Dungeness crab.

The fact is, for many people, either place is about as close to paradise as you’d find on earth.

And, yes, I’m feeling lucky – or especially blessed – that way.