Tag: Photos

All you can eat

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

A Penobscot Bay windjammer cruise typically includes a lobster bake, though technically the crustaceans are boiled or steamed with corn on the cob. The event takes place on any of a number of uninhabited islands along the way.

It does mean going ashore, of course.

For the record, last summer I ate 3½ lobsters – hey, they were small chix – but a shipmate managed 6½, just shy of the Louis R. French record of seven. Had she known, I would have cheered her on.

For those of a more squeamish nature, hot dogs and other hot goodies are offered, along with gooey s’mores, as long as the wood fire continues.

For more schooner sailing experiences, take a look at my Under Sail photo album at Thistle Finch editions.

As an added concern: working from home

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to my poetry and fiction enterprises in my supposedly free hours – well, they’ve rarely paid me, unlike my career in the newspaper office – the idea of having workspace at home has been a given all the way back to the mid-‘70s.

For other members of our household, though, it’s something that’s certainly taken hold since, well, before Covid.

When the downstairs became crowded once the renovation overhead got going, we soon felt cramped. That big printer provided by an employer, for instance, took up some prime tabletop real estate and a precious electrical outlet. We still had a smaller one for our own use. Then there were other things, like a traveling table for presentations, a ream of printing paper, hand-out literature, and it all adds up.

The kitchen table typically became overrun with two or three laptops, stacks of documents and notes, and perhaps a few groceries for one coconspirator. Just what would happen when we were joined full-time by the second, who has her own online ventures? We needed to plan for those.

What became obvious was that each of us could use a second room of our own for these labors. Or at least a room that could do dual service. One where we could even close the door on a project without having to pick it up and put it away for the night.

The smaller front parlor, once cleared of “temporary” storage, would return to use as one office and conference room and, as needed, overnight guests.

The back parlor, which had been my bedroom, studio, and laundry room, would become a dining and crafts room, likely also dedicated to the other coconspirator’s business. And, yes, some of those crafts.

The new guestroom upstairs held the potential of also accommodating some of my overflow. It would also need a desk for our son-in-law in his visits. His company had obliterated its own offices long ago, and he was almost always on call.

And you were wondering what we were going to do with all of that new space? Oh, my.

We still had two storage units to empty, too.

As for the clothes washer and dryer

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the original layouts for the upstairs, I thought a laundry room was pushing our limits. On the other hand, I didn’t want a washer and dryer in the bathroom, either. That just would have looked, well, utilitarian. Besides, keeping them separate would avert crowding when competing uses erupted.

So what would be wrong with keeping them downstairs?

That’s when the fact that we would have to carry our laundry up and down stairs was pointed out to me. They’re the bulk of our wash load.

OK, I relented and was willing to go see where the new plan would lead.

I had to admit that no longer having it in my bedroom and studio was going to come as a relief.

~*~

What I’m seeing now is how much this “luxury” really enhances our daily living, starting with the sheets and blankets storage.

I’ve long been a fan of having elbow space as part of my work area. For perspective, I recommend Richard Swenen’s 1992 bestseller, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives.

The laundry room – and the slightly wider than normal hallway between it and the stairwell – reflect that thinking.

The laundry tub also fits into that idea of margin, with its deep bowl facilitating household and painting projects cleanup more easily than a bathtub does.

Add to that the ease of ironing.

There’s even thought of running a clothesline out from the window.

Frankly, I’m not so sure about that, though I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

An air of a ghost town

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Much of Way Downeast Maine stirs up echoes of the American Far West, at least in the eyes of some, and that includes impressions of ghost towns.

The downtown of Lubec has some prime examples, including this imposing waterfront emporium that was the headquarters for R.J. Peacock company’s wide-ranging sardine operations.

I think the structure has a slight resemblance to the long-gone steamship wharf that once welcomed passengers just below our house in Eastport. This one is still standing.

To explore related free photo albums, visit my Thistle Finch blog.

Fitting me like a glove

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I posted a year ago, this would be the first time I’ve had a tailor-made personal space. How heavenly! Look at those two windows higher up on the wall, allowing for shelving below and cross-circulation of air in the warmer months in addition to natural light.

Roughly 12-by-14 feet, including the closet and writing corner, much of it would be taken up with a very comfy double-sized bed, but the room was also intended to enclose my 200-plus journals, rows of LPs and CDs, a turntable and Bose stereo, hundreds of books, plus clothing, filing cabinets, and a writing corner. Hey, I’ve been downsizing.

The room is isolated, tucked away from everything, unlike the previous space where I could keep an eye on passers-by on the street and deliveries to the back door, the entry that got 98 percent of our use. I could even see the deer in our yard. The new room, in contrast, feels more like a treehouse, even with that double-sash window that displays a corner of the ocean and all of its changes.

~*~

My bedroom is the smallest of the four, but it fits me like the proverbial glove. If I sometimes think of it as being like a treehouse, that was something I never had as a kid, though I did climb often to the top of the elm in our back yard. I can nearly clamber to its tippy top in my sleep, almost 70 years later, hundreds of miles to the east.

In our renovations, the room is also envisioned as a place for my continuing downsizing, a consideration for my heirs who have no interest in my journals, manuscripts, recorded music, clothing, or ancestral snapshots and formal photographs. I don’t want to burden them with any of that. Still, despite my previous efforts, there’s so much I still need to sort through in my remaining time. Back to those journals, manuscripts, recordings, clothes, and photos. Some of that labor may even lead to future posts here.

Back when we moved into our Dover house, the one with the red barn in New Hampshire, I needed tons of space for my literary projects – everything was on paper. Not so now, especially after so much of that paper is now available to readers in digital publication.

What we did with the wall between mine and the front bedroom is especially delightful. Originally, the space was supposed to be divided between the two bedrooms, but then she who must be obeyed ceded it all to me, except for the space overhead. Her reason was that this was the wall where she decided her bed should go, and the bed would have obstructed the closet. OK, then.

Gee, I had been thinking about what might go up my side of the space. Instead, I have a bit of upper wall, which makes me wonder what might be displayed there instead. My Far West cow skull, perchance? Or a moose antler rack from around here?

My proudest part of my upstairs quarters is the writing center carved out of what would have been closet, up against an outside window. Here I can see a corner of the harbor and yet also have so much at hand overhead.

~*~

The back two bedrooms – mine and the one we’re designating as guest room – are largely square in their floorplan but were to have a signature charred beam running upward along the exterior wall, a reminder of the 1886 downtown fire that charred our rafters but didn’t get further than that. For us, these are also reminders of a chimney fire or two that the house also survived. For the most part, the rooms are mirror images of each other, except for differences in the wall that has the closets. More on that in a later post or two.

When it came time for the drywall to go up, we yielded on preserving that detail and instead went for an unbroken wall, mostly because of the expense of the labor needed to execute the details. Alas.

~*~

In the renovations, my room took priority because so much stuff from where we were dwelling downstairs had to move up to make room for ongoing work as it shifted to the first floor.

Besides, I was tiring of trying to sleep and write in the same chamber as the clothes washer and its noise. That future dining room was getting very crowded. We would need it as a staging area for the next stages of renovation.