Tag: Smiles

No, tomatoes don’t all taste the same

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The first year I witnessed the gardener in our household sprout and then transplant a dozen or so varieties of tomatoes, I was perplexed. Foolish me, I thought tomatoes were pretty interchangeable. Not so by the end of summer, when I had discovered how much each variety had its own identity. Some ripened earlier than others, a major consideration in our short growing season. Some were firmer while others were juicier. Each variety matured in its own size and shape. Trying to describe the range of flavors could soon sound like a wine tasting commentary. So far, we’ve had nothing that has delivered a hint of slightly warm asphalt, which seemed to be a plus for one wine critic. We’ll save you our own take.

Also important to us is disease and blight resistance. New England can be a difficult region for tomato growers.

Here’s a sampling of what we’ve cultivated, eaten, and even dried, canned, or bagged frozen.

  1. Goldie: A large, deep orange, slicing beefsteak fruit. “The perfect tomato,” as I blogged back on August 26, 2021, touting it for its starring role on my beloved sandwiches. This heirloom variety is one of the last to blossom and bear harvest for us, but it’s definitely worth the wait.
  2. Pruden’s Purple: Valued as being one of the first large tomatoes to mature (72 days), this firm wonder has a distinctive deep pink, ridged appearance. It also contains few seeds. The flavor is described as nicely balanced between sweet and tart.
  3. Brandywine: A very popular large heirloom, this one generally matures in 80 to 90 days. Many folks consider it the tastiest of the lot. Its leaves resemble potato plants more than tomatoes, and the heavy fruit means the plants need a lot of support.
  4. Yellow Brandywine: A gold-yellow variation created in 1991 from the famed Brandywine heirloom, this beefsteak weighs in at up to two whopping pounds a globe.
  5. Sungold: These tangy sweet golden orange cherry-size tomatoes are among the earliest to arrive for us – within two months, supposedly, though for us that meant early August last year – yet continued to deliver through September. Harvesting at peak can be tricky, though: a shade too early misses the glory, but a shade too late and they start to spoil. Their flavor is described as intense and sugary-sweet, a delightful addition to salads. They form in clusters of ten to 20 tomatoes on a vine. Add to it the red Glacier, another cherry tomato that arrives early and continues valiantly into autumn.
  6. Juliet: This small, elongated, prolific paste tomato has been a true workhorse for us. It freezes well, providing a foundation for soup and sauces throughout the winter. Lately, we’ve augmented this one with Plum Regal, primed for the end of the season; Amish Paste, a larger elongated plum tomato that also works well for soup and sauces; and Roma, an egg-shaped three-incher prized for making paste and sauces.
  7. Opalka: At the larger end of the paste tomatoes, this Polish entry grows up to five feet tall and has irregularly-shaped fruit up to six inches long. Tasters at Fedco Seeds described it as “an oasis of flavor in a desert of tomato hell,” “a pleasing texture and good aftertaste lingers,” “round and mellow flavor… full-bodied.” As I was saying about critical taste analysis?
  8. Cosmonaut Volkov: Back to the one-pounders I love for tomato-and-mayo sandwiches, this slightly flattened beefsteak is named for a Russian astronaut who died returning from space. It can go mushy if overripe, though.
  9. Omar: Or more accurately, Omar’s Lebanese, which was introduced in 1996 via a Lebanese college student named Omar Saab. Typically weighing in at up to 1½ pounds apiece, the fruit sometimes ambitiously reaches three or four pounds. The flavor is described as “multidimensional sweet.”
  10. Copper Beauty: An elongated and very tasty small tomato, this one still has lots of green in its skin when ripe, augmented by orange streaks, along with a dark red interior when sliced.

And we haven’t even touched on some fine “black” tomatoes.

 

Skillsets that became useful in my non-fiction book

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Returning to that adage, “Write about what you know,” I realize how some work experience from my past gave me a unique edge in drafting Quaker Dover.

For instance:

  1. My journalism career included an early gig of pure research for a daily Action Line column. (We had an editor/writer, a secretary, and two researchers – big time!) Writing and editing, of course, were the staples of the rest of those years.
  2. From writing and then revising the novels, of course, I had explored the dynamics of building a large book and then the distinguishing qualities of fiction in contrast to journalism. I even learned to excise a hundred or more pages from a manuscript and not weep.
  3. My long service in Quaker meetings, as presiding clerk in addition to committee work and visitation, steeped me in the decision-making process and culture of the Society of Friends, past and present. Along the way, I gained familiarity with our peculiar customs and historic language, ranging from liberal “unprogrammed” worship at one end and old-order conservatives at another to pastor-led evangelical at the other extreme.
  4. Genealogy research accompanied much of those discoveries, especially as I gleaned the old minute books and journals. (Many of my findings appear on my blog, Orphan George.)
  5. Triangulation of three or more differing versions of an event, as I encountered especially in material and correspondence regarding my grandparents, became helpful in considering Colonial history in New England. I could live with the ambiguity while letting the conflicting accounts still add to the bigger picture.
  6. My long interest in geography – maps, especially – came to play in placing Dover in perspective with the rest of New England as well as Devonshire in England itself.
  7. My training as an artist in high school and my work with photojournalists in the years after came in handy in examining portraits of Quakers (once those were permitted) as well as related locations. Sometimes I could see where an individual was in regard to changes affecting Quaker practice and the world around them.
  8. Online sleuthing, rather than archives (which I had explored in the genealogy), came to the fore during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Somehow, I think my experience in formatting my novels as ebooks, fed into this, but I had already devoured many digital texts by the time I became amazed at the number of rare old, arcane books I could download for free.
  9. Despite the fact that Quaking Dover is a history involving political conflict, I was surprised to find that my political science degree didn’t add that much, though the way Vincent Ostrom had taught us to closely read an argument came in handy, especially in looking at a system from the ground up rather than top-down.
  10. Moving to Maine before the final revision and publication also added to my perspective as I settled in. Dover, like much of New Hampshire, gravitates toward Boston, as did much of the Dover Quaker history. Little did I suspect just how much Dover Friends and the broader community influenced the growth of Maine to the east and northeast once the territory reopened to English settlement once the conflicts with the French and their Native allies wound down – earlier than I had presumed, in fact.

An eclipse too good to be true

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Against all odds for this time of the year in Maine, the long awaited full solar-eclipse day delivered ideal weather. Amazingly, especially for April, after a week of gray, rain, and snow, the sky stretched cloudless, the air was crisp, and temperatures edged into the 50s. It felt too good to be true. If I had been a betting man, this was a wager thing I would have lost.

You’ve no doubt heard about the swarm of curiosity seekers who mobbed the narrow band of total eclipse as it moved up from Texas and through the Midwest and eventually through northern New England. I won’t rehash that part of the story. For us, the question came down to finding a place to observe the astronomical event without the carnival congestion and related distractions.

Houlton, 115 miles to the north of us, touted itself as the ultimate destination and publicized accordingly. After a snow-scant winter, they needed to recover from severe winter tourism losses. We wished them well but thought other locales, perhaps Millinocket, might be saner, even though more distant.

Houlton is normally a two-hour, 18-minute drive to the north of us. Narrow, forested, two-lane U.S. 1 the only route for most of the way. For others, it’s at the upper end of Interstate 95, just before Canada. It’s not only the seat of potato-famed Aroostook County, it’s also the principal access point. We had to wonder how widely some of the metropolitan traffic would spill over into Washington County, perhaps once GPS started rerouting traffic to alternate highways. It wouldn’t take much to jam up everything for us and everyone else.

In planning for our adventure, we scoured the maps and settled on Danforth, population 587 spread over 60.46 square miles (6.46 of that being water) at the northern edge of our county, just before Aroostook. Danforth was on the way to Houlton anyway and would receive just about the same timespan of total eclipse. How heavenly, if we could stay out of the mud and muck. We focused on a side road north from the village at the center of town and hoped the route was paved. No guarantees from the map or satellite photos. If not, considering impassable conditions this time of year, we’d need to have plans B, C, and D at hand. We zeroed in on two cemeteries as possible places to set up our folding chairs, and headed off, leaving ourselves a generous margin of time for delays and readjustment.

Too good to be true, we instead had smooth sailing all the way, scouted out our sites and some gorgeous scenery, even noted the possibility of crashing Mike & Kay’s Eclipse Party that a homemade roadside sign presented. But where was everybody? Had we deluded ourselves? What had we overlooked? The scenery, though, was gorgeous.

We decided to head back to the village and stopped at the only restaurant in town, one with fuel service and a single rest room, which had a long line. No surprise. We were, though, surprised by the number of friends and neighbors from Eastport we ran into. Oh, yes, the food was better than most you’d find in a diner and the service was prompt and friendly, despite the throng at the front of the store. I’d stop there again, definitely.

I did have to laugh at the pristine black tee-shirt one woman wore. It featured photos of the cycle of a solar eclipse and the time 4:36. Where we were, totality was set to begin at 3:32. Was I the only one aware that she was running on Atlantic Daylight Savings to the east in Canada?

Beyond that, here’s what we found:

When we returned to the cemetery, which had been No. 2 on our list until we discovered that No. 1 was tiny, wet, and too heavily wooded, we were jolted to see we had unexpected company. A party of three was firmly ensconced. Were they locals? Would they resent our intrusion? Nah, they were from just a few towns down the road from us in Eastport, and their planning paralleled ours. As kindred spirits, they became the perfect associates for our experience, the kind who swapped food with us and had prepared accordingly. Their holiday greetings had even gone out with 200 pairs of eclipse glasses and best wishes for looking ahead in 2024. Yeah, they were a plus.

Maybe this was true, after all.

It may be spring, but there were still patches of fresh snow on the ground, some with large tracks I’ve since identified as wolves. Seems that in this stretch of Maine, wolves range in from neighboring Canada. I was almost disappointed they weren’t bear.

Also almost too good to be true was those flimsy little fold-up solar eclipse glasses, which completely blocked any light except the sun’s. These weren’t Cracker Jack prizes but rather surprisingly effective. My previous full eclipse, the late ’70s in the desert of Washington state, lacked that advance. This was a leap ahead of the smoked glass that made the rounds back then. This time we watched the progression as the overlay of the moon slowly created a crescent sun, eventually resembling the familiar waning or new moon. Well, this was a kind of turnabout as fair play, right?

As we estimated the amount of the sun’s face that was being covered, we were impressed by how much illumination still surrounded us. Even at 90 percent coverage, we could have been convinced this was only a hazy day. Back in the ’90s, I had been in the woods during a partial eclipse and been disconcerted by the eerie monochrome that fell upon us. It wasn’t precisely twilight but a kind of graying, almost like a dry fog. That’s what now happened, around 98 percent coverage, accompanied by the appearance of a flock of confused grackles and a gush of cold air from the direction of the sun rather than the stiff breezes that had been at our backs.

And then the incredible began in a rapid sequence. We could remove our protective film lenses and look at the sun, which was not yet a ring of fire but instead a spotlight of pure white rather than its usual yellows. It was unearthly, eternal, perhaps suggestive of the light proclaimed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead or the words of creation in Genesis and the gospel of John. This platinum brilliance hung over us, out of time and then gone, replaced by the anticipated disc accompanied by Venus and Jupiter.

Trying to photograph the distant ring of the sun’s surface with a cell phone was elusive. Instead, enough light still poured forth to fill in most of the orb, leaving only that dark pinhole. We gazed on a small bead just to the left of the bottom of the orb, a spot where the sun would begin to emerge as if being reborn. Somehow, we overlooked the small memorial lamp at a headstone in the cemetery where we were.

And then, once more, that pure white spotlight blasted toward us in utter, aloof majesty, and the regression toward some normality began.

The camera sees in its own way. Somehow, the rainbow is fitting. And the moon still covered most of the sun, despite what you observe here.

Shadows, by the way, are sharpened.

Yes, it was almost too good to be true.

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.

Some sterling libraries I’ve encountered

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

No, not the Library of Congress or Manhattan’s flagship facing Bryant Park, though I’ve been in both, or even Boston’s impressive Copley Square hub. Two of those were unable to put their hands on the volumes I was seeking and had no idea where they’d gone.

Instead, let me praise some other collections that have given me joy. Unless otherwise specified, they’re public libraries.

  1. The Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington. It’s one of the premier rare book compilations in the New World, with impressive rotating displays in the front gallery and, for the more adventurous, access to original materials in the reverential reading room. Samuel Johnson’s Ramblers, John Jacob Audubon’s bird books, and Gary Snyder’s poetry broadsides are a few of the treasures my fingers and eyeballs explored there, along with a lingering fondness for African violets that graced its sills. The earliest books published and the much earlier manuscripts are often breathtakingly beautiful, even when you don’t understand the language.
  2. Indiana University graduate library. On a much bigger scale, it was a wonder, opening in my senior year. Hard to imagine just how much came into my purview there, back before the Internet, especially in regard to esoteric sides of contemporary poetry as well as the pioneering field reports from the Bureau of Ethnology in the American Far West. When I returned to campus as a research associate, I had faculty access and borrowing privileges.
  3. Dayton’s classical record collection and librarian. As a youth, I wasn’t the only one she guided to fantastic discoveries. Not just classical and opera, either. I still recall a very early Bob Dylan album that supposedly never existed.
  4. Case Western Reserve Historical Society. Sitting near the Severance Hall and the Cleveland Museum of Art om University Circle, the society’s genealogical collection is justly acclaimed and proved to be a great help when I set out to research my own roots. Much of the material was donated by the Trumbull County public library in Warren, Ohio, where I was living, and while that meant driving an hour away, I still have to admire the wisdom in assuring that the materials could be more appropriately curated and made more widely available. The local library, I should add, was solid – it even had a hardbound copy of John Kerouac’s first novel – the one before he became Jack.
  5. George Peabody Library, Baltimore. With its visually stunning ante bellum or art deco atrium (what I remember could be either), the collection itself was once part of the adjoining Peabody music conservatory. Its genealogical collection was impressive but didn’t match my areas of research. Still, it was delightful just to sit in that airy space.
  6. Binghamton, New York. There was something timelessly proper about this institution fronting a green.
  7. Fostoria, Ohio. Its straight-shooting director, Dan (if I recall right), cut back on the number of best-sellers on the racks and invested instead in paperback copies of more timeless books, which he then had turned into hardbacks. The savings in cost added up. For a small blue-collar town, 16,000 population, the collection had surprising depth. For me at the time, the range of the Tibetan Buddhist volumes was unexpected. Somehow, one donor had even presented a beautiful translucent marble wall for a big part of the front of the building.
  8. Camden, Maine. The picturesque town of 5,200 year-‘round residents triples in the summer, including a large dose of old-money wealth. The town was one of the few did not have its building donated by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in the late 1800s. When, over time, its celebrated 1927 Colonial-style brick home demanded expansion, the result was a much larger space underground in the neighboring park. The 1996 result is quite striking and delightful, almost an homage to hobbits, in fact, with the older building still sitting like a hat overhead. As one measure of the town it serves, I’ll point to the opera section of the CD collection, much of it donated by patrons. It seems to have everything and then some.
  9. Needham, Massachusetts. The large paintings by N.C. Wyeth overlooking the tables in the periodicals room was reason enough to stop by.  He called the town home.
  10. Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. Being able to access William Wade Hinshaw’s filing-card drawers of typed extracts from Quaker Meeting minute books is a genealogist’s dream come true, as is the ability to examine historical microfilm pages from Ireland and England without having to leave the country.

Oh, my. I could add more. The North Carolina Quaker Meeting minutes archived at Guilford College, for one. The Chester County Historical Society’s library in West Chester, Pennsylvania, for another. The community outreach in Watertown, Massachusetts, or Dover, New Hampshire, or the Peavey Memorial here in Eastport, Maine, for yet more. Meanwhile, what do we do a digital library? Consider Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, with its online historical trove of Quaker writings presents both the original page and a readable transcription to flip among. As a researcher, it’s quite amazing to be able to read these books and tracts in the comfort of your own home rather than having to fly to London or some other distance for the only available copy.

Or complaints about some others where I’ve lived.

In my estimation, a good library is an essential component of public social vitality.