Tag: Smiles

Here’s what bugs me about ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

For reference, I’m focusing on the Amazon Prime video series, not the earlier books.

  1. Pop songs as a running commentary or an alternative dialog. This isn’t opera.
  2. The lack of positive male role models.
  3. The maudlin playing of the brothers’ mother’s death, especially after she’s gone. It definitely reduces her to a two-dimensional character.
  4. The fact it wasn’t filmed on Cape Cod, contrary to the story. The color of the water is wrong and the McMansion is so out of place, ultimately. Even the beaches are wrong. Where are the lobster boats?
  5. The way the story keeps evading the richer possibilities of polyamory or outright incest, which it keeps skirting. Instead, if the projections are correct, season three is going to veer off into one brother or the other, but not both together. That’s why I’m thinking I’ll be tuning out.
  6. Superficial treatment of so much.
  7. The flashbacks feel like a riptide. Just where are we at this point?
  8. The presence of a commercially published novelist as a major character. (I would object if she were a successful painter or actress or other fine artist for that matter – it’s simply rather incestuous creatively.)
  9. The way our Ugly Duckling’s mother, the writer, has so many lines of wisdom. She could be speaking in paragraphs.
  10. The difficulty I have in following slang, even when it’s the difference between “big bitch” and something else as an equivalent of beloved girlfriend.

There’s more to the Northern Lights than you see

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Living as far north as I do, just a hair below the 45th parallel halfway between the north pole and the equator, I’m starting to keep an eye out for the Northern Lights on clear nights through winter. Moonlight, clouds, precipitation, and pollution all block viewing, but our remote location means that many of our nights can be visually crisp and rewarding for those who bundle up.

  1. More formally, the beautiful, dancing waves of light are known as the aurora borealis, named by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1619 in honor of Aurora, the Roman goddess of dawn, and Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind. They most famously resemble giant colorful curtains blown by some cosmic wind, though that’s all a mesmerizing illusion. In fact, where I live, they’re more likely to be detected by time-exposure photography than by the naked eye.
  2. They’re best viewed between September and April, when the night sky is longest and darkest, especially in the “auroral zone,” a cap roughly within a 1,550-mile radius of the North Pole. Places like Fairbanks, Alaska; Tromso, Norway; Lapland, Finland; Orkney, Scotland; and Yellowknife, Canada, are key travel destinations for viewing, but rare sightings have been reported as far south as tropical Honolulu, Hawaii.
  3. While Northern Lights happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, they are most intense after a geomagnetic solar storm, which tosses energized particles into Earth’s upper atmosphere at speeds up to 45 million miles an hour. As the Earth’s magnetic field shields the surface by drawing the onslaught toward the poles, the energized particles collide with atmospheric gases, producing vibrant hues of blue, green, pink, violet, and even gold in surreal movement across the night sky.
  4. Solar storm emissions run in 11-year cycles. The last peak of extreme activity was in 2014, and the next is next year. We’re already in the higher-than-usual range.
  5. The strongest geomagnetic storms can disrupt GPS systems and radio signals. One temporarily knocked out electricity across the entire Canadian province of Quebec. The largest solar storm recorded, Carrington Event of 1859, sparked fires on telegraphs. I remember some occasions in 1970-’71 when they turned the overnight teletype news reports from the Associated Press, United Press International, and other wire services into unintelligible jumbles. (Some of my Sun Spot poems are drawn from that outpouring.)
  6. The storms even have the potential to wipe out the Internet for weeks or months unless the technology is “hardened,” , according to some warnings.
  7. The night lights also appear in the Southern Hemisphere as the aurora australis but are more elusive because there’s less land mass, and, thus, fewer suitable spots for viewing the spectacle.
  8. Earth’s not alone. Jupiter, with a magnetic field 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s, has far brighter blazes. Auroras have also been discovered on both Venus and Mars, despite their very weak magnetic fields.
  9. NOAA’s forecasts are available online at NOAA’s Aurora Viewline for Tonight and Tomorrow Night page, mapping the southern-most locations from which you may see the aurora on the northern horizon.
  10. The best time for viewing? One source says mostly just before sunrise or after sunset. Another says between 9 pm and 3 am.

Some things I’m anticipating in the year ahead

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. Sitting beside our newly installed wood-burning stove on otherwise chilly mornings and evenings.
  2. Completing the second phase of our upstairs renovations along with moving into the back half up there, including my book collection when it comes out of storage.
  3. My second week on the water in the schooner Louis R. French.
  4. Revisiting my journals from the Baltimore years on.
  5. A magazine orgy.
  6. Renewed time with the Bible.
  7. Using my passport. We do live right next to Canada, after all.
  8. Events at the arts center.
  9. Continuing Quaker worship face-to-face rather than Zoom.
  10. Scallops in season as well as local blueberries, cranberries, lobsters, and crab.

A few things I’m grateful for in the past year

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. A second presence in the house year-‘round. Plus our guests.
  2. Seeing the home renovations finally under way. And how.
  3. My maiden voyage in a ship overnight. As you’ll be seeing.
  4. A steady supply of real tomatoes, once they started arriving at the beginning of September, thanks to a serious, raised-bed garden already featured here at the Red Barn.
  5. Our new choral director. We may be a small community, but there’s some deep talent.
  6. The resurrected film society. The showings are followed by some serious discussion into the wee hours.
  7. Contradances, too, both here in Eastport and at the Common Ground Fair.
  8. My appearances resulting from Quaking Dover. You can still find some of them online.
  9. Scallops in season. (And local blueberries, cranberries, lobsters, and crab.)
  10. All the eagles I observed during the alewives’ run and additional encounters after. Always inspiring.

Hodie, hodie!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My choir has been singing a joyous Renaissance piece that translates, in Allen M. Simon’s rendering, as:

Today Christ is born:
Today the Savior appeared:
Today on Earth the Angels sing,
Archangels rejoice:
Today the righteous rejoice, saying:
Glory to God in the highest.
Alleluia.

I first heard it in the second classical concert I ever attended, around age 12, with the velvety Roger Wagner Chorale on tour. Never, ever, did I imagine I’d be part of presenting it myself.

Still blows me away, all around.