Tag: Smiles

My favorite radio program at the moment

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s called “My Music,” a Saturday morning staple on the CBC Music FM radio network.

For two hours each week, a notable Canadian classical musician is invited to share his or her favorite music. Not all of it’s classical, either. Sometimes it’s a pianist or a violinist or even a conductor or composer. Some are quite famous in musical circles, while others are fairly obscure. Organ, clarinet, harp, percussion, and varied ethnic instrumentalists have hosted as well. And there are some amazing singers, not all of them opera.

Sometimes they stick to their particular niche, but I especially enjoy the ones who venture far beyond that.

It’s quite touching when they honor their parents, siblings, teachers, and friends with their selections, and quite enlightening why they explain what makes someone they admire stand out. As I said, it’s not always classical. Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson turns out to be a huge influence.

I do wish classical stations in the U.S. had a similar program. To attempt this on a national level would be too overwhelming. Part of its joy is a small-town feel. Basing one in Boston or Los Angeles or Chicago might even be too big.

Bloomington, Indiana, would be a natural, or San Francisco, or even a whole state like Minnesota.

Whaddya think?

She did have quite the tongue

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the official statement marking the death of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, President Jimmy Carter observed, “She had style, she had grace, and she had a sense of humor that kept generations of political newcomers to Washington wondering which was worse – to be skewered by her wit or to be ignored by her.”

Just listen.

  1. When her father was governor of New York, he and her stepmother planned to send her to a conservative school for girls in New York City. Curtly, Alice responded, “If you send me, I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will.”
  2. When her father became president after the 1901 assassination of William McKinley in Buffalo, she greeted the event with “sheer rapture.”
  3. She later said of her father, “He wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.”
  4. When a prominent Washington senator was discovered having an affair with a young woman less than half his age, Alice quipped, “You can’t make a souffle rise twice.”
  5. Most famously, “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.” She had that one embroidered on a pillow kept in her living room.
  6. On Calvin Coolidge: “He sprang from the grass roots of the country clubs of America.”
  7. Another quick character sketch: “He looks as though he’s been weaned on a pickle.”
  8. And one more: “Never trust a man who combs his hair straight from his left armpit.”
  9. As for Washington, D.C: “A town of successful men and the women they married before they were successful.”
  10. Through it all: “I’ve always believed that if you’ve got a good sense of humor, you can get through anything.”

Do note, her father was quoted: “I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.”

Hand it to raccoons for wily ways

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Native to North America, these mammals with the distinctive bushy dark-ringed tail typically live about two years in the wild, weigh up to 20 pounds, and have babies called kits.

Here are ten more considerations.

  1. They’re known as Trash Bandits because of the black “mask” across their eyes and their ability to find treasures amid human trash, often by overturning garbage cans or lifting the lids loudly in the middle of the night.
  2. They’re nocturnal and, during the day, rarely venture far from their dens.
  3. They eat a wide range of food. Grasshoppers, mice, insects, frogs, fish, ground-dwelling birds and their eggs all fall on their menu, as do dead animals, nuts, berries, pet food, and the content of bird feeders. If you possibly can, do not feed them.
  4. They’re excellent climbers who will even shimmy up a pole to get those bird feeders. (It’s not just squirrels, then?) And their back feet can rotate backward to allow them to climb down trees headfirst. Maybe even those poles, too.
  5. That mask deflects the sun’s glare and may aid their night vision. It may also hide their eyes from potential predators. As if you want to know what they’re thinking.
  6. They seem to wash their food before eating it, even if there’s no water, though water does enhance the sensory awareness of the finger-like toes of their front paws. Those slender fingers are nimble enough to hold and manipulate food and objects that include doorknobs, latches, lids, bottles, jars, and boxes. Beware, they are one of the few animals that can open doors. So far, I haven’t heard of any plants with that skill.
  7. They are smart, maybe even more than the typical domestic cat. They’re noted for solving complex puzzles in captivity, as well as their frequency of escape.
  8. Unlike many creatures that have declined as human development spreads, raccoon populations have thrived in urban and suburban areas. Toronto has even been dubiously dubbed the Raccoon Capital of the World.
  9. They are the second highest reported carriers of rabies, exceeded only by bats, though few cases have extended to humans. They are also susceptible to raccoon roundworm, which can spread through feces to the soil and then pets or small children. They can also transmit distemper and leptospirosis.
  10. Their hearing can even detect earthworms underground. Do watch what you say.

In case you’re interested, their name comes from the Algonquian word “aroughcun,” translating as “he who scratches with his hands.”

Applying the Tao of food

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The Chinese mystic Lao Tsu, the founder of Taoism, once said, or I think he did, that when it comes to food, we should eat what’s in season and from the region where we live.

Living in a so-called temperate climate, as I have, makes the adage difficult to maintain day to day through a full year, but as a guideline, I’ve appreciated its merits. Besides, it’s not a bad concept to keep in mind when sitting down to ponder seed catalogs and ordering, and then getting the mailings and planting the seeds under grow lights, as many folks do at this time of the year.

Here are some foods as I see them applying. Many but not all are items foodies pay dearly to obtain. Others are the basic reason for gardening – or is the practice itself the reason and any harvest arrives as one more blessing?

  1. Asparagus: I came to love this herald of spring when I was living in an apple orchard. The sprouts grew wild, free for the taking, and glutting out for the month they sprang forth was a delightful challenge. I repeated the celebration with a bed or two in Dover, and do miss those.
  2. Fiddleheads: These ferns are another herald of spring and well worth the expense. We’re hoping to raise our own, as well as asparagus, as we get better settled in here.
  3. Strawberries: Just in time for a few birthdays in June …  
  4. Crabmeat: It’s available if you know where to look, but Betty’s (the best) is available only from late spring to early autumn. Fresh is definitely the tastiest.
  5. Lobsters: Again, year-‘round, but the price does drop as the waters warm. Not that they’re ever cheap.
  6. Blueberries, raspberries, currants, and cranberries: Our county leads the nation in the harvest of wild, low-bush blueberries. Cranberries are a more recent addition at a few farms. Raspberries and currants are whatever we can keep from the deer.
  7. Summer garden abundance: lettuce, sugar snap peas, parsley, basil, cucumbers, tomatoes.
  8. Potatoes: The skins are so tender when fresh, and the insides haven’t yet turned starchy. My, they are sweet and creamy, definitely worth the excuse to head up to Aroostook County, where culls can be a bargain.
  9. Garlic and leeks: We do store these, so the “in season” doesn’t always apply. But they do brighten up what we’re eating through the winter months.
  10. Scallops: Speaking of winter, getting these straight from the fishing boats is heavenly. Those you buy at the market or in a restaurant aren’t quite the same.

Fresh cider and pick-your-own apples, peaches, and pears were things we enjoyed in Dover but haven’t yet located here in Way Downeast Maine. We’re lookin’, though.

Before you start your car, thank this auto pioneer 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When we think of many of the technological advances that impact our daily lives, we usually don’t know the names of their inventors, even when we know the businessmen who got wealthy as a result. Elon Musk did not invent the Tesla, for instance, nor did Bill Gates invent the internet or Henry Ford, the auto. The list is actually a long one.

Consider John William Lambert, mentioned in a previous Tendrils.

I remember visiting an early coworker and, upon seeing an old car with an impressive Lambert name in brass across the radiator sitting at an open garage door, I asked, “Ann? Is that car any relation to you?” She replied that her grandfather used to make them but otherwise conveyed no knowledge that he had been so prominent a figure.

Here are ten facts from his life.

This was the breakthrough vehicle.
  1. He invented the first practical American internal combustion gasoline automobile in 1890 in Ohio City in Van Wert County, Ohio, where he tested it on the village streets early the next year. It was the Buckeye gasoline buggy, a surrey-topped three-wheel runabout with one seat. It had a three-cylinder, four-stroke engine.
  2. In 1891, that horseless carriage became the first automobile offered for sale in the United States. Priced at $550, it attracted no buyers.
  3. Undaunted by the buggy’s reception, he turned his attention in 1892 to making stationary gasoline engines for farm and industrial factory use.
  4. Lambert’s base of operations was the Buckeye Manufacturing Company, which he had founded in 1884 as a farm implement manufacturer and moved in 1892 to Anderson, Indiana.
  5. His experiments with drive-train technology led to the Lambert friction gearing disk drive transmission. The gradual, or gearless, transmission became a signature feature on all of his future cars.
  6. His next attempt at an auto line came in 1895 with a model called the Buckeye. It was a four-wheel modification of the buggy but failed to find buyers.
  7. His first marketing success was the Union, released in 1902. About 300 of the tiller-steered cars were sold.
  8. In 1906 he introduced his first Lambert, establishing himself as one of the more successful automakers of the time. Production peaked from 1907 to 1910 with 2,000 cars a year.
  9. Buckeye Manufacturing, which built the cars, had moved by 1905 to Anderson, Indiana. The Lambert Automobile Company was one of its subsidiaries. Touting its Lambert Friction-Drive Automobiles and Trucks, the Buckeye factory mass-produced Lambert’s cars, gasoline engines, and auto components as well as fire engines, railroad inspection vehicles, and steel-hoof tractors before closing in 1917. At its height, the company had more than a thousand employees.
  10. Lambert held more than 600 patents and died in 1952, age 92, in Anderson.
At its prime, the Lambert came with 15 layers of hand-painted color.