Tag: Thoughts

On work itself, when done right

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Reporter Tom: “I was building a cabinet several nights ago and everything kept falling into place, everything fit, I cut the wood just right and there was such a good feeling of simply working that in a way I didn’t want to finish the thing. They never taught us to work that way. It’s always to get the thing done.”

Nowadays, no sense of craftsmanship. No unity of elements or workers. Just things, not creation.

For Esquimaux artists, objects do not have to be seen but treasures to be unwrapped and felt on special occasions.

~*~

The downtown since I left. Main Street by Nyttend via Wikimedia Commons.

Within the journalism trade

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to mass media, the real power brokers are the big advertising agencies that foot the bills or at least allocate the payments. Forget “liberal media,” the rig of the game is elsewhere.

Here are some of my early journal entries along the topic.

  • Journalists are not eunuchs, or shouldn’t be. Those are the propagandists.
  • More people know the latest Alka-Seltzer ad than what Scotty Reston wrote last night.
  • The people of Fostoria hate the paper; they pick at the people who write for us, isolate them, castigate them. Within the city our only hope for recruits is among those outsiders who, like Teresa Beatty, simply don’t care about the neighbors. Yes, paradoxically, among the surrounding areas, our virtues are appreciated.
  • Another difficulty is in our correspondents; they want to write only about their interests, will not take assignments or cover feature-news … In writing only what they want, they miss the cream …
  • The R-T is a sinking ship. I see no hope … the paper cannot meet the city residents’ level of expectation without losing half of its circulation, the half that matters, beyond the city limits …
  • These “news” items they send in: “such-and-so met at the home of so-and-so and discussed the topic of (insert title). Mrs. A was in charge of refreshments, Mts. B was program chairman, Mrs. C was greeter, and Mrs. D was hostess. X, Y, and Z were elected.”
  • I used to think that if people were interested in the event, they would have been there and already know the outcome. Now I suspect they really don’t know where they were till they read it in print.
  • So much potential here, nobody in our five-state (but not five-star) circulation area touches: so many “off news” angles, one could win it all. [Thinking now of Marcy’s touch / specialty / inspiration …] [Also, of Kurt’s later … and wishing we hadn’t lost contact.]
  • Monday, an unsigned letter at work today, man who didn’t like anything: if we’d put out the kind of paper he wants, he wouldn’t like it: there would be nothing for him to rage about.
  • Some people exist on their dislikes.
  • Living devils, caught in their own hells.

“I used to think I had some control, but I’m finding out more and more that I have no control over the film. The film is gonna come out the same way,” depending on the performers, scriptwriters, prevailing moods, and other factors. “The material is being filtered through me, so it’s gonna wind up having my shape. And for me to think I can unshape it is crazy.” – Robert Altman, producer and director

My feelings after “having my own paper” on the prairie

“I hate to admit it, but everybody’s got the same news.” – Chicago Tribune Managing Editor Maxwell McCrohen on promoting features and columnists. He broadened the definition of “news.”

 

Is this too harsh? Even on a bad day?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A few asides on the small town where I was dwelling.

John Quinn, who grew up in Fostoria: “Small, flat, uninteresting. Platt-Deutsch. Smelly. Thick-skulled Catholic diluted with third-removed Yankee.”

B.L. Reid: “An ethnic polyglot with many Germans and a sprinkling of Irish and one unusual strain, a tribe of Belgians. To the time of the First World War, three out of four sermons a month in the Catholic church were preached in German. The Belgians were the glassworkers and conducted the local industry. A small opera house was visited by traveling musicians and players. Pretty public parks were much frequented by the Germans and Belgians, often observing their transplanted holidays in their native costumes. The Belgians formed a fine concert band and Belgian funerals, led by the band and followed by mourners on foot, were a familiar and impressive sight.”

Radio “newsman” Mel Murray, in his own voice, used my newspaper column as his “editorial” this morning on WFOB, two days after the concert I had reviewed. Obviously, he wasn’t there.

The people of this town gossip and bitch to each other but when it comes time to stand up, run away. They all want somebody else to stand up for their view, yet are afraid of anything different or new. They seem to be sleeping on their feet.

“Findlay’s only got nickel millionaires, but here, shit, these pishers may got money but they stick it up their ass.”

Nickel millionaires, sez the trashy town’s foot doctor.

[Findlay was headquarters of Marathan Oil and Cooper Tire & Rubber; Fostoria had none.]

~*~

The town sat at the nexus of four major railroads , the B&O, C&O, New York Central, and Nickel Plate lines. They were a constant presence. Photo by Nathaniel Railroad via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

This piss-hole of a city! So much negativity, jealousy, and hatred it’s a struggle for anyone to remain alive long – negativity that could kill a horse

This place is still a swamp, not even an idea to look up to.

Everything’s got to be good or bad. Their minds can’t handle anything more. Their minds don’t work anywhere near as fast as their hatreds do.

They keep electing crooks just like themselves.

Reporter Tom, a West Virginian, observing how these Midwestern towns build statues of their founders and then live in the shadows: They think they’re friendly, chattering all day, cutting down each other, not a good word to say, a whole damned town of gossips, women and men …

As I saw it, the thing about this place is there’s nothing to look at, no lofty ambitions like a mountaintop, not even a holy man with a begging bowl.

There wasn’t even a river running through it or a lovely lake or pond to ponder. Just the railroad tracks and truck traffic.

 

Feed the fire

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

And so I am, when finished transcribing a journal in my spiralbound series.

The title line was from another wide-margin volume in that series.

Was I journaling at the office, too? Or even awaiting the bus? That would explain the lengthy, detailed entries so close together by date. When dates were included.

~*~

Meditation, quiescence or Dhyana, not enough: the practice should be fierce!

As with fire.

Still, tension or anger

reduce to nothing!

Nothing tangible, that is. How divine!

 

From yoga to Zen, though not in the route I took

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Sanskrit Dhyana was corrupted into Chinese Ch’an and thence, in Japan, into Zen.

The sixth patriarch insisted there would be an awakening in prajna (transcendental wisdom) rather than in mere absorption of quiet sitting …

~*~

My name, Jnana, also appears transliterated from Sanskrit as Gyana, meaning the “wise use of knowledge,” among other nuances Here, in an image by Yulem via Wikimedia Commons, is an Indian hook hanger made of bronze with rudraksha beads showing one of the most frequently used hand positions, or mudras, during the practice of pranayama and meditation to symbolize the movement of human consciousness toward holy light.

 

Who are they besides their latest book?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Contributors’ notes at the back of a literary quarterly or toward the beginning of a glossy magazine can sometimes be among the most entertaining reading in the entire volume.

Or they can be among the most deadly, as I’ve been thinking while scanning those in the Paris Review, where they run along the line of so-and-so is the author of the new insert-title-here book of poetry or fiction. It’s so one-dimensional.

Don’t know about you, but I definitely want to know what makes a writer tick – unique details help. Hopefully, something more than where they’re also teaching.

Yes, I know as writers we’re all hustling our books, but ultimately, we’re the brand, like it or not. (God, it hurts to admit that, but it’s true.)

The celebrity Proust Questionnaire at the closing of Vanity Fair magazine issues is a great prompt.

So here I am, pushing a whole lineup of volumes while hoping at least one of them jumps out at you and makes you get it, free or at a price – yes, I’m shy about asking for money – but still!

This matter of self-identity came into play with my poetry collection Hamlet, a village of gargoyles, which built on exercises where I found it much easier to say who I’m not than who I am.

So here I am, with a few potential contributor notes I may have sent out:

  • As a youth, Jnana admired crystals grown from supersaturated solutions. Deep blue copper sulfate was his favorite.
  • Jnana has found landscapes evolving into an awareness of spirituality and space, as well as settlement and wildlife.
  • In addition to reading and writing, Jnana enjoys hiking and camping, birding, New England contradancing, classical music, opera, jazz, visual arts, genealogy and history, theology, Quaker practice, homebrewing, and a cappella part-singing. If there were only more time, he contemplates.
  • Jnana Hodson never expected a film literature course under Harry Geduld would influence his poetry as much as college writing class under poet Dick Allen. But it did: the clash of thesis and antithesis producing an unanticipated synthesis in reaction.
  • When Jnana first began reading contemporary poetry (for pleasure, independent of classroom assignment), he sensed that often the poem existed as a single line or two, with the rest of the work as window dressing. Now he reads the Psalms much the same way, for the poem within the poem, or at least the nugget he is to wrestle with on this occasion. Psalm 81, for instance, has both “voice in thunder” and “honey from rock.”
  • Elk move through Jnana’s mind, its memory, more as emblem and ideal than creature. He has not tasted elk flesh or stroked the fur. What he’s known has appeared only on the forest floor as track and scat – no ticks on the neck or patchy summer skin. That, and the winter encounters viewed from a distance.

While we’re at it, let’s ponder the faces on back dust jacket or cover.

How few seem like people I’d like to meet. How much anger, hatred, envy, darkness – brooding – comes through? How little serenity, how little joy? Multiplicity of personality. Just who am I? Who are you?  Empathy. Discomfort. All the rest.

Who are you in relation to all this?

Get ready for another turn here  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Here we are again, another new year, another new calendar to fill. As if that should be any problem? Let me guess that you, too, never seem to have enough time to do so much of what you’re hoping to accomplish, day, week, month, or more. Right?

No matter. This time of the year is typically a moment for reflection of what’s happened in the previous 12 months of our lives and also for planning for our next 12.

Blogging, and my writer’s life in general, are no exception.

Blogging was, I believe, envisioned as a place for “live” journaling, or logging, in a ship captain’s sense, though my flagship Red Barn and four affiliated sites over the past 14 years have always put twists on that by scheduling long in advance. Even with that, each year has somehow always taken on a fresh emphasis.

The Barn started out with a huge backlog of previously published poems and related pieces to share, giving the blog essentially a literary focus. To my surprise, digital photography, especially once I retired from the newsroom, came to the forefront, too. As the pace picked up, marriage, family life, and our “city farm” in Dover provided fresh waves of inspiration, and there were files of unpublished poems and essays to add to the mix. Excerpts from my widespread correspondence and my Quaker writings also came into play. On top of that, publication of my novels and their subsequent revisions widened the perspective, including outtakes, as did my history Quaking Dover and the spirituality investigation Light Seed Truth.

More recently, the focus shifted to Way Downeast Maine where I’ve resettled.

So far, that adds up to more than 6,000 posts.

~*~

In addition, we’ve had the emergence of my quartet of affiliated WordPress blogs, which have undergone their own evolution.

Much of my Quaker-related writing led to establishing As Light Is Sown.

The photography has joined the Talking Money and New England Spirit entries at Chicken Farmer I Still Love You.

Poetry in chapbook presentations, especially, now appear at Thistle Finch editions.

And Orphan George Chronicles make my research findings available to genealogy investigators who share some of my linage.

It’s a lot, but it’s not sitting in dusty files or some editor’s sludge piles.

~*~

In the year ahead here at the Barn, you’ll be seeing excerpts from my physical journals, which started nearly six decades ago. Last year, having wound up on this remote island in Maine, I finally hunkered down revisiting the earliest decade of the books and found much of merit that hadn’t been distilled into my novels or poetry, so we’ll give them a final airing here.

It has me thinking of a poet I’ve dearly loved and his remark that nobody since could pursue the life he did. That remark came after he saw recent real estate prices for marginal properties around the lands he and his cohorts had purchased dirt cheap decades earlier in the Sierra Nevada range of California and then built upon and then realizing they couldn’t afford to buy their places now.

I wish I could advise kids today setting forth some advice for moving ahead.

All I can say is I’m glad I’m not in their place.

Looking back, though, I’m seeing ours was often a difficult journey, too.

Here’s how things unfolded for me. It really was a merry-go-round, something of the continuing nature of this blog.

Much of what’s ahead promises to be more confidential, subjective, off-guard than what you’ve seen from me before.

As always, I do enjoy hearing your comments and sharing your company.