Tag: Top Ten

A few more things to put Maine in perspective for you

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Geographically, Maine is the biggest state in New England – almost as large as the other five combined. That still ranks it 39th in size in the USA.

We’re also famed for some very dry humorists and fresh-from-the-sea lobsters the way Vermont’s stuck with maple syrup and a red leaves identity.

Beyond that, here are some other things that are unique to the place.

  1. It’s the only state that borders just one other state. But it’s also the only one that borders three Canadian provinces.
  2. Half of the state is essentially unpopulated – mostly forests, wetlands, black flies, and mosquitoes.
  3. Its craggy coastline is longer than California’s, but shorter than Florida’s and Louisiana’s and, of course, Alaska. While the state and its tidal waters are famed for lighthouses, Michigan – with four of the freshwater Great Lakes ringing its shores – has the most.
  4. The bulk of the population lives within twenty miles of the Atlantic and its tides. Less well known are the interior towns between the ocean and the mountains. Much of that belt’s suffering, economically.
  5. Some of the state’s biggest urban centers are divided into two cities by rivers: Portland/South Portland, Lewiston/Auburn, Bangor/Brewer, Biddeford/Saco, Brunswick/Topsham. Calias/Saint Stephen is complicated by the U.S.-Canada border. Augusta and Waterville are the prime exceptions.
  6. Demographically, Mainers are the oldest folks in the country. The median age is 45.1 years. About 21.2 percent of the residents are 65 and above while only 18.5 percent is under 18.
  7. Despite all the white steeples you see in the photos, Maine is among the four least churched states. Typically, it’s hovering at the bottom, with New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont as rivals. Some of the variation occurs when looking at religious affiliation versus measures of religiosity.
  8. Famed outdoor outfitter L.L. Bean in Freeport can be seen as the epitome of the Pine Tree State. But quirky discount chains Mardens and Remy have their own loyal following, as adventurous visitors discover.
  9. Maine is the leading lobster-producing state in the nation, employing more than 5,600 hundred lobstermen (male and female). The tightly regulated catch contributes more than a billion dollars to the state’s economy.
  10. The state is also famed for its wild, lowbush blueberries. More than 70 percent of them are harvested in Washington County, where I live. Ranked by dollar value in the state’s agricultural output, the berries traditionally come in second, a bit above $100 million a year, but way below the $247 billion potato crop, mostly in Aroostook County to our north or the $137 million milk output statewide. But medical cannabis sales, at $266 million in 2020, surpassed them, and that’s without recreational marijuana figures, $72 million in 2021. They’re expected to go even higher this year.

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.

 

Some disturbing trends about suicides

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In my March 19 post noting the arrival of spring, I noted that the months of April, May, and June are generally the leading time of the year for suicides.

Among other trends in the United States, consider:

  1. Males are almost four times more likely to kill themselves than are females.
  2. Guns are the most common form of suicide, accounting for more than half of the deaths. Suffocation is second, at one-quarter, and poisoning at 12 percent.
  3. Between 2001-2020, suicide rates rose roughly 36 percent.
  4. It’s the tenth leading cause of death overall.
  5. By age groupings, people 85 and older have the highest rate (22.4 per 100,00), followed by 75-84 (19.6) and 25-34 (19.4). For 35- to 54-year-olds, it’s the fourth leading cause of death; for 10- to-34-year-olds, it’s the second highest cause.
  6. It’s now the leading cause of death for 13- and 14-year-olds, having doubled in the decade of 2008 to 2018. Bullying, school stress, and use of social media are considered potential causes. Higher rates are also reported among young people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual compared to their peers who identify as heterosexual.
  7. Among racial/ethnic groupings, non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska natives have the highest rate (28.1), followed by non-Hispanic white (17.4). Non-Hispanic Asian has the lowest (6.8).
  8. The American Psychological Association notes that suicides have increased most sharply in rural communities, where loss of farming and manufacturing jobs has led to economic declines over the past quarter century. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, examining the steep rise in deaths from suicide, drugs and alcohol among white, middle-aged Americans in that period, argue these “deaths of despair” are linked to a deterioration of economic and social well-being among the white working class.
  9. Others with higher-than-average rates of suicide are veterans as well as workers in certain industries and occupations like mining and construction.
  10. For every suicide death, there were another three hospitalizations, eight emergency room visits, and 38 self-reported suicide attempts.

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.

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.

Ten recent tools that greatly changed carpentry jobs

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Remember, not everyone who carries a hammer is a carpenter.

Apart from the Amish, who often are master carpenters, today’s tradesmen are indebted to these advances:

  1. Rechargeable batteries for all those power tools.
  2. The Sawzall. Top of the list. Any project working on an older house requires getting through earlier construction. This chews right through the mess.
  3. Oscillating multitask tool. The Sawzall’s little sister. Chews through the finer details. It’s like the equivalent of laparoscopic surgery that doesn’t leave huge scars.
  4. Carbide blades. They go right through nails and screws and greatly outlive their earlier incarnations. Think time of constantly replacing the blades as well as the time and cost.
  5. Laser-light “stick.” (And before that, the retractable metal measuring tape.) Look, our contractor’s working with 1/16-inch tolerances. Accuracy counts, especially when dealing with hand-hewn beams and posts from nearly two centuries earlier. He’s trying to get a plumbline precision to preserve the earlier let’s-hope-it-works construction.
  6. Laser level indicator. This one really blows me away. Place the small device where you want and it shows an appropriate line all around. I have no idea how you’d accomplish the measurements otherwise, but they can be crucial. Especially when we’re dealing with everything that’s overhead.
  7. Structural fasteners. They’re engineered to be superior to earlier long screws or bolts. I guess it’s kind of like those zip-ties I’ve come to rely on in gardening, but I’m told this is huge.
  8. Cell phone, including Internet access. You know, YouTube advice, as well as ordering online or by phone, calling consultants, even checking on the status of other participants in the project. Not all of those calls are personal, not that I’d begrudge a hard-worker there.
  9. Clear plastic sheets and zipper strips. A lot of dust and whatever goes flying around, after all. Keeping it rounded up is definitely appreciated, especially as we’re trying to live in the same house. Add to that the power vac. Maybe it’s a guy thing, but these are amazing. Even with water.
  10. Dumpster. I’m starting to see having one outside our house as a kind of status symbol.

Status symbols? We could do a whole other Tendril about those pickup trucks and trailers or the guys’ preferred brands.

Source: Mostly Adam Bradbury.

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.

For most of us, it’s spring

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Or more properly, in the northern hemisphere, today is the vernal equinox, derived for the Latin vernal for “spring” and equinox for “equal night.” And that means it’s officially spring, even if there’s still snow on the ground or a blizzard in the forecast.

For folks south of the equator, today’s the beginning of autumn.

Either way, the date usually falls on March 20 or 21 – the 19th is more of a rarity, with the next one not until 2044. (Hmm, looking that far ahead, I’m not seeing any on the 21st. I’ll let the experts argue.) The problem arises in the fact the Earth doesn’t circle the sun in exactly 365 days – there’s that nagging quarter-day that gives us our Leap Year and its February 29, which we just passed.

That said, let’s allow ten other items spring up. Remember, in much of the world, we’re coming out of hibernation, of one sort or another.

  1. The spring and fall equinoxes are the only two times during the year when the sun rises due east and sets due west. As we’re discovering the ancients knew and celebrated.
  2. If you were standing at the North Pole today, you would see the sun skim across the horizon, beginning six months of uninterrupted daylight. At the South Pole, of course, it would mark the start of six months of darkness.
  3. Spring is definitely in the air. With the ability to carry more moisture than it had in winter, the air delivers more scents, such as cut grass, flowers, even the damp earth. That also means that airborne allergies resurface. Watch those pollen counts in the weather forecast!
  4. Springtime is the most popular time to buy or sell a house, pushing property prices to their highest. Winter cold dissuades most people from moving till the temperatures warm. For families with children, the end of the school year is a factor, too.
  5. By definition, Western Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, as early as March 22, though that won’t happen again until 2285. The calculations are a bit more complicated for the Eastern Orthodox, where Easter comes no earlier than April 4 or as late as May 8.
  6. Babies delivered in the springtime have the highest propensity of developing schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, and anorexia, according to at least one study. On the other hand, for kids in general, it’s the season when they grow the fastest.
  7. While springtime is usually portrayed as sunshine and roses, it has its dark sides. For example, Facebook found it’s the highest seasons for couples to break up their link, along with the two weeks before Christmas. The lowest breakup times were from August through October as well as Christmas Day.
  8. In North America, tornadoes and thunderstorms are most pronounced than through the rest of the year.
  9. Spring fever is more than a common phrase, for good reason. Its emotional and physiological symptoms include restlessness, daydreaming, appetite loss, and high heart rate. After cold winters, though, I’d say it beats cabin fever, for sure.
  10. Contrary to widespread impressions of suicide rates rising during the winter, especially around the holidays, self-inflicted deaths are highest in April, May, and June. are when suicide rates are highest. There’s also an increase in manic behaviors and worsening bipolar disorder symptoms.

Ten random questions

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. So what if it’s NOT historically true?
  2. Is there any egg in a Chinese egg roll?
  3. Who was Jack Russell?
  4. Has anyone used “Jack Russell Terrier” as a nom de plume?
  5. Can brilliance compensate for lack of depth?
  6. Enemies? Present within? Or without?
  7. How are you supposed to answer, “How ya doin’?”?
  8. What’s that noise?
  9. What do I have to do to get my books banned?
  10. Is it better to have no taste than bad taste?

What makes a place ‘home’ for you?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of the big themes running through my novel What’s Left was that “family” can mean so many different things to so many different people.

Maybe it’s all the renovations going on in our old house, but recently I’ve been pondering many varied understandings of the word “home,” too.

For starters, sampling of what others have said, a home is:

  1. “Where one starts from.” (T.S. Eliot)
  2. “Where we should feel secure and comfortable.” (Catherine Pulsifer)
  3. “A shelter from storms – all sorts of storms.” (William J. Bennett)
  4. “Where there’s one to love us.” (Charles Swain)
  5. “Any four walls that enclose the right person.” (Helen Rowland)
  6. “Where my habits have a habitat.” (Fiona Apple)
  7. “Not where you live but where they understand you.” (Christian Morgenstern)
  8. “A place that gives you unconditional love, happiness, and comfort. It may be a place where you can bury your sorrows, store your belongings, or welcome your friends. A happy home doesn’t require the trappings of opulence.” (Simran Kuhrana)
  9. “A machine for living in.” (Le Corbusier)
  10. “The place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” (Robert Frost)

Is it even a place at all?

Cecilia Ahern insists it’s a feeling. Lemony Snicket pegs that as homesick, “even if you have a new home that has nicer wallpaper and a more efficient dishwasher than the home in which you grew up.” Maya Angelou relates it to an ache “in all of us, the safe place we can go as we are and not be questioned.” For John Ed Pearce, it’s a state of  mind, somewhere “you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.” Edward Sharpe senses home as his beloved’s presence, “Wherever I’m with you.” Edie Falco connects it family when he returns to them from his paying job and realizes they make his labors “richer, easier and more fun.” For May Sarton, it must have “one warm, comfy chair” as the line between being “soulless.”