Tag: Top Ten

Some things ‘Quaking Dover’ has in common with my novels

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Not that I really noticed the parallels until now.

  1. Counterculture is central, leading to an awareness of an underground community or at least kindred spirits.
  2. Both have meant learning to write differently than my neutral third-person journalism. Emotion, for instance, over fact, is the rule in the fiction. And the history opened a similar vein as creative nonfiction.
  3. The role of a narrator in both. In the history, that meant developing the gently laughing curmudgeon as he pored over historical data. In four of the hippie novels, it was the snarky daughter reviewing her late daddy’s hippie experiences.
  4. Both veins are self-published, falling under the shadow of being “not commercially viable” by publishing houses. That places an additional burden on the author.
  5. Marketing is a huge challenge. Apart from Subway Visions, none of my stories take place in a big city or address a big audience. How many hippie novels can you name, anyway. As for Quakers?
  6. Spirituality and religion run through all of them. In the novels, it’s often yoga, though Hometown News runs up against a puzzling array of churches. In Quaking Dover, though, it’s often the clash between the upstart Friends and what I first saw as rigid Puritans before both traditions begin to, uh, mellow.
  7. There’s a strong sense of place, even if these locations are far from the mass-media spotlight.
  8. I go for the big picture. I really would like to have a simple book – something, as Steven King advises, having only one big idea – but that’s not how my mind works.
  9. They’ve all undergone deep revision. Much of the fiction actually got new titles and new characters after their original publication.
  10. They were all labors of love.

Here these go again

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The random notes in no particular order continue:

  1. Did college recruiters ever come to my high school? We weren’t elite and we weren’t any of the other demographics they were hot for. How about yours?
  2. Our high school guidance counselors did little more than sign you up for a draft card, as far as I can see.
  3. Genji was a definite historical character.
  4. Argentata chard … doesn’t taste like chard … hardier and cleaner than spinach.
  5. Gentrification versus decay.
  6. An inept lover, too charming by his very incompetence, unintentionally funky, nothing more than some everyday world seen through myopia. So why am I bothered?
  7. I love some of the drone videos filmed around here. But definitely not all.
  8. And then we learn that the mayor’s involved. As we said in the news biz, this story has legs.
  9. Yes, I remember Hudson, it’s up in the Cuyahoga Valley, a lovely New England style village not far from the Cleveland Orchestra’s summer home.
  10. Some writers place most or all of their plots in a particular locale, usually a big city or perhaps a state. Just never mine.

 

A few thoughts spinning around Scripture

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment
  1. Even if Biblical Scripture is essentially the “men’s minutes” of divine history, the women therein generally come off much better than the men – and whenever the women are named, there is growth in the church: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, etc.
  2. Because the male gender language has been inclusive, representing the universal, there is no English way for men to refer to themselves in the particularity of being male – no way, in other words, that we can distinctly represent the specifics of being male only. So just who has been more impoverished by this defect?
  3. When I get away from my emotions, I’m also far from my God … (God is love).
  4. Argument: It’s possible to do religion without faith, but impossible to maintain a mutually loving connection without faith i.e. trust. Thus, positive relationship exists with the Divine.
  5. Hosanna and Alleluia as universal expressions of awe and ecstasy.
  6. Hashem = “the unnamable name” = neutral.
  7. Adoni = lord = male.
  8. Elohim = breast = female.
  9. The idea of “casting spells” is that you can order God/the gods/spirits to do your bidding rather than the other way around.
  10. Zionism originated to save a language. That is, a language needs a place where it lives.

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.

Dragging me out of the Stone Age

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

I was tempted to make that “stoned age,” but I was of a more tempered side of the hippie era.

When it comes to high tech, though, I’ve leaned more toward neo-Luddite. You know, face-to-face and keeping people employed. That’s why I go inside to a teller at the bank, rather than an ATM or drive-thru. Ditto for fast food.

One way my family has of nudging me in the other direction is in their Christmas and birthday gifts to me.

Well, my clumsiness therein is another matter.

Here are some examples.

  1. My first cell phone and then, a dozen years later, the big upgrade to my S22 Ultra, in large part for its digital camera abilities.
  2. That replaced the Olympus digital camera they’d presented a few years earlier. I have to agree it’s a huge upgrade.
  3. A coconspirator in all this offered some puzzling lenses and a lobster tripod for photography that made no sense until I learned about the S22 Ultra. I was so ignorant, but these are cool.
  4. Then there’s the LED ring lamp for Zoom meetings with its warm and cool light settings. The way it’s set up now, I use it for a regular light at my workstation.
  5. A Fire tablet. An ebook author really should have one, though I use mine mostly to stream music. Which leads to …
  6. A Bluetooth headset that works with the aforesaid cell phone and tablet plus my laptop Zoom connections. Didn’t know I couldn’t live without one.
  7. As well as my Tribit remote speaker. I love the flexibility of taking my music around the house or of having hands free during a phone conversation.
  8. My little weather station, the one that doesn’t require wires running out to the wind, temp, and rainfall gauges. Hey, living on a windy island puts the weather high on the awareness chart.
  9. The mustache trimmer. The rechargeable battery device really does the job better than a razor.
  10. Most recent is a set of wireless speakers to go with the new audio system. I started to say “stereo” but know how outdated that’s become. Still, this one  accommodates vinyl, if you know what that means.

 

Well, maybe this should go somewhere

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Still more random notes in no particular order:

  1. Why so many churches? Only an unbeliever would ask.
  2. Note the hippie vibe of Pride Day. Like a time warp.
  3. The jolt of phoning someone and preparing to respond to the voicemail only to have a live voice pop up instead.
  4. Keys that don’t fit anywhere.
  5. It’s a Catholic church too small to conduct bingo games.
  6. I’m spending as much time keyboarding as ever.
  7. All those years I worked five-day weeks every holiday ‘cept maybe Christmas Eve. Or commuted in atrocious weather.
  8. What is literature? And why does it matter?
  9. She strikes me as little more than skin-deep beauty.
  10. What do you like about Christmas?

 

A shoutout some outstanding vocal ensembles

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

With the holidays just ahead, we’re coming up on the prime choral season of the year.

Look around, and there are many outstanding groups, not just the big, famed organizations in the footsteps of conductors Robert Shaw, Roger Wagner, Margaret Hillis, or John Oliver, either.

Hit on some of these on YouTube or Vimeo and let me hear what you think.

  1. Old Order Mennonite Harmonia Sacra. Let’s start from an old American shape-note tradition of harmony. Singing from the 1832 hymnal compiled by Joseph Funk in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, this video will likely lead you to others in this unique stream, including the Shenandoah Christian Music Camp. I’m inclined to sing along, using some much later Mennonite hymnals. Imagine an entire congregation singing parts like this, and many do. Eventually, it may even lead you to the unique Sacred Harp style. If you want to talk about American roots, don’t overlook this. I’m forever indebted to my exposure in this vein. So where do we turn from here? How about something completely different in the religious vein:
  2. Detroit Mass Choir. This large, tightly disciplined urban body runs flawlessly, turning on a dime when director Jimmy Dowell spontaneously decides to repeat a phrase or section or even jump back several parts or similarly ahead. Their take on Charles Tindley’s 1905 “The storm is passing over” is outstanding. Yeah, it’s one more place where stony unemotional me gets teary. That confessed, don’t overlook the instrumentalists, either. And I, for one, do appreciate the audience support throughout, something my mother would have considered interruptive and rude.
  3. Jehovah Shalom Acapella. And you thought the King’s Singers or Cambridge Singers epitomized the small, elite, all-male a cappella field? This six-member Ugandan Gospel group, members of the Seventh-day Adventist faith, delivers with an unbelievably smooth pop style. Where, by the way, do they find such an incredibly deep bass? Now, if we only knew how they’d handle Handel, Bach, and Mozart as well, we might have even more cause for amazement. By the way, we’ve also delighted in live performances by athletic Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
  4. Central Washington University chamber choir. Within a higher education state institution in tiny Ellensburg, well east of the Cascade Range and Seattle, there’s long been an outstanding fine arts program. In such situations, a few good teachers can make a lasting impression. (I hate to think of the destructive obverse.) Under the direction of Gary Weidenaar in works by contemporary Ola Gjeilo or Renaissance master Tomas Luis da Victoria , these student singers reflect, I feel, the high standards found in many other pockets across America – and not just its great conservatories and leading music schools. Returning to the shape-note tradition:
  5. Amherst Madrigals. In William Billings’ “Euroclydon,” a distinctive masterpiece, these ten singers blow me away. It’s a very demanding piece, after “all. And they present it so clearly, with no conductor in sight! For further confirmation, listen to what they do his “I am come into my garden.” Or, for pure polyphony, move onto another group for this:
  6. Indiana University’s Conductor’s Chorus. Their master’s of music performance of Palestrina’s “Sicut cervus” for conductor Daam Beam Kim in 2016 is unbeatable. After seemingly endless rehearsals and a few public performances of this choral masterpiece, I can’t imagine anything more ethereally sublime than this. Period. Even as an IU grad.
  7. Saint Olaf College Choir. This Minnesota Lutheran institution makes some incredible music. The diction in their videos and recordings leaves me envious, and their annual Christmas broadcast is understandably anticipated and admired. Still, compare their rendering of William Billings’ “What wondrous love is this” to one led by Ukrainian conductor Yuriy Kravets and the Shenandoah Christian Music Camp orchestra and choir, previously noted. Both are deeply moving.
  8. Luther College. Set along the upper Mississippi River in Decorah, Iowa, this church institution also has a superb musical program. Just listen to what its Nordic Choir can do. I’m even more impressed when I notice they sing their parts from memory and then their ease in navigating dynamics. Oh, my, that soon leads to a Baton Rouge high school performance that definitely stands out. Yes, high school.
  9. Quoddy Voices. My current chorus is an amazing group in a small remote fishing village with an active arts scene in easternmost Maine. Still, we would really welcome some younger voices. During the Covid restrictions, director John Newell put together some remarkable virtual presentations online, despite the fact we were recording individually under some highly unfavorable conditions. Now that we’re back face-to-face, I’m also delighted and humbled to be part of this circle and its stellar leadership.   
  10. Boston Revels. A unique half-century-old organization that blends history, folk traditions and classical music, dance, plus theatrical acting and story line, I have to admit a bias in being part of the organization though not its justly celebrated annual winter holidays extravaganza. Each year’s Christmas show ends with the entire audience joining in, in full harmony, on the Sussex Mummers’ Carol, inevitably drawing tears from me and, I suspect, most others in the packed and wildly cheering Sanders Theater at Harvard. As a charter member of its community chorus, I do confess this family custom is one thing I do miss in relocating to Way Downeast Maine. Thanks for the memories, all the same.