Tag: Writing

Wilting as they lose local awareness

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As a newspaper editor, I was often startled in looking at coverage from the other side when something I was affiliated with was subject to a story. Or even more startling, when I was quoted and seeing how it looked it print.

It was like working in a restaurant kitchen and shipping dishes to the dining room and then, on a night off, going in for a celebratory dinner.

Seeing a report through the readers’ viewpoint really could be eye-opening. It’s not the “names-is-news” philosophy that many small-minded editors and publishers pursued, either. That approach could be even more boring than reading the phone book. Remember those?

The backbone of most of American newspapers has been the way they connect with their local communities. As one wise editor once told me, it should be news of local interest, rather than just happenings in the place itself. I spent much of my career trying to open parochial outlooks to an awareness of the wider world, both directions, and I do believe that can happen and even be exciting.

When I was calling on daily newspaper editors across the Northeast as a syndicate features field representative, I was surprised by how few of the papers gave a taste of a unique nature of each of the communities. Many of the editors thought of local news as city council and school board meetings plus high school sports scores. As I argue in my novel Hometown News, the real stories – the kind that come home – are found elsewhere and require more reportorial digging. That’s one reason I’ve long advocated local columnists (real writers, not dilettantes, though skilled amateurs are welcome). Few papers had even that much.

When former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously proclaimed “All politics is local,” he understood those roots.

~*~

A decade after I’ve left the newsroom, I’m directly experiencing that again, or more accurately, its lack.

In the past 20 years, the number of people employed in newsrooms at American papers has dropped about 60 percent. That leaves far fewer people to write about what’s happening or even be aware of what’s going on at the grassroots level where they live. Much of the nuts-and-bolts editing is being done in clusters far from the paper itself, removing another layer of local nuance and understanding.

In my case, in my participation in events celebrating the 400th anniversary of the founding of Dover, I’m seeing the local paper is doing far less coverage than I would have expected. Not after the family that owned it for generations finally sold out to a media conglomerate.

That disconnect isn’t just print media, either. New Hampshire Public Radio no longer originates any content in the Granite State, as far as I can see. Two decades ago, appearing on one of its shows would have been a natural for a local author like me.

Quite simply, it’s disappointing and a bit scary.

I’m really looking forward to tonight’s reading

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

If you’re a musician or writer or some other kind of performance-potential artist, you probably find being part of an open mic event invigorating. Not just because you get to air your own work and see how it fares on exposure, but also because you’re amid so many kindred spirits.

Tonight has a kind of hybrid version — six featured published writers at the wine bar downtown — and it is creating a buzz in our small community. Each of us gets about 15 minutes in the spotlight, as well as a book-signing and chat time afterward.

I’ll be reading a chapter from my new book, Quaking Dover, one that details a remarkable but often overlooked outburst in early New England, the bohemian colony called Merrymount. I had settled on that excerpt, a side I hadn’t yet presented in my presentations, before realizing how appropriate it is for this weekend’s ArtWalk festivities, many of them reflecting Pride awareness.

So, here we go … just as the summer season is beginning in our oceanside setting.

This feels like a ‘welcome to the club’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Coming up at the Phoenix wine bar downtown on Thursday from 6-8 pm, I’ll be one of six local writers reading from our books.

It’s organized by Catherine SJ Lee, whose wonderful collection of short stories Island Secrets is well worth acquiring. One secret she doesn’t mention is how many fine writers and other artists dwell on the charming island I now call home. Honestly, I feel honored to be among those invited to read and am certainly looking forward to personally meeting others.

Each of us will present a 15-minute selection of our work and then engage in a meet-and-greet over a bookselling and signing at the end.

These days, presenting my case without including an accompanying PowerPoint does feel a bit strange. Still, as a writer, I do love having the text itself be the sole focus, as I have enjoyed in our monthly open mics at the arts center.

The wine bar event is part of the first ArtWalk weekend of the season in Eastport and Lubec. Other planned activities include gallery tours, rock painting, sidewalk chalking, games, musicians around town, an outdoor contradance, and perhaps a street dance or two.

A few more candid reader reactions

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Despite nearly 60 years of writing, I’m still not accustomed to having readers come up to me in public with enthusiastic reactions.

My book Quaking Dover just may change that.

Here are two recent examples.

“It’s like you’re speaking right to me! It’s not like a history at all!”

That’s from a city councilor far from Dover.

I do hope that doesn’t put off history book addicts, though.

On the other hand, a Dover history buff said this:

“The clearest presentation of George Burdet I’ve read. Usually the histories of him are convoluted and hard to follow.”

When she first mentioned him, I felt some trepidation. Burdet wasn’t a Quaker and in fact predated them. He was one of those side details that could trip up the central argument if I had misread something.

More important than any praise is the confirmation. Or correction, too, for moving forward.

To those who say God wrote the Bible, let me reply as a writer

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

If He’s so perfect, why didn’t He do a better job of it? (See any masculine references here as traditional and object to them as you wish.)

Even in Hebrew, so I’m told, many key passages are unintelligible. As for the King James English, which many Protestant fundamentalists hold as inerrant (meaning flawless, perfect, unblemished), let me object. There’s a lot of clumsy translation – and outright mistranslation. Add to that the ways our own language has shifted in the centuries since. (To wit: I find myself having to retranslate many key Quaker writings from the mid-1600s on for modern readers, even those with PhD credentials. Those early Friends were conversant with the KJV lingo. Does thee understand?)

For perspective. When’s the last time you read Shakespeare? Without relying on footnotes?

More to the point. He (yes, He, in the current argument) certainly could have used a better editor, in any language. As for revisions? Let me contend that no work of language is ever perfect, it is ultimately a human artifact. Including the arcane collection known as The Bible.

For me, the best we have in those pages is all the more exalted because of that edge of imperfection and decay. It allows humanity to creep in. I’m thinking of some very cutting-edge contemporary poets, actually.

My fascination with that divine text has turned to the struggle to accurately record our own, very personal, experiences of the Holy One. Name it as best you can. And, from the other direction, the ways our own lives have reacted to the struggle from our own first-hand encounters with those haunting great mysteries.

I’ve come to see – and treasure – what we have in that book more as a set of deeply personal journals of individual and group experiences, including their failures, than as any set of how-to steps to eternity.

Blogging isn’t your only life, is it?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Are any of you amused by fellow bloggers who apologize for not posting during a hiatus in their otherwise self-imposed publishing schedule?

I am. And remember, my career as a journalist was filled with pressing newspaper deadlines where missing by a few minutes could be costly.

Blogging, in contrast, has none of those pressures, at least for most of us. I doubt that any of our followers is drooling in anticipation while awaiting our next post on whatever schedule we follow. Like every Wednesday or Friday, who’s counting? The important thing is to have something to say, usually gleaned from real life.

That’s assuming you have a routine. You do, don’t you?

In the bigger picture, I can think of some voices I miss, unfortunately long gone from the scene. Ones who even erased their contributions when they closed up shop. But they always appeared when they had something to relate, and it didn’t matter what day or week we were in.

Still, we post and/or schedule as best we can. We’re our own boss here, right?

And for the more inquisitive of us, when we fall behind your postings, we’ll catch up when you show up next round.

This is, after all, ultimately about sharing the joy and wonder or challenges of life where we encounter it.

And yes, even that “do wish you were here.”

For the record, I still regard many of you as pen pals. Remember what that was?

Now, to try to catch up with all that’s been happening on this end. That’s one thing I’ll admit can be frustrating.

A few lives I almost had … but I’ve wound up here instead

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Being of an age where I have more to look back on than what lies ahead, pondering forks in the road I followed, I find myself concluding they ultimately turned out for the best.

Still, there are moments when I wonder how my life would have gone if, say, things had turned out better with certain lovers or I hadn’t narrowly missed out in a desired career move – things that would have opened other avenues. In fact, a big goal all along had been to become financially independent so I could hunker down with my more literary writing, the thing I’ve been able to do in retirement.

Here’s a handful.

  1. Been hired by a really big daily newspaper. The Wall Street Journal, especially, had been interested until laying off a ton of editors and reporters just before my graduation. And there had been a brief flirtation from the Washington Post and, later, Detroit Free Press.. My dreams of living in a major city, with all of its fine arts cultural opportunities, vanished with that.
  2. Returned to my hometown after college. Well, it would have left me deeply rooted. Or, in one scenario, wedded into a wealthy family on the other side of town, with all of the opportunities that would have afforded. But would I have found that too confining? (Said girlfriend ultimately did.) Instead, I was off into hippie communion and poverty-line journalist existence in foothills a few hours from New York City.
  3. Stayed in the ashram or at least the Asian spiritual stream. Yoga had saved my life and was a hot field, if I had been more entrepreneurial. But I wouldn’t have encountered Quakers and my family roots. Instead, leap ahead a few steps.
  4. Not persuaded my fiancée to overcome her jitters. That is, freed me to move on without her. She may have even closed off a few upward moves for us toward the end.
  5. Stayed with the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, had its major grant not been slashed shortly after being renewed. I would have had another four years in a big university setting, and my first wife could have earned her degree there rather than being uprooted. It might even have led me to graduate school and an academic career after all. But I did have dreams of mountains and wilderness, or else recognition as a poet, and those all led to the next fork.
  6. Remained in the Pacific Northwest. Despite the grueling demands of the office, my professional career was also exciting and on an upward swing. I was making inroads as a poet, too, and with the mountains and forests, I was living a dream. But there were dark clouds as well, any of which could have erupted even had I been able to relocate to the western side of the Cascades. Instead, I was soon in an eastward ricochet.
  7. Not faced marital difficulties. That is, had she been faithful rather than leading to divorce. Add to that my near miss with a big management job at America’s eighth biggest newspaper and its sterling ownership. Well, I probably would have had that big heart attack, too. Instead, I rebounded into a whirlwind romance with a sprite who seemed to be everything I ever desired. Leading to the next set of painful forks.
  8. Moved to Baltimore or managed to remain, including marriage to the dream of my life. First, that engagement went up in smoke and left me, well, a pile of emotional ashes. My hot job on the road covering 14 states turned into a dead end. And I failed to find a shared mission with a devoted lover who would have desired to have children together. From the start, I could have moved to, say, Boston, instead. At least I was able to give myself a sabbatical and hunker down writing for a year amid the debris.
  9. Had a book manuscript click with an agent or, more vitally, a commercial publisher. Or even a few critics. My goal of becoming financially independent kept slipping away, though my later friendship with one celebrated author has shown me how precarious that bestseller life can be. As for having a book take off? A writer can get trapped by success.
  10. Married the Georgian. She swept me off my feet, and how, maybe because she seemed to embody everything I thought I desired, as well as what she said she desired, as her mother reminded her. Yes, it was exciting, but after just a month, she panicked. Frankly, I soon saw it would have been a disaster. In addition, she never would have fit in as an editor’s wife, much less in any of the roles that might have opened later.

When I look at the forks I chose to follow, I have to admit the one of going back into the ranks of the newsroom rather than management was crucial. The reasons I stayed there could easily fill another Tendril.

A writer’s humble request

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Reading can be an intimate connection between an anonymous individual and a writer. The action really is one-on-one, even for a bestselling book.

Too often, though, it’s one way, like therapy with no one piping up on the other end.

Authors typically work in isolation on a work of passion and then step forward in a state of exposure. It can be especially tense if you’ve taken risks, knowing they can backfire.

Unless you’ve been there, you have no idea how much a reaction, positive or negative, can feel. There really is a shock and elation when you see that someone else “gets it.” Or even if they don’t, they’ve at least engaged.

Typically, though, there’s silence.

That’s why I’m still astonished by people who tell me they love the tone and content of my new book.

In addition, even a brief review or comment can help a writer sharpen the direction of future work.

Reactions to Quaking Dover are definitely encouraging fresh perspectives for my own public presentations around the work. Remember, one publishing house rejected the book because they detested first-person. Thankfully, I listened to a wise beta reader and reacted accordingly.

I definitely look forward to hearing your reactions. In addition, if you like the book, please leave a brief review plus stars at your retailer’s website or other places. Nothing beats word-of-mouth, either, in the book world.

 

A doctoral thesis dilemma

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Doctoral hopefuls in English literature are often cautioned against selecting their favorite author as their dissertation subjects. So I’ve heard. Seems they’re quite likely to wind up hating everything about the person by the time their deep-dive project wraps up.

Wonder if that will happen with me and my Quaker history project before I’m done presenting it one way or another.

Not that I’d want to be addressed “Doctor.”

An unexpected New England perspective

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Continuing research into topics related to my new book Quaking Dover has greatly changed my view of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in New England. And thus the greater legacy of the region itself.

And here I’d thought I was done!

When Carla Gardina Pestana’s history, Quakers and Baptists in colonial Massachusetts, presented the Salem Friends Meeting as the only Quaker body in the Puritan colonies, I was initially baffled, only to learn that it was true, including those of today’s Connecticut.

Besides Dover and Hampton in New Hampshire, the other Quaker congregations were in Rhode Island or what was then the Plymouth colony or, in Nantucket’s case, the province of New York.

Massachusetts’ unification of the Plymouth colony in 1691 does muddy the waters, but by then, the persecution by Puritans had greatly lessened.

The ultimate impact was on freedom of religion and speech and political opinions, all of which are facing renewed opposition today.

As I had said, here I thought I was done.