Like speaking to the ghost of my first lover

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Let me explain. After showing my tech-savvy elder daughter a few things about Facebook during a visit, I had one of those “whatever happened to?” moments and chanced upon my first lover’s FB site. That led to what we call falling down the rabbit hole, in this instance this one where her photos and posts made me happy to see what appeared to be a good life … at least until getting to the point where she related that her husband had passed. Forty years together? Impressive. How was she holding up after the loss?

As I continued:

A lot has transpired since we last communicated, but I can say on my end much of it wouldn’t have happened had you not been so much a central part of my life way back when. You really did change my direction. Thank you for the positive things that followed because of that.

Should you want to know more or to just chat, fire back. Or peruse my profile or my blog for a sampling of what’s really been – and continues to be – a rich life, maybe more than ever. Yours, of course, is likely to be more fascinating. Best regards, all the same. Peace … 

Of course, I haven’t heard diddly.

A quick look at labor and income changes in America

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Some realities and trends I find disturbing, as gleaned from Harper’s Index over the past few years:

  1. Hypothetical median income of full-time U.S. workers [2020] if income were distributed as evenly as it was in 1975: $92,000. Actual median income of full-time U.S. workers: $50,000. (Guess which direction the differential is skewered.)
  2. Percentage of U.S. manufacturing jobs that required a bachelor’s degree in 1983: 14. That required one in 2018: 31.
  3. Percentage of Americans who believe that a four-year college degree is not worth the cost: 56. (Are employers who expect a degree holder for a low-paying job getting a free ride?)
  4. Portion of all U.S. student-loan debt that is held by women: 2/3. (Does that reflect gender pay differences in similar jobs?)
  5. Percentage of unpaid taxes that are owed by the richest one percent of Americans: 70.
  6. Average percentage of their fortunes that the twenty richest Americans gave to charity in 2018: 0.8.
  7. Factor by which the average cost of a home in the United States is higher than the average salary: 8. (And the guidelines I grew up with said don’t go over 25 percent of your income. So now it’s twice that?)
  8. Percentage of Americans aged 18 to 29 who live with one or both of their parents: 52.
  9. Rank of workers 75 or older among the fastest growing demographics in the U.S. workforce: 1.
  10. Percentage increase since 2020 in the amount of work employees are doing outside of the nine-to-five workday: 28.

Acid test novelist: Gurney Norman (1937- )

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Returning to Tom Wolfe’s charge that no great novel sprang from the hippie counterculture, it’s clear that he overlooked Divine Right’s Trip, which originally appeared in the margins of the Last Whole Earth Catalog. (Far out, indeed.)

Rather than taking place in any of the celebrated hippie havens, Norman’s pilgrim figure finds himself in Cincinnati, a largely redneck habitation I’ve heard described as a place of perpetual Lent, before heading on into the strip-mined mountains of eastern Kentucky. Yes, hippie did indeed take place in seemingly unlikely locales. It was also often drab and lonely. And then, as Norman illustrates, it also drew nurture from some very unlikely sources.

If anything, there’s widespread lament that Norman didn’t write more. Divine Right’s Trip is humbly beautiful.