Respect for the Greek inheritance of Philosophy

August 29, 2025 - I just read a short news item about the Taliban in dispute with the Chinese over oil well drilling in an Afghanistani valley. The Taliban accuse the Chines of reneging on the contract and the Chinese accuse the Taliban of "robbery" for forcible take-over of the oil wells and taking a dozen Chinese oil expert/workers hostage and confiscating their passports.

It is interesting to me in so many ways because the Taliban are, in fact, a lot like a criminal gang in the sense that they make their own rules and do not abide by those established by the outside world. And those rules established by the outside world, I was thinking about that and how much we owe to the ancient world, in particular to Greece and the evolution of Philosophy where thinkers examine and establish the core ideas upon which social governance and behavior get built.

My sister and I were talking about that on the phone and how religion fits in. I would say that religion was an early origin for philosophy in that it is a deal making kind of relationship between people and the outside world. People need something to turn to. After a time, savagery has demonstrated to lead to utter destruction and despair, so savagery must be reigned in. In despair and hoping to find some cause for things and some succor, people created gods, first on the elements: weather, sun, seasons. I will give you something I value if you give me something I need. This basic exchange, it seems to me, is at the heart of everything.

In the Western world we value Christianity because Jesus Christ made a lasting human example of a man so good he put love as the highest power, not lust or conquest. In the Western World we have put education and the value of learning what developed in our ancient civilizations in regard to social governance and human behavior at the heart of our civilization. The Greeks gave us philosophy and the search for the roots and functions of values, and Christianity gave us selfless values and devotion to the greater good rather than selfish savagery.

It will be interesting to see the Taliban trying to interact with the outside world when they have no cultural respect for or system for the learning (since they deny secular education and rely entirely on religious education for boys) of the historic devolopmnet of ideas on social governance and human behavior beyond savagery. They don't have a shared value for the social contract only a reliance on primitive savagery. When savages and tyrants try to make deals.

Respect for the Greeks and for Christianity AND especially for EDUCATIOM - my passion and my career field! >p/> wrightj45@yahoo.com

It isn't about living longer but living BETTER!

Out of the tail spin! Lately I have been in a slump. I have often said that I have never been lonely or bored and for most of my life that has been true - the other day, however, I sat listlessly on the sofa with no inspiration or interest and no amount of cat patting or dog companionship could lift my spirits. This, I thought is what boredom and loneliness feel like. I thought about my usual strategies, but so many of them are out of reach to me now. In the past, in a slump, I would hop in the car and take my dog for a hike around Pakim Pond in the Pinewoods. Gene's and the Red Top Market never faied to ift my spirits along the drive with Pakim pond and the pines a true tonic. Another thing I used to do was I would go to a book store (it used to be Borders) and load up on creativity magazines like ART JOURNALING and Somerset or Art in America. Well, I thought, I can still do that!

I love the seasonal magazines, especially Autumn/Halloween, and Winter/Christma! I knew I hadn't done the magazine thing for TEN years because my last Art Journaling Magazine was dated 2015! I decided to go to The Garden State Pavillions shopping center which I find so daunting I haen't been there in the last ten years. But I drank a latte' for fortitude and got my car keys and off I drove. First I parked too far away, then, although I searched and searched, I couldn't find Art Journaling - the main magazine I wanted. A store clerk helped me look and he couldn't find it either though it was on the computer as in stock. Nonetheless, I left with 6 new magazzine at an exorbitant price! In case you didn't know, the price of magazines has soared to from $20 to $30 each!

Getting out of the Garden State Pavilions onto Route 70 was a disaster due to construction barricades and detours and the odd uncooperative driver not willing to wait in line like the rest of us and attempting to line jump which caused an horn honking uproar in the herd. Finally I was home and so exhausted from my hunting trip I didn't even look at a magazine and instead I criticized myself for trying to fix an internal problem with external means and for spending money extravagantly.

Today however, I found the small spark of will I needed to get me to Martin's Lake with my dog, Uma. The walk around the beautiful lake on this extraordinarily gorgeous day (75 degrees) picked me up and I called in an order for Vegetarian Delight lunch special at Audubon's Chinese Take-out restaurant. Along the way I bought myself a latte' at Dunkin Donuts.

At home, I truly enjoyed the Vegetarian Delight which seemed crisper and more colorful even than usual and tastier too! The final verdict - I feel so much better! Call it the weather, being outdoors, a healthy lunch, all of the above - I am rejuvenated! And the Chinese take-out and the latte' were far less expensive than all those magazines, but the magazines give me somethin to look forward to - to anticipate. I can enjoy a good Art Magaine for a year or longer, which is why I still have the Art Journaling Magaine from 2015. And since they didn't have it at Barnes and Noble in the Garden State Pavilion, I bought a subscription on-line and my first copy will arrive mid September - another thing to look forward to. I hope this little push to a better level lasts! I will let you know! By the way, I have finished the Dr. Ornish UnDo It book - the audio-book version and I am trying to live up to it! I bought the paperback to review and reinforce.

Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com

Looking for something new to try? Craft Classes!

Check out this line-up of fun craft classes available:

September 16-Star Book

September 23- Rag Rug

September 29-Nature Weaving

October 14-Wood Burning

October 21 -Gourd Scarecrow

October 28- Weaving

November 6- Embroidered Felt Star

November 12- Locker Hook Coaster Set

November 18- Thanksgiving Centerpiece

10:00 AM-12:00PM

Pre-Registration is required.

Call 856-224-8045 or email mcummings@co.gloucester.nj.us Cost $10.00/class Classes are held at 254 County House Road, Clarksboro, NJ

If like me, you are feeling the tingle of autumn in the air, you may be interested in one of the many many wonderful farmers' markets we have in South Jersey, after all, we are still the Garden State! This one has alwayeen my favorite:

Collingswood Farmers Market

Saturdays Now - November | 12 PM

Downtown Collingswood

Called “One of the State’s finest markets” by Charles M. Kuperus, the New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture, the Collingswood Farmers’ Market started as the dream of community volunteers and from the interest of the New Jersey Department of Agriculture to bring fresh produce directly from local farmers to communities.

There are also music festivals and performances everywhere and since it isn't blazing hot anymore it seems like he perfect time to check them out. As always, I post for my old favoite The Albert Music Hall!

Albert Music Hall – Saturday Night Show

August 23rd | 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM

Albert Music Hall

Running since 1974, the regular Saturday Night Show features a mix of Pinelands, Bluegrass, Country, Americana, Folk, and Old Timey music each week. This week there will be 5 bands: Crown Acoustic, Eric Sommer, Fish & Whistle, Easy As Pie, and Billy Penn & The Inside Drivers.

Happy Trails everyone - wrightj45@yahoo.com

September Walking Tours at Red Bank Battlefield 2025

If you love Red Bank Battlefield like I do, you may find these walking tours of interest:

Sept 13 - Her Story - Colonial Women in Revolutionary Times

Sept 20 - The Road to Philadelphia 1777

Sept 27 - Crossfire - Descendants talk about the Whitall Family Plantation during the Revolution

Oct 11 - The Fall of the Forts: Mifflin and Mercer

Oct. 28 - Hessian Soldiers, Hidden Stories

The Walks are 1 hour and Free! For more information call 856-853-5120

Just checked the flyer again and it says registrationn is required.

Health update - the low down on Walking

From an npr nesletter in my morning e-mail

A new study reviewed data collected from more than 160,000 adults around the world on the link between step count and a variety of health outcomes, and suggests a new goal. After 7,000 steps, “there seems to be diminishing return on investment for increasing more steps," says Melody Ding, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney who headed up the data review. Compared to people who got in just 2,000 steps a day, 7,000-steppers’ chance of developing Type 2 diabetes fell by 14%, cardiovascular disease by 25%, symptoms of depression by 22% and dementia by 38%.

And don’t worry if you’re a slowpoke – researchers found a health benefit no matter the speed of your stride.

If you’re not into walking, that’s also fine. The point is to get physical activity. You can translate 1 mile of walking (approximately 2,000 steps) into one-fifth of a mile of swimming or 5 miles of cycling, says Dr. William Kraus, a cardiologist who studies exercise at Duke University.

"Everybody wants to know how little I need to do. That is the wrong question," says Kraus, "Anything is better than nothing — more is better than less."

The Biggest Loser, 20 Years Later

There is a 3 episode documentary on apple tv about the aftermath of the hugely popular show The Biggest Loser which aired 20 years ago as of 2024. It ran for about 18 seasons (or episodes) and the documentary follows up on the winners of the weight loss cmpetition. In case you weren't a watcher, Obese people auditioned to be on the show in a kind of weightloss race involving low calorie diets (as low as 800 calories) and all day work-out routines (of up to 8-10 hours a day).

Millions of people watched both apprehensively and hopefully, I think. At the time, I was, myself, about 50 pounds overweight. It is a 50 pound companion I have had since I was 38 and got pregnant. Before that, I had always been about 125 to 130 pounds. During my pregnancy, I ate carefully but with an eye to nutrition and nourishment for my baby not with an eye to my figure. It was the beginning of the personal sacrifice that marks the role of motherhood. Within 6 months after the birth of my daughter, however, I had lost the 50 pounds because at the time, I lived in the city of Philadelphia, worked in New Jerssey, and I had no car, so I walked everywhere carrying the baby in a backpack and a diaper bag and a school bag hanging on my arms - a workout of its own kind.

Once I moved to New Jersey and got a car, however, the weight didn't stay off, those sneaky 50 pounds that had hovered watchfully and waited for a chance returned at an average of about 10 pouds a year.

I was working all the time. I had a full time teaching job, two after school jobs teaching English as a second language and tutoring homebound children, and a full Saturday job from 9-5 at the University of the Arts. Sundays, I did the laundry the grocery shopping, and once I bought my house, the cleaning and yardwork. Needless to say, I was eating fast food and not looking after myself, though I tried. When you are cooking for two and one of them is a skinny and obsessively picky eater, you are trapped in the cycle of trying to tempt your child to eat something/anything that they like (mac and cheese) at the same time you try to get something with nutrition into them (carrot coins and chicken cordon bleu wa her faorite.)

Befor that life changing event of mothernood, I had been very involved with fitness thanks to a team of phys ed teachers I had the good fortune to eeet in college at Glassboro State College in the early 1970's. They were young and modern and interested in fitness. They allowed us to research and design our own fitness programs, and get our grades by charting our progress with their guidance. At the time, I was interested (as was just about everyone else thanks to Jim Fixx) in jogging and running. My program was to start out walking around the three sided park of Knight's Park in Collingswood, and slowly add jogging from telephone pole to telephone pole with the goal of eventually jogging one whole side, then two, then finally, all three. I did it, it worked and I got an A and an understanding of how to get fit. At that time, I was married and my ex-husband a competitive and inconsiderate man by nature was into both running and bicycling. Although I could do a 15 mile ride with pleasure and without pain, he found ways to force it into 50 mile rides which killed me and took the joy out of the experience. He had been in the army and his introduction into fitness training was forced marches with backpacks at Fort Gordon, Georgia. That kind of punishment suited his nature anyhow. So he often turned our outdoor experiences into painful forced marches.

After college and before divorce. I also had taken a course in Modern Dance, taught by a gifted and fascinating professional dancer/goat farmer. She was the old hippy stock, back to mother earth, organic produce in a truck garden, chickens, and goats for milk, cheese, and sale. She had been a lifelong dancer in first ballet, and then modern dance. The birth of her sons followed by her husband's desertion changed the course of her life. They had started the farm together but he had left for New York and a career in design and a wealthy younger woman, unencumbered by pesky disabled children. She was on her own with a deaf son and a handicapped daughter. I loved her class and for the first time in my life, I began to love and honor my body and to understand it. I found grace.

During that time, I also had become a vegetarian thanks to the life changing book Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. It was the time of the greatest fitness of my life. I worked in a library and I got there by bicycle while I also went to college part-time and alternating full time.

Divorce, a move to Philadelphia, dating and we zoom forward to my later years (middle aged), I was about 50 pounds overweight, raising my daughter, working all the time, and not eating mindfully, also I was still taking college courses and earning my third post- graduate degree. And in whatever time was left, I drove my daughter to her classes, her shows, and her athletic events. Then, my daughter grew up and left home around 2002. I was free.

First, I started walking at night, but I fell and broke my arm. Then I fell down the attic stairs and seriously injured my back. I realized I was not only fat but dangerously out of shape, I had to do something, so I joined a local gym that had a program where if you got 5 people from your work to join, you got a discounted rate Five teachers joined, but soon, I was the only one going. Every day, directly after school (I gave up the tutoring job) I put on my gym clothes and went straight to the gym (Royal Fitness in Barrington). I rode the bike for an hour and did a variety of strength building machines. People at the gym were helpful and supportive which helped me overcome my intimidation in the face of machines I had never used before and an experience beyond my comfort zone.

On the way home from the gym, I stopped at Audubon Lake and did an hour walk. On average, I did 2 hours at the gym and an hour walking and in one year, 52 weeks, I lost 50 pounds. I looked and felt marvelous, like a new person. The neon sign that kept blinking in my mind was "YOU CAN GET IT BACK" but the gym had stirred something else in me, a renewed interest in romance. Several years of unsuccessful and deeply disappointing dating followed during which I slowly gained the weight back. Then I watched The Biggest Loser! Like the contestnts I was sad and hoping for some kind of progress, some kind of FIX. Over the 20 years of the program, I, too, joined the gym again, walked again, cleaned up my diet again, and again and again. And each time, I lost 20 pounds or 30 pounds, and within the next couple years I gained it back again and I got old.

Unexpected Disabilities began to pile up in my late 60's and early 70's. First, I got degenerative spine disease which I discovered while taking a kayak off a car rack. It took a year for recovery from the damaged disc that impinged on the nerves in my spinal cord and caused the pain. That ended my outdoor life. I couldn't turn my head, or drive, and moving my shoulders was always dangerous. It got better eventually though, but the orthopedic doctor told me it would spread down my spine and it was not going away; it was dessicted disc disease. Then my eyesight failed - things got blurrier and I couldn't read anymore or read street signs while driving; the cornea specialists told me it was degenerative and genetic and it was Fuch's Disease - a break down of the pumps that dlean and protect the cornea. Then I tore the meniscus in one knee, and at the gym, I developed a stabbing pain in my hip while on the treadmill. the Orthopedic doctor said I had arthritis is both knees and both hips and the treadmill was bad for both. No more treadmill walking.

Still, I could always walk outside. And I have. I kept mainly to a simple diet with enough casual diversions into bad habits (ice cream, milk shakes, potato chips, cheesecake) to keep me 50 pounds overweight. But I stayed vegetarian. It wasn't enugh. Eventually I added two new afflictions to my resume' - a case of diverticulosis so severe I ended up in the hospital (Virtua in Voorhees) - (my daughter came home to help me establish a new routine of soups), and then a couple of years later a cardiac event which sent me to the hospital (Lady of Lourdes) and ended my volunteering at Red Bank Battlefield. My sister came to my aid this time and once again, I endeavored to help myself stay alive by going to the gym and walking the dog. That's where I am today. The diverticulosis was caused by my high blood pressure medications drying out of my intestines. The cardiac even twas caused by calcified soft tissue around my coronary artery.

The trajectory of The Biggest Losers has been somewhat similar. They were fatter and lost more but they, too, gained it back and are still engaged in the great struggle. Only one kept it off and he said he is an obese man in a fit body and every day he is hungry and every day is a struggle. Iterestingly, at age 51, one of the trainers, Bob Harper suffered a massive coronary heart attack. He was fit, but his cholesterol was high and he had a meat based diet; when he recovered, he became a vegan.

Perhaps that is the fact and the theme of this EVERY DAY IS A STRUGGLE. Whether your struggle is with nutrition or exercise, depression, family life, life purpose, home maintenance and independence in living while aging, cognitive decline, loneliness, we are all engaged in a struggle every day, and perhaps in my case, a great big gratitutde is that I have the will and the fortitude to engage in the struggle and that fortitutde may be the thing that buys another year of healthy life.

By the way, we (my dog and me) are just back from our walk around Martin's Lake, about 1500 steps, 1/2 a mile, and very good for meditation because it is peaceful, beautiful and usually pretty empty. I am listening to Dr. Dean Ornish's book UNDO IT! on audio book each night and trying to implement the lifestyle advice from his research. Also, I am doing the workbook each day. Just this week, my brother was in the hospital for his hear - congestive heart failure (which killed our father) and atrial fibrillation. He is now determined to clean up his lifestyle - no more drinking or smoking.

Good Luck on your Great Struggle whatever it may be!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

August is Wellness Month

Try these simple wellness tips: Stay Active – walk, dance, or try yoga Eat Healthy – focus on fruits, veggies, and whole grains Think Positive – practice gratitude daily Connect – spend time with loved ones. Manage Stress – try mediation or deep breathing Sleep Well – rest is key to good health

Collections - August 14, 2025

This headline item mademe think about collections today

Are you a collector?

A married couple, they died in a car crash in Italy. Mario Paglino and Gianni Grossi, designers who turned Barbie dolls into one-of-a-kind works of art that sold for thousands of dollars, including one that fetched more than $15,000 at a charity auction, died on July 27 in Italy. Mr. Paglino was 52; Mr. Grossi was 54.

Well, I haven't been a collector unless books count. I have thousands of books and have been donating dozens of large containers of books to the Free Books Project over the past 5 years because my eyesight is failing from Fuch's Dystrophy and I can't really read anymore. I am happy for my books to go to those who can read.

Other than books I don't have much in what you could call a 'collection' which is defined as a group of related objects. My daughter did have many Barbi dolls in her childhood and all the accessories including the converible car, the ice cream stand, the hair-dresser's salon, the recording studio, and the bargecue shop, among others. But perhaps her main collections were her Jurrassic Park action figures. She had a dinosaur encyclopedia and all kinds of accessories to that film, lunch box, t-shirts, posters, all that. She also collected American Girl Dolls and has Four of them. I forget their names. Actually almost anything that counts as a collection belongs to my daughter: she has an antique bottle collection given her one piece at a time by her father, probably a couple dozen bottles dug from privies in Northern Liberties in Philadelphia.

I am more of a one-of-a-kind collector. I have one doll from my own childhood, not particularly valuable in terms of cash but she means a lot to me because she was given to me by my Godfather, Neal Schmidt, who was possibly the nicest man I ever knew, kind, gentle, thoughtful and serene.

I gave away my seashell collection to my sister's grandson, and my fossils. For a time, I had an eye for house shaped teapots and I think I have three sets of them. Once, my daughter and I had a tins collection, added to by her vintage/antique buying and selling father, but Lavinia sold or disposed of most of them during a summer when she was getting ready to make her break-for California. She held a sureptious yard sale. I had forbidden it because I didn't want her gathering anything she decided might sell, loading it up out front and then disappearing leaving the remnants on the lawn which was a probably scenario for that period of her life. She held the yard sale when I was away and threw away trash cans of things that didn't sell. I was heartbroken when I saw some things I had given her - a little cupboard with an antique lead cowboy and an Indian to go with teh book The Indian in the Cupboard, for example. I just turned away and let it all go, not the first time in my life I had to make that move.

When I left my ex-husband, I was so exhausted, frightened and overburdened with worry I couldn't carry one more box of my stuff up to my apartment over the Drug Store on Haddon Ave. in Collingswood, so I left my entire collection of first and only edition feminist magazines and books on the curb. I had called some women's groups hoping someone would come to get them but no one was willing and I couldn't carry them up those stairs.

Collecting is an interesting and vauable pursuit, to me. First off, collector's save and conserve material culture for the future. Especially in this 'throw away' culture in which we live, stuff isn't saved, it is disposed of and replaced by new stuff.

I had a '3 Diminsion Art' course in college, taught by sculptor John Giannotti, where he once discussed the future of material culture and furnishings in a time when houses are built without attics. In my childhood most houses had attics and Grandparents and Great-grandparents things were stored there. Attics and chests of the antique and vintage items featured in many novels about treasure maps and shipwrecked ancestors forced into cannibalism. Our modern post World War II lives didn't include attics. Our modern New Jersey Development houses had no attics or basements. Nonetheless, some old family heirlooms managed to survive and float down to me and live with me at present. I have no idea what will become of them because, so far, in our family there is no one remotely like the kind of child I was which is how these objects came to be in my possession; I was that child, the reader, the saver, the Grandmother's girl. I have Sandman/Young Great grandmother's 1929 sewing machine, Merchant-Marine Wright Grandfather's mahogany deck chair, a wing chair in poor condition from my mother's McQuiston side of the family and some fading photographs from 1869. It is impossible for me to say what will become of these refugees from time after I, their conservator, am gone from this world.

I have been divested of my things several times over through divorce and moving. This house where I have lived for 40 years is filled with things which I suspect will have no value to anyone when I am gone, and this is a sad observation I hear all around me from people in my age group who are preparing for the final divestiture. Nobody wants all that old stuff.

I know there are collectors out there who would like to have and to hold many of the interesting items I have but I don't have the interest or motivation to make those arrangments; for example, I have a 1947 German made portable typewriter and an even older 1919 typewriter. The stories they tell from the times when they lives, but I don't feel like looking for homes for them.

Who knows, maybe a day will come when old things will become popular again and it will be easier to find homes for these wonderful things like my Great Grandmother's sewing machine. I can only hope so. Maybe a web site called The Old Curiosity Shop.

Happy Trails

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Collingswood Arts & Crafts Fair August 16

Join Perkins Center for the Arts in celebrating arts and culture from across South Jersey at the COLLINGSWOOD CRAFT AND FINE ARTS FESTIVAL!

Discover a vibrant mix of art and community at Artist’s Alley on Irvin. Emerging artists showcase their talents alongside hands-on crafts for the whole family. Perkins Center for the Arts brings together local artisans and is, again, partnering with Bancroft, a nonprofit serving people with disabilities, to feature student artwork in the Bancroft space in Artist’s Alley. Artist Kathy Casper will also be there, leading a hands-on art activity for visitors. Don't miss the stunning exhibition Visions of the Idyllic by Shutian Cao inside the Perkins galleries!

Festival Details: Explore, inspire, and support local talent August 16-17, 10:00 am-5:00 pm.

Special Events on Saturday, August 16:

Exhibition Docent Tours - 10 am - 1pm

Artist Talks and Stories in the Folklife Zone: 10:30 am - 2:30pm

Creation Station with Bancroft

Shutian Cao Artist Talk and Demo: 3:00 pm

Gallery Reception: 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Join in the Folklife Zone, part of Artist's Alley on Irvin! Established by the NJ Folklife at Perkins in 2022 as part of the Collingswood Crafts and Fine Art Festival, we honor contemporary living cultural traditions and celebrate those who practice and sustain them in South Jersey.

Enjoy free demonstrations, displays, and other activities featuring master artisans and tradition bearers. This year, we present a series of workshops on Sunday, August 17, presented by folk artists and tradition bearers who presented the day prior.

Full Schedule: https://canvas.perkinsarts.org/events/292

NJ Folklife at Perkins is a co-sponsored project of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com

Pineystock, a 60s-Themed Music Show

August 10th | 2 PM

Albert Music Hall

We’re throwing our very first Pineystock—a far-out, 60s-themed music show inspired by the legendary summer of ’69. It promises 3 hours of peace, pickin’ and harmonies. You might hear some Janis, CCR, and the Grateful Dead renditions—but this isn’t just a tribute show.

If you have never been to Albert Hall, you should go! It is a long ride to Waretown but how I loved that long dark ride through the mysterious pine woods to get there the many times I went in years gone by. I haven't been there in ages because 1.my eyesight has dimished with a cornea disease and I can't drive in the dark. 2. The adventurous friends I went there with have gone on their own path years back and we don't see one another any more. Nothing happened, we just drifted apart. 3.I can't get any of the people I know now to go with me! The last time I went about ten years ago, was with my daughter and she really enjoyed it. She even bought an Albert Hall bumper sticker for her car!

Wish I could go with you!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Anne of Green Gables and Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn

A random set of thoughts: when I was walking today I was thinking of Anne of Green Gables as I often do. It was probably the most influential of the books I read as a child and being a total book worm, I read a LOT of books. I read adult literary classics right alongside girlhood favorites like Nancy Drew, and Cherry Ames-Student Nurse. But the one that touched my heart and influenced my life was Anne of Green Gables. Her profound response to the natural world matched my own. Her attempts to do the right thing even though they sometimes went awry matched my own. I realized with Anne of Green Gables that I wasn't odd or singular and that there were others in the world with a similar set of aspirations and sensitivities. Anne of Green Gables has walked through my long life with me. I am so glad I visited Nova Scotia twice although both times I was with a male companion who was captaining the expedition and so despite my desire, we didn't visit Prince Edwar Island. Nonetheless, I got the feel of the air and sky and sea from my visits.

Of course, being a girl in the last half of the twentieth century, I read the boyhood books as well as the girl books. So I read Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and in fact, most if not all Mark Twain's novels, although some of them were completely incomprehensible to me like A Connecticut Yankee i King Arthur's Court. But those boys, Huck and Tom, never reached my heart in any meaningful way and I never think of them now even though I have watched the film versions of the books as well.

It seems to me in some profound way, these two novels of youth represent the female and male worlds even through the vast stretch of time and change from when they were written to now - something more on the psychological level. And if I were in a literary program, I think I might want to explore this relationship. Anne of Green Gables still has spin-offs appearing on streaming tv services and has perhaps had more film inte rpretations that Tom Sawyer or Hickleberry Finn. Maybe women cling more to the literature of their childhood than men do. In fact, I knew very few boys who read for pleasure, neither of my brothers, for instance and non of the boys I knew in the neighborhood or in school. It wasn't until college and the literature program that I was in that I met young men who loved books and wanted to talk about them. That was a revelation and a joy!

Anyhow since this literary pondering wasinsisting on being put down somewhere, here it is.

wrightj45@yahoo.com

UnDo It update - Day 2 Aug. 4, 10:00 a.m.

Well, a small victory and a small defeat (so far) I did manage our walk to Martin's Lake and I went with a neighbor who often walks with me and Uma, my Lab. I did NOT get to the gym, at least not yet. One of the reasons I was so keen on trying this Ornish program was because I have been having a symptom for about a year - a queasy stomach in the morning, often before I awaken and it is pronounced enough that it wakes me up. I googled it and the result was probable low blood sugar. I am still trying to figure out what to eat or drink and when to eat or drink it. But I hoped that if I followed the program, I might be able to ward off diabetes if that is the cause of the nausea.

By the way, the grocery shopping that I did yesterday only cost a total of $40. I will make the salad again today for lunch because I am determined to have fresh vegetables EVERY day for the 8 week program.

Also, I had hoped to get to the gym today to help raise my daily step count which, yesterday, by the end of the day was 3300 and I am aiming for 5000. Today, the park is only 1500; it is a half mile park and takes about 30 minutes at my glacial pace. Because I have arthritis in my feet, knees and hips and a bad back, I walk very slowly. Also I have to be careful walking because of my eyesight problems, one issue is I can't see depth properly, so a crack in the sidewalk can be a fall for me if I am not slow and careful. My back holds up just enough to make it around Martin's Lake which makes this walk perfect for this stage in my fitness attempt.

wrightj45@yahoo.com

A New Start - Dr. Dean Ornish's book - UnDo It! Tracking my progress

Yesterday I began to listen to Dr. Dean Ornish's new book UnDo It! about reversing and preventing chronic diseases. I was familiar with his Reversing Heart Disease book and I was hoping this new book would get me back on the track to improving my health and mobility.

For 3 days, I have done my morning walk around Martin's Lake with my dog Uma. The weather has been superb. Today, after Woodbury Friends Meeting, I stopped in the ShopRite and from the organic dept. in produce I bought: broccoli, shredded carrots, baby leaf spinach, and tomatoes. It is my goal to make a fresh vegetable salad every day at midday. The two areas I have fallend down on most are eating vegetables and getting to the gym for my half hour workout.

I will track my progress here: So today, Sunday August 3rd (It is good to start at the beginning of the month!) the full process, at least the walking and the fresh vegetable meal begin! I forgot to get mushrooms, and I want to add sunflower seeds and black olives. Oh yes, I also had an ear of corn microwaved in its husk - delicious! I am on chapter 2 of the UnDo It! book. I will keep you posted.

The main idea I take away so far is that instead of compartmentalizing heart, separate from brain, and diseases separate from each other, like diabetes separate from diverticulosis, they are all in one system and that system needs the proper fuel and maintenance: vegetable based diet, and strength training with cardio - walking and the gym. That way, the cardiovascular system can deliver the right stuff to the brain and the organs and can keep modulated the balances of sugar and fats and such. Forgive me if my explanation is less than AMA ready.

Happy Trails! And may your trail run through good weather and fair skies! wrightj45@yahoo.com

Another Strategy to Save Myself

Yesterday a friend on a phone call recommended a book to me and today, by coincidence, I read about it in my daily e-mail news feed: Dr. Dean Ornish's book UnDo It! - Lifestyle choices to reverse chronic disease. In particular, this book, acccording to my friend, strives to focus on brain health and early intervention against cognitive decline. Mp/> This blog post is only to introduce the idea. I have borrowed the book via Audible and I will be listening to it at bedtime which is my habit. I have lost so much vision due to Fuch's Dystrophy - a degeneration of the cornea due to the break-down of the Fuch's pumps responsible for cleaning and protecting the cornea, that I can't really read anymore - it is such a struggle and I need a magnifying glass. So, I listen to audio books. I doubt there is much new in this book to me, as I read Dr. Ornish's heart book in the beginning of my heart disease fifteen years or so ago, but I think of it as a REVIEW and Inspiration to get back to the good lifestyle.

In truth, I do a good many of the recommended things as do many of my friends including - I am a vegetarian. The friend who recommended the book is a vegan (Marilyn Quinn) as is my other best friend, Barb Solem. I haven't been willing to go that far but I am close. I still have dairy products in my diet, cheese, ice cream!, and a milk based protein drink, and, to be honest, I DO NOT eat enough vegetables and fruits each day. I am a carboholic.

My main failure, however, is in the area of exercise. For the month of July I have done no exercise. The previous couple of months I was doing well - going to the gym 3 times a week for a light workout: 15 minutes on the bike, two arms machines, two abs machines, a couple other weight machines here and there, a total of 30 minutes. And I was walking EVERY day at Martin's Lake, a half mile walk on a good sidewalk around a charming pond. Then, the dog got sick with a serious illness, pancreatitis, and my days were taken up with getting my sister in Clarksboro each day to help me carry the dog out, fix her special foods (boiled chicken and rice) and get her to the vet. That took two weeks, and then I got sick with a recurring stomach bug - diarrhea and nausea that lasted a day or two. The same illness hit me last summer.

That little health crash got me off my exercise track and I never got back on. The excessive heat of this month didn't help. Following that, I became apathetic, sad, lazy and struggling. My sister's bi-weekly cleaning visits really helped me keep my head above water, but I wasn't doing the minimal exercise component.

Fortunately, I was able to keep one thing going - my writing (my daily journal and my blog) and working in my Art Journal - creative exercises. Also, I work pretty diligently at keeping up with friends in whatever way possible, texting, phone calls, lunches.

So, with this blogpost begins my journey with the new Dr. Dean Ornish Book and whatever program or ideas for saving myself that it inspires which I will share with you. I have recommended the book to two other friends and we are tossing around the idea of a casual book club based on it. I will let you know how that progresses! Happy Trails - wrightj45@yahoo.com

Old People Talking - Conversation

One of the things I love about this blog is that I often have a lot of thoughts and conversations and this is a place where I can put them. I don't know if I am sharing them. Various friends have told me from time to time, that they read something in my blog and recently a cousin from my childhood found me because he looked something up and it took him to my blog! This morning I was talking to my sister about my latest passion for dressmaking in the late 1800's as a career and an art.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my Great-grandmother was a skilled dressmaker according to the Federal Census, by the age of 16. Also by that age, I was taught in high school Home Economics Class how to sew and by 18, I was making all my own clothes. My sister and I both could sew and we grew up watching our mother re-upholster furniture and sew all the curtains for our houses. My mother also made some of my clothes and in particular, I remember an Easter outfit she made for me of pale yellow linen in the style of Jackie Kennedy, a slim skirt and bolero jacket with a paisley brown and yellow cummerbund. It was beautiful. Being a teenager, I didn't respect the garment or my mother's efforts or art - I wanted jeans and a sweater set - the going fashion for teenagers.

But I digress, and that brings me back to my subject, old people talking. This morning I asked my sister if I was boring her talking about sewing clothes and the cost of fabrics in Philadelphia in the 1960's and she said I wasn't because she liked to sew too. I asked her because I had stopped phoning my brother because although I listened politely to his endless stories about getting tree trunks and renting a log splitter to make his wood piles for the winter wood stove, and his detailed accounts of car and truck repairs, if I talked about something interesting to me, he was in the habit of putting his phone on mute. When I got hip to what he was doing, I confronted him and then stopped calling. It is a two way street. You tell your stories and listen to theirs. My sister and I do that. She talks about work rlationships and the adventures of her daily bus commute which I find interesting because I took the bus to the city daily for years when I worked at the library in Glouceter City and my bus and hers used the same route and things have changed!

Recently, however, atlunch with two friends, I was talking about discovering the death of an old friend I had looked up on the internet. The friend and I had known one another in the 1970's and hadn't kept in touch much over the years. I looked him up and found his death notice an the Canadian registry of artists. He died in 2022. It was remarkable to me because I have reached the age where often when I look up someone from the past, I found they have died. The friend with whom I was talking had done her share of the conversation on the topics of her frivolous daughter-in-law, her son's lack of control of his wife, and her still painful hip replacement surgery, and I had listened politely, but when I was talking about the Canadian artist and how we had met, she was getting impatient and interrupted and told me to get to the point and complained that I digress too much. I was hurt. I fought back and reminded her of the social cotract of friendship where we listen to one another with patience and respect. She and I haven't spoken since and I feel the friendship may be waning. Waning friendships in aging is another good blog topic for another time.

Anyhow, talking about sewing my dresses for work as a young woman working in Philadelphia in a publishing company in the 1960's may have been one of those well known 'old people boring conversations' so I asked my sister but of course, she is prejudiced in my favor and said it wasn't boring.

The friend with whom I am having lunch today was mentioning to me how when she gets together with her gentleman friend's young family, his adult children are middle-aged and their children are in their teens, none of them ask her even one question about her books or her writing or her life. They aren't interested in her at all. She has written three wonderful books on the pines: Batsto and other Quirky Places in the PineBarrens is her most popular one. She is very popular at Pinebarrens events like the antique glass and bottle show and the Clountry Living Fair and hundreds of people tell her how much they love her books, but her boyfriend's kids have no interest at all.

I have seen this before in regard to old people. Once at the photo department of Walgreens an old man showed me a photo of his Navy ship in the arctic. They were there searching for parts of a Russian crashed craft of some kind. He was trying to tell the store clerk who was visibly bored and impatient, which I have seen before, and which I understand. After all, they are working! That clerk didn't give a hoot about Russian aircraft or the arctic and the old man was keeping him from his tasks probably stocking shelves.

We have no place to tell our stories if we have no friends. That's one of the things I LOVED about my previous involvement with historical society volunteer work - we all were interested in history and enjoyed the stories we shared. Plus it was all older people who were polite by a lifetime of training and because historical clubs and societies seem to attract polite people.

I don't have any conclusions to draw from this set of observations about aging and conversation, except that I suppose it is a big challenge and an important one to continue into our aging to cultivate friends in social groups who share our interests so we have people to talk to. And, perhaps, to take up writing and also take up blogging! It just occurred to me that one of the reasons I have been so interested in my Greatgrandmother's life as a dressmaker is because I listened to an old person talking when I was young.

Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

New Art Journal Page project - The Dressmaker

As you may have read, if you follow this blog, I have my Great Grandmother Catherine Sandman's 1929 sewing machine. As a young child, I actually met her, although at the time, she was suffering from a catastrophic stroke and my Grandmother Mabel was taking care of her in Ocean City, New Jersey. She has fascinated me ever since. I am fortunate enough to have a series of photographs of her from the ages of 16, 20's, middle age, and just before she died in her 80's.

During the time that I was focused on family history I found CAtherine in Phildadelphia on the Federal census living with her family, German Catholics just south of center city. Catherine was listed as a seamstress and I had the oral history from her daughter, my Grandmother Mabel, that they both sewed uniforms for the Schuylkill Arsenal in Philadelphia. Most of my ancestors grew out of the fertile fields of South Philadelphia, which is where I, in fact, was born and raised until age 11.

My German ancestors in Philadlphia worked in traditional trades: brewers, bakers, dressmakers, watch repair. The tradition of sewing was passed down to me in the form of the quilts my Grandmother Mabel sewed for all of her grandchildren, one of which I passed on to my own daughter, Lavinia.

I didn't realize it at the time, by the course in sewing that was given to girls in high school in my youth, was to play a contual part in my life. From those early introductory lessons I lerned to make a skirt from a pattern. The paper patterns were a thin tissue of a pale cream/coffee color. I learned to use a device with a spoked wheel and colored carbhon paper to trace darts and other details from the pattern onto the fabric. Thanks to the Simplicity Easy to Sew patterns, when I was 18, working in Philadelphia at a publishing company, I could buy fabric in the many fabric stores and sew a simple stylish sheath dress in less than an hour for less than $5.00. It took about 1 and a half yards of fabric which I could buy on sale from a remnants table, and since I had been taught how the patterns worked, even such arcana as finding the direction of the weave of the fabric (not really that important in the kind of basic sewing I was doing), I had no trouble learning how to make up the simplest garments. Later, I used that skill to make my toddler's adorable little cotton overalls. These could also be made in under an hour for under $5.00 which was a great help as I was living on very limited income until the 1990's when I was able to supplement my meager income with part-time jobs. By the time my daugher was school aged, I was buy clothes because I had no time to sew. For all those years, I used my mother's Singer sewing machine. I have written about that machine in an earlier post this year. According to my sewing machine repair-man, Chuck McGowan, it is the best model Singer that was ever made. I would have to agree as it has been sewing for me for over 60 years and for my mother before me.

My high school education prepared me for a job in the clerical world. I guess if you put a simple, broad chronology to Women's Work, the kind that earned money (for the common woman), it would be housekeeper, seamstress, nurse, clerk, schoolteacher. All of my friends in my age group - 70's, were carried by the stream of current culture into the last three of those career choices. The generation of women that I knew from my mother's period were almost all home=makers, although one or two had jobs in offices as clerks, or saleswomen in department stores. In my Grandmother's generation all the women I knew were homemakers, housekeepers, or in my Grandmother Mabel's case, saleswomen. She worked in Stainton's Department Store in Ocean City on Asbury Avenue.

Her mother's generation were housekeepers, seamstresses, bakers, cooks.

The important point to me, however, is that they had a way to earn a living. My interest has also shown me that many women in my Grandmother's and Greatgrandmother's time worked in factories as well which I saw in photographs of the early textile mills. I guess the one thing I left out because it was outside my experience was farm work. I do know that many women from the lower economic class in Philadelphia were transported by bus to do farm work during harvest seasons in New Jersey. Many brought their children who also worked in the fields during harvest. Now that work is done by immigrant labor and by machine.

To get back to the tools of the trade, however, which is what my next pages in my Art Journal will be about, I have a deep fondness for these things which made it possible for women to free themselves, by however so small a degree, from total economic dependence and domestic servitude: the sewing machine, and this trade, dressmaking, seamstress, was a SKILLED trade! It also involved beautiful resources, fabrics, laces, buttons and beads, and creativity, at the same time that it demanded backbreaking labor and exactitude. Take a look at those dresses in the next museum you visit and the painstaking details of pleating and beading and fitting. Those dresses were a creative and a tormenting process, and a kind of prison for the wearer.

Recently I came across an interesting detail about the white dresses worn by the famous poet Emily Dickinson. They ahve always caused a bit of mystery in those familiar with the life and work of the great America poet. She 'took' to wearing the simple white garment at some point in her life and stayed dressed in them until she died, a recluse.

What I learned recently was that the style of dress was a common "house dress" worn by women in that time, loose fitting and relaxed and most importantly NOT REQUIRING A CORSET! Can you imagine spending your days laced up in a suffocating torture chamber of a corset restricting both your movement and your breathing? I can't. No wonder Emily opted for the house-dress.

Even this simple garment however, had many tiny pleats and lace trim on collar and cuffs. Lace, remember, was hand-made from about the 1500's to the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800's and early 1900's in factories. Lace was imported from such centers as Italy and Belgium where it was handmade by skilled craftswomen.

Even in my own childhood, women plied some ancient fiber arts such as crocheted doilies and tableclothes, as well as the yarn arts of knitting. I have sample of each of these arts and they are magical - to be able to take a length of string and turn it into a lacy filigree! But these skills are dying out in my generation. We all have too many jobs to juggle along with housework and childrearing.

Many years ago when I was in Mexico, I bought a shopping bag finger woven from cactus fiber! I wish I still had it, it was unbrakeable but I have long since lost it. It is a long thread from those early women taking a fiber and figuring out how to turn it into a frabric, to the seamstresses making shirtwaists and ballgowns and the factory workers keeping eh bobbins loaded and the machines running.

Happy Trails along the thread that runs so true! wrightj45yahoo.com

Finding Inspiration-Fighting Ennui

July 26, 2025 - I was feeling a common apathy of a hot summer morning and in my e-mail news feed, I came across an npr essay on what columnists did to give a perk to the morning. As it happened, I was thinking that I felt uninspired and I began to think of what I do when I am looking for insspiration and I thought of my big tub of resource files in the back room of my little bungalow.

Over the many many years, when I am working on a new project for an art show, I will print out pictures from photographs or other resources to use for reference. There are so many, I could go right up the alphabet but the most common are family, friends, historic places, landscapes, pets, memories. After the pojects are over, the files become scattered, but this Spring in a major organizing effort of a couple of weeks, I got all my art supplies and my downstairs folders into labeled tubs. (The attic will have o wait, maybe forever)

My morning latte' gave me enough energy to go back into the Den and pull the heavy tub off the shelf and rifle through the folders pulling out promising prints: pets, my favorite willow oak tree on Station Ave, in Mt. Ephraim, the Railroad trees (60 of them in a column beside the tracks) throughout the seasons, mushrooms and a Mary Oliver poem. I also found an old wooden ruler that I liked and I have been searching for.

I have been wanting to do a project on the railroad trees through the seasons for years. I have photos of them in winter in snow, in Spring in bloom, and summer in green and fall in russet colored leaves. Today may be just the day to do that page in my Art Journal.

I also found an old dinosaur birthday card that I filled out to mail to a friend whose birthday I am celebrating in August with tickets to the Edelman Fossil Park and Museum, part of Rpwan University. The card must be from my daughter's childhood, hence, more than 40 years old! In a few minutes I will take the dog for a short ride to the post office to mail that and another card I am sending to an Art Journal buddy. We will ride around one or more of the local parks while we are out which is another thing I do to get inspired and to cut through the haze of apathy that often fogs me in in the mornings.

This is a special day because it is the second day when, thanks to my sister's energetic and expert help on Thursday, all the chores are done and I am free to do whatever I please! So, the ride to the PO and the parks, then I will pick one of the pages and start an art journal page. I think it will be the railroad trees!

I hope this inspires some ideas in you for what to do with your one and only unique and irreplaceable day! By the way, I also received an essay from an old classmate that he wrote about the death of his family companion, Buddy the Labrador Retriever. My files inspire writing as well as providing imagery for my Art Journal, as can be attested by this blog entry. Maybe you'll be inspired to write. How about a summer memory?

By the way, if you are interested in starting an Art Journal, you don't need any specific or special artistic skills, you can begin by doodling, any pattern, any idea, any sketch. I think I wrote a blog entry earlier about a man who wrote a column in this month's AARP magazine about his 50 years of keeping journals! Good for the brain, good for the memory, maybe even good for posterity!

Happy Trails - wrightj45@yahoo.com

Groundbreaking Ceremony at Benjamin Cooper House, Erie Street, Camden, NJ

"America’s 250th birthday will be celebrated on July 4, 2026, marking 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 in Philadelphia. The celebration will involve various events and initiatives throughout the U.S. spanning several days." This excerpt is from a very much longer piece in my e-mail from the Camden County Historical Society of which I am a member and have been for many years. Once, after retirement, I was also a volunteer/part-time worker in the suitcase school visiting program for a couple of years. In that program, we (the volunteer/part-time employees carried a trunk of artifacts from two significant periods of our history - Colonial Settlement, and The Underground Railroad.)

Also, at that time, I was very much involved in what came to be about 15 years of intense family history research. Our family, on my mother's side, had a long history in the Camden/Gloucester County area: Major Peter Cheesement (a road named for him runs along Camden County Colege campus) was an ancestor. His daughter, Rachel Cheeseman married William C. Garwood a teacher, storekeeper for the Turnersville Store, and postal employee as well as some municipal and church posts in the Turnersville area. His grandson was my grandmother, Lavinia McQuiston Lyons, father.

Most of the family at that time were involved in the many mills that lined Timber Creek, saw mills, and grist mills.

One of Major Peter T. Cheeseman's ancestors was also a veteran of the Revolutionary War, Richard Cheeseman. During my voluteer days at Gloucester County Historical Society (Camden and Gloucester counties overlapped one another during their history) I found Richard Cheeseman in Strickers revolutionary War Index. Proving his blood connection to Major Peter T. Cheeseman seemed too complicated for me to pursue given the scarcity of paper trails in the time of wooden buildings and fires, not to mention the use and re-use of the same names throughout family history.

Anyhow, even without the family history, my volunteer work in the 20 years after retirement took me to many places that fired up my interest in our fascinating history in this early colony of the new world. I was also a volunteer at Red Bank Battlefield for many years, giving tours of the Anne (Cooper) Whitall and James Whitall House at that historic site.

I am eagerly awaiting the opening of this new venue to celebrate our history and grateful that speedy and brilliant strategy saved this landmark from the fate of the historic Harrison/Hugg House in Bellmawr which was demolished by the Department of Transportation.

You can find more on this landmark place and event via google and it would be a helpful and valuable thing for you to send in a check and become a member of Camden Historical Society. They have a terrific magazine and the e-mail flyer that I get gives literall dozens of wonderful events in this remarkable County!

Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com

Batsto Citizens Committee Summer Newsletter item July 15, 2025

The Batsto Citizens Committee Summer Newsletter is a great read and I always enjoy it. You can become a member and get your on-line copy as well! There was a fascinating essay about the history of the paper mill turned Playhouse in this issue. What I can share with you however, is the Events Calendar.Special Events for 2025

7/19/2025 ~ The Second Pennsylvania Regimental Reenactment

7/27/2025 ~ Batsto Dog Show

9/28/2025 ~ Fall Antique Glass & Bottle Show

10/19/2025 ~ Country Living Fair

10/26/2025 ~ Haunting in the Pines

12/7/2025 ~ Winter in the Pines

I haven't been very often in recent years but Batsto was a favorite palce of mine since my teen years and I strongly recommend it for a family visit, or for a single solitary hike and enjoyment of the history of this wonderful place. If you go to an event, go early and be prepared to park at a distance as the events are very popular!

Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com

My Morning read - AARP Mag. Two Grandmothers & a Journal Keeper

Tuesday, July 15, 2025 and 11:30. I should have been leaving for lunch with dear friend Barbara Solem today at Maritsa's but instead I an on the sofa sick with diarrhea and upset stomach. I think it was mushrooms in Chinese take-out leftovers. Anyhow, the AARP Magazine came in time to keep me company. I tore out two articles to put in my current journal, one on a man named Chip Brown who has 138 journals kept over 50 years!

I have a trunk full in the attic and a shelf full in my bedroom ceiling to floor bookcase, probably over a hundred at the rate that I keep them. They help me structure my life, figure things out, find a safe place to put my complaints and emotional pains until they fade. I also glue in countless articles on simple sets of exercises to do each day (I don't) but I am hopeful, and articles about artists among other things. I highly recommend journal keeping and it has been mentioned in many articles about keeping our brains healthy over the long haul.

Speaking of health and the long haul, there was an article about two grandmothers, very very different from one another who both lived to be 104! Was it genes? One did have a healthy life, the other had an ordinary life without particular efforts regarding healthy meals and nutrition. In the article they mentioned the pillars of aging: gemes.exercise, diet, sleep, social connection, purpose. Then they added resilience forged in hardship, sustaining poser of love, the anchoring power of faith, and the surprising power of conscientiousness! I thought those worthy of taking a break from my reading, toast and tea and making this blog entry.

My maternal grandmother was solitary (agoraphobic), melancholy, anxious, although she did have nearby and loving family. She spent her last ten years with dementia. She did have an ordinary but poor diet (a lot of crackers and cheese and tea). My paternal grandmother worked on the boardwalk every summer at the seashore where she lived and at a local department store in the winter. She walked every day and read and made quilts. She had friends and belonged to a movie group as well as the Democratic Women's Club. Both lived into their lat 80's but in dramatically different lives.

Something to ponder as I work my way towrds 80 this year.

Happy trails - wrightj45@yahoo.com

From the Eco-Justice Collaborative Newsletter July 2025

Eat Less Meat! That’s the answer many people give when asked to name the single most effective change we can make in our personal lives to lower greenhouse gas emissions. If you’re looking for protein from sources other than animals, you might be interested in this recording from Climate Action Now’s recent Plant-Based Revolution Climate Action Party. And at the website of the Good Food Institute (gfi), a nonprofit think tank “working to make the global food system better for the planet, people, and animals,” you’ll find their primer, “Alternative Proteins 101.”

As anyone who has followed this blog knows, I have been a vegetarian for most of the past 40 years since I read DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET, by Frances Moore Lappe. To help you, Colonial Diner in Woodbury has a vast menu of vegan items. One of my former favorites, no longer on the menu but very easy to make was: vegan chili in baked potato boats! My vegan chili is so easy: 2 cans of each - red beans, black beans, white beans, a large jar of mild salsa, 2 cans of corn. Bake several potatoes and scrape out the insides (save that to make potato pancakes!) Just put a scoop of chili in each half potato and if you are a vegetarian you can sprinkle some grated cheddar on top, if not, just eat as is or sprinkle some coconut bacon (Vegan item I buy at The Station in Merchantville - very tasty).

I am always trying to adopt more climate freindly hapbits - first, I became a vegetarian. After I bought this house, and read up on permaculture I have long since gotten rid of a lawn in favor of a little shady grove of trees and shrubs. Over the years, we (my daugher and I) planted Christmas trees we bought with root balls instead of cut trees. This past 2024, I started buying sustainable bamboo sourced toilet paper in place of the toilet paper made from Canadian trees. There are many ways I can improve still ahead of me that I haven't adopted yet. Of course, I use only oil cloth shopping bags, but I could get rid of my Dunkin Donut's latte' cardboard cup in favor of a re-usable metal thermos, and one of these days I have to stop using Poland Springs gottled water. I have two great water filter pitchers but I am not good at drinking as much water as I should, and using the bottles is a good way for me to make sure I drink what I should each day. Room for improvement.

Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

a Canadian Artist -Salmon Harris

Back in the very early 197's, my then-husband, Michael and I took several trips in our camper VW van across the United States and across Canada, East to West. On one of those trips, we picked up three hitchhikers, not an uncommon thing to do in the trusting 1970's whe so many young people had hit the open road for adventure and travel. We dropped off one, a Quebois whose name I no longer remember, but we kept two and brought them to New Jersey with us for a visit. We had picked them up while headed West and they had taken us around near Vancouver. We visited an artists home and studio, and we hiked up a mountain.

The mountain hike was a disaster for me. I was trying to be strong and equal so I carried my own backpack and I wore new hiking boots. Soon, I was left behind by the two Canadians who wore sneakers and carried very light. I labored the rest of the way in pain, out of breath from the high altitude and with bleeding feet. When I got to the top, I was rescued by a band of women Scouts who took off my blood soaked boots and socks, cleaned my feet and bandaged them while Mike and the Canadians went fishing. They had brought a pretty young woman with them who pranced up the mountain unburdened by anything, like a young mountain goat, free and happy.

I didn't hold a grudge or resentment, but I was sad and I did learn a lesson. I carried too much and since I wasn't as strong as the others, my ex having been in the military and trained for long hikes with heavy packs, I was a fool to carry as much (or more) than they did.

The Canadian artists were a tall, twiggy fellow with a long curly mop of red hair named Salmon Harris. He looked a lot like Bert Lahr as the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz. The other artist was a handsome blonde with a large sailing ship tatooed on his chest named Christian Schmidts. They were slyly humorous, good natured, and full of fun.

One of the things I admired most about them was that they had created a fictional vacation camp called Camp Camosun and they had printed bumper stickers and other paper art in relation to it: envenopes with a line drawing of a dog, a scattering of stickers, a World War II airplane for one. I may still have these items lost up in the attic.

I thought this was such a fun and clever kind of art project. They stayed with us in Collingswood for a couple of weeks in our top story apartment with the small landing that was perched into a tree canopy. It was summer. I can't remember a lot from that experience, but I think we took them to the Philadelphia Art Museum. Also, while they were with us, I had gotten an IUD inserted at Planned Parenthood. I had been told it was relatively pain free.

We took LSD while they were with us, and my IUD wasn't at all pain free - it was agonizing as my body attempted to eject the foreign object. My LSD trip was filled with malicious monkeys jeering at me from the tree canopy off our landing.

Over the years, we heard from them by mail. Once about ten years ago, I looked up Salmon Harris and got in touch with him. He was working as a storyboard artist for the film industry: 2010 The Twilight Saga - Eclipse, The Grey 2011 and others. He also published a book of his Art Work which is now out of stock on amazon and for $95 via Diatrope Books. We kept in touch a bit and when I next heard from him he was working as a tax collector in rural British Columbia so that, as he put it, he could be near his son who lived there. The last time I heard from him via e-mail, he was in advertising, developing souvenir materials for tourist development in Summerland, BC. H had, allegedly founded a company to that effect called Samalot. Of course, who knows if that was even true! I sent him some mail there but it was returned as undeliverable. I never heard from him again.

Yesterday, while I was watching a series of natural disaster documentaries, one about snowboarders was set in British Columbia and I thought of Salmon Harris. I googled him and a notice in a Canadian artists' registry gave his death as January 6, 2022. He was born in 1948, three years younger than I am. I couldn't find any more information about him at all, no obituary. I couldn't find anything about Christian Schmitz either. I did find out that Salmon Harris's real name was Frank G. Prodnuk at his graduation from Vancouver School of Art.

It i an all too common event for me now that I look up old friends and find they ahve died. It shouldn't be surprising as I will be 80 on my next birthday and by my age, a lot of people die. I was sorry that I lost touch with Salmon Harris. His comic spirit and his artistic talen were bright like 4th of July sparklers. I remember both of those young men, both young and beautiful, lithe and joyful, ready for life and adventure and full of creative energy and good humor.

During one of my searches, years ago, I had been able to find some of his film storyboard work. I wish I had it in my photo storage but it was long ago. I would have posted it here. He does have a listing in the Internation Movie Database under artists for his film work. Sorry to see you go Salmon Harris - Happy Trails!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Making friends and living longer

My morning e-mail today contained a CNN report on how socializing is an essential to a longer life. As is so often stated, we are social creatures and increasingly people live isolated lives - delivered meals, work at home, delivered groceries. This CNN article mentioned some ways to find and make new friends. I want to add that making and keeping friends not only lets you live longer, but better!

Let me start with my two newest friends and how I met them and how we developed our budding friendships: A couple of years ago, my brother's granddaughter moved from Philadelphia, Pa. to New Jersey. I had tried off and on to make a greater/warmer relationship with her father, my nephew, but he didn't take to it. Like some other male relatives of mine, he tends toward morose and is not particulary inviting or friendly, so I gave up. His daughter, however, is in education, so we share a career and she is friendly and was receptive to my efforts. We have developed a monthly lunch routine. Today we will be going to lunch at one of two local railroad stations repurposed as cafe's. Developing friendship: I took an active interest in her house hunting projects as well as in her career and I avoided topics where we might not agree - politics, for example. I like my great-niece and she is easy to spend time with. She is polite, pleasant and cheerful.

My newest friendship developed out of an Art Show at one of the repurposed train stations I just mentioned. I show work there regularly in their group shows. At one show, I saw prints by a South Jersey Art Group and inquired into contact information since printmaking was my major at Rutger's the State Univ. for my second bachelor's degree. I contacted the group, joined up and there I met an artist who specializes in Art Journaling, something I have always wanted to get into. We met for lunch and she brought two of her Journals and I was stunned by the beauty and complexity of her work. I bought supplies and got started on one of my own. I hope to meet her again and I will get in touch to try to work out another lunch date, to a place closer to where she lives as she is quite a distance from me.

The CNN article suggested making small talk at group events with people standing or sitting nearby. You have the shared event for a take-off point. We just had a holiday and if you attended a group event, it was a great way to meet new people, staning on the side of the road watching a parade, for example. Attending historic site events as well as celebrations is great for meeting new people! I belong to two historical societies and I get e-mail notifications of their events, that is helpful, as are libraries! I met one of my best friends at a hike with an Outdoor Club decades ago. She wrote a book and I bought a copy.

Because I keep this blog, recently, I heard from a relative I hadn't seen or spoken with in decades. He read one of my blog posts and shares an interest in local history. We have been e-mailing one another weekly ever since! I am also very diligent about birthdays and keeping in touch with old friends and relatives, such as my cousin Patty who lives in Cape May. It is far to drive but I try to get ther one a year.

I have a small group of old work friends who meet seasonally for lunch. Some are still teaching. One of the group of about 6 always takes the initiative to set up our next lunch date.

The neighbor who kindly walks my dog for me each day has a couple of groups of friends he meets for breakfast regularly. Many articles say it is harder for men to maintain friendship groups but my neighbor is a chanpion at it. He has a golfing group, a hgih school classmate group, and he is always present at the games of his granchildren.

Helping a neighbor is a great way to make a friend, as is walking the dog. Both of these have brought new friends into my life. A neighbor I passed frequently while I was walking my dog has become a good friend; we started walking together! And a neighbor with whom I had been discussing an adjoining backyard fence has become a good friend. I introduced them both to one another and the three of us meet for lunch about once a month.

I hope this gives you something to think about and an idea to try out - it reminds me of the girlscout rhyme "Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other is gold."

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Trends: housing, women's fashion (July 3rd 2025)

Today, in my news feed, I read two interesting articles from The Atlantic, a magaizine to which I used to subscribe before my vision failed so much I have too much trouble reading fine print. Fortunately on the laptop, I can enlarge the print. One article was about how so many people are still flocking to the sunbelt, in particular Arizona and Florida, which was interesting to me because I know of people who are doing that, both relatives of my friends, and people with whom I went to high school. It is surprising to me because I HATE the heat! And I mean I HARE it. I lay the explanation for that at my ancestry: British, German and Scandinavian. These are cool and moist places. My expewrience with Florida came during my marriage when my in-laws retired to New Port Richey on the bay coast. The steamy heat was like living in a sauna, enervating and unpleasant. My favorite seasons are and always have been autumn and Spring. Autumn takes the lead - the cool crisp weather, the taming of the sun.

The article went on to detail many of the detrimental aspects of living in the sunbelt, burned barefeet from the blazing hot sidewalks, windshield wipers melting onto the glass fo the car and the threat of an electrical grid failure which woul allow for people to die of heat in their homes. One thing they didn't mention, in regard to Arizona, was the lack of water. I read once before that deveopments were built that were entirely dependent on trucked in water supplies. The south is steamy and unpleassant, the west is dry dry dry and scorching. I hae a cousin with two sons who live in Arizona and the temperature is regularly over 100.

My other experience with heat was in Morocco, in the desert with my then husband, and the heat was so bad, it scorched my throat and mouth and I couldn't breathe. My body couldn't breathe. Same thing happened in southern Spain. It was unbearable.

If I migrated anywhere, which I would not, it would be north. I wonder why people are going to these places? They mentioned in the article, affordability. Sprawling developments made housing cheaper in those sunbelt regions. I do remember many older pelple talking about how it is more affordable living in certain states. They don't factor in the absence of municipal resoures we take for granted here, liek trash pick-up, municipal sewerage, and municipal water, all things my parents did without when they moved to the mountains of West Virginia. It didn't matter so much when they were in their 60's but when they reached their 70's it mattered a great deal. There was also no snow plowing on the back roads.

True, where I live, the taxes are fairly high. But it is so much easier to live here when you are old. Also there is the factor of old neighborhood living. My little house, where I have lived for 40 years this year 1985-2025, is a five minute drive from the grocery, the pharmacy, any kind of shopping mall or municipal entity. Also, because of our taxes, we have senior/handicapped transport if you don't drive anymore and senior income based housing available if you put your name on the list and wait long enough. I have neighbors I have nown for those 40 years and they help me with my trash and recycle and walking my dog. We share things with one another.

I have said many times before that I love my hosue and I love my neighborhood and town and even my state. No complaints here. No reason to move. I pay fairly high taxes and it is WORTH IT! Also, we have senior/freeze, so my taxes were frozen a decade ago. I pay the full freight but get the difference between the current rate and my rate when it got frozen back in a rebate in the summer which I use to pay the August quarter. My brother who lives in Wewt Virginia has very low taxes and no municipal resources at all. He is much more of a penny pincher than I am and he won't even run his air conditioner to save on electricity!

Here is where the housing and the fashion topics overlap - I thik people moved south and west because it was apopular trentd, something they all talked about and it became a 'fashion' - that's how so many of my high school classmates ended up in The "Villages" in Florida, just like a fashionable trend running through a high school, a kind of shoe (Weejuns) or a kind of backpack. Claire McCardle made a fashion for women that changed our lives in big ways, thank goodness.

I still have a few articles of clothing with no pockets, but not many. Epecially now that I have to carry my cell phone everywhere for my safety as well as convenience, pockets are a necessity, but it wasn't that long ago that most women's clothes had no pockets. And it wasn't that long ago that women worke shoes with high heels even in the daytime. I ust watched two Doris Day movies recently and she was cinched up and crippled into high heels all during her adveture. We had such inconvenient clothing. I grew up in the time before pants were acceptable attire, pretty much anywhere. To work each day all of us women in Phildadelphia offices wore high heeled shoes and skirts and dresses so our legs froze in the winter waiting for the bus!

So today, I am thankful for pockets, flat and comfortable shoes, pants, and those helpful trends. I am aslo grateful for staying in my small and comfy bungalow in a small town in a great state, my good neighors, and even though sometimes too hot, or too cold, mostly temperate and bearable weather. I live in paradise! Glad too that I don't have any arguments with a spouse over "money saving benefits of rural living." A lot of the people I used to speak to at the dog park or other public spaces, it was the husbands who wanted to go south or rural to get out from under taxes or paying for yard care of snow removal. The wives wanted to stay near the children and their communicty conneections. That was certainly the case with my parents. My dad wanted the woods adventure and my mom lost her church friends, ceramics class, neighborhood visits with lifelong girlfriends, and many other social benefits.

Hope wherever you are, you are happy there! Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

Creativity - Three Parts

1 - Yesterday at 12:30, June 27th, 2025, I was driving to The Station Cafe' (Eiland Arts Center) on Chestnut St. in Merchantville, NJ to meet a NEW friend, Tamarie Bitgood, who is president of the Salem County Arts League. We met through Loren Dann who is a founder of the South Jersey Artists Collaborative (or Collective) the group that will be renting one of our buildings at Woodbury Friends Meeting.

The radio program I was listening to as I was driving on 90.9 fm was on creativity and the speaker was talking about two parts of the process: inspiration, and "Flow" He spoke of the neutral, relaxed mind that allows new ideas to spontaneously emerge. I have certainly found that to be true. But I also derive a great deal of inspiration from input, from magazines, stories, objects. I read a book on Flow once by the famous reseacher/author Mihaly Csikszentmihaly: Flow, the Psychology of the Optimal Experience. published in 1990.

My best description of what FLOW feels like when I experience it is that I lose all sense of time and of myself and I become one with the activity whether it is writing or painting. It feels like surfing the wave, a smooth melding of action and thought. Hours can go by and I won't notice. It is a calm center.

2-At our lunch, Tamarie brought two of her ART JOURNALS to show me. I had three pieces of art in the latest show at The Station on the theme - Travel/Collage. I have wanted to make Art Journals and get into the ArtBook field for years but I couldn't seem to find the inspiration. I have kept journals since the 1970s and have hundreds in a big trunk in the attic but they are mostly narrative. My prose mind takes over and very little art ever gets into the journals. I wanted to change that and get away from art that needs to go on walls as I have no wall space left and I don't sell or move enough work and I don't want piles of it gathering dust in the attic. I felt the best solution to continuing to be creative visually was to turn to Art Journals. Tammy's were beautiful and mind-blowingly complex, and she had mastered the combination of idea and image. Her work far exceeded anything I had ever seen in the many magazines I had bought hoping to be inspired: Somerset Publications.

3-The way the creative process works for me: I have, in my living room a one hundred year old Singer Sewing Machine inherited from my Great-grandmother Catherine Sandman Young who made her living by sewing from her teens throughout her adult life. She and my grandmother made uniforms for the Schuylkill Areenal in piece work which allowed them to mind the children and make a living at home. The Sewing Machine, to my mind is a great tool of women's survival and labor. There were so few decent ways for an immigrant/poor woman to make a living in the 1800's, mainly cleaning or, if they were skilled, sewing. Since all clothing had to be made by hand before the industrialization of that industry, many women were employed in the task. Men did tailoring and women did sewing and haberdashery.

That sewing machine is an inspiration to me and it is also an item of beauty. When I think of the era of home-sewn dresses, I can see the fabrics, the trims, laces, buttons, beads, and the spools of gem like colored threads. How beautiful!

Because I have also sewn in my life, both my own clothes in my 20's and my daughter's in her toddler years, I have an inside experience of the art. So at some point, I began sewing as part of my artistic output - I made the other symbol of women's experience: the handbag/market bag. The first one I made was when my daughter was one year old in 1984. I sewed panels like quilt squares with a pocket in each panel and then I sewed the together like a book with a shoulder strap so she (my daughter Lavinia) could carry it and sit and pay with the toys in the pockets.

My first artistic piece I made was a set of 4 'pocketbooks' of 5 panels each and a painting in each panel behind a clear pocket. It was 2019 and the two hundred year anniversary of Women's Suffrage celebrated in a show at The Station called BRAVE 100.

I expanded from that idea and did a set of 12 pocketbooks/market bags which I put up at Woodbury Meeting and then gave away to friends. My latest was a piece I called Ireland Market Bag, a black bag with pockets on the front with clear panels and in one panel a portrait of my daughter at Bunratty Castle in Ireland, and in the other pocket, some memorabilia (a set of Ireland postcards in a ribbon, a boarding pass, a set of Irish stamps) that I had saved from a vacation we had taken to Ireland when my daughter was in her mid teens. I called it "functional art" because you could hang it and look at it or you could use it to carry things from the market or the post office or wherever. I really liked sewing those bags, using my mother's Singer Sewing Machine which was, according to my sewing machine repair man, the best model ever made. My great grandmother's sewing machine, an electric cord model, I have never tried to get to work. It is so old.

This Ireland Market bag connected all of it, the female experience of sewing and shopping, the art of painting, and my experience of travel, especially since Ireland was the country of origin of the maternal side of my ancestry, the McQuistons. It joined my German female ancestor Catherine Sandman Young, to my Irish ancestor Lavinia McQuiston, and carried on my daughter's name which has flowed down through 5 generations of women on my mother's side and was my mother's middle name as well. That to me made this piece my most perfect artistic creation.

Happy Trails!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

ps. Tam's books and my bag have inspired me to do an Art Journal on women's tools, starting with sewing notions!

South Jersey Quaker Fellowship in the Arts

The theme of TriQ this year is "Growing", and, relatedly, the name of our Art Show is: "Growing Compassion through Art". As is usual, your visual or performances do not have to be all related to that theme. However, we would like to invite all visual and performing artists to showcase at least one piece having to do do with that if possible. Not a prerequisite to showing, though! Artists do not have to stay for the Gathering, though you might want to stick around at least for a day! Artists do not have to be members of a Monthly Meeting or FQA(Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts), although you might be interested in our website at fqaquaker.org

We always welcome new artists, whether beginners, amateur or professional. Spread the word to arty friends! If you've not yet told me you'd like to show, or if you want more info, email me at dpulone@comcast.net or text/leave a message at 609-670-7625.

Drop off for art will be Friday, Sept 26 from 4:30-7 pm and Sat, Sept 27 from 9:30-11:30 am. Art Reception is Sat. 3:30-5:15. Artists must pick up their art by Sunday, Sept 28, 3 pm.

Attached fyi is Intent to Show form. I will have them there at Art Building(DeMartini Building) when you drop off your art, or you can print out and fill in beforehand.

If you are interested in performing, let me know asap cause slots are filling up fast!

I'd love to hear from any of you!

Doris P.

The SAD IRON

In my living room is the turn of the 20th century sewing table holding the 1929 Singer Bentwood cased sewing machine of my Great Grandmother Catherine Sandman Young. My Great Grandmother born 1864 and died 1954, was a seamstress from her teen years (according to the Philadelphia federal census) I also have her 'Sad Iron' which weighs about 6 pounds and is solid cast iron. The name "sad" comes from the old English/German word for solid and this iron was in use for a couple of hundred years, at least until the 1880's when the first electric iron was invented. Since most households had a constant running fire in a fireplace or a coal stove, the iron was heated on a surface near it and then placed on a trivet.

The sewing machine that I have from Great-Grandmother Catherine is a 1929 Singer made in New Jersey and there is a longer blog about it further down the list. These two artifacts of female life are the oldest heirlooms from my female ancestors that I own. The oldest heirloom from a male ancestor is a deck chair from the early 1900's that belonged to my paternal Grandfather who was a Merchant Seaman. I don't know what significance this chair has or why he kept it but I was always fond of it from childhood because it has those desk arms for a book or a drawing pad. I saved this chair when my parents moved to West Virginia and my father was clearing out the garage attic where it had been relegated for some reason.

A kind friend fabricated a missing piece and helped me put it togeether as it had been disassembled.

These items have great emotional value to me, a connection with my forebears, and in particular the sewing machine has meaning because it is how my Greath Grandmother and my Grandmother supported themselves during and after widowhood.

I began to ask friends what their oldest heirloom from a female relative was and one told me hers was an afghan knitted by her Norwegian Grandmother who had raised 10 children mostly on her own. She had been a cleaner and she had done farm work..

I am very taken with the kaleidescope of thoughts connected to making clothes from the 19th century, the thought of the piles of fabrics, the wooden spools of gem like threads, the buttons, beads, lace trims, velvet trims. What a rich and artist resource.

Once, I did a lot of sewing myself. In my late teens and early twenties, I made all my own clothes from Simplicity patterns, and when my daughter was born, I made most of her clothes until she went to grade school. The putting together the pieces from the patterns, all the parts of the process of making an item of clothing from choosing the material on were pleasurable to me. Sewing on a machine is kind of magical and I still do some Art work usig my sewing machine passed down from my mother, the best model every made according to my repair man, Chuck McGrath.

AS it happens I have several heirloom items, one from my other Grandmother, the Irish line in Philadelphia - Lavinia McQuiston (married name Lyons) which is a chocolate pot made in occupied Japan. I have that pot because I admired it in her China Cabinet and she gave it to me. >p/> Once I made a scrapbook about the family heirlooms that I have so that when I die, my relatives will hold onto them and not jsut let them go to Goodwill or someplace anonymous like that. These came down, after all, hand to hand, relative to relative.

What is your oldest artifact/heirloom from a female anestor? wrightj45@yahoo.com

Northern Exposure Season 5, episode 11 - Childbirth

All This below is true but I hve to put in a foreword after thinking and say it is no small feat to create a human being! I guess you have to expect some pain and trouble to have the gift of creaation like that. You make a human being who grows up and reads and writes and sings and plays instruments and makes a family and makes friends and has a career and moves on into the infinite future! It i a godly gift. All mythic heroes suffer for their miraculous powers.

In later episodes, Shelly gets to meet her daughter at different ages and I was taken back to the days of my daughter at different ages and remembered the greatest adventure of my life which was being her mother. It is epic.

The Episode I just watched of Northern Exposure is about Shelly Tambo's baby shower. Women tell their horror stories, men make ridiculous comments about things they know nothing about yet feel entitled to lecture on. The truth about pregnancy and childbearing is never told. Too daring? No one ever tells the truth about childbearing. We can't. It is like there is a kind of unwritten law that you can never be honest about that experience. Well, you can neer be honest about your own experience of that event, even though it is your own. It is really a horrible situation. What happens is that you hide that truth from yourself and the rest of the world because it is too much to bear - the truth. Once it begins, gestation, after those first few months, there is no going back. You are committed and you have to go through with it. It would be interesting to r=write The Red Badge of Courage about Childbirth instead of war. Those last couple of months, just think about it, that baby is almost fully grown, you know how big that is, and it is inside you squeezing al your organs to the side, moving around like a little whale or a porpoise, inside you. And those months you have to contemplate that large lump of huanity squeezing its way out of your body.

I saw a movie once that came a little close - Tulley with Charlize Theron (2018). That is mainly about her post-partum depression after childbirth, facing up to the relentless demands of caring for anewborn when your body hs been through an unspeakable trauma. The pain of labor is mind-bending. Fortunately for me, I faced it with Yoga, meditation and breathing. Since there is no escape, you MUST fall back on something and just HOPE it will help you survive this unbearble agony.

Of course there is that miraculous moment when it is over and you have survived and the baby is alive and whole, and you are relieved, you are rescued, and you experience that flood of supernatural love. But it is quickly replaced by the ceaseless demands on your body, your energy and your mind. Your time is never again yours. All of your time and all of your attention and energy is bent towards the demands of the little person your brought into the world. You carry that little burden everywhere until your arms ache. You are grateful for a stroller, an aunt, a playpen, those stolen moments of physical freedom.

I remember what it was like to kneel beside the tub at night and just deeply wish my child would get old enough to shower so I could be divested of this nightly ritual. Most of us are not sorry we did it, at least at some point but equally, at some point most of us are sorry we did it. I am astonished at how many women do it again, and again. I don't get it.

It is another reason I am so against dog breeding - to put some enslaved animal through that pain and trauma over and over for money is brutality at its most basic lack of compassion. It is a basic lack of compassion that allows men to put women through this over and over again, that and the fact that they are never exposed to the reality of it, the agony, the trauma, the soul crushing enslavement of it. Even if they were, they would still do it 0 lust would triumph over compassion.

Thank heavens for birth control that spared me all those years for maturing, educating myself, getting a career so I could be independent and self supporting. Thank heavens for birth control, all the many forms, that allowed me the one experience and no follow ups, no sequels. Thank heavens for time, that allowed me gray hair and celibacy and a release from all that reproductive bondage. That's how I truly feel. And thank heavens my child grew up safe and sound and healthy and independent and self-sufficient so I got my life back.

wrightj45@yahoo.com Childbirth is in a real sense, enslavement.

Lazy Hazy Crazy days of summer - Film Fest Ideas

Hello, pwehaps like me you are feeling like a crocodile on a river bank on this hot hot day (it is 98 according to my phone app) I just have no energy, and apparently it isn't just me because my pets are all lying around too. We have air conditioning so it is quite comfortable in the house, but the outside world must be pressing us down. So I was thinking of my annual summer film festival. When I am stuck in the house each year during a heat wave, I tend to think of a themed film fest. Over the years I have enjoyed:

All the JAWS movies, the Jurassic Parks and even the Star Wars prequels, sequels and other quels

Surfer movies both old an new, beginning with Endless Summer and going up through Blue Crush among many others

Himalayan Mountain Climbing adventures like Everest 1998 or Vertical Limit 2000

If you want to jump way back and go lighter, there are the Beach Party Bingo movies and Gidget

Music Festival movies are a perfect way to laze out a too hot to trot summer afternoon and evening: Woodstock, the perrenial favorite and Festival Express!

Maybe a dip into the old paintbox: Vincent and Theo is a lovely look at the borother love of the Van Gogh siblings and there is At Eternity's Gate, and there is always FRIDA (2002)! and Georgia O'Keeefe (2009)

Perhaps you'd ike to re-visit the great epics: Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, War and Peace

And with July 4th coming, you might prepare with some Revolutionary War movies like The Patriot or Last of the Mohickans, or some series like John Adams and The Turncoat!

A series I am revisiting is Northern Exposure. I am in season 5. It is available for free on amazon prime.

You may be trapped in the house but your tv or laptop can set you free to roam the world! Enjoy!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Demolition of Woodrow Wilson High School & thoughts on high school

Two summers ago when some of my teacher friends from Mary Ethel Costello School and I were meeting for lunch at Maritsa's in Maple Shade, there was a group of lively and cheery elders at a table nearby. I couldn't help but notice there was an array of high school memorabilia at a table beside them, they were alumni from Woodrow Wilson High School, class of 1955. Although they were obviously elderly with the usual short white permed hair and the seriously outnumbered men, they were joyful and having a great time. I think there may have been about ten people, about two or three men. There was a yearbook, a letter jacket, a large format class group photo, and a couple of other artifacts.

My own high school group still meets for reunion and I was surprised to find from several friends with whom I spoke about this event that other high schools didn't! Perhaps it is because my high school is from the old days of small local schools with smaller class sizes. We had 150 graaduates, about a hundred of us survive and about 50 of us come to the reunions.

I have often said that high school had little impact on my life but I was wrong. When my family moved from South Philadelphia to New Jersey, my life took a radical turn to the better. Merchantville High School at that time took tuition students from Maple Shade because they didn't have enough teens to keep the school open and the neighbor towns had the new developments springing up for the upwardly movile veterans of World War II. Lots of huge housing ventures sprang from that event and the resulting baby boom.

The kids at Merchantville were sophisticated, well dressed, well behaved and a good example to set a standard for those of us from Philadelphia. I dread to thin k what my high sschool life would have been like if we hadn't moved. The schools in South Philadelphia were notorious for fighting, bulgarity, and low class behavior of all kinds.

Immediately, I learned how to talk like the kids from Merchantville, and eradicated expressions such as "youse" and "I senen" from my speech. It also raised my expectations. My best frieds went to college, so it occurred to me that perhaps I could go to college too. Of course, eventually I did go to college and in fact, pretty much never stopped going. I got my fial dgree, a masters at age 60!

We are dwindling, the alumni of Merchantville High School class of 1963. Just a yeaar or so ago, I lost two classmates, my best friend Chris Gilbreath (married name Borget), and a neighbor and teen friend, Romeo Benrtura.

I am one of those people who feel that places hold a residue of emotion. Can you imagine the layers of teenage emotion that went into the dust of the demolition of Woodrow Wilson High School? I bid the building a sad farewell and a memorial honoring of the memories that now exist only in the hearts ad minds of the thousands of young people who once passed through those halls on their way to adulthood!

wrightj45@yahoo.com