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

July 12, 2024 Butterfly Festival Red Bank Battlefield, National park

There will be a Buttefly Festival sponsored by the Certified Gardeners of Gloucester County at the Red Bak Battlefield i National Park, on the 12th of July. There will be art, crafts, tours, and presentations soif you are free, what better way and better place to spend the day than along the Delaware in the lovely park grounds of Red Bank Battlefield! Here follows the program:

Check out the Event Schedule

11:00 All About Butterflies

11:30 The Buzz on Bees

12:30 Bugs on the Go Bug Show

1:15 The One Man Circus >p/> 2:00 Bugs on the Go Bug Show

3:15 Bug Parade- put on some wings and join the parade.

Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

I am starting a new series which I have dipped into before without a thematic thread joining episodes. Annals of Aging

My episide today is the mystery of MOTIVATION and the m ysteries of NEW MEDIA

About two. or maybe even three years ago, I ventured to the apple store in the Cherry Hill Mall with an excellent tip from the local Verizon store guy to go just in time to be at the door when it slides open at 10:00.

Motivation: I had been going to the verizon store for help with my iphone which was failing in its mission to provide music for me at the gym. I won't go into that - it is a blog post of its own. Suffice it to say it was a wifi complication among other things but NOBODY had been able to solve it at the gym, or the verizon store and they couldn't solve it at apple either. The phone just kept cutting out so I was replacing it as it was old and the battery was failing.

At the apple store, I took advantage of the August back-to-school-special offers and replaced my old laptop (which had been given to me by my daughter some time before) as well as my old iphone and solve the issue of my ipod as well.

The ipod was dead, couldn t take a charge, and would never be replaced as they were being phased out by the iphones. After much time and struggling I emerged from the store with a new laptop and a new iphone at great discount prices (the whole thing for $1200) and a free set of wireless ear buds! At home, I was able to manuever my way through the new media with patience and perseverence but I was mystified by the ear buds. My daughter was due to visit at some point and when she did, she set up the ear buds rapidly and with a small display of irritation that I wasn't able to do so easy a thing. I couldn't do it because I had no instruction booklet, only a small square plastic jewelry box with two buds inside - period! She installed an app and said I was ready to go and she left.

I opened the box like a monkey finding a satelite phone and put it away in my coffee table drawer where it lay for two more years.

Recently when I returned to the gym, I decided at first to just listen to the cacophony of static and incomprehensible shrieking that is the sound system at the gym rather than again enter the fray of trying to make my iphone work at the gym and listen to music. Then, I discovered that my old corded ear buds didn't work with the new iphone anyhow and the new buds remained as pristine and mysterious as the day I first saw them. No buttons, no instructions. No clue how to make them turn on.

First clue: at the hair salon recently, getting my annual shearing before the heat set in, I asked my hair stylist, Shana, a young person that I presumed may have some knowledge of these things. She didn't but another stylist nearby, a few years younger did: "charge your buds with your phone charger first, then just squeeze the post on the buds and they will work automatically. Look on the case for a little light that is hidden until the buds are charged, then you know they are ready to go."

I charged adn charged and looked and looked and the mysterious light never came on. This morning, in a rare spell of apathy and laziness that my morning latte' hadn't been able to budge, I took out the box with the buds once more.

First, though, I had done some research via google on ways to listen to music at the gym that didn't require the phone or the buds and of course, I was referred to the venerable mp3 player, which I had used about 20 years ago until some innovation had outdated that as well. Hopeless, I took out the earbud box and opened it for one last look before I relegated it to the drawer for evermore, and lo and behold the mysterious light was ON INSIDE of The little white Box!!!

I put the buds in my ear and opened apple music on my phone and subscribed for 3 months FREE and listened to Joni Mitchell! I was ELATED! Out of the jaws of abject failure had come success and the sound was remarkable.

A surprising consequence of this victory was that I was motivated into two of my more avoidance prone chores - shower and replacing the dog covers in her dish tray.

MOTIVATION: Generally a Dunkin Donuts latte' is enough caffeine drive and motivation to get me to do the chores I find myself most reluctant to do - cat litter boxes, laundry, showering. You may have heard how older people don't like to shower and there are reasons for that. One reason is that it is dangerous and we know it. Our balance is poor, our joints are not reliable and it is hard to climb over the tub to get in and out of the slippery tub. I have handles which I had installed and my tub/shower enclosure has built in handles so that is a big help. I like to be clean and that helps. Usually, I parlay one chore with another as in, I will get the litter boxes done first and the bathroom will smell nicer and then I can shower.

My resolution of the $100 valued ear buds wasting away in the coffee table drawer for two years was such a powerful motivation boost that I changed the absorbant cloths in my dogs food try and got my shower in 15 minutes flat!!!

I would say this is a result of the power of learning something new which every kind of newsletter recommends as a healthful factor in countering the ravages of aging. I suppose most young people have other young people to help them figure out new media, or I guess they go to youtube for help (which I have tried for other things but I don't do well with auditory instruction - I am a reader and NO new media comes with written instructions anymore). Anyhow, when I go to the gym on Wednesday, I will have my ear buds, and Joni Mitchell to help me pedal through my 15 minutes on the stationary bike as well as rhythm up my repititions on the seated rower, the abs machine, and the leg crunch!

Persevere, my friends - ask for help, and keep on trying to move incrementally into the future!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Movie Talk - 50th Anniversary of JAWS and more

For the past 2 or 3 weeks, I have been watching Northern Exposure which is 25 years old this summer, in JUly. It ran for 5 years from 1990 until 1995. Back when we had VHS, I boufht the series in a video club I joined and wasted hundreds of dollars on. Who knew that the obsolenescence of various media was around the corner. I have somewhere two storage tubs of videos that I couldn't bear to throw away, although I did throw away all my home videos because: 1.they were on a small format for my camera, and 2.they needed a caddy to play on a vhs equipped tv and the caddies were no longer available, and then the video tv were gone too. One summer in a radical cear-out necessitated by my small home and my tendency to save things, out they went. I do regret it. But you just can's save everything.

Every time I watch Northern Exposure, I am chrmed and touched and impressed by the complex and affectionate portrayal of the characters. They become like friends. Each time, I notice things I didn't think of before. Always in the past I have LOVED Chris of KBHR because of his erudite philosphical and artistic take on things and how he shares ith with his audience, never assuming they won't understand. He doesnt' patronize or talk down to his audience, he trusts them to make of it what they will. This time through (probably my dozen time through the entire series) I took note of the way Ed Chigliack understands the world through movie plots and narratives. I would say that I have understood the world through the prism of European authors who captured my young mind before I was twelve and marked it indelibly.

Often I have noted here in this blog how I rummaged through the ccollections of European classics in my Grandmother Lyon's basement bookcase. She let me read them all and they were way too old for me but I was ready! I read deMaupasant, Boccacio, Doestoyevsky. Edward Bulwer Lytton wrote the Last Days of Pompeii and to my last days, that will haunt me. I actually got to visit Pompeii when I was married back in the early 1970's.

But movies also have taught me quite a lot. This summer marks the 50th anniversary of JAWS, from the novel by Peter Benchley which was based on the New Jersey shark attacks in the early 20th century.

I think one of the plot engines that sticks with me is how the honorable and intelligent 'everyman' sheriff tries to protect the people whie the greedy businessman mayor is ready to sacrifice them for the profit of the season. This battle between the common good and greed is going on all the time all over the world and in particular in our own country which has been sold down the river to the greediest politician of all time - Donald Trump. That is one superlative he really does deserve.

But what is more rare is the exploration of GOODNESS to be found in TED LASSO, a contemporary and award winning series about a coach who puts the emotional welfare of the men in his team above winning - how rare is that! Northern Exposure, too, in its own more divided way examines how good people strive to do good in a complicated world filled with challenges to their character and their intentions. There is the struggle between the greedy selfish businessman, as always, in the form of Maurice Minnefield, the grandiose bellicose braggart and bully who exemplifies the persona so on display in our nationald theater at present.And there is Dr. Joel Fleishan, struggling with his ego and his ambition but always doing the best he can for his patients. Probably the most kind and thoroughly good character is Chris of KBHR. He is generous, non-judgemental, accepting and helpful to all. In some ways he reminds me of Ted Lasso.

Anyway if you are looking for something to watch, amazon video has Northern Exposure for free, and apple tv has Ted lasso which you can binge for free for a week and cancel your subscription before you get charged a monthly subscription fee. I am not sure about jaws, but I am about to find out. For some time, I have refused to subscribe beyond pbs and amazone, because I use amazon frequently for so many household and art supplies that it pays for the subscription in gas and delivery. I hate to shop and I love to have my stuff delivered to my porch in a day or two!

Happy hot day tv viewing and if you want to chat about the shows, you can reach me at:

wrightj45Wyahoo.com

Juneteenth Celebration

Cherry Hill Juneteenth Parade and Festival at Borton's Mill from 10:00 a.m. to 3:oo p.m. Check the internet for more details.

For those who don't know what Jeneteenth celebrates, it is a celebration of the day that the last enslaved people in Texas finally recieving the word along with the Federal army of their freedom.

There are so many ways to celebrate via pbs on tv, or by reading and familiarizing yourself with the heroes of the Emancipation movement as well as attending any of the many celebrations being held around South Jersey.

Another event coming up is Family Archaeology Day at Red Bank Battlefield, please check with google for more information. And for added Black history, many of the troops who defended Fort Mercer 1777, were from the Black RhoDE ISLAND REGIMENT. Inreasingly over the years both volunteers like Harry Schaeffer and workers at Bank have been doing research on these soldiers. There is a book on the Rhode Island Regiment of African American Soldiers that the volunteers at the time (I was one) read in their monthly book club some years back. We also read "Never Caught" about Ony Judd, One of Washington's escaped enslaved people who got away and was never captured, same as with his prized chef Hercules.

Happy Juneteenth!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Finding and Holding onto Happiness

June 16, 2025 - As many of you who have visited are aware, one of my most frequent post themes has been on how to be happy. I get my tips from several wellness newsletters, magazines, friends, books, all kinds of places. Today from THE WEEK magazine comes this Yale University Study: "Take a few moments, a few times a day to slow down, pay attention and expand on those awesome moments." The awesome moments to which this sentence is referring were detailed in the article and included such small ordinary acts as stopping to admire some flowers, up close, on a walk with the dog, or the study the sky and the clowds while in a paprking lot, or to enjoy the swirl of a rising flock of birds leaving the ground and entering the sky. You can examine the veins in a dew dropped leaf on a tree beside your driveway, or enjy the yellow layer of buttercups in bloom rising up over a green yard, or the first bloom of the orange tiger lilies (which I just saw in their warm elegance along the fence at the end of my driveway. One of the ways I admire and get close to such things is to paint them! I keep a small 6 by 8 watercolor pad in the table by my sofa and a small Windsor Newton water color set there too and sometimes I just make some small watercolor paintings of, for example a group of red tomatoes from the supermarket joined by their green twisted branch, or a plucked branch of my neighbor's hydrangea which is a glorious shade of perriwinkle blue.

Anyway, the article goes on to say how these moments of awe and admiration can stave off depression. I believe that to be true and I believe it to be part of why I am so happy so much of the time.

Believe me, I am just as subject as anyone else to the sorrows of the world and the anxiety caused by the chaos and violence in our current period (the assassination of the Minnesota political couple, or the young Jewish couple in Washington DC the ongoing bombins in ISrael and Iran, the famine in Gaza, the suffering of the people in Ukraine). You would be blind and stupid to be unaware of all this, but as the serenity prayer reminds us all, we must be aware of what we can control and what we can't. I only have a few years left in this experience of being alive on planet earth and it is enormous - much bigger than these passing troubles.

One thing that reminds me of this regularly is to sit in silent worship at my Quaker Meeting in Woodbury where the Meeting House is 300 years old. As I sit on the benches made by the families of the founders and contemplate all the generations that have sat there worried about childbirth, crop failures, smallpox, wars (at least 4 in that span of time) the deaths of loved ones, the births of new ones, I am reminded that all things pass, but the aged trees in serene watchful splendor outside in the burial ground, and the old building are still here. All things pass. I will pass too, and my ashes will sit in the earth next to all the other human worriers who lived and loved an died and re-entered the earth from which we all originally sprang. So let me enjoy the infinity and power of the leaves, the trees, the birds, the clouds, the oceans, rivers, the squirrels, the purring affection of my companion cat and be grateful for what I have in this world of wonders.

Really importantly, if you are feeling down - GET OUTSIDE! Go for a walk or if you are too droopy to get up to a walk, go for drive and park in a nearby park and roll down the window!

Happy Trails!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

A small Father's Day memory

In the summer of 1985, my Dad came up from West Virginia to help me turn the attic of the house I just bought into a bedroom and playroom for my daughter. A new peaked roof had been put onto this little bungalow and the floor of the attic was a lumpy mess of the old melted roofing tar and asphalt scraps which I had to scrape off. The roof wasn't insulated, just the beams, boards and the asphalt shingles.

Over two excruciatingly hot weeks that summer, Dad showed me how to put the insulation between the beams, then put up the dry wall, then tape and plaster the seams. It was hard work and a short ceiling, so we couldn't ever stand upright and by then my Dad was in his 60's.

Because I am human, and a sibling, I got slyly competitive and asked, "Dad, do you think I am better to work with than my brothers? I fully expected him to say I was because I was following orders and working quietly and carefully. He said, "You're better in one way, you don't know what you're doing and you know it. Your brothers always think they know what they're doing and they don't."

It was a disappointing complement but so typical of Dad, and it was a great sacrifice of him to spend that summer in that baking attic.

Happy Father's Day

wrightj45@yahoo.com

NO KINGS Protest Saturday June 14, 2025

HADDON TOWNSHIP, NJ — Protesters in Haddon Township and across the country will take to the streets Saturday in "No Kings" rallies nationwide to coincide with a military parade commemorating the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary, which also falls on Donald Trump's 79th birthday and Flag Day.

"No Kings is a nationwide day of defiance," says nokings.org. "From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, we're taking action to reject authoritarianism — and show the world what democracy really looks like."

Just a few of us will be gathered on the hill of the Woodbury Friends Meeting site with our own signs protesting Tump's ICE raids which have kidnapped people at work, at school, at college, and at municipal buildings where they have gone to work on their permits and visa applications. They claim through the propaganda Fox channel to be deporting gang members and criminals but in fact, they are kidnapping citizens, workers, students, families, storekeepers and farm workers. It is horrible that people working in the fiels must flee to the woods and hide from these ICE enforcers.

One trespass against our rights follows another. Trump is working on defunding public broadcasting, defunding colleges and universities, and criminalizing protest. In Los Angeles he sent military and National Guard against American citizens exercising their legal right to protest the invasion by ICE into communities to kidnap people, and his propaganda channel magnified the violence to inflame the public and lied about the people being arrested and detained.

What have we come to?

Here are some ways you can take action. Sat, Jun 21 @ 12:30pm

Roadside Rallies Against Fascism › Sat, Jun 14 @ 12:30pm

Safety Marshals for No Kings March and Rally › Sat, Jun 14 @ 1pm

No Kings South Jersey › Mon, Jun 30 @ 6:15pm

Learn Spanish Meetup! › Fri, Jun 13 @ 7pm

Pre-Mobilization Call for June 14 ›

All Information from Cooper River Indivisible

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

June - Tips for Creativity

One of my health and happiness e-mail newsletter has been offering tips for boosting creatity and I thought I would share 5 of them with you:

1. Doodle! The propt they offered with this one was to take 10 circles and make something different out of each one.

2.Write a poem: What I would suggest is to learn a classic poetry form like the sonnet or the villanelle, read some of the greats and then work on one of your own. I suggest you leave the haiku alone unless you are going to try to do the form which is a season, a philosphical insight, and a 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable form. Again if you do this, try reading some of the good ones first. Or ignore what I said and just write freeliy for the heck of it!

3.Daydream - observing free thought trails (not rehearsing ists of chores to be done) This is best done while engaged in a thoughtless activity like walking.

4. Do 10 percent more.

5.Try one new thing - take ukelele lessons, learn a language, try a new sport, attend a historic event, Try Origami

I just did my version of this when I did 3 art pieces for the neew show at th Eiland Arts Center at The Station, Chestnut Ave., Merchantville, a gallery and coffee shop. The theme was travel and collage was the suggested medium. >p/> Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

Small Town Goodness 6/4/25

Yesterday when my sister and I took my Husky/Lab mix, Uma, for her daily walk around Martin's Lake in Gloucester City, she was fine! Last night, she started to be 'not herself' in that she didn't want to get up and go out before bed and she refused her bedtime dog treat - unheard of! This morning, before I even awoke at 7:00 she had had an accident on the landing to the back room, about a bucketful! I cleaned it up but I knew something was really wrong because she NEVER has accidents in the house and it was a ridiculously large puddle, like a small swimming pool of urine. She usually goes about a cup of uring on her walks.

She was collapsed on the floor when I finished the clean-up and she couldn't get up. I went to get my sister who often walks her for me and Uma ALWAYS wants to go in the car, it is second only to a walk in her list of most favored treats! She wouldn't get up.

When I got back with my sister, whom Uma LOVES, she did try to get up and we were hopeful. My sister got her as far as the sidewalk and Uma collapsed and couldn't get up. My sister yelled to me to get a bath towel that we could use together to hoist her up and carry her to the house and in the span of time it took for me to get the towel, a young man passing by came over to offer his help. His name wa Ely. Ely was able to pick her up gently in his arms (and she weighs 80 pounds!) and carry her into my house. He said "Dogs are in the center of my heart" and we agreed that was how we felt too. Also in that time, two neighbors from the across the street came over to offer help, and a police car stopped to ask if we needed help. After we were in, a neighbor who was doing yard work came over to ask if there was anything he could do.

Uma is collapsed on the gloor in the living room at present. I took my sister home. My vet, Dr. Sheehen in Fairview, is a wonderful veterinarian, but closed on Wednesdays so tomorrow morning, I will call and ask him to see her. As has sometimes been the case, she may be back up by then, who knows.

The point of this post is that in the face of all the horrible news of cruelty and murder that is headling right now like the smoke coming from the Canadian wildfires, here is a breath of clean, fresh, hope! All these people stopped what they were doing and came generously and lovingly to offer help to my sister, my dog Uma, and me. This is small town goodness.

Sometimes the goodness I experience in this small town of Mt Ephraim seems almost mythical. One neighbor told her babysitter about the house I live in when it was up for sale, 40 years ago. I saved her house from burning down when I walked by and saw her porch on fire. Her husband walks my dog every day. I helped a neighbor once who was stranded in a parking lot when his car broke down, he takes out my recycle and trash every week. When I thought his mother was alone too much after her husband died, I started a senior group for her which we ran together for 7 years!

My neighbors don't complain about the leaves from my trees and I share my driveway with them when they leap frog parking their two cars. We are all good to one another. This is the America of the Saturday Evening Post and Norman Rockwell. It isn't gone and it isn't a myth. It is alive and well in probably millions of small towns around America. I am so lucky to have found mine!

Happy and hopeful trails my friends, whoever you are who may be stopping by my post fence to chat! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com