My 80th birthday is coming up!

Each day, it has become more and more important to me that I am turning 80 on November 13th. I never was big on making a fuss about birthdays and generally lunch with friends and a personal project would suffice. For example on my 70th, I made a scrapbook about my life. Each birthday I would buy myself something I really wanted, often, something like an outfit from L. L. Bean where I don't normally shop becaue their prices are extravagant. This year, I have several lunches lined up beginning today. Today I am meeting Babara Solem and Nancy Thomas at Mritsa's in Maple Shade which is where I spent my teen age years. I have written before about the milestones in my life that happened in Maple Shade, my first bank account, my first serious boyfriend whom I later married. There I spent my high schoolyears. Today, I will pass all those places.

Yesterday, whiledriving around running errands with my sister, a friend texted her that Pierre Robert had jsut died, a radio person in this area. He was friends with a radio personality that Iknew, Michael Tearson. Michael Tearson had an encyclopedic knowlege of rock and roll bigoraphical and recording information. He also had a magical nighttime voice! I loved to listen to him on the radio - WMMR was the station. One thing I reember about him was that he hated The DArk Side of the Moon which he said was the most requested bit of usic and he was tired of it. It is very long, that's true, but I alwyss loved that song, especially the lone female voice singing wordlessly at the end, her soaring voice, so full of emotion, deep, not sentimental but full of feeling.The days of great radio.

Eighty years is a long time. So many of the friends and boyfriends I knew are dead and every day more contemporaries from the world of culture who are around my age are reported as having died. So many of my family, the whole fabric of my childhood have gone, vanished into the grave or smoke and ashes. My ex-husband is still alive. And thankfuly all my siblings still live. So many pets have died. Since I jsut had another pet medical emergency this week to the tune of #600, dogs were on my mind and my sister and I counted up 6 dogs who have lived in this house over the 40 years that I have lived here. This year is the 40th anniversary of this house as well - half of my life has been lived in this house.

Aside from all the personal milestones in a life, marriage, childbirth, college graduation, buying a house, there is the wider world of history that circles around a life. I was born the year World War 2 ended! Ilived through the scacity left over from the epression and the world war, then blossomed into the post war years of bouty - the 1950's. The winds of war swirled around me from the Korean conflict to Vietnam, which was the one that had the closest ipact since my brother was in the US Marines and served there which prompted me to get active in the politics of protest to end the war.

Through all those years, College was a thread that ran like a major color in my plaid From graduation in 1963 through to my 60's, I was always in college. Since I didn't do the usual 4 year route but went part-time most of the time, the college years spanned all my years including my childbearing years. My first degree was in 1974 from Glassboro State College which is now Rowan University, and my second was in the 1980s from Rutger's the State University in Camden, then even in my 60's due to the benefit of my job as a Lab teacher at the University of the Arts, I was able to get my Masters! The University of the Arts is now gone. I wonder where their records went. The Academy of Fine Arts is gone now too. I wonder where their collection went.

There are 350 hours betwen now and my birthday, almost the amount of day in a year. I guess I will be writing about it a lot since I feel it is such a major milestone. There are 15 days betwen this one and my birthday. Maybe I will hafe 15 entries in this blog and perhaps I will do a 15 page piece in my handwritten journal as well or in my Art Journal - a good place for such a thing! Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com