Clover Market this weekend

September 20th | 10 AM - 4 PM

Downtown Collingswood

The award-winning Clover Market returns to downtown Collingswood on Sunday September 20, from 10-4 pm. Featuring a curated group of 100 handmade and vintage vendors, food trucks, live music, and even more shopping and dining around town.

This event and a couple of others came from an e-mail newsletter called Visit South Jersey.

Red Barn Farm, 391 Rt. 206, Hammonton, NJ 609-517-2711 All Autumn Fall Festival events including Sunflower fields, Corn Maze, October Fest, Food Trucks and other farm related events!

Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com

Saddler's Woods Pumpkin Walk

There are a few events listed here and they are not in date order, so please read down for those that are coming up in September - thanks!

ENCHANTED PUMPKIN WALK - October

Saturday 10/24 4-8:00pm

This fundraising event is sure to get you in the Halloween spirit! Enjoy a short walk in the woods along a trail lined with over 150 illuminated carved pumpkins. New this year will be a chance to meet some beloved goats, Rosey, Dandelion, and Oats! Funds raised will help restore trails with handicapped accessible features, restore native habitat, and bring back the munching goats in 2027!

The email flyer I got for this also called for volunteers. If you are retired or retiring and looking for ways to fill your spare time meaningfully, there are a lot of great volunteer opportunities that will enliven your days and help you to meet new friends.

Certified Gardeners are starting a course Gloucester County 856-224-8045 Begining in January 2027

Learn about basic Planting tecniques, composting, plant care

Staff teh certified Gardens Community and Youth garden projects

grow produce for local food banks

Assist with special events (such as those held at Red Bank Battlefield

Benjamin Lay - Reading of the play

We’re excited! Three of our local Meetings will welcome Mark Povinelli, as Benjamin, reading a condensed version of the original play The Return of Benjamin Lay. Each performance will also include a discussion with the actor, joined by historian/playwright Marcus Rediker. Invite a friend or two!

The Return of Benjamin Lay explores the irrepressible prophetic witness of an 18th-century Philadelphia Quaker. One of the earliest revolutionary abolitionists, Benjamin stood for values that continue to need our voices in 2026. What, where, and when:

Each event is part of a series of three readings sponsored by Philadelphia-area Meetings, supported by a Membership Development grant from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Experience this stunningly beautiful and historically meaningful performance:

Thursday 15 October 2026, 7pm: At the Middletown Friends Meetinghouse at 453 West Maple Avenue, Langhorne PA, in collaboration with the African American Museum of Bucks County. Open to all, but can you help the event planners with an RSVP? Drop a line with your name and number of guests via email: pmervine@aamuseumbucks.org Friday 16 October, 2:30 pm: At Friends Village with support from Newtown Friends. This venue is located at 331 Lower Dolington Road, Newtown PA. Open to all, but can you help the event planners with an RSVP? Drop a line with your name and number of guests via email: info@friends-village.org Saturday 17 October, 2.30 – 4.30 pm: At Radnor Friends Meetinghouse at 610 Conestoga Road in Villanova PA. The event is free, and open to all, but your RSVP helps us plan. Drop a line with your name and number of guests via email: radnor.meeting@radnorquakers.net Read more about the play and about Mark Povinelli at BenjaminLayPlay.com.

Welcome back, Benjamin.

My note: For those of you who don't know who Benjamin Lay was, he was a Quaker firebrand Abolitionist. He was also a dwarf who lived for a time in what were once habitable caves in the banks of the Delaware River in Philadelphia. Lay was so impassioned about the crime of slavery that he gave activist witness at the local Quaker Meetings He denounced Quakers whobought and sold human beings and he was so passionate that he was cast out of many Meetings. He is a hero of mine. There was a beautiful graphic ovel about Benjamin Lay that I bought and gave to members of my Woodbury Meeting for Christmas one year.

XPonential Music Festival at Wiggins Park 9/18/26

XpoNential Music Festival Kicks Off on the Camden Waterfront Friday, September 18th

Settle in at Wiggins Park for an evening of live music featuring a mix of roots, rock, soul and indie sounds. Friday’s lineup brings Dawes, Cyril Neville Plays The Dead, Devon Gilfillian, Budos Band, Te Vista, and Daniel Villarreal to the waterfront for the opening night of the festival. Between sets, take in the views, grab something to eat from one of the food vendors, browse craft offerings, and enjoy the energy of one of Camden County’s signature weekends. We can’t wait to see you there! To learn more,

I don't go anymore but I used to and I enjoyed it. First off, moving the festival from the summer to fall was a big improvement because when I went before it was unbearably hot with no shade. My daughter's then boyfriend was playing the first year I wnt. he was in a band called "These United States" and I was delighted to be doing something with her and to seeing her boyfriend perform.

Now at 80, mostly what I do for an outing is go to lunch. I try not to dwell on the things I used to do and instead keep my focus on the things I CAN do! Still, I like to share with you things I used to enjoy and hope that you can enjoy them.

Happy trails wrightj45@yahoo.com

Woofstock for a lot of fun!

Sometimes you have to think outside the box for a lot of fun! I went to Woofstock a few times when it was further South - I think Woodstown, but wherever it is, it is worth the trip. My favorites were the square dancing dogs and the distance divers. The Labs dove out over the pool and the one with the furthest dive was the winner.

All the dogs were winners though and so were the people who enjoyed the wide variety of dog ability displays - the agility challenge was great too!

I hope you get to go!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

10 Days Til Woofstock 30! September 2026

Join us for the 30th Annual Woofstock Festival—a milestone celebration of community, compassion, and our 4-legged friends! 📅 Saturday, September 26, 2026

⏰ 11 AM – 4 PM

📍 Voorhees Town Center

💲 $2 per person | $5 per family

Places to go - Haddon Twp. Branch of Camden County Library.

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. >p/> Haddon Township Branch (adults) Please register

Fighting for Freedom >p/> Explore a fascinating piece of African American history with the Haddonfield Daughters of the American Revolution. This exhibition seeks to embrace the stories of all those who pursued independence by centering on the lives and experiences of Black craftspeople and artisans from the 18th and 19th centuries.

My note: I thought this was particularly interesting in view of two notes:

1.Just watched a documentary on the slow demise of Colonial Williamsburg. This is a historic site that was once the go to vacation place for families in the 1980's and 1990's. My Father and Mother took me and my daughter there during summer vacation on our way to DisneyOrlando, which, by the way is part of the reason Colonial Williamsburg is dying. It has been overshadowed by a culture of amusement parks like Busch Gardens.

Colonial Williamsburg has a fascinating history and if you want a deeper dive into it you can find the documentary on YouTube. It was a salvaged and reconstructed village funded by Rockefeller money in the 1930's. The Bi-Cenntennial really gave it a lift-off.

2.One of the saddest things, to me, about the falling out of favor of Williamsburg as a vacation destination was the firing of the trained artisans who worked in the shops and interacted with the visitors: blacksmiths, seamstresses, wig makers, bakers, hearth cooks, leather workers/harness and saddlemakers, all these people were specially trained and experienced and devoted themselves to the living history of this period in the founding of our nation. What a loss. I am so glad my family and I and my daughter got to visit this marvelous and beautiful place in its prime.

It is ironic in our current period of what I would call national decay, that our 250th anniversary would be celebrated by cage fighting on the White House lawn as an entertainment - what a symbol of the times.

In my yard there is a very tall and beautiful pine tree that my daughter brought home from Colonial Williamsburg campground from our trip that year. It was a tiny siddling that fit into a paper coffee cup and now it is a stately and magnificent pine tree.

If you are reading this blog you are probably interested in history too and I hope you get to visit the lecture in the library and also the new Revolutionary War Museum down on Erie St. in the salvaged Cooper Tavern in Camden via the Camden County Historical Society. Both require a phone call for appointment or registration!

Happy Trails! wrightj45Wyahoo.com (note: the blog comments section may have been somehow rescued from the spam bots - I have had a message recently with no porno spam!)

Best Books Part 2

I feel guilty that there are books I owned, read and loved, gave away and missed so much I bought them back again and I never mentioned them:

Here is one that just fell out of a bag on my coat closet door today - Spoon River Anthology Edgar Lee Masters. Why?

A common thread for me was the glimpse into the lives of ordinary people, the monumentalizing of the people who go unnoticed in every day life, and who are US, our families, our neighbors, and whose lives are universal and significant. Every life is a book. Masters made these lives each a poem.

There is an admonition that I like "Be Kind for Everyone is engaged in a Great Struggle." Plato. And indeed we are all engaged in struggles every day of our existence. It is a shared experience and Spoon River makes us less alone.

Our Town is a book I have bought and given away many times in my life. I love it for the narrator's answer to the question of whether any of us are capable of realizing the magic and wonder and inexplicable beauty of ordinary daily life. He answers, "Poets maybe." But I think many of us have glimpses of that each day and that helps us to survive the struggle. There is a profound wonderfulness to the most ordinary of things which are brought out by Thornton Wilder, the smell of ironing a fresh starched item of clothing, the tiny perfect oak leaf stuck on your car window, the song of a bird as you sit on the porch, the call of a neighbor passing by. These are timeless and perfect.

I wonder now that these books which came to me so early - in my twenties, I think, when I was in college, have been so meaningful to me throughout my long life. Thousands of books have passed through my brain like passengers on a busy train line, but some stay with me. These two are sitting on my piano right now, reminding me of how much I loved them.

In the background I hear clamouring voices of other authors and books that want to be mentioned and not forgotten and indeed, this morning at my Quaker Meeting a friend mentioned her travels to Prince Edward Island and I was reminded of Anne of Green Gables, a book which I loved with all my heart. The magic of the descriptions of the landscape stay with me to this day, the blossoming trees of "The White Way" and I can almost smell the blooms. These small details or scent and natural beauty are a connecting thread through all these loved experiences. I did get to visit Nova Scotia on a few occasions but never got to visit Prince Edward island but it lives in my imagination forever.

On The Trail of the Lonesome Pine....

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Best Books

One of my favorite columns in the only magazine I can still read, is Best Books by.... An author is invited to share her or his choices of best books and explain why. I am going to fish out the latest issue and cut out the section and paste it into my daily journal because it is such an interesting idea and I enjoy reading the critical observations made by the authors about the books. In this issue, 9/18/2026 issue, Dan JOnes mentions some books and authors I have enjoyed in the past: War and Peace by tolstoy and Middlemarch by George Eliot.

I rarely talk about books anymore though they were my first and best love. I can't read anymore because my cornea disease and cataracts have robbed me of that gift. The only way I can read The Week magazine, is with a magnifying glass.

To be honest, now that I am OLD, I can barely remember the books I read, so many books. But I remember War and Peace because I watched the film annualy for so many years. It feels as real to me as my own life. Middlemarch is a different situation. What I remember of that book was going to Lebanon, Pa. on an annual autumn pilgrimage with Dorothy and Ray Stanaitis to eat at a favorite Amish themed family restaurant. We had stopped to shop at some kind of market with second hand books and I found a beautiful copy of Middlemarch by George Eliot for $10. At the time and for a long time, I was very poor and I didn't have $10 on me. Ray Stanitis would kindly treat for my lunch but Dorothy wouldn't let him buy me the book.

Also at that time, I was still in college and locked in a battle withthe English Dept. at Glassboro State College over the lack of any women writers in the World Literature survey course. The professor had suggested that I create a bibliography of worthy authors to add to a future course and I was reading up a storm and creating a wonderful bibliography beginning with the Japanese author Lady Murasaki Shibiku, credited with writing the first set of romantic novels in the early 11th century, the Tale of Genji.

This project was a great gift to me because it brought to me all those wonderful women authors who had actually achieved fame and note in their own lives but who were written OUT of literary history later. So as not to digress, I will mention only one or two authors as examples: Christine de Pizan, the Book of the City of Women early 15th century in an attempt to acquaint the world with famous women of history and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin which President Abraham Lincoln said ignited the Civil War. Needless to say, Middlemarch was a much desired and worthy addition to my collection, but I didn't have the $10 and nobody offered to lend it to me so I had to let it go. Dorothy worked in a library and didn't believe in buying books. Eventually, though I did manage to get a copy.

Anyhow these 10 best or 5 favorites columns always make me think of my own but I couldn't ever limit them to these small numbers - there have been too many. It would be like saying my ten best memories - I have thousands. But I often think of the sweeping epics like War and Peace, by Tolstoy and Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak and Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Those books educated me and broadened my world and became deep layers in my entellectual development. I am sorry so few read or care about books today, or perhaps just that I have interactions with so few book lovers in my increasingly constricted life.

In that same issue of The Week magazine there was a piece on the latest book by Emily Wilson, the classicist who wrote a translation of The Odyssey that spawned a big market movie this summer. Her new book Crossing The Wine Dark Sea discusses among other things, the art of translation and how an author must move beyond literal translation to a deeper understanding of the meaning being conveyed since languages do not literally translate from one to another.

All of my books are gone now, box by box, set adrift like baby Moses on the drifting waters into other hands, the collection of a lifetime. I try not to think about that, or to mourn the missing. This morning I was missing my collection of diaries and the book that instigated that collection: A Book of One' Own 1984, Mallon. It is a casual history of great diaries. I miss it and the diaries I collected along with it. But they are gone and it is no use looking back because you turn into a pillar of salt.

Also this morning I read a news piece about a documentary being released in which the filmmaker interviews each of the succeeding "oldest people in the world" the last one mentioned in his work was 116 and lived in Brooklyn. He said she was so old she couldn't keep her eyes open and she died the following year. When I think about my possible goal of reaching 90, I do think that is old enough because I am neither trusting nor optimistic enough to feel that I would be safe being in the infant state that people older than that seem to fall into - diapers, wheelchairs, oh it is so depressing to contemplate, most of my friends in my age group fear it.

Those centenarians, somehow, seem to be able to sift down into it and give over to fate, so maybe that is the gift.

Well to drift from literature to old age is far enough. Time to get moving and deliver a book I bought for a friend: A Midwife's Tale by Martha Ballard, as it happens, a book about the diary of a midwife from the 1770's. It is a wonderful book and there is a lovely film made from it as well. The friend I am delivering it to was a teaching friend of mine, Joanne Wells, the school librarian. She and I used to walk in the park near our school on our combined lunch and prep periods. We are both long retired now - me 20 years, she 2 years.

Happy trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

(please remember to use my e-mail to contact me as comments doesn't work well due to robot spam and that is also why I don't link my e-mail and just post it for you to copy and paste - thanks!)

South Jersey Museum of the American Revolution on Erie St. in Camden, NJ

In case you were wondering what has been happening with the South Jersey Revolutionary War Museum being created in the old Benjamin Cooper Tavern on Erie St. Here is an update:

The Benjamin Cooper Inn at 75 Erie St. in North Camden had a soft opening as the American Revolution Museum of Southern New Jersey. This happened after a $4.6 million restoration paid for with money from federal, state, and local grants. The New Jersey Historic Trust gave most of the funding.

The stone building dates back to the 18th century. Over time, it has been a home, a tavern, an outpost for the British Army, a shipyard, and a place where people built yachts. Later, it became a storage unit and a dump for toxic materials. Back in the 1760s, the land was where mass auctions of enslaved people took place.

Tours are now available but limited. You need an appointment. The Camden County Historical Society has a 30-year lease with the private owner that runs through 2051. They haven't said when the museum will fully open. "It's been a race to the end," said Jack O'Byrne, the society's executive director who will retire from his role on July 4, according to The Inquirer. "The project probably died like 13 times.

Zed Fox will be the next executive director. He said Monday that the board meets Wednesday to talk about the official opening date, hours, and cost. Fox thinks the museum will be at full capacity by fall. Joseph Cooper was a Quaker who built the 2 1/2-story Dutch Colonial stone home in 1734 for his son and daughter-in-law, Benjamin and Hannah Cooper. Benjamin Cooper ran a ferry. He also used the home as an inn and a tavern. British Col. Robert Abercrombie turned the inn into an outpost in 1777. Hessian troops marched through Cooper Point during the war. These were German soldiers who helped the British Army.

"The building itself is an artifact," O'Byrne said. "You know, it's the most historic building in Camden." Work still needs to be done. A temporary roof was put in after a 2012 fire and it's still there. Floors aren't finished. Bathrooms don't have doors. The second floor is blocked off right now and hasn't been fixed up yet. The society spent six years planning to open the museum before America's 250th anniversary. Success came years after they lost the Hugg-Harrison-Glover House, a Bellmawr home that survived the Revolutionary War, to a highway construction project in 2017. They fought to save it but couldn't.

A private company called 75 Erie St. LLC bought the property from Agathon Realty for $1.1 million in 2018. O'Byrne got the 30-year lease two years after that.

The society wants to raise $750,000 to match a New Jersey Historic Trust grant. This money will restore the tavern's upper level. Plans call for the museum to serve as the trailhead for Camden County's LINK trail, a 34-mile shared-use path that's being built across 17 municipalities.

Many years ago, I took photos of three of the ol Cooper family buildings in Camden, all but this one had been burned out and were in ruins. I am glad that they saved this and progress has been made!. Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

September 10, 2026 A ride down Broadway in Camden City, NJ

Like many of my friends, I have had a minor relationship with the City of Camden. My relationship was down Cooper Street to the Rutger's University Campus where I went to college in the early 1970's and got my BA in Art. I remember driving from Collingswood through North Camden and crossing a little bridge near the Ben Franklin Bridge Plaza onto Cooper Street. I passed a seedy sad old hotel, some deserted churches, and a scattering of brick row homes, a few small stores and one or two long past their heyday graceful mansions. Once or twice, I drove to the south side of town and took photos of the deserted, graffiti covered, burned out empty streets behind the Walt Whitman house and south of what was then Mickle Boulevard.

My second time of travel through Camden was by the Broadway bus from 8th and Pine in Philadelphia where I lived at the time, to the library in Gloucester City. Broadway was dying. The department stores were burned out from the riots, there was one Ben Franklin 5 & 10. There were also a few eating shops no doubt for the workers at City Hall and Cooper Hospital. That would have been the 80's.

The Rand Transportation Center with the speedline replaced the bus stops and the shops all slowly disappeared from the city. A few times, I returned to a pizza place where poets used to meet under the leadership of a local colorful character named Rocky Wilson. He was a storyteller, poet, puppeteer, dancer, and all around aquarian hippy on a seemingly permanent trip.

When I retired in 2006, there was no need for me to return to either of my old cities, Philadelphia or Camden, until I began to donate books to the Free Books Project which at time was held at the Newton Friends Meeting located between Cooper Hospital and the Ben Franklin Bridge plaza.

Once again, I was driving down Broadway, this time from Woodbury to the Newton Friends Meeting where a hopeful group maintained a garden and from which they distributed free books to all the little free book libraries and book arks throughout Camden City. Broadway was a desperate and desolate stretch of road that would be a perfect setting for a zombie movie because clusters of homeless and drug addicted broken and collapsed people gathered on street corners near the few little corner shops that remained open. I would estimate their numbers in the hundreds from one end to the other of Broadway, that is from The New York Shipyard to the Bridge Plaza.

My sister works at the Hilton Garden on the riverfront in Camden City and I have had the occasion to drive her to work or to pick up her paycheck and our route is down Broadway from where she lives in Clarksboro - I can't manage the 676 overpass. The cars there drive so fast and are so aggressive I am afraid. The whole waterfront at the Hilton Garden is one of those all white corporate buildings on campuses (as they are called now) with a nice walkway along he river, in particular the American Water Building. The Rutgers Campus too has spread out and built dormatories and other buildings from the old campus down to the new corporate campuses. There is, of course, the Acquarium and the waterfront music venue along the river as well and the courthouse complex.

Along Broadway, however, the addicts have been disappearing and my sister has said it is the fentanyl killing them. She takes the bus most of the time and so did the addicts, but they have gone the way of overdoses, amputations and disease and they have thinned out. Along Broadway, too, the brick row house neighborhoods have been disappearing and are replaced by some new buildings and a great number of empty lots between little forlorn clusters of brick homes, some with a sad little effort of homemaking, little gardens or holiday decorations and neat sidewalks. My heart aches for the children raised in such places. It is far down below the city childhood I endured but there are similarities. The lonely and abandoned feral cats and dogs wandering around hoping for a handout, or a home, the magic of childhood that allows these poor children to find beauty in the wild weeds of the empty lots. I did it too - my gravel beach near the garages at the end of my brick canyon.

Back in the old days (70's) when I used to take the bus from Philly to Gloucester City, there were often old timers who would lament the city that had been with the ethnic neighborhoods and stores, the department stores, the library - and they would point to the burned out hulks or empty lots and paint their pictures of the lost world. They blamed it on the "Blacks" which of course was unjustified but they couldn't look beyond the riots. Those oldtimers made me so nervous on the bus because they weren't discreet at all and I was always afraid they would offend the other passengers and get me into a ruckus I didn't deserve.

Well those oldtimers are long gone and no people even remotely like them ever take that bus anymore. There are workers on the bus, though, like my sister and the people who work at the port which isn't New York Shipyard anymore, but HOLTEC, a shipping and cargo port with two and three stoy stqacks of cargo containers going onto ships to cross the ocean or coming from across the ocean.

The death of the city is such a deep and complex evolutionary tale that there is no way to pin the blame on anyone, neither the usual suspects - rapacious realtors and neglectful landlords, nor lazy and destructive residents who don't do their bare minimum of care. Maybe it was just old age. The city that once was a thriving metropolis just got old and died.

Well it is being replaced by something new which I will be long gone before it is realized. Once I knew people who lived in Camden, went to school in Camden and taught in Camden, but I don't know them anymore and have no idea where they went or what happened to them. When I pass my old campus, my memory of my college days there has become so faint it is almost as though it was a different person.

And so it goes.......

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Things to Do - Quilting

Right on the White Horse Pike in Audubon there is a quilt store that has classes for a number of kinds of projects and the most eye popping array of fabrics imagineable. Last winter I made a qulted sofa throw that I have over my legs as I type. My Grandmother and her mother were quilters and the women of my mother's generation practiced a bunch of fiber arts such as crocheting and afghan making that we have somewhat lost over the years.

If you are looking for a new hobby or craft to learn, you can check out the web site

earlygirlquilt.com

and see the classes and the fabric samples. It is also a good way to meet people and possibly make friends!

Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com

Memories from the first half of the 20th century

This morning when I called my sister at 9:00 as I do every day, I said "News from the Wright sisters" and I immediately had a flashback memory of a tv show we watched as a family in my early childhood of which I was very fond and so were my family.

The memory I had was of a black and white tv show where a stout older woman leaned out of a row home second floor window and called "Mrs. Goldberg!" That's all I remember. I know the show was about various events in the family members' lives but it is the lady leaning out of the second floor window calling Mrs. Goldberg that I remember.

I looked up that show and it ran from about 1949 to 1956, the early years of television for the general public. I know that because I remember my early adopter, Grandfather Joseph Lyons, buying the first tv in our neighborhood and all of us going over to look at it. All I remember is a vaguely faded green thick glass oval shaped screen with some samll figures on horseback galloping across a landscape - must have been a cowboy, wild west show. Not impressive at the time.

I don't remember our family's first tv, but I do remember all our early televisions were encased in furniture type cabinets. Our stereo too was in a vaguely Scandinavian style cabinet.

The other television shows I remember from the early days were Winky Dink And Me, and Willy the Worm, of course, children's shows. Before I leave Mrs. Goldberg however, I wanted to add that her show came from radio.

A once dear friend of mine from a writing club, Dorothy Stanaitis of the Riverton Writers, used to write about radio shows. She is a dozen years older than I am, in her 90's. We haven't seen one another in a decade partly because she moved into assisted living and then the pandemic drove a wedge between many old friendships. Dorothy wrote a lot of stories about the radio days and even did an entertaining presentation about the shows she remembered so vividly.

One thing I remember about Winky Dink was the Winky Dink Screen. My mother must have helped me to send away for it because it was while we lived in Philadelphia and I was under 10. I remember when it came in the mail and I could adhere it to the tv screen and solve the Winky Dink puzzle, thrilling.

Willy the Worm, Sally Star, Kukla Fran and Ollie, these were some other early shows I watched as a child and my most vivid tv show memory which I remind my brother Joe of every Halloween was a horror movie show the Roland Show, of Dracula and Wolfman classics with some comic alternates thrown in with the post world war 2 stars Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. It was on a UHF channel, maybe channel 48 and the theme song was the Monster Mash. The movies were mostly old black and white classics and always featured mansions with bookcases that were doors that led to tunnels that went down to the sea.

Enough reminiscing for today - off to pick up my sister and run some errands on this splendid September morning but I have to say these memories remind me of just how old I am - so old!

Happy Trails (from another tv show - Roy Rogers and Dale Evans) wrightj45@yahoo.com

Everything You Do Matters

This summer another icon has died, Gloria Steinem. I and all other women owe a great debt to those who have had the courage and dedication to stand up for our rights for equal pay, eaual opportunity and reproductive choice.

When I was a teen, the women of my mother's generation and her friendship circle in our new development in New Jersey, had no credit, so they couldn't buy a car or a house They rarely had education beyond high school and some not even that. They were homemakers, and therefore were not paying into social security and had no future financial viability for old age beyond what their husbands supplied, and as the experience of that group showed, that was not a reliable resource. At least 3 of the dozen women in the circle (a cul de sac of the new style of development of the 1950 s) were left by their husbands with three or more children of school age still at home. They had to find some kind of employment though they had no work experience outside the home. This was a very tentative way to live and a very dependent one.

My mother was lucky in that she had a good marriage and a reliable and devoted husband, so she was cared for until she died at the age of 75.

I, however, had other plans and half a dozen children and a life of homemaking wasn't one. My first dream was to finish high school and get a job as a secretary. At the time, that seemed a glamorous and possible goal. My high school, Merchantville, had a career process for students in the business track. Businesses in Philadelphia interviewed students at graduation and we were able to get jobs. My first job was as a clerk at W. B. Saunders Publishers on Washington Square, Phila., Pa. in 1963. I ran addressograph and graphotype machines to print labels for the Book of the Month members postcards. I loved having a job and met so many young women my age from various high schools. We went out to lunch in the local delicatessens on payday and we made plans!

One of them, Jeannette, went to Mexico with me when we were 18. Our horizons were broadened by this experience, both as workers and from working in a big city. My job offered me tuition to advance my office education at Pierce Business School, across the street from the Philadelphia College of Art. PCA is where I really wanted to go, but, I went to business school and became a secretary, then I got married and went to Europe.

When I got home from Europe, the Women's REvolution was in full swing. I got into college through extension school attendance and got a bachelor's degree and a career as a teacher - not a big leap in the world of women - teaching - but a big leap in the world of working class girls like myself. It was the making of me.

Going to college taught me how to go to college and I got three degrees and a divorce and my own apartment and my own income and a secure future. The Women's Movement gave me confidence and a road map.

I didn't have to stay in an abusive marriage to be supported, and I even bought my own house!

Thank you Gloria Steinem! Thank you Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan, and the army of women whose names I will never know for supporting my dreams and ambitions and my independence.

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Following the Advice

In the previous blog, I had excerpted a Real Simpe magazine article on what to do if you are languishing. I took three of the steps today - 1.I took a half hour walk down at the Delaware River at Proprietor's Park in Gloucester City, Nj. It was breezy and open and bright and it made me feel good! Tha actually covered 2 of the steps suggested - taking a walk and getting outdoors. I followed it with a 3.reward - I stopped in The Heritage Market on Hudson Street corner and bought tuna salad and potato salad for a nice lunch when I got home - my reward!

It did make me feel better and it encouraged me to try it again. I have been trying all summer to get myself out in the morning for a short walk. I have succeeded a dozen times, but my goal is to get out there daily and to improve my cardiovascular fitness. Well, it is a start - or a re-start!

Happy Trails! and Happy Labor Day weekend

wrightj45@yahoo.com

LANGUOR, LANGUISH, LANGUISHING

How to Cope With Languishing

Try these simple, expert-backed ways to shake off the "blah" feeling and start finding more joy, energy, and purpose in your days.

01 of 10

Take small, actionable steps forward each day.

Create a list of top priorities—the most important needs—and focus on accomplishing just two or three of them per day. "This might be as simple as taking a 15-minute walk each day to get an exercise routine going, or something more involved, like drafting a new resume or tackling house-cleaning one room at a time," Manly says.

02 of 10

Reward yourself for every positive step forward.

As you complete the small tasks on your list, Manly suggests offering yourself a feel-good reward, like watching 30 minutes of your favorite show in exchange for every 30 minutes of cleaning, focused work, or other accomplishment. "This type of reward system supports the positive, flourishing-oriented mindset that's so essential for getting unstuck from languishing energy," she says.

03 of 10

Make plans that excite you.

Having things to look forward to is an underratedly important part of making life worth living. Busy and overwhelmed? Make a plan with yourself/your partner/your family to do absolutely nothing—sit on the couch with a glass of wine, your favorite meal, and a good movie. Bored and lonely? Make a reservation at a restaurant you've been wanting to try and text a friend to join you. Get tickets to an upcoming comedy show. Book a pedicure. Plan a weekend getaway or book a flight to visit your grandkids. Whatever gets you excited for next week, next month, or next season—large or small—get it down officially in the calendar and make it happen.

04 of 10

Find a way to be physically active every day.

There's no getting around it: Exercise has been proven again and again as a powerful mood booster and regulator. On the flip side, lack of exercise has been linked to poor mood and mental health. If signing up for a new HIIT class motivates you to move, do it. If that makes you want to crawl into a cave and hide, don't! Find something else that works for you. Even small doses of physical activity and lower-impact exercise are enough to help keep depression and anxiety at bay (and improve symptoms when they hit), studies have found. Walk the dog around the neighborhood, do 10 jumping jacks while the coffee brews, dance to your favorite playlist alone in your living room, try yoga, or get the vacuum out and start vigorously cleaning. Movement is movement, and it's fundamental for lifting you up both physically and mentally.

05 of 10

Reach out for positive, affirming assistance.

Having a trustworthy loved one or group of friends you can lean on, talk to, and seek guidance from is a blessing, and you shouldn't hesitate to get their support. But if that's not an option for you, or it's not quite enough to pull you through a period of languishing, it's important to find a support group or mental health provider for help. "Avoid the urge to hide your difficulties and challenges," Manly says. "We all need support when life gets rough."

06 of 10

Do something kind for someone else.

Trying to cope with nagging "blah" feelings can be isolating and lead to internal ruminating that's ultimately counterproductive. One of the most beautiful and healthy ways to get out of your own head, feel better, and spark positivity is to think about what you can do for someone else. Find a more formal or recurring volunteer opportunity in your community for some structure and accountability. Or simply think about small goods you can do throughout the day for those around you. Help your next door neighbor with an errand, pay for the person behind you at Starbucks, call your sister and ask how she is (and really listen!), bring home a mini gift to your partner, just because. Random acts of kindness, volunteering, and gifting—in other words, generosity and goodwill—are proven tonics for feelings of languishing and low mood, help us find joy in selflessness, and provide a bit of healthy perspective.

07 of 10

Identify and incorporate joy into your life.

During periods where you're feeling nothingness or emptiness, Dr. Metzger suggests consciously identifying what brings you joy, and then making an effort to incorporate it into your life on a regular basis. "Be very intentional in seeking joy," she advises. "Write down what brings you joy and incorporate it into your weekly routine. It's the only way to undo the languish by counteracting it with positive emotions."

Connect with people you trust and love.

You may not consider spending time with lots of other people (or certain people) something that brings you true joy—but there's no doubt that interacting with people in your life who bring you comfort or make you feel relaxed and at-ease can help. "Connect wi

th others to enjoy little bright spots in life such as a movie, cup of coffee, or baking project," Manly says. "Laughter and friendship can be very good antidotes."

09 of 10

Go outside at some point every single day.

Find some time every day to be in nature or just to get natural light outside. Research has found that even just a 10-minute "dose" of exposure to natural spaces can help lower key stress markers and increase feelings of happiness and calm. Any time spent outside is fantastic for you, but if you want an even more significant boost, try getting your nature fix in first thing in the morning. Exposure to natural light soon after waking is not only a happy hit of sunshine, but it also supports your natural circadian rhythm, signaling to your system that it's time to rise and shine (and making it easier to fall asleep at a regular time each night, too).

10 of 10

Acknowledge and validate your own experience.

Lastly, if you recognize that you are languishing—and perhaps have been for quite some time—be kind to yourself, and keep in mind how much you've been through and dealt with. "If you are suffering, don't blame yourself or expect yourself to magically pop out of languishing," Manly says. "The [past few years] has taken a toll on our bodies, minds, and spirits—it's natural to feel quite low after all that's occurred." Acknowledging how you feel (or how you don't feel) doesn't signal that you've given up; awareness is actually a big first step toward making positive moves forward.

Read the original article on Real Simple

HOPING YOU FIND THIS HELPFUL TODAY. I HAVE BEEN LANGUISHING FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS DESPITE THE FACT THAT I COULD DO A HUNDRED GRATITUDES A DAY FOR ALL MY GOOD FORTUNE. I HAD SOME SETBACKS THIS SUMMER AND I CAN SAY THEY WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY SLUMP, BUT it hardly matters. What matters is how to get out of it. A couple of my close friends have been feeling the same way and we wonder if it is just a fact of our age which is 80!

I hope not!

Happy Trails! wrightj45W@yahoo.com

Genealogical flotsam and jetsam

Awprmwvwr 3, 2026

"The expression flotsam and jetsam originated as 16th- and 17th-century British maritime legal terms used to describe different types of debris from a ship at sea. [1] (https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/flotsam-2012-11-11), [2] (https://www.etymonline.com/word/jetsam)

Very appropriate for a note on the family history of people who came from a maritime lifestyle. Sometimes while doing something completely unrelated, family history notes crop up, just like stuff floating to the surface of a river after a ship has sunk. Today, it was writing about the Delaware River for the Red Bank Battlefield Walking Tour schedule that made my Philadelphia ancestors raise their bony hands from the grave and wave at me "visit us! don't forget us!" and I found myself looking up Great Grandfather Hiram (Scots Irish early ancestor) and Great Grandmother Lavinia Johnston (family born in Ireland before coming to Philadelphia and marrying Hiram McQuiston and starting our Philadelphia family tree.) Not to be ignored, the Garwood Cheesemand clan clamored for attention and once again, I found myself sorting through the bits and pieces for paper trails.

I think my quest began with two things - my natural curiosity and my gamily history mystery which bedeviled me until I began to unravel it. When I found out that my mother, Mary Lavinia (Goldy) and her sister Sarah, had been adopted by their Aunt Lavinia (Garwood/McQuiston) Lyons, I wanted to know what had happened to my mother's biological parents but my Grandmother was, ulike me, a very closed mouth and secretive woman. She evaaded my childhood questions and also made up unrealistic stories - the classic being that they were killed in an automobile accident. The truth as it turned out, was that the mother of Mary Lavinia and Sarah had died young in the tuberculosis epidemic that followed the Spanish flu epidemic. Her husband, Levy Goldy, the son of a New Jersey famer, was unable to care for the girls and put them into the Friendless Children's Home in Camden, NJ wher they remained with their sister Elizabeth, until their young Aunt married Joseph Lyons and was legally able to adopt them.

William C. Garwood had married Mary Lavinia McQuiston and had two daughters, one of whom, married Levy Goldy and then had two daughters and died. The Garwood line connects to the Peter T. Cheesmean line through Major Peter T. Cheeseman's only daughter, Rachel who married her school teacher, William Collins Garwood. That branch of the family grew in Turnersville where William C. Garwood was a tax assessor, a Justice of the Peace, and a storekeepr in the Turner store, as well as a school teacher.

I aam foggy, perhaps just this morning on how their daughter ended up with the (allegedly) feckless Levy Goldy. The daughters of that union were my great-aunt Lavinia and her sister Sarah. Great-aunt Lavinia was the one I knew all my childhood on 10th and Oregon Avenue with the bookshelf in the basement that made me a bookworm and school teacher like that long ago ancestor William C. Garwood.

So I spent this morning re-visiting this complicated shrub of ancestors and their complicated life stories. I ended up reaching all the back to our English origins in Suffolk England and the maritime world that threw up these human bits of cargo onto the shores of the new world. One of them was a Quaker and is buried in the Burnlington Friends Cemetery, so there is the mystery of roots - I became a Quaker like my one ancestor and a school teacher like another. Not that either of those two outcomes would have been unusual in the periods of time in which they fruited.

I pestered my poor daughter (living in England) with the information, which no one but me seems to find interesting or engaging. I am sorry for that. I don't know why it pesters me so or why I pester others with it but I do know I am not alone. Millions of people across America are fascinated with their origin stores and feel the same connection with these ghosts that I do, so much so that industries have been spawned from it, like ancestry.com. I would join back up but it is too expensive right now. My grope doesnt' stop with family tree information, however, I spend countless hours watching one documentary after another about our human origins as well - all the latest on Neanderthals, homo sapiens and our cousins Denisovans and the others. Rising Star Cave is one of the ones I have watched more than once. Just this week I must have watched at least four documentaries about tiny specks of bone giving up dna connections. Those researchers and I have a lot in common. We want to know - we don't know why, but we do. I have engaged in so much history during my first decades of retirement because I wanted to re-visit those days of my early ancestors and know their lives. Most recently the thread took me back through the Midwife's Tale both the book and the documentary and once again, I visited the life of women of the Colonial period and their (to me) horrific experiences in childbirth and illness. These threads run in so many directions and yet they make patterns, and the latest pattern runs right through to the headline news of this week:

Gloria Steinem, most influential activist of the Second Wave of Feminish died at the age of 92. The lives of women: our lives in romance, sex, childbirth and motherhood. Our careers as secretaries, nurses, school teachers, our struggles as single mothers. This morning I awoke feeling grateful and proud that I had been able to buy a house - a house of my own on my own with my own ernings. This is a very modern accomplishment. I remember my father bing so proud of me for it and aso both my parents being so proud of me for being able to go to college and graduate! A woman being able to buy a house on her own, a single mother is a very modern accomplishment not accessible to my own mother's generation - the generation before female 'credit' and careers with wages sufficient to independence. Not saying that no women had those accomplishments, just that the average woman did not. My mother didn't even have the chance to get a high school diploma having been adopted during the depression and required to go to work and help her family survive.

Thank you Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug and all the women with you and before you for all you made possible for my generation of women and thos eto follow!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Red Bank Battlefield Walking Tours September 2026

Red Bank Battlefield Fall Walking Tours!

Join us for our Fall Walking Tour Program! All tours take place at 10am.

September 12: Red Bank's Monuments and River Fortifications

September 19: The Delaware Valley in 1776

September 26: Red Bank's Inhabitants Before and After the Battle

October 3: Battlefield Tour

November 21: Von Donop and the Delaware Valley Campaign of 1776

All tours are free. Registration is required:

https://secure.rec1.com/NJ/gloucester-county-nj/catalog

For more information contact Jen Janofsky: jjanofsky@co.gloucester.nj.us

Red Bank Battlefield is one of my favorite places in the world. When I was more able bodied, I loved to walk the top level and down to the river level and sometimes even down onto the Delaware River beach. At some low points in my life, I would drive to Red Bank Battlefield in the evening and watch the sunset over the river which was comforting to me.

The Delaware River always had special meaning to me because I was born and raised just on the other side of the river, about where the Walt Whitman bridge ands in Philadelphia, and our maternal family church was right on the river, Gloria Dei, Old Swedes Church. The smell and the sight of the river have been with me all my life, like an old friend, and even more, perhaps like a relative because the river has been with my family in all our generations on my mother's side. In fact her grandfather, Hiram McQuiston owned and ran a haulage business from freight arriving on the river port to the shops in the city. In my years of doing family history, I could trace my maternal side through to the original Irish immigrants at the end of the 1700's (Gallagher, Welsh, McQuiston). As of this year, the only family I have left in Philadelphia are in Gloria Dei cemetery, or on my father's side, New Cathedral Cemetery and Mount Moriah. All my living relatives have moved to the New Jersey side of the river. It is only writing that, that I realized this is true.

Actually, my German side (Sandman, Jung) came to Philadelphia in the early 1800's, German Catholics who lived in South Philadelphia and plied the typical trades, seamstresses, brewers, bakers, and who attended a Catholic church which is no longer there, St. Aloysius Parish, founded for German immigrants around 1890.

Lament: I miss my family. Now that I am 80, they are mostly gone, except for those younger than I am. I am the oldest living relative of either side. I miss the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, the cousins. Fortunately I have my siblings. My mother loved being a mother and wanted a big family. I never did and I never saw the value until now when I realize how utterly crucial it is to have brothers and sisters.

The River is an important lifeline through the history of America and it is a beautiful place to visit, so if you are in the mood to have a walk and hear a talk - please enjoy the walking tours in this beautiful month of the year. Happy Trails!

wrightj45@yahoo.com (please use my e-mail for responses as blogs comments section is polluted with spam and I don't make my e-mail a link to avoid having the same spam bots pollute my e-mail- thanks! I do enjoy hearing from you and have had many fascinating e-mail friendships evolve!)

ps: Amendment - How could I forget! I have an older relative still alive, my cousin Patty Gushue in the Villas in New Jersey. She is my cousin, daughter of y father's older brother William Wright. She is about 4 years older than I am. We don't know much about the Wright side of the family which is lost in the hay stack that is such a common name as Wright.