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.

Dolly Parton has died at age 80

Dolly Parton, country music legend, dies at 80

> "With a distinguished career that lasted decades, Parton is the best-selling female country music artist of all time, having sold more than 160 million albums worldwide."

I won't copy and paste the whole paragraph of awards and hits Doly achieved in her life time. She was what a great star should be a great soul along with a great talent and a beauty. She was generous and kind and also devoted to wonderful phanthropic programs like her prouject that sent books to children to encourage literacy. Her father she said, had never learned to read and write.

Just a couple of nights ago, I had watched a documentary about Linda Ronstadt and in the end Linda was making an album with Dolly Parton and Emmy Lou Harris, clled Trio. I was reminded how kind Dolly was to other stars, supportive and warm.

My brother called to tell me Dolly died, and it made me cry. I am going to make a portrait of her to celebrate her life and honor her, and tonight I will watch a documentary about her as well. Happy Trails Dolly, wherever it is we go - wrightj45@yahoo.com

Being born in 1945

The bombs, destruction, and horrors of World War 2 echoed throughout my childhood as our civilization worked to process the intense worldwide upheaval of it. It intensified the contrasts of the world before, and during the war, against the world that followed.

We had an old family movie made by my grandfather Lyons during the war, the young sailors and neighborhood girls walking, laughing and flirting in the park at League Island Lakes, South Philadelphia, and my mother and father bringing me home from the hospital. It is gone now, the way of so much technology of my lifetime - it was video tape and it degraded beyond redemption. In that film you saw the neighbors of South Philadelphia working on their victory garden allotments. These were people who had suffered shortages in most material goods including food. They knew want not only from the war years but the depression before it. My parents childhood was under the specter of hunger and poverty. What saved them both was family.

As I was growing up, the contrast blossomed - the deprivations of the war years were replaced with the bounty of the post war: Men had union jobs tht paid well and our industrialized nation was geared up for production - cars, televisions, canned goods, washers and dryers. And these men were tired and traumatized by the war, they had no interest in military things, they wanted barbecue pits and lawns to mow, love and wives and children, hence, the baby boom!

There were so many of us babies from the returning men and the grateful women, that they built a world around us and around family life. There were grand picnic parks with boat rides and when we moved to New Jersey, there were family oriented swimming parks with lakes and picnic tables and families could go there on the days fathers were off from work, and spend the whole day eating cold meatloaf sandwiches that mom made and potato salad. Families road tripped together staying in family motels with pools and scenic attrctions. People were frugal because they were one salary households.

No women in my world worked outside the home and they no longer wanted to. They had worked during the war years and now they were swamped with children and devoted themelves to home arts, cooking, making curtains, upholstering furniture, making rock gardens, making family parties with days of cooking and competitive cake baking! My mothr made birthday cakes that were trains, and she sewed my clothes from patterns copying Jacky Kennedy's fashionable and simple elegance. My mother and her best friend saddled up the baby stroller and went to the mall to see the wonders of the department stores and bask in the gleam of the luxurious future that had arrived.

The war always lay in wait in magazines and books, unfolding the infinite evil to which men are capable of enacting upon one another and innocent others, even children. Time and Life put out book after book of black and white photographs of the devastated cities of Europe and the concenration camps. That shadow always hung over us along with the shadow of the BOMB.

From grade school in my overcrowded indusrial brick factory of an elementary school in Philadelphia, to high school, we children of horror and plenty were constantly advised that bombs had been built that could at any moment blow up our world the way we had blown up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We had drills. In the dank dark brick school of my childhood, we little ones were marched down to the damp and monstrous basement to lie on army surplus cots uring periodic drills, more frightened of the giant roaches than the bomb. Later, we just hid under our desks in drills in our modern New Jersey schools, long rancher style buildings which had no basements.

In our teens, we shook it off to the beat of the Beach Boys as we drove in our cars to the seashore to lie on the beach in blissful youthful antiipation of the future of romance and adventure.

Some of us never saw that future. Some died in Vietnam, some died in automobile accidents. I got to experience all the adventure promised by my long childhood immersed in LITERATURE. Books promised me foreign lands and Art and beauty and love and I had them all. I fell in love wiht a tall dark stranger and married him and went to live in Germany and tour 38 countries in Europe. I got to see the great monuments of European civilization. I got to experience deep intense romantic love. He was a deeply flawed and broken man but at least, I got to know what it was to fall head over heels in love and I adored him until his decline into mental inllness made him a different man. No regrets.

I was able to experience the euphoria and vast oceanic blossoming of the baby boomers flowering in the 1960's. I think it as like when the great barrier reef releases all its sperm and ova in one great oceanic orgasm. We were intoxicated by love and music and culture and youth and drugs. We were intoxicated with life. It was a wonderful time and culure still had relevance to us. Our minds were still growing and college wasn't a path to an indusrial commercial employment but to a world of art and philosophy, poetry and literature. Sadly when the 1970's died, I think that version of college died with it.

It is a strange new world to me now, an iolated electronic world. I am obsolete and out of time and touch with the new world though it is the new world on which I am typing and to which I am posting my thoughts - a letter in a bottle -

No purpose - just pure love of thinking and writing.

wrightj45@yahoo.com (as mentioned before, the comments function on blogspot is polluted so please write to me by e-mail if you want to discusss = and I don't make my e-mail a link because I am hiding it from the spam bots that polluted comments)

The trauma of the men of post world war 2

Post Script

In my early childhood there were three men present in my daily life, my father Joe Wright, my grandfather Joe Lyons, and my god-father Neal Schmidt. My father had lost his father in his teens and he had been forced to sign up with the CCC, then the Merchant marines and finally the navy for the War in the Atlantic and the Pacific. From 16 to 26, that was his world - a harsh, cold, dangerous world of men and labor. When he came home, fortunately he came home to a preturnaturally forgiving and loving wife and a job that though dangerous and difficult paid well and gave him a good life. he was an ironworker. He NEVER spoke of his life or his war years. All I learned about him, I learned second hand from his tv shows like Victory at Sea. When we watched that together as a family, I think he was sharing that experience with us. He never spoke of work or his youth. I found out about the Civilian Conservation Corps by going through his papers with him in his tin box and seeing his discharge. Also he took our family on vacation to Shenanadoah, Sky Line Drive, several times and told us he had built it! He kept himself to himself, as the old saying goes. He was watchful but not articulate, and when he got drunk, he let himself go and had minimal restraint on his anger and his sense of both entitlement and victimization. Mostly he was affable and highly active and productive. he was a builder - he built a garage, a varbecue pit, changed everything inside the house, doorways and so on. He had to be doing - he was immenssely energetic and he loved his home and having a family.

Grandpop Lyons, too, was a veteran, but from World War I. He hadn't been to war but to the Mexican border. He was a quiet gentle man, a postman. I think the walking kept him sane and the smoking. He hand rollwed his cigarettes by the cigar box full and smoked incessently, to my grandmother's chagrin because the smoke stained her Irish lace curtains so she made him smoke outdoors. He was gentle to the bone and self effacing. I never saw him lose his temper. He and I and the dog kept to the side garden a lot where he smoked. I was irresistably drawn to gentle people because I was afraid all the time from my father's unpredictable drunken violence.

Another gentle man was my godfather, Neal Schmidt, family friend, and a man who had suffered a tragedy so greaat there was no reovery. His fiance' and her whole family were killed in a catastrophic automibile accident. He withdrew into himself and lived on the periphery of other families his whole life. He too was gentle and sensitive and I loved him. Together we watched old movies in silent and safe companionship. I still have one of the dolls he gave me for Christmas, and Effanbee walker doll. He, too, never spoke of the war, the navy, or any of those experiences or any part of his previous life. None of them did. Their lives disappeared with them into the ground.

The only one capable of salvaging and saving their stories, me, hasn't got those stories, only my impression of them. The women are too much for this blog entry. Maybe later when the mood strikes again.

On Purpose

Monday August 24th, a perfect day.

A friend was lamenting yesterday that he felt he had no purpose in life and I was thinking, maybe we don't need a purpose to just be or do.

I was thinking how i enjoy writing this blog just for the fun of doing it. I don't need 'likes' or 'followers' and i don't even expect readers, though they do turn up.

Two hundred years ago a midwife kept a little journal of her experiences helping women in that most dangerous and painful experience of giving birth. I speak from experience. It is almost impossible to describe the anguish and terror of a baby growing inside your body, that big living lump of humanity that then has to squeeze out through that far too small an opening. The pain has been known to send women mad. This heroic and merciful figure wrode a horse in snow in the New York frontier of the 1700's and a canoe in freezing river waters to come to the rescue of women in the most dire circumstance of their lives. She saved them and kept the little hournal, for no more purpose than her own record.

Her female ancestors saved her hournal and passed it down generation after generation until in one generation it ended up in the hands of her distant descendant, Clara Barton. A hundred years later a historian had it published and it became a film.

Similarly a young dumpster diver found a little red notebook kept by a young woman who moved to New York City in the 1920s. The young woman saved the little red book and she and her boyfriend, a librarian searched out the author, an elderly woman in her late 80's living in Florida and gave her the book. They wrote a book about the adventure.

The point is that something you do may turn out to have had a purpose you never imagined, and it might just as well disappear in to the ash heap of material culture. I just don't thibk you need to have a purpose to be and to do. Existance is its own purpose.

Just a thought - Happy trails wherever they may lead

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Oldest Person 117 years old

"QUOTE OF THE DAY"

"‘Even at 117, I have had many firsts this year, from stroking a llama to holding hands with the king.’

Ethel Caterham, the oldest living person in the world, reflecting on the past year as she celebrates her 117th birthday from her home in the U.K. Her secret to a long life is “never arguing with anyone; I listen, and I do what I want,” she added."

Ethel Caterham's advice is something I have been working on myself recently, not arguing. In contrast, I just read a piece about the "biohacker" who claimes to be the most tested man in the world, Brian Johnson. I saw a documentary about him and although, I saw no harm in his compulsive excercising and extreme diet, I drew the line at him taking blood from his son and injecting into himself. Obsessive Compulsive pretty much sums up what I thought of him.

There is a saying that i can only remember the first few words which are often spoken and left in the air to describe situations where people do all they can to control something and then the unexpected flies in from a totally unexpected direction and scatters everything into chaos "The Best Laid Plans of mice and men often go awry." (I looked it up) Robert Burns was the author of the longer quote.

The tech 'health maximizing' Brian Johnson has been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, a gastroentiritis.

I was reminded of the great ultramarathon walker Edward Payson Weston who was killed by a taxi driver. All of it teaches me that it isn't so much how long you live, as it is HOW you live.

Having been working on that all my life, I am still shy of a good score, but I am learning. and I am trying. Frankly having made it to 80 seems very lucky to me and not altogether something I achieved but more something I have been given. There are plenty of times I could have died had not fate intervened in some way and I was saved, so I am grateful for this great gift and my gratitude pushes me to try to make myself worthy of this gift, even now, in my sunset years.

This leads me further in my decision to adopt a dog again. It is another small thing that I can do to help someone; share my home and resources with someone who is vulnerable and in need and who in turn will share with me the gift of purpose and the greatest gift of all which is love.

Happy trails (my comments section is often polluted by spam so if you wish to share your thoughts, please feel free to e-mail me -

wrightj45@yahoo.com.

Also, I don't make it a link as that invites the spam bots to pile on and pllute my e-mail as well. Hope to hear from you!  

Outdoors

Some people have had decorative signs on their lawns tha say one word - BELIEVE. It always annoyed me because I want to ask believe what? Believe in miracles? Belive in Karma? Believe in God? Just believe seems pretty dip - so open your brain falls out.

But here is something I believe - the Outdoors heals! As you know I have been sruggling this summer with what I would have to describe as a mood disorder - a deep state of sadness. Is it depression? I don't know exactly what depression is. I can still function,s o perhaps not. I wrote you about the death of my cat Booty and my dog Uma and those were the events that rode on the back of the pain and sorrow train that is Old Age!

Old age is so hard. Losing beauty is ok, but losing vision and hearing is awful, but even worse is losing mobility. When I speak of what I am going through, it is a reflection of the experience of 2/3rd of the people I know who are my age. Four of my friends and two of their husbands are experiencing what I experience a couple even worse. Only two people I know my age are so far free of these disabling conditions: one has had two knee replacements with resounding success and is traveling and climing hills and mountains. Two others walk over 10,000 steps a day with a fluent and confident stride. Those two walkers do have their on situations to contend with but less life altering: kidney stones, and a mild form of dementia.

When I described my cobdition to my Philadelphia brother, he said, "Now you know how I feel." That aame day, I found "7 minutes of chair tai chi for old people" on YouTube and gave it a try. It was easy and I will do it again.

The next day, I went to Proprietor's Park and did the little walk, which is 900 steps from the car to the statue and around and back. I hope in a week, I will be able to do the longer walk along the river. I made a deal with myself, I could have my decaf latte' as long as I drove directly to the park and did the little walk each day. I have done it two days in a row. It does make me feel better.

I know and have proved it experientially at least to myelf that getting outdoors is healing and beneficial emotionally and physically. The key however, has always been how to make myself do it when I am depressed and lethargic. For the month of July when I was experiencing the pet losses and heart episodes, I just couldn't make myelf do it. Now somehow I can. I recommended the "7 minute chair tai chid for old people" to my brother and he said he would look at it. I hope he does. My brotehr in W.Va. does better than either of us in mood control and I think it is because he walks his dog outside every day - every day! Outdoors is somethign I do believe in!

Get Outside! Start with a car ride to the park if you can't make yourself walk, even a sit on a bench can get the magic of the trees and the ir and th natural world into your sad and wanting body.

Happy Trails!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

(I don't make my e-mail a clickable link because it lets in bot spam which has already polluted my comments section)

What's Missing?

Tuesday August 18th, 2026 noon. Just finished lunch and I was sittting here thinking about what exactly I have been missing in this period of trial and sorrow. This morning, I spoke with my brother in Philadelphia. I think there is an invisible kind of radio wave whereby siblings might feel that there is something they should know and get in contact with another sibling.

I brought him up to date on my sad state of affairs, my heart trouble, my dead pets, our West Virginia brother's diagnosis of eye melanoma. Meanwhile, I had contacted all my most communicative friends to find out which one had been telling me about someone they knew who had undergone treatment for this very thing. It was Nancy and she told me her next door neighbor had melanoma of the eye and had radioactive seeds implanted in his eye and had been cured. It was good news.

Telling my brother all the things that had happened caused me to admit I was depressed. He said, "Now you know how I feel." And it is true. Now I could empathize with his apathy and his gloom. He stays in all day and gets high and watches tv. When he tells me, I alway ask him to get outside and go for a little walk and to try gummies instead of smoking because smoking is so bad for his arteries and heart. I know he won't but I have to try. I called him later and left a message for him to look on YouTube for "7 minute chair tai chi for old people." I tried it yesterday and it was quick and easy and I am going to do it every day.

While I was sitting here, after eating my lunch of crackers and tuna salad, I realized that I felt a little better today. I had taken a short walk at a local park, Proprietor's Park, down on the Delaware River. In the beginning of the summer, when I could harly walk, I took to driving down there with my dog, Uma, and walking from the car to the statue, around, and back to the car, about 1000 steps. There was a bench at the statue where I could stop and sit when I needed to in the beginning. After a week, I was able to walk the longer path along the river and afer a week of that I was able to go further along that path, about 2000 steps - the point being that there was alway improvement.

Maybe the chair tai chi, maybe the walk, but for whatever reason, maybe TIME, I felt better after lunch today. I have my car back and my second tire situation resolved. And I began to wonder, what it was that felt better and what it was that I had been missing when I was depressed. It came to me that it was a sense of happiness in myself. Not a happiness from an outside experience but an inner sense of just feeling good inside myself. That had been missing and in its place had been a feeling of doom and sadness, loneiness and pointlessness.

Whatever helped me, walking, chair tai chi, or time, I am grateful to have had a short flush of that good feeling and it gives me hope that the fulltime sense of happiness in myself will return at some point. It is a reminder to me, however, that it is best to try to get moving and not to just sit steeped in sadness. The bigger world outside is a tonic, even taking a car ride to the park is a window opening on to the big world and sky and the healing powers of air and trees and space.

Sorry I have spent so much time on my inner workings and not on activities or bigger ideas but perhaps this is what was needed, if not to you, definitely to me. And maybe it has helped someone also struggling to get over a series of blows.

'Happy Trails to You until We Met Again!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Change the Channel August 15th, 2026

Just as in the lives of everyone, sometimes several sticky anxiety producig situations arise at once in my world.

So it has been in my life this summer that I had a crisis each week. First I had a serious and frightening heart episode (I won't go ito details as I make things too long). The following week my cat Booty disappeared then turned up dead in my recycle can. The week after that, my dog, and best friend, Uma died of a heart attack. This week, I just heard from my brother in West Virginia that he has been diagnosed with melanoma in his eye.

There are five of us siblings in our family unit of my parents, Mary and Joe, now deceased, and their offspring. I am the oldest at 80 and next to me is my brother, Joe in W.Va., about 77 or 78 (I am never sure which), then my brother Neal in Philadelphia who is in his late 60's, my sister MaryAnn, estranged from us in W.Va. in her med 60's, and the baby, Sue who is 61. Sue ad I are the closest.

My personality from birth is to be anxious and see many angles of potential disaster (like my father) and my position in the family predisposes me to worry. Too often I feel like "my Brother's keeper" literally, although, I have been out of that job for a couple of decades. Slowly over time, I began to say "No" to their requests for money or assistance and they all matured and found ways to resolve things on their own. Not feeling responsible was my task. Still, when my brother Joe, told me yesterday that he was diagnosed with melanoma in his eye, I awoke this morning wondering how he was going to get his groceries if he couldn't drive.

Joe lives on a mpuntain a half hour drive to the closest small town, and an hour tp Walmart; a car is a necessity. Joe inherited living rights to the house when my father died, which instigated the rift betwen four of us up North and the sister in W.Va. who had expected to inherit the house outright. My brother had moved to W.Va. to stay with my mother and father who had declined terribly after my mother's death, so my father wanted to make sure Joe had a place to live but that maryAnn who was committed to living in W.Va. would own the house when Joe died.

My sister Sue gave me the advice I needed this morning: "Joe is Captain of his own ship. He will work it out one step at a time as things evolve, stop worrying about him." She is right, of course. Not worrying is the thing I need to work on - not feeling responsible for everyone and everything - not thinking that the way people behave is in some way attached to me. Sometimes people do things because of who they are and it has nothing to do with me.

There was another situation recently, a problem arose and I had to step back and stop looking at this small and recent problem and expand my focus to take in the whole, larger successful and beautiful situation Expanding the focus - like moving the camera lense to panoramic.

I had made a cartoon type drawing in my daily journal once of a radio dial, a metaphor to mysself about changing the channel. This is a far harder thing to do than one might suppose. Our minds get stuck on one station, maybe an angry complaining talk show, and we have a hard time moving the dial. That is a skill. That skill is acquaired by practicing meditation, in my life anyway.

Pema Chodrin calls those places where our minds get stuck, "sticky shenpas" and they are like parasitic leeches in the lake of the mind, they sink their teeth in and suck away your vitality and creativity. Detaching them is a practice, not allowing them to feel fixed and immutable. Recognizing that they have no real hold upon us and shaking them off.

I think I have been working on that my whole adult life from my first acauaintance with the subject of Buddhism sixty years ago, through college and psychology and to my Quaker practice. I am still a novice, still learning, still practicing and still seeing how I fall short. But owning the concept that we can change the channel is the key to freedom.

Happy Trails to you until we meet again.....

to comment or converse, you can reach me at my e-mail wrightj45@yahoo.com

I write this as a reminder to myself!