Do you have any Irish family History?

St. Patrick's Day is around the corner and whether you have Irish ancestry or not, you can celebrate what the Irish have brought to America and the beauty of the irish soul. I believe in celebrating and celebrating Irish culture and history allows me to visit with my Irish Grandmother in spirit and in memory. I sincerely hope it warms up by March so I can attend the event listed below! Hope to see you there!

"Join the New Jersey Irish Society and Camden County for the 10th Annual St. Patrick’s Parade in Gloucester City, NJ! This festive event will take place on Sunday, March 2nd, starting at 1 PM. The parade begins at Martin’s Lake, located at Baynes Avenue and Johnson Boulevard, and then proceeds down Monmouth Street." (from the Camden County News events e-mail)

Happy Trails, through history and through the world!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Neither Rain nor Sleet -

This post is about my vintage sewing machine adventure of this past week. Actually, the inspiration for the adventure goes back some years, when I was doing family history and discovered on a census that my Great Grandmother Catherine Sandman Young had been, as a young woman of 16, a seamstress/dressmaker. She remained a seamstress all her life. In the beginning, she sewed uniforms for the Schuylkill Arsenal in Philadelphia. We don't often think about how clothing was made in the pre-industrial days of manufacture. Whole armies had to be clothed and women often were the main manufacturers of these uniforms.

Originally, in the Colonial period, fibers were farm grown and processed locally, turned into fabric (such as linen) at local mills, processed at Fulling Mills (you can see the ghostly reminders in the names of roads. There is a Fulling Mill Road near where my cousin lives in the Villas). Finished fabrics were purchased and cut and sewn by hand in the home, or in some cases in local cottage industries by tailors. Most people had two sets of clothing, a work set, and a "Sunday go to Meeting" set.

Once, I sewed a costume by hand for a Coloial volunteer job I had. It takes a long time, even for someone who has long experience of sewing. There are statistics for this; it is estimated that a man's shirt could take about 10 hours to sew by hand. By sewing machine, the estimate was an hour and a half.

I am the fortunate inheritor of both my Great Grandmother Catherine Sandman Young's 1929 Singer Bentwood sewing machine, and her daughter's 1955 Singer 301A sewing machine which she gave to my mother and my mother passed down to me.

Two or three times over the past decade, I have wanted to fetch the 1929 Bentwood from the attic for various reasons, most recently I wanted to bring it to my Seniors' Group for a theme we had on family heirlooms. But I couldn't find it behind all the stuff in the attic and I am too old and creaky to manage those attic steps carrying something heavy, but a week ago, my sister went up with me and together we located it and she brought it down. Unfortunately the key to the Bentwood case was gone. it had been tied to the handle by a blue ribbon which disintegrated. We looked but couldn't find it.

I called my sewing machine repair man, Chuck McGowan, who has repaired my 1955 Singer 301A for me a couple of times. Most recently he repaired it so I could work on a project for the Haddon Fornightly Annual Group Art Show in March 2023. I sewed a piece for that show and won the Founder's prize, $250 which covered the fabric and the repair and the replacement case that I bought from Chuck. The original case was fabric over cardboard, like old luggage, and it had fallen apart.

I was so excited to have the 1929 machine downstairs but disappointed not to have the key to open it. Chuck McGowan told me I would never find a replacement key because they are so often lost over time but that I might be able to get the case open if I had the right screw driver. I looked it up on YouTube and sure enough there were instructions on how to use a screwdriver to get the case open, but none of my screwdrivers worked. Another tip they had was to cut off a section from a wire coat hangar and beat it flat on your anvil. I had no anvil, so I went to my favorite local family owned hardware store and told them my story and they helped me find two screwdriver candidates. Happy ending - one of the two screwdrivers was long and flat and thin enough to do the job and I opened the case and Great Grandmother's machine was out in the light once again. >p/> I want to know everything all the time, so of course I began to do some research and found out, by serial number, that my 1929 was manufactured in Elizabethport, NJ, in what was, at the time, the largest purpose built factory in the world! I read the history of sewing machines (they go back to the 1750's, used for leather I put in a call at a couple of antique stores and visited one or two with my sister. These tables used to be seen everywhere and they were popular for a time as gaardening tables. We all know how things disappear over time. These tables which were once everywhere, are now nowhere! But Antiques Emporium in Burlington City had one!

I don't drive far anymore because my vision is too poor for reading signs and I get lost. The gps doesn't help me for a number of reasons. But I decided I wanted that table - and there were complications. They could hold it for me if I bought it with a credit card but they no longer put a hold on items because people don't show up, so I tried to buy it with my credit card but they were having trouble with their new credit card machine. I decided to be brave and drive up there, with preparation in the form of written directions, and a pumpkin spice latte' I should be able to do it.

The weather this week was dreadful, torrential downpours, frozen rain, fog, cold and windy, but off I went. I did perfectly fine all the way to Burlington, up 295N in the rain, and exit 47B, but then a problem happened with 541 and I ended up lost in a gargantuan shopping center. When I finally found a road out, it took me to Mount Holly and I got so emotionally destablized I had to find a highway and go home (route 38). My former younger braver stronger self would have persevered, but I am not that woman anymore. I got old.

When I got home, I told my sister, Sue, what had happened and she said she had Sunday off from work and would go there with me. More torrential downpour but with better directions from my friend Nancy, who lives up near there, we got directly to the Antique's Emporium, on High Street, which is one of my favorite places to visit. Back when I drove all over, I used to go there about once a month to stroll and browse. I have been there with most of my friends at one time or another too, and often we had lunch at the restaurant that faces the river and Burlington Island, which changes ownership all the time.

The Antiques Emporium is enormous and used to be an automobile manufacturing plant for Chrysler cars. The building was rescued from demolition and got a new life as an antiques mall with a cooperative of sellers. Two nice gentlement helped put the beautiful table which was exactly what I had been looking for, in the back of my car and we drove it home and set it up and placed the queen on top for display. I neglected to ask if anyone knew the age of the table. The price had been $125 with a 20 percent discount in February!

At home, I put my 1929 Singer on display and admired it, then I did some research. A group incuding Singer and a German Culture Association gathered the data and put together a spread sheet of all the Singer sewing machine models and the places and dates of their manufacture. It took them 5 years from 2000 to 2005 to create the database and post it online. This was enormously helpful.

Next, I did some research on my table and found two almost exactly like it for sale on e-bay and etsy from antique sellers. Both were from 1920's. One was more complete and had a $675 price and one was a bit less perfect and was for sale for $350. So I got a good price on my table and I was delighted that the table was the same age as my Singer sewing machine.

It felt as though I should find out the same information on my other machine which was old but I had no idea how old. My mother used it and I have used it. I used to sew all my own clothes and I sewed my daughters until she went to school. It works perfectly with the occasional help of Chuck McGowan, repair man. My Siner 301A was manufactured in 1955 in Anderson, North Carolina as one of the Centennial models for Singer's 1851-1951 Celebration. Chuck McGowan had told me that it was the best model they ever made! He had worked in a Singer factory. Singer factories are all gone now in the US as of the 1980's.

Sewing machines are a big factor in the lives of women. Two inventions that changed our lives in the turn of the century were sewing machines and bicycles. Sewing machines gave us a cottage industry to make a living and bicycles gave us mobility and both were more or less affordable, althoug $60 for a 1929 Singer was a pretty hefty price. It was after all, the era of the Stock Market Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. I wonder how Catherine Sandman Young found the money to buy that machine or perhaps her husband bought it for her before he died, or her family. Whatever means of affording it, it was her life-saver during the Depression. My Grandmother Mabel, her daughter, and she sewed their way into rent and food for the children since both were widowed.

Once in the Ocean City Historical Society Museum, there was a display of late 1800's summer dresses. The intricate detailing, beading, pleating, tiny embroidered details, lace trim, just mesmerized me and I wondered about the young women sitting at the table sewing these garments which must have taken days. They were also so fussy, I couldn't imagine how constricting they must have been, to keep them clean and to do anything in them, especially with the strangling corset underneath.

Anything women do always ends up in the press or in literature as in some way connected to impropriety and so it was with seamstress/dressmaker work. If you browse around the history of this trade inevitably it is alluded that it paid so poorly some seamstresses were forced into prostitution to make enough to live. Hence, popular history hints seamstresses had a slightly scandalous resputation. This makes me angry. Laws and economics were stacked to force women into near slavery and prostitution no matter what they did. You could be a wife, or a cook, or a servant or a dressmaker. First the mills helped women to escape this dead end, then the sewing machines and inevitabley the sewing factories, as bad as they were, they allowed for some independence for a woman outside marrital bondage and after widowhood.

My Grandmother of the 1955 301A Singer, worked in Stainton's Deparment store in the winter at Ocean City and on the Boardwalk selling tickets at the amusement pier in the summer. She had moved to Ocean City to care for her mother, Great Grandmother Catherine who had suffered a catastrophic stroke. In her spare time, Grandmother Mabel hand-sewed quilts for all her grandchildren. I still have mine but I used them and they are in tatters. I think the quilts were her Art form.

Visiting with these machines is visiting with my female ancestors and it is looking into Women's History. It is also thought provoking in pondering how some things manage to stay in the family over a hundred years when so many other things fall away over time. It makes you think too about those who recognize the importance of some items in the social history of people, like those wonderful folks who compiled the database of serial numbers for the rest of us.

This post is only about sewing machines, but it happens that I also have a 1919 typewriter! I don't know where it came from or how long I have had it; I can't remember a time when I didn't have it! But that is a story for another blog post!

Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

Music Buff?

MUSIC THROUGH THE DECADES" TRIVIA NIGHT, WOODBURY

Event Hosted by Tony Romeo Features Music, Prizes, and Dancing March 8th, 5-9 PM, American Legion Post 133 at 1018 Washington Ave. in Woodbury, NJ

If you know your music, show us what you got and win a prize at the Gloucester County Historical Society's "Music Through the Decades" Trivia Night on Saturday, March 8th from 5:00 to 9:00 PM in the American Legion Post 133 at 1018 Washington Ave. in Woodbury, NJ. The evening will be hosted by Tony Romeo, prominent trivia performer and Executive Producer and Host of Weekend Philler. Airing on WPHL (PHL17) the magazine-style show spotlights people, places and things in and around the Philadelphia area.

The evening features a trivia competition, music and dancing between rounds, a 50/50 raffle, and the opportunity to dress for your favorite decade with prizes going to the best dressed. Snacks and soft drinks are included, and a cash bar is also available.

Tickets: $25 per person available for purchase through the Historical Society website at https://bit.ly/gchs-trivia-night. (No tickets sold at the door). Tables of 8 can be reserved.

Sponsored by: Gloucester County Historical Society Museum

CONTACT: museumcoordinator@gchsnj.org (856) 848-8531

Geo Locator: 39.85009, -75.14289

Google Maps: https://bit.ly/AmericanLegion133

Black Soldiers in the Revolutionary War

Just recieved this information this morning and I wanted to share it. When I was a voluteer at Red Bank Battlefield, a fellow vounteer, Harry Schaeffer was doing some research on African American Solciers who fought in the Battle there. They were with the 1st Rhode Island, I think I remember. It has been a little known and little shared part of the history of the founding of our nation. This looks like a grand way to celebrate Black History Month as well as to remember the period of struggle to create our Demoncratic Nation!

BLACK CONTINENTAL ARMY SOLDIERS: A LITTLE-TOLD STORY >p/> Woodbury Juneteenth is Celebrating Black History Month with 2 Live Actors Feb. 23, 1 PM, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 414 Mantua Pike, Woodbury, NJ

Woodbury Juneteenth is presenting a Black History Month program celebrating the African Americans who served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War on February 23 at 1 PM in the Bethlehem Baptist Church, 414 Mantua Pike, Woodbury, NJ 08096. The FREE program features historical re-enactors Noah Lewis and Joe Becton highlighting a broad range of experiences of the freemen and enslaved men who fought against the British to establish the United States. Lewis will portray Ned Hector, who served in the Continental Army's artillery unit and as bombardier and teamster driving wagons of ammunition and supplies. Becton will portray the life and times of Jack Sisson, an enslaved African American who gained his freedom by enlisting in the Continental Army, fighting in major battles, including the Battle of Rhode Island and the Battle of Yorktown that ended the war.

The Bethlehem Baptist Church and the Gloucester County Historical Society are collaborating in the event which is sponsored by the City of Woodbury, the Gloucester County Cultural & Heritage Commission, and the New Jersey Historical Commission. >p/> CONTACT: Donna Miller, dmiller@woodbury.nj.us

Geo Locator: 39.83235, -75.15680

Google Maps: https://bit.ly/BethlehemBaptistChurch

Singer Sewing Machine - a Survival Tool

An Obsession: For several months, I have had an obsession to see my Great-Grandmother's Singer Sewing Machine which was buried in the attic behind years of accumulated storage chests, tubs and footlockers. Frankly, I can barely stand to go up there AND twenty years ago, I fell down the long attic steps and seriously injured my back, so I have body trauma aversion to going up there. But I had to see that machine. I don't know why.

I know what prompted this compulsion orignally, however. With a seniors group I founded, we were holding a Family Heirlooms/Family History Day, and I wanted to bring that machine because it belonged to my Great Grandmother Catherine Sandman Young. Both my Great Grandmother and her daughter, my Grandmother Mabel Young Wright, supported their families in their long widowhoods by sewing. I know one job they had was sewing uniforms for the Schuylkill Aresenal, or so I was told.

We all feel like we are in hard times now, but my female ancestors really knew hard times - they lived through the Great Depression and both World Wars. My Great Grandmother lived into her 90's but the final years were lived after a massive stroke. My Grandmother Mabel took superior care of her mother, knitted booties and caps for her, sewed her satin, embroidered bed jackets and kept her immaculately clean under hand sewn quilts in the front bedroom of the apartment they rented on the second floor of 623 Asbury Avenue, Ocean City, NJ.

When I was a small child, I visited my Great Granmother in her bedroom and I remember rushing to her open window to watch the fire engines roaring out of the fire department directly across the street, 6th and Asbury Ave.

Great Granndmother couldn't speak or move except her eyes, but there was nothing horrible about it to my young observation, it was just how she was. And her daughter kept her so clean and decorated that she was to me, like a large doll.

My Grandmother Mabel left the Bentwood Sewing Machine that they both used to me when she died. I have carried it around with me for about 50 or more years. When I moved into my house atso number 623, it went into the attic and stayed there, quietly soaking up time until last week when I got my younger sister to venture up there and haul it down.

My sister is a good sport and it is a heavy machine. Once downstairs, I realized the key that had been tied to the handle by a pale blue ribbon turned gray by age, was missing. We both searched with flashlights in every potential corner but no luck. It has slipped into a crack in the universe where lost antique keys go to celebrate their retirement.

What to do. I had my machine but couldn't open it. First, I called a sewing machine repair man, Chuck McGowan, who has worked on my mother's sewing machine, which I have also inherited, for me twice when I was using it to create some art works which later won prizes for me! He said those Bentwood Singer keys are impossible to find but it I had the right screwdriver, I could insert that into the round hole and jiggle it around to unlock the box.

No screwdriver that I had was able to do the trick. My obsession was getting stronger. I called an antique store. I was about to call a locksmith, but I tried the internet instead. On YouTube, two European men (one Dutch and one British) and one American woman carefully explained to me how to use a screwdriver to open the box. One of the men suggested if I didn't have screwdriver that fit, I should cut a piece from a wire clothes hanger and take it to my anvil and hammer it flat. The other one suggested that I use the key from a sardine can. Being a vegetarian without an anvil, I was stumped so I went to my local family hardware store.

I have gone to that hardware store for 40 years! They have EVERYTHING! They have never let me down. I explained my situation and the young woman, a daughter of the family line that has run the store all these years, showed me a couple of screwdrivers she thought might do the trick.

It was a cold, rainy, ihospitable day ahd normally, I wouldn't have wanted to go outside. My obsession to open that box was so strong, I could't wait to get there and then get back home and try the two screwdrivers I bought for $11. I moved the box from the bookshelf to my bureau where there was better light and using the advice from the Englishman, I lifted the screwdriver gently inside the lock and turned it right and Voila! The box opened and revealed the sleeping princess.

The last hands that had caressed that shapely machine had been my two female ancestors, now both long gone, but lovingly remembered by me. Following additional information given by one of my YouTube tutors, I copied off the serial number from the base of the machine and discovered that my Bentwood Singer Sewing Machine model # AC678501 had been made in 1929 in Elizabethport, New Jersey. That information yielded a website with the egraved illustration of the enormous built-to-purpose sewing machine factory which at the time was the largest of its kind in the world. It had been built in 1872 and by 1982 it was closed.

When I went to high school, girls took a course called "Home Economics" in which we were taught to read a recipe and cook somthing; in my case it was a perfect cheese soufle' and to sew! I learned how to sew so well, that I made all my own clothes for many years. As I worked in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the grandmothers mentioned, there were many nice fabric stores nearby, and on the remnants table I could get 2 yards of a good quality fabric for under $5. Using a Simplicity Easy to Sew pattern for a simple shift dress, I made them sleeveless for summer in cotton, three quarter sleeved for autumn and spring in linen, and long sleeved in wool, corduroy and tweed for winter.

When my daughter was a toddler, I made a bunch of rompers the same way, short legs in light cotton for summer, long legs in corduroy for winter with a turtleneck top underneith. I could make her a romper for about $4 in less than an hour.

One of the reasons that sewing machine means so much to me is not only that I knew that Great Grandmother, or that she kept her family fed and housed by use of it, but because sewing was the way the vast majority of women made a living throughout the 1800's and a good part of the 1700's and 1900's and women in sewing factories all over the world still are supporting their families this way.

Also, I made a historically accurate costume for a volunteer job I had years ago, sewn by hand, skirt, bodice and shift. It took a long long long time. Seamstresses who made the elaborate dresses of the 1800's could work 15 hours a day and were known for having damaged eyesight from the work. The sewing machine saved them.

The first Singers were made in 1857. I plan to look into the history of them a bit more now that I have my hundred year old machine open. And I am seearching for a proper sewing table with wrought iron treadle. I have a call in to Old Mill Antiques in Mullica Hill and one day, I will try to persuade a friend or relative to go table hunting with me.

My mother's machine, which I have always used, was the best machine Singer every made, according to my repair man. I will try to find where I put the information he gave me about it. Maybe it is in the box I had to buy to keep it in. The original suitcase style one had disintegrated over time. Great Grandmother's Bentwood Box at one hundred, is perfect!

Happy trails, down whatever history trail you may be on! wrightj45@yahoo.com

From NPR Tips to get out of a funk!

This morning in my e-mail feed there was an NPR piece on tips to get out of a blue mood, a slump, a funk, or whatever you call it. It was illustrated in a kind of comic book style and there were perhaps half a dozen tips. I thought them interesting enough and helpful enough to share with you! Most of them I already know and use, and one I would NEVER use, but, put simply (paraphrased) here they are:

1. Take a walk down memory lane, look at some old photographs, nostalgia can give you a perspective on your life. (My note: I just posted about my solo-retrospective art show, so you know I have done this one, and currently I am writing a book based on each piece of art and that phase in my life. It is a kind of Marcel Proust style memoir)

2.Take a Walk, even for 5 minutes, especially if you are a desk walker. Get up every half hour and walk around a bit. If you can, walk outside. (I have done this all my life, take a daily walk, although now the temperatue is so low and I am so old, the past couple of weeks I have had a couple of days between each walk)

3.Eat something. Often what you feel is your body telling you that you need some nourishment (nutricious food! I just made a pitcher of Nutella Smoothy, which, by the way, is really good hot too!) 4.Do some Art: Gather some art supplies, colored pencils, markers, water colors, paints of any kind or even scissors and colored paper and spend some time creating. (It goes without saying I have done this all my life but when I am too down to do a big painting, I have several small water color pads and Windsor Newton water color sets, and I do a few quick water color sketches - usually still life paintings, but also of my pets, or something from the yard - recently a branch of seed pods from my sleeping Rose of Sharon) 5.Watch cute animal videos (I do NOT do this because I live with cute animals so I watch them and they are immensely comforting. I am watching one right now on a cat perch on a window sill watching a fat squirrel run up and down a tree close to that window) My dog is snoring lightly beside me on the sofa - oh bliss!) 6.Take a Cold Plunge - they give health and brain reasons for this one in the NPR piece, but I can tell you I would NEVER do this! I hate cold water and any unnecessary discomfort. I have enough of those naturally with arthritis and old age. I recommend buying a good quality electric lap throw and getting cozy with that and a book or audio book or an album! This week was the 50th anniversary of Blood on the Tracks - Bob Dylan)

7.Take a Walk down Memory Lane AGAIN, look at some old family photos, your vacations snaps, look at your life. NPR gave reasons why this is good for you. (I have done a lot of family history and it has made me more connected to my family, my ancestors and history I recommend watching Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, a pbs show and then start your own family tree - you might also contact a family member to get some family history)

8.This one they left out but I will add - Phone or Text or Meet up with a friends. Yesterday two of my neighbor friends and I went to a new local place for a delicious lunch - I had cheese ravioli in marinara sauce and a small salad - and an even more delicious long conversation! Afterwards I felt lighter and mildly elated! I have lunch with friends on average once or twice a week,) 8.Write - my suggested tip. I keep a daily journal and it has helped me through some dead ends and bad turns in my travel through life. It has been a road map and a record. Also, I like to keep this blog! Writing helps us remember and it helps me understand and figure things out. Write a blog and read a blog!

Little Stories

Some time in 1969 or thereabouts, a young army wife had boarded a plane to meet her new husband in Frankfurt, Germany. Her husband had been drafted and had received the very fortunate assignment of the Signal Corps in Germany rather than Vietnam. He'd asked her if she would wait until he came back and having serched her soul she replied quite honesty that she couldn't promise anything because two years was a long time. There was a time when she would have promised to wait without hesitation because she loved him so whole heartedly, but something had happened a couple of years before, and she had been given an insight into the possibility of another young man. That is a little story for another time.

Alright, here I drop the pretense and admit the young woman was me. I was 21 years old. We'd had a worlwind marriage - blood tests, marriage license, justice of the peace, and a honeymoon at the World's Fair in Montreal, Canada.

Among the significant traditional gifts parents gave their almost adult daughters, I had been given a set of Samsonite luggage, creamy oyster white. There was the large suitcase, the medium sized one, and the ittle rectangular toiletries box.

I am an old lady now, and if I had kept to fiction, I could have filled in imaginary details to repace the ones I have forgotten, such as, what time of year was it? I have a vague impression it might have been summer, but I am not sure.

When I boarded the plane (from where? I don't remember) I saw my parents out the small airplane window with my brothers and sisters and my parents were crying. In contrast, I was thrilled! This was the adventure of a lifetime.

At the home of the Justice of the Peace, I had looked into the mirror on the other side of the lace covered dining room table, where we were pledging our vows and I had said to myself, "This is the biggest mistake I have ever made." Already, I had been given a peek into the mental illness that had only just begun to emerge from my young husband's behavior. He was prone to excessive rage, temper tantrums generally triggered by automobile problems or his mother, but generously sprayed across anyone who happened to be present. In those days, it was common for serious young couples to spend a lot of time together. We were together most week nights and every weekend.

But here was offered to me the opportunity to not only visit Europe, but to live there, in the brightly colored posters of Toulous Lautrec. Among the many books I had bought as a young working woman; I had gone to work directy from high school, and I mean directly - I finished high school on a Friday and went to work at W. B. Saunders Publishing Company on Monday. My job provided me with my first discretionary money, and I spent it at the Cherry Hill Mall. In those days, there were book stores, attractively arranged and fairly expensive. There was also, however, at the book store in the Cherry Hill Mall, a rediced price table at the entrance to entice passers-by into the store. On that table I had foun an art book of the paintings of Toulous Lautrec, and from what had apparently been a set, another of the work of Gauguin, and a third of the work of VanGogh.

Now I was on an airplane on my way to visit the birthplaces of these heroes of mine. I felt very grown up and also a bit frightened, not about the flying or the plane, but about going to and being in a foreign place, managing. My fear was mediated by my faith in the practicality and resourcefulness of my young husband. He was brilliant and he could do things like fix cars, read maps, plan trips, and he had been through basic training and officer's candidate school and he was proven and certified to be up to the job, whatever it might be. He had already arranged an apartment for us in a small town called Heilbronn.

Germany was part of the recycling of soldiers to and through Vietnam and back to the United States. There were so many soldiers stationed at the post World War II military bases that the housing was all full and offers were given the option of off-base accomodation which my young husband was more than happy to accept. Some officers wanted their families on base, but Michael was eager to live in the 'real' Germany not the military base one.

I am interested to look back and realie that I wasn't frightened of flying. We had spent a great many of our date nights at the Philadelphia airport dringking coffee and watching planes arrive and take-off. Maybe that was why. Of the flight itself, I remember almost nothings, who sat next to me or what we were served - all that has gone with time. What I remember is the announcement that there was going to be a slight detour in our flight. We were going to land in Thule, Greenland for slight repairs adn then we would resume our flight.

We departed the plane, somehow with our luggage. I remember that clearly because we all made kind of nests and forts out of our luggage. We were all army dependents, families of soldiers, and a few soldiers scattered amongst us. We were held in a vast cavernous hangar. We were there for many hours. No one told us anything. Mothers struggled to tend to sqwaling babies and to corral and control rambunctious toddlers and small children. I remember clearly being relieved that it was just me and I didn't have to cope with children in those hours of waiting in the cold, airplane hanger with no snack bar or any kind of comfort.

At nearly the days end, we were all told to board the plane again and we did, docile as sheep. And we proceeded to Frankfurt Am Man where my young husband awaited me in our new car. He took me to our little apartment on the third floor of a complex of new concrete residences, with its sloped ceilings and feather comforter on the fat little bed, the modern, no European style nonsense furnishings, and my favorite piece of all, a buttery kitchen cupboard with a slide out sifter for baking.

Years later when my family was all together at one of our holidays dragging out our stories, i was retelling this one and my father said, "I ws crying at the airplort because I saw the airplane they put you on was an old World War II plane and I didn't think it was going to make it!" To this day, I am stunned that my father thought my plane was going to go down. And that we had engine trouble and could, actually, have gone down!

A Fire Story and a Story of Neighbor Love

Thirty-Eight years ago, I was a struggling single mother living in a third floor walk-up on 8th Street in Philadelphia. Our building had mice and roaches. Aside from my apartment being three floors up, the laundry facilities were in a dark dank basement an additional set of steps down! Hauling my stroller and my baby, groceries and diaper bags and my school bag up and down all those steps was an ordeal, matched by the ordeal of walking several blocks to get the bus or the speedline to New Jersey, then walk several blocks to my babysitter's house before I walked to school. At the time, I taught junior high school, the classes where all the students had failed the minimum basic skills test, Remedial English. The students were hardened riverfront kids largely born into families with alcohol and drug addiction, often neglected and abused. They were angry and uncooperative students and I was a brand new teacher, "thrown into the shark tank" you could say.

My romance with my daughter's father was mysteriously deteriorating but I hadn't the energy to try to figure out why and my romantic partner who had been such a short time ago, passionate and loving, had become distant and indifferent. Still he was the babysitter on the one night a week when I was forced to take the bus back to New Jersey for a night class I taught in the library.

It was all too much - new mother, hard work, difficult travel, and I used every ounce of character and resilience I had to rise to the challenge for the sake of my daughter whom I loved with a deep bond that defies description. Because of that, I determined, when Governor Murphy, in New Jersey, gave all teachers, across the board a two thousand dollar raise, I was going to look for a house in New Jersey.

I had visited the school in Philadelphia that my daughter would be attending if we stayed there and it was grim. It reminded me of the hideous grade school in South Philadelphia that I had attended, a brick factory style fortress reminiscent of a Dickens brick workhouse. I wanted better for my daughter, a green yard, a new and attractive school with nice children.

As it happened, the best friend of my baby sitter saw a house for sale around the corner from her, a tiny bungalow with a big yard right off the bus route and a couple of blocks from a beautiful grade school. She told my babysitter who told me and I begged a teacher friend to give me a ride over to have a look. Immediately my heart leapt out to the little house which was identical to the cookie jar I had from my mother and which I had played with as a child when I was sick in bed.

Several varieties of obstacles fell into my path which is always the case in 'hero and holy grail' stories. The realtor was an obstacle, down payment was an obstacle, and my quest coincided with my parents' retirement to West Virginia so they were largely unavailable financially and in person to help me.

Despite it all, I persevered and in August of 1985, forty years ago this year, the house became mine. My first big obligation/and promise for my daughter had been realized, we had a home with a yard in a nice little town with a good school, a place where she could grow up safely and securely.

There is too much to tell about the next 40 years in the little house, but let me get to the crisis that ensued a year ago in summer.

My now grown daughter, Lavinia, who lived in New York City was home for a visit and we were walking my dog around the neighborhood when Lavinia noticed a fire in a wicker chair on the porch of the woman who had told us about the house for sale all those years ago. Her name is Kitsy. My daughter called out "Mom, Kitsy's porch is on fire!" I immediately ran to the house on the corner and banged on the door for a neighbor while Lavinia phoned the fire company. Then I ran to another neighbor. The first neighbor ran over with a fire extinguisher and began to squirt the wicker furniture all of which was on fire now. The second neighbor ran over and turned on the garden hose in the back of Kitsy's house and began to wet down the porch walls and roof which were also, by now, on fire.

Bu the time the fire truck came, just a few minutes later, the neighbors had put out the fire. At a ceremony at the Borough Hall I was presented with a pink fire hat, and the fire marshal tod me the fire had gotten into the roof and entered the ceiling and had broken through the porch window so the speedy help of the neighbors had actually saved the whole house from burning down.

The home of the neighbor who had found the 'forever home' for me and my daughter had been saved by the people she saved, and neighbors had saved neighbors!

"On Saturday, January 4, President Biden signed into law the Women's Suffrage National Monument Location Act, authorizing the placement of a monument honoring the women’s suffrage movement on the National Mall.

In a statement issued from the White House, President Biden said, "In addition to commemorating the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the Women’s Suffrage National Monument will recognize the generations of women who fought to ensure an equal voice for women in our democracy and honor the leaders who fought for the enfranchisement of all women long after the 19th Amendment was ratified. Vice President Harris and I are committed to defending equal rights for all Americans, to strengthening the federal government’s recognition of women’s contributions to our nation’s history, and to inspiring the next generation to create a more equal future for all."

The National Women's History Museum is a proud partner of the Women's Suffrage National Monument Foundation."

Although I was fortunate enough to visit the National Women's Art Museum in Washington D C back in my heyday, I haven't beeen to this museum and my travel days are over. But I do enjoy their news in my e-mail and I am still an avid reader of Women's History. Since women were able to rise through college to the doctoral level and gain entry into previously all male levels at Museums and Publishing, we have had the opportunity to learn more about our historical heroes. One of my favorites has always been Alice Paul of Mt. Laurel right here in NJ. You can visit the Alice Paul Institute and learn more about her lifelong efforts that eventually gave women in America the right to vote. Isn't it hard to believe that there wa a time we didn't have the right to vote?

Happy New Year friends and Happy Trails always!

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Friendship Gallery, Woodbury, NJ

I realized today that you couldn't find the Friendship Gallery with an online google search so I am posting this to get it out there. We began the Friendship Gallery about 2 years ago when the former SODAT tenants of the Underwood Building on the grounds of the Historic Woodbury Friends Meeting 122 N. Broad Street, Woodbury, went out of business. A small group of five cleared out the reception area and painted it and turned it into an Art Gallery. The five of us on the original committee held a group show to begin. Jo Ann Wright, painter, Jerome Barton and Susan Hagan, stained glass artists, Diana Brose, member of Friends and painter, Carleton Crispin, Property Manager at Woodbury Friends added 3D printed sculptures and a wood burned piece.

Currently, Jo Ann Wright has her first solo-retrospective up until January 31st. There are about 30 pieces including paintings, prints, and photographs and multi-media pieces from a variety of art shows. After Jo Ann's show, Diana Brose will put up her solo retrospective show.

The future of the Friendship Gallery remains to be seen as the South Jersey Artists Collaborative may be able to rent the Underwood Building if their grant comes through, under the direction of Loren Dann, painter.

Visits to the gallery are by appointment only. Call 856-430-5769 for the solo retrospective of Jo Ann Wright. Contact for Diana's show will be posted when her show goes up.

It gave me great pleasure to rescue a charming space from abandonment and turn it into a cultural arts space and it was a special delight for me to be able to have my first and only solo retrospective. I plan to do a memoir based on the paintings because seeing them in the show brought back so many memories of the 60 years represented by them. Each painting or print represents a dozen or more that were related by theme or media over that period of interest or that medium. For example there is one lithograph although I was a printmaking major at Rutgers The State University and did a wide range of print forms from woodcut to lithography. There is one colored pencil 'painting' to represent the dozenor more city store front portraits I did during the 80's when I lived in Philadelphia.

So far I have taken my friends to see the exhibition when we have lunch together in Woodbury. It is enough for me to have my friends enjoy my life's work. I have no interest in selling and many of the works on display are one of a kind and I wouldn't want to sell them. For example, I lost ten of the colored pencil city storefront portraits in a house fire in 2015 at my sister's home in Mickleton. Anyone interested in seein the show before it closes can contact me at 856-430-5769. Also I am on the grounds attending Meeting at Woodbury Friends every Sunday from 10:00 to 12:00. You can find me in the Meeting House.

Happy Trails! Happy New Year 2025 wrightj45@yahoo.com

A Good Man - Honoring Jimmy Carter 1924-2024

You know, I never understood why Jimmy Carter lost the eletion for his second term in office until I watched the pbs AMERICAN EXPERIENCE documentary on him, last night, 1/1/25. That was the way I celebrated New Year's night this year. I needed something positive. Jimmy Carter was my ideal of a really good man, honest, decent, caring and hard working. It was nothing short of a miracle that someone with such humble beginings could aspire to and actual achieve the presidency of the United States.

He began by joining the navy and moved up the ranks to become an officer in the submarine corps. He was very successful in the navy and I can tell you, from having read an autobiography of his many years ago, that he LOVED the submarine corps and would have made a career of it had his father not died and left him in charge of the family farm.

A lot of people depended on that farm, families of share croppers and his own family, so he left his chosen career and went back to Plains, Georgia to run the farm which was not prospering at the time. Jimmy Carter put his heart and his experience to the task of turning the farm into a profitable and stable business and then he turned his attention to politics. He became a senator and then governor. Amazingly, Carter won by convincing people he was an honest man and by proving that indeed he was what he said he was.

He was also careful to keep to a middle road in a segregated and intensely bigoted Georgia. He simply sidestepped the issue, but somehow, peope of both races sensed he was a good man, not a hateful one and that he would do the right thing, which he did.

He was a complete unknown, yet he put his shoulder to the task and made a dedicated and ceaseless effort with the unstinting support of his wife, Rosalyn. Often the profound support of women/wives/mothers/assistants is neglected in history, but in this documentary, he work both before and after he achieved office was acknowledged.

I have been making an effort to put a focus on the positive - doing the 5 gratitudes every day, trying to focus on the good things people are doing so I don't drown in the despair of the bad things which tend to catch the headlines, so I was really happy and grateful to spend an hour or two learning more about a really good man.

Jimmy Carter was a practicing Christian by which I mean not that he advertised as such, but that he practiced Christ's princples: PEACE, love, compassion, honesty, decency. And his greatest achievements reflect that, the SALT Treaty, the Camp David ACCords (please look them up if you don't remember) and he devoted his life after the presidency to helping provide housing for the homeless through Habitat for Humanity!

By the say, one neighbor has kindly volunteered to give my dog a really good walk every day, and my neighbor across the street just put out my recycle can and brought it back. I want to honor good men today!

Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happy New Year 2024 to 2025

Last night, I watched the ABC New Year's show to see the ball drop at Times Square. I am no fan of celebrity news or celebrity anything, really, but what I did enjoy was seeing crowds of happy, smiling and joyful faces! Happy JOYFUL faces!! Afterwards, I relfected how there was so much anger and violence in 2024 that seeing a million people dancing and kissing and waving and laughing was like a balm for the spirit.

My New Year's Resolutions tend to be the same each year but that is fine because it is a new start to an old effort to improve my health - I started the New Year off right with a New Year's walk this morning with a neighbor, from Lambert to Northmont and back - about 2,890 steps. My intent is to add some stretching and elastic band strengthening exercises to my day. Also, after my fruit cake is gone, I am cutting out sweets! I need to work on my diet - more nutrition, less snacks and much less sugar. I have altready succceeded in one effort to cut out sugar - no more caramel latte's for me from Dunkin Donuts.

My next plan was to write up the big news from 2024, but since most of it was vulgar gossip or criminal actions involving sexual harassment, exploitation and cases around these acts, I decided to skip the news and focus on positive events in my personal life in 2024 instead, so here goes.

Art was the big success story for me for 2024 I had work in 7 different group shows: The Station- 4 shows, Camden County College Annual Exhibition, Cherry Hill Arts in Bloom at Croft Farm, Haddon Fortnightly Annual "Through a Woman's Eyes Show. I sold one painting - a winter Pine Barrens landscape, and gave away a Batsto painting and a few smaller 10x12 paintings. I opened a gallery in the reception area of the abandoned Underwood building on the grounds of historic Woodbury Friends Meeting and we have held one group show of 5 participants and now I have a Solo retrospective show up until January 31st. After my show, Diana Brose will have a solo show. After that, we think the building may be rented by someone and we may lose the gallery. If that doesn't happen, we can figure something out.

On the family front, I am grateful that all my siblings are alive and functioning, my daughter is in some period of transition but is successful in her career in film production and seems to be coping well. A few relatively new friendships have been developing and I feel surrounded by friendship. My pets are all well after some dangerous health scares, and my stalwart little ark of a bungalow remains standing and in good shape. I am a lucky woman with wonderful neighbors and a great life!

I did lose a couple more friends this year, one from high school - Romeo Ventura, and one from my teen and married years, Tom Nicholas. The only news item I feel worthy of note is that Jimmy Carter died at the age of 100 - a man I truly admired and feel is a model for what a good man is. May they all be at peace with the spirit in the sky. Also I found out that I lost some distant aunts and uncles this year, my Uncle Joe Lyons and his wife, Rosalie and his sister Susan Lyons Atmore. I think of them from our childhood in South Philadelphia. No one got in touch with my sister or me despite the fact that my address hasn't changed in 40 years, but I put that down to the trauma and shock of losing a loved one and the struggle to get through the aftermath. A cousin, Mark, the son of Joseph Lyons, has been in touch with me via e-mail. I was glad he renewed connection.

All the usual bad news continues, the horror of war in Ukraine and Israel, the continual criminal assault on our communities from madmen - mass shootings, cars driven into parades, and the usual crimes involving madmen killing people in subways. Homelessness continues to increase as does drug addiction. Those are the bad news stories that follow from year to year in this our new millenium.

But at least the whole world is not at war and this morning I read that statistics show a decrease in murder and violent crime in America in general. In my own little patch there is heavenly peace and order and contentment. I hope that is true of you as well!

Happy Trails to You! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Solo Retrospective December 10, 2024 to January 31, 2025

On the grounds of our Historic Woodbury Friends Meeting 122 Broad Street, Woodbury, a formerly rented building had become vacant. Long story for another time. It is a flat, one story very accessible building with a lot of windows. It winds along, rancher style with a string of about half a dozen rooms on either side of a main reception area. Since it was just sitting there empty, I asked the Meeting if I could use the reception area for an Art Gallery and they agreed.

First, five of us formed a gallery committee and had a group show, a stained glass artist, Jerome and his partner Susan, who now rent a studio in the building, another Quaker artist in the Meeting, Diana, the property manager, Carleton who does a good deal of work with computers and has a 3D printer, put up a group show. (Which stayed up for about a year).

The South Jersey Artists Collective is in the process of getting a grant to rent the building from us in the Spring 2025 and their plan is to turn the Gallery into a Resource room, so I decided I had better make hay while the sun was shining and realize a long standing dream of mine to have a solo retrospective art show. My sister and my Right-Hand-Woman, helped me hang the show and I made postcards for it.

What an interesting area of emotions the show engendered in me, looking back on all the phases of my life represented in that show. Admittedly it is a modest, humble little exercise, but it is deeply satisfying to me. This is the age of looking back, the 70's, which I am about to leave in a year and enter the 80's. Heaven only knows what that will bring.

Anyhow, I chose one or two paintings or prints to represent a series of works I did in each of the decades of the last 60 years, represented in the show. It begins with two linocuts I did in the 70's before I went to college, and progresses through work I did in college, such as a lithograph I did while at Rutgers, when my major was printmaking, through the University of Arts, when I was getting my masters. it goes right up to this past summer when I had work in the most shows I could have imagined, seven group shows!

I have within me a well of melancholy and it is far to easy for the bucket to fall into the well and for me to roll it up and drink from the tearful waters. It has become a life-long practice for me to turn that melancholy into writing - whether in my daily journals, this blog, or my mamy writing experiments sitting on my book shelves, spiral bound or in looseleaf binders. It is a manifestation of the magic of the many folk tales where the beset protagonist uses her skills to spin straw into gold or to spin a fabric that exposes the arrogant king in his nakedness. My thread is ink and my fabric is the page.

For the month of December, now, I have been inviting friends to visit the gallery and see the show which is by appointment only which means I have lunch with a friend or two and in their kindness they come and see my show. I have thought about the paintings and prints and the periods of my life that they represent.

This week, for two nights, I enjoyed a 3 part documentary by Ken Burns on Ernest Hemingway. I paraphrase a quote by Edna O'Brient interviewed in the film 'writers are self-centered; we spend hours every day thinking about what we are thinking.' And that is certainly true of me. It is a trait I have criticised in myself through my life, that I am too solitary and too centered on myself and my life. But what if that is the natural trait of an artist - a writer or a painter?

The documentary gave me an idea of how to use the memories dredged up by touring my solo-retrospective, I think I will write a memoir to go with each piece! I feel an edge of excitement at the prosepect of it. I LOVE to write! This anticipation and creative urge is a boon, a gift, that makes retirement wonderful.

Merry Christmas everyone! Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com >p/> I think I will post each essay here too!

Review of Ken Burns documentary on Hemingway

One of the things I love about having this blog is that I can talk about things none of my current friends are interested in such as Ken Burns documentary on Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway had an impact on my young adulthood. I read all his books and in that period, I really loved a couple of them. Interestingly, later in life, I bought my favorite as a gift to a brother of mine and he hated it. I read my copy again and I didn't like it any more either. The point being that there are some books that fit a particular time in your life but age and experience, and changing attitudes and taste completely transform your feeling and evaluation of that book. The book was "Moveable Feast."

The Ken Burns documentary is 6 hours long and I binge watched it yesterday. I had a really good day, went to Woodbury Friends Meeting and afterwood had lunch with two of the Friends at the little Woodbury Train Station Cafe' which is cheery and festive. One of the Friends came back to the WFM grounds to visit my solo-retrospective art show (more on that in another post).

By the time I got home again around 2:30, I was chilled to the bone and everything ached. As my sister said "Now you know why old people move to Florida!" We are in a cold smap and neither the WF Meeting-House, nor the gallery were warmed. It was like sitting in a refrigerator.

So. I put on a warm hoody, my slippers and got under my electric lap blanket and tucked in for a nice winter's viewing, after I fed the pets, of course.

As I have often said in posts, I was a book worm my whole life. I have loved books with my whole heart since I first laid hands on one. My house is filled with them literally fron floor to ceiling in wall shelving I had installed. I have been in the midst of moving them along for the past 3 years to the Free Books Project.

When I read Hemingway, I was a young adult. I had cut my teeth on a lot of antiquated literature in the vocabulary rich style of the late 1800's and turn of the century. Hemingway said he wanted his books to be able to be read by anyone with a high school education. I could read books by people with a college education by the time I was ten and had read Dostoevsky, Turgenev, deMaupassant, great British authors like Dickens, and the classic American greats like Mark Twain when I was a child. In my late teens, Hemingway seemed like a revelation. I mention these other books because it is the context in which I evaluated the writing and the stories. Hemingway's novels formed my early fantasies of what a literary, bohemian life would be like. It made me want to go to Europe!

The most interesting thing to me in the documentary was the pure high quality analysis of the great critics and authors Ken Burns recruited to talk about Hemingway's writing including one of my favorites, Edna O'Brien. Burns brought on board a couple of Hemingway's biographers whose works I had read over the years. I read everything about him, the magazine articles, the biographies, the criticisms and the praise.

One of the things I went to college for in the 1970's was to learn literary criticism. I didn't learn much. It is a big big subject. I did a huge amount of reading in my major, and I had a few really marvelous professors among them, James Thomas Farrel who wrote the Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, and Basil Payne, the great Irish poet. What I enjoyed was the ability of the interviewed critics in the documentary to delve below the surface in the writing and to compare and describe the writing itself as well as to bring out the critiques of the period when Hemingway's books came out. And most especially what I enjoyed was the panoramic context of the times because they were my times!

I am a creature of the twentieth century and Ken Burns does a masterful tour of it. All my influences, other writers like John Dos Passos, the burgeoning crop of women journalists like Martha Gellhorn, the Paris art and literary scene, Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein. Part one I found enlightening and enjoyable; part two I had to do some fast forwarding because over my lifetime my sensitivity to the killing of animals has increased and I was horrified and sickened by the slaughter of animals, not to mention the extreme cruelty of bull fighting. I saw a bull fight in Spain and it was deeply depraved. The animal was frightened and tortured. he tried to escape by jumping over the walls but they were too high. After they tortured, weakened and tried to enrage the terrified creature, they stabbed it to death. It made me cry. I had never seen anything so depraved before. I know the laws are changing all over Mexico, South America and Europe in regard to bull fighting - it isn't really fighting, in fact, it is torturing and murdering in reality. The animal has no chance. These creatures are raised and fed and have no reason to suspect what is about to be done to them by human beings who up to this point haven't been a danger. The thoughtless, wasteful and cruel slaughtering of African animals by Hemingway and the people of that time is always profoundly upsetting. How he could pose over the carcasses of creatures murdered for no other reason than his entertainment is worth pondering. It is an outward sign of Hemingways wholesale giving over to his worst indulgences of violence, intoxication, and unrestrained lustfulness. He seems a slave to his appetites which in the end destroy him.

The one door for me to compassion for him was the obvious mental illness from which he suffered, and which he obviously inherited from his father, and which his own poor sons inherited from him. The suffering went on, generation after generation. Indulging his unrestrained greed for excitement, novelty, adrenaline drugged experience broke him - broke his skull, his bones, destroyed his liver and his brain and his constitution. It made him so sad and sick that he had to kill himself to end the suffering. It was an almost biblical portrait of the wages of sin.

Just recently in the news, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 federal death row inmates. The three he didn't commute were mass murderers who committed hate crimes like Dylann Roof. At the same time there was the story of the man Trump had put forward to head the Department of Justice, Matt Gaetz. The security check on him showed he had spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring prostitutes and had been seen buying and using multiple kinds of illegal drugs and had even been accused of sexual exploitation of a high school junior. He denies all of it, of course, but the report released to the press details the evidence behind the accusations. He resigned from the senate and took himself out of the running for the DOJ position. His excuse is that it was the bachelor life of a youth and that he is a different man now.

In the end of Hemingway's life, he was the tortured and murdered bull who couldn't escape the ring, and he was the shark shredded marlin as well as the old fisherman defeated in his triumph (The Old Man and the Sea). He studied death and practiced it and it turned out to be the indulgence that got him in the end. But he was so obviously suffering from what we now know as CTE chronic traumatic encephalopathy from his 4 or 5 concussions as well as the inherited tendency to depression. The alcoholism was the slippery slope down which he slid to his final suicide. Four of the 8 people in his family died by their own hands. It was a portrait not only of art but of dissolution and degenerate despair.

Was the documentary worth watching! Yes! If you read, you will learn so much about writing, and if you study the human condition, you will find a rich repository of observation. If you like history, you will find a great traveling companion through the twentieth century.

Happy Trils! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Mini Christmas Outing 12/21/24

This morning I had a minor mishap - I dropped a bottle of 200 teeny tiny blood pressure pills on the floor. This was worse than it sounds because I have bad vision from my cornea disease and a bad back from degenerative disc disease, so I couldn't really see the teeny tiny white pills and I had a terrible time trying to bend down to pick them up which I did using two pieces of paper. Then I tried to separate the pills from pet hair and other debris despite the fact that my sister had mopped the kitchen floor the day before. I did it but I am a bit germ phobic and I didn't want to take my pills.

A neighborly kindness - my neighbor around the corner walks my dog for me because he is an avid daily walker and his wife and I have been friendly over the years. She is the one who phoned to tell me about the little house for sale in which I have lived for 40 years! He suggested that I call and ask the pharmacy to replace my prescription which I did. They phoned my prescription plan and it was approved! So I put Uma in the car and we went to the drive-thru pick-up. It is so cold out after our snow and freezing rain last night that my windshield was encased in a frozen layer of snow and ice.

While we were out getting the prescription, I decided to get gas as I was below 1/4 and my father always advised me to never get below 1/4. I had a happy chat with the gas pumping guy - an old white whiskered man in hat and hood. We were observing the guy ahead of me who had no hat and his ears were bright red! The old fella said he had pumped in winter for three years and he knew how to dress. I said, "With age comes wisdom." We wished one another a Merry Christmas and I decided to drive to Knight's Park to see the snow around the beautiful trees.

It was pretty, and on the way home, I realized I had money left on my thank you gift care from my Seniors Group, so I stopped at Dunkin Donuts and got a hot chocolate.

there I was, sipping hot chocolate, listening to B101 the Christmas radio channel, looking at the snow icing on all the lawns, glittering under the sunshine! I felt happy! And I thought how easy it can be to make yourself happy - a ride, a chat, a hot chocolate! Now I am hope and making my lunch, but I am in a very cheery mood and I have my high blood pressure pills replaced and my attitude adjusted! I am having a nice vegetable soup that I get from the Chinese take-out restaurant i Woodbury called The Golden Palace.

Make your days merry my friends! Happy Trails - Jo Ann (as always, don't bother with comments, it is polluted by spam - if you want to contact me here is my e-mail wrightj45@yahoo.com)

On Retirement and what to do when your schedule is removed!

I retired in 2006 from both my jobs, my full time public school Art teaching job in a middle school, and my part time job as an adjunct professor at the (now closed) University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pa.

It is am intoxicating feeling being free! The only time we are that free is when we are small children before going to school or in the summer when we are in school. I watched what other retirees did and noted a few were kind of adrift, lost, aimless. Some had other kinds of jobs. At first, I did take a part time job as a school-visiting history storyteller for Camden County Historical Society. It was fun but exhausting, hauling that travel chest full of historical artifacts up the steps of the many elevator-less publis schools in South Jersey, not to mention doing the majority of my presentations on Black Hitory Month and Women's History Month, February and March, the snowiest (in that period) times of the year.

Then I decided to pass the job along to another interested retired teacher and I took a full year when I determined I would do nothing but what I felt like each day. What I felt like was taking a drive. I had a nice New Jersey map book and with a full tank of gas in my Saturn station wagon, I would pick a back road and follow it to its end. I began with Kings Highway (which is where I live) and I followed it until it disappeared into other names and roads. My favorite and most fruitful destination was Greenwich on the Delaware Bay. There was a historic Oyster Ghost Town there and it was the dock for a historic tall ship named the Meerwald. I met the folks there, took a tour, hiked the trail through the salt hay marsh and fell in love with the locale. I became a volunteer. Every couple of weeks, I would drive an hour down to the Maurice River area, to the Bayshore Discovery Project and do some volunteer tour guiding. Once, I gave a tour to a man who turned out to be someone I went to high school with! His family had been boat engine mechanics and had a shop on the ghost town's main street: Hettinger's Motor Repair.

I kept on taking drives and following interesting roads and discovering history mysteries such as Fort Elfsborg, an original Swedish settlement fort now vanished except for road signs and a beautiful patterned brick historic house hidden in a floody estuary which made me interested in patterned bruck houses, I attended a lecture on patterned brick houses by an author of a book on it which was held at Bass River State Park. What an interesting place that is! From that, I began to visit the State Parks I could drive to.

Also, around that time, I had joined an Outdoor Club and went hiking and kayaking regularly all over the rivers and forests of South Jersey and met man interesing people including a group of geocachers, and an author who became my best friend, Barbara Solem. She had written a book on The Forks, and another called Ghosttowns and Other Quirky Places in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. We hiked all over the woods together and we still have lunch every week or two. History became my passion.

Another passion that had been lying dormant but for which I now had the time was family history! I joined ancestry.com and began to research some family mysteries such as what happened to my biological grandmother. Her sister, Lavinia Lyons had been my grandmother all my life and it came as a shock to learn that she was actually my great-aunt. She was a quiet and secretive woman by nature and intensely private so she clammed up whenever I tried to find out anything about my mother's biological mother, her sister, but I had two photographs of her and a name. Ten years later I had solved the mystery and made a family tree which I had photocopied and which I framed with frames from yard sales and gave to my four siblings for Chritmas. Also it inspired my continuing interest in cemeteries, a half dozen of which where my ancestors are buried, I have visited

My long rambles and my family history crossed at the Civilian Conservation Corps. My father had been in the CCC in his teens before he joined the Merchant Marines and then the Navy. I had run across the CCC in my forest ramblings and in particular at Bass River where there is a series of signs giving some history, as there is at Parvin State Park which is a great place to hike. So many great CCC stories emerged from the woods that I was inspired to write a book called White Horse Black Horse taking two fictional characters, a photographer and a writer on the CCC State Guides project in 1937. Then I gave some talks on my book and sold a few copies, but most I gave away to volunteers I met at historic sites.

Other historic sites that captured my interest were original settler log cabins and I attended a great lecture, again by someone who had written a book about them, at the Greenwich Harvest Festival held each September. On the grounds of the festival there is one of the historic log cabins.

And I also took a guided tour of One-Room Schools offered by the 'then flourishing' Burlington County Hisorical Society. It was marvelous, and being a retired teacher, my heart was touched by the early efforts of teachers to convert colonial children to literate citizens. One school in particular was fascinating because it is where the teenaged Clara Barton went to teach in Burlington in a one room school you can still visit. She lobbied to have the tuition school turned public so the poor children could learn to read and write as well as the ones whose families could afford to pay tuition. She succeeded so well a male administrator was hired to take over and in disappoiment and resentment at this unfair result, she went on to found the Red Cross during the Civil War!

So you can see how one trail led to another and one story ignited another. But as the years went on, things began to happen to me physically which was a shock because I had always been so healthy and active AND a vegetarian! But genetics plays a big part in the age story along with lifestyle and like my father and mother before me, I developed arthritis in my spine and knees so there was no more hiking up frozen waterfalls in Jim Thorpe, Pa. or 8 hour kayak trips on the Winding River.

By then, being a natural storyteller, and having gotten the hang of writing a book (I had started out as an English teacher in my education career) I had written and independently published three books. I tried using a contact given me by my author friend but he wasn't interested in historical fiction and the interview was too depleting for my sensitive writer's soul so I gave up on traditional publishing and found a commercial printer (not online - an actual building with people). I wrote a relationship novel, a memoir of living in a van in Europe for a year, and gave away most of my books.

In my travels, I had become interested in old train stations. Most historic towns around South Jersey had one and since I am old enough that I actually rode trains when passenger trains existed, I was still entranced by the romance of the train. At one of the old train depots, I found an Art Gallery: Eiland Arts Center, Merchantville, NJ. It was in the town where I had gone to high school, and I got to chat with the gallery/coffee cafe' proprietor, Nicole Eiland. She put me on the mailing list and I began to get notifications of upcoming group art shows. I was invited and inspired and I began painting for the shows! My work was accepted and a whole new avenue opened up for me. I couldn't hike anymore but I used the photographs I had taken of my favorite hiking places as resources for my paintings. And I began to make paintings of some of my favorite historic spots. I sold 4 paintings of historic sites in Maple Shade, 2 paintings of the woods, two of rivers, and a scattering of other subjects over the next decade.

So, the interests that had grown out of the seeds of driving and visiting were: Genealogy

Historic site volunteering

Hiking and kayaking

Writing books

Painting

Quaker Religion

Almost forgot - Seniors Group

And the most recent one which was to emerge from an emotional crisis. A family event occurred which caused me unresolvable emotional pain and I decided to visit a Friends Meeting for Silent Worship. Many years earlier I had attended Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Quaker version of church. I liked it, the freedom of conscience, the peacefulness, the practice of meditation. The closest Meeting was Woodbury Friends Meeting, ten minutes from me. I went on a snowy morning and there was only one Friend there but I stayed and two years later became a member. It is a small group of generally half a dozen in person and a few others on zoom. I like the intimacy and the peace. They were hit by an unexpected event when a drug and alcohol support facility renting a building on the grounds of the historic Meeting went bankrupt. The building (located on the other side of the parking lot) was abandoned. A year later, I asked if I could clear out and paint the reception area and turn it into an art gallery. One of the other regular members is also an artist and I had introduced her to the group shows at Eiland Arts Center in Merchantville. We both had paintings to put in a show of our own and we did! At the same time, a former high school student who had become a stained glass artist was looking for a studio and he rented two sections of the abandoned building, so now we had a stained glass studio, and a gallery! I paid the stained glass guy to pain the gallery. Currently the South Jersey Artists Collective is working on a grant to rent the rest of the building.

Before they take over the building, I grabbed the opportunity to have a Solo-Retrospective of the artwork I have done since my college days in the 1970's. My youngest sister who is 20 years yonger than I am, does work for me a couple of times a month, and she helped me hang the show. I had cards made for the show at Bellia Copy Center in Woodbury, very friendly helpful people and very reasonable in price. This has given me a great sense of satisfaction. By the way, showing my work at Eiland Arts gave me the confidence to show work in other local shows and this year I had work in 7 exhibitions, Cherry Hill Annual at Croft Farm, Haddonfield Fortnightly Annual, Camden County College Seniors Show and four group shows at Eiland Arts. Not bad for 79!

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention that walking around town I noticed our fire dept. had been turned into a Senior Center that nobody seemed to use to I wrote a proposal to the mayor to hold a group Meeting once a month. Six years later we had a dozen regular members. Each month I invited a speaker or provided a project, and what I found they enjoyed most was Show and Tell. We brought items or photographs and told our stories. The town has taken over the building and expanded with a grant to provide five days a week of programs for the seniors of our town.

Looking back on it today to write this blog post gives me a great sense of satisfaction in how rich and productive my retirment has been. The moral of the story is to get moving, go places and talk to people and things turn up and passions get ignited! I met so many retired people who volunteer at local historic sites and they have made new freinds and generated interests to pursue in their lives which enriched their time. It is a great gift to be free! And a great gift to share your time and talents.

Happy Trails Retirees! Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Walking motivator Dec. 17 2024

This morning, two friens and I were talking about improving our daily walking habit. I had read an article from Journal of American Medical Association about how 5000 steps a day can improve symptoms of depression. I know this and I know it improves EVERYTHING, flexibility, cardiovascular health, and generally I walk my dog each day to the railroad tracks and back, but this autumn I had a couple of falls and got sick a couple of times and a neighbor walked the dog for me. I said I would walk on my own anyhow, but I didn't. I am a sedentary person by nature and would rather sit curled up on the recliner sofa and read or watch movies or paint or draw or do anything you can do on a recliner! So I really did need motivation.

Some years ago I saw two interesting artists' projects - one was a walker who took a photo at the same spot every morning for months at exactly the same time, the other was an artist who collected everyone's sunset photos and made a giant collage of them!

Our project is very simple, each walk we will take one photo of something we like it can be a plant, a leaf, a lawn decoration, anything we like. It doesn't have to be spectacular but it has to be one of us taking the photo, not an old photo or a photo someone else took. I am looking forward to taking my photo and also seeing what my two friends take on their walk. It really has made me more enthusiastic about walking my dog Uma today. She is patiently waiting as always!

Update: I did my first group text from the dog walk and I took 7 photographs of Santas on the lawns around town! It was so much fun!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Collosal Olmec Heads and Christmas

Naturally, it being mid December, I have been thinking a lot about Jesus Christ's teachings and about the man himself. A couple of weeks ago when my little Sunday School (called First Day School in Quaker tradition) had reached the Roman Empire in our chronological approach to the history of religion, a youngster asked this most intelligent question: "Is there proof that Jesus actually lived?" and as it happens, there is! First of all I saw an episode of the "Naked Archaeologist" that explored the writings and sites associated with the actual physical presence of a man called Jesus Christ. He was a tiny mention, a footnote, in the writings of contemporaneous historian/philosophers like the Greek Pliny, and the Roman Tacitus, among others.

Archaeology is a great interest of mine and just a night ago I saw a wonderful three episode British program from 2019 called Lost World & Hidden Treasures that looked at three great archaeological discoveries: The Sutton Hoo Anglo Saxon burial in Suffolk, the Lion Man wooden sculpture from German cave, and the Olmec Heads. The narrator, Janina Ramiriz

Something that occurred to me after re-acquainting myself with the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount was that one of the MOST Revolutionary things about the teachings of Jesus Christ was his focus on humility. When Jesus said "blessed are the poor in spirit" he has been variously translated as meaning, by the word 'poor' - humble, not deprived or lacking in spirit.

Considering our world political situation currently, you cannot help but be struck by the HUBRIS/Arrogance and self-centered pridefulness of the worst and largest of the world leaders such as Trump or Putin or Netanyahu, to name just three.

In the episode of Lost Worlds that explores the discovery of the 30 ton Olmec heads in the jungle which had swollowed up the huge Olmec civilization of Southern Mexico and Central America, you see the concrete manifestation of this pridefulness. The giant bounder heads all sport the same sour, angry implacable expressions. An additional sculpture found in further exploration of the buried civilization depicts the ritual sacrifice of babies. The toddlers are depicted crying and clinging with their arms around the high priests carrying them to the blood letting death they will endure.

So much of a certain kind of display of what is taken to be strength has to do with emotionless, pitiless and implacable determination. Empathy and compassion are considered weaknesses. Domination and power are the halmarks of what are considered the GREATS of the ancient world such as Alexander the Great, who was, in fact, Alexander the Destroyer. All that mahy of these later described as great leaders were actually accomplished in was large scale crime. They invaded other people's lands, destroyed their buildings and crops, looted their temples and homes and kidnapped them into human trafficking slavery and prostitution.

So, how did we come (most of us) to view these things as evil rather than laudable? Through the teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ preached lover over hate, kindness over cruelty, and respect and care for the- a smallest and the weakest. These were not qualities valued at all in the empires of the time of Jesus Christ, or indeed, the empires of today. Yet Christianity rose and spread throughout the world, although it can be seen that often what is labeled Christianity is far from anything Jesus would have considered a manifestation of his teachings. What we have in many of the most popular contemporary mega-churches is ostentatious display of wealth and power, exploitation of the weak for the financial profit of the leaders, and, often as displayed in scandal after scandal, sexual exploitation of the weak.

Jesus, the humble, the kind, the one who shared, who saved those who were being judged and persecuted, who washed the feet of his followers wouldn't recognize most of the churches that call themselves Christian today. Jesus rebelled against the manifestation of the Jewish religion of his own time; he turned the tables and ran the money lenders out of the temples! What would he make of the giant tv screens through which loud calls for donations and promises of wealth are shouted by so-called ministers and the lavish mansions and luury automobiles of these leaders of the mega-churches in the mid-western US or the Catholic churches everywhere.

I mentioned to a friend over lunch that the Roman Empire expanded and thrived upon Extortion. They attacked, too over, and taxed the lands of their neighbors in an international pay-for-protection scheme. I just remembered a bit in the crime series, the Sopranos, where one of the characters says, "The Romans are back, we are the Romans." And it was true, their extortion rackets were based on violence, intimidation and cruelty, lack of compassion or empathy or any respect for justice or mercy. That is the contest in the world today.

The Olmec Heads, the Roman Empire - Power, pride, crime for the accumulation of wealth, despising justice or fairness as weak - a will to win at all costs, drive for domination, destruction in a kind of grab-all-you-want-and-all-you-can side versus:

Jesus Christ, Justice, compassion, qualities of character as greater than display of wealth, sharing, protection of the weaker and the dependent, stewardship and respect for the natural world, humility and patience, the traits of the other side, the traits of Jesus Christ's teachings.

these are my Christmas thoughts in December 2024 Merry Christmas Friends! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Christmas in the Pines 2024

If you are looking for that old time, Contry Christmas feeling you might want to visit Vatsto Village in the Pine Barrens. I love Batsto at any time of the year, but at Christmas you will enjoy hot chocolate and cookies, tours of the Mansion, carriage rides and my personal favorite, walking through the historic villaage and taking the nature hike alongside the lake. Also, don't forget the Christmas vintage trin show at the American Hitory Museum at what used to be the andaloro Farm, at Andaloro Way in Deptford. You will need to check the web for both sites for times and days to be sure of availability.

Happy Trqails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Art Show

One of the founding members of the South Jersey Artists Coalition is holding a show with talk and performance on December 4th at 1:00 p.m. featuring her portraits and Dr. Daisy Century. The show will be at the Dr. Ross Beitzel Gallery of Rowan College of South Jersey on 1400 Tanyard Rd., Sewell, NJ 08080.

Loren Dann is finished her graduate degree this Decenber. Her paintings are beautiful and I recommend you visit this show and see these portraits. Loren has been instrumental in many kinds of art programs and is working on bringing her ideas to the Underwood Building at Woodbury Friends Meeting if her grant application is approved this Spring.

Hpe to see you at the show. Loren will also appear at Artist Talk, January 29, 2025 at 12:00 p.m.

Jo Ann

What is Christmas without a train show?

I just received this in my e-mail and I wanted to share it with you because I LOVE this museum! It is a small private museum of fascinating groups of family heirlooms and the collections of the owner. I have been many times and will be sure to visit again this Christmas! Hope you will too

Hi Everyone!

It's time again for the Annual Toy Train Show at the Museum of American History at Deptford, NJ! Starting November 29th, 2024 and running thru January 28th, 2025, the Show will be feature O and O-27 gauge toy trains, from the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s. Lionel, Marx and American Flyer engines, with cars attached, will race on two different platforms, each one decorated with vintage buildings, and other structures to give a traditional holiday appearance!

The Museum is open Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 3pm.

I am attaching a flyer for you. Please feel free to share!

Hope to see you soon at the Museum!

Jeffrey Norcross

The Museum of American History at Deptford, NJ

138 Andaloro Way

Deptford, NJ 08093

856-812-1121

Christmas Memories

Last night I was drowning my sorrows in a few hours of Hallmark sugary romance. In the final film of the evening, set in Paris, the male romantic lead in an attempt to get to know the female romantic lead asks her for her favorite Christmas memory.

At first, I was kind of stumped. Rather than a whole memory, or a ujit of narrative, I had a stream of brief impressions. The first that came was of Walnut Street and 6th Street in Philadelphia, 1964. I am in my dark green mohair coat, brown calf high cowboy style boots and I am freezing cold, walking up to Market Street to catch the bus home after work at W. B. Saunders Publishing Company on Washington Square. On that corner was a beautiful florist's shop and the window was filled with Christmas wreths, poinsettia, red ribbons and frosted around the squre corners from the cold. I was 18 yeqrs old and happy and Philadelphia then was beautiful. The people were all well dressed, especially at the holidays, the stores were all decorated magnificently - not modern and austere - but with an abundance, a kind of Victorian mixed with Post World War II exuberance. The big stores like Gimbels and Lit Brothers and Snellenburgs all had multilayered vilaes with trains and animatronic figures, Dickens style villages, Alpine landscapes with Swiss villages and snow, cosy luxurious fantasy American living rooms with fireplace, tree, snowy windows and well turned out families in matching Christmas Pajamas and robes. Christmas Wonderland was the overall theme. There were actually men selling roasted chestnuts on Market Street and they were delicious rich and hot and warming. People were happy, shopping, carrying red shiny store bags, wearing mufflers and hats and gloves.

That memory was quickly replaced by the Nuremburg Christmas Market in Germany at around the same period, a couple of years later. I was still the same optimistic, enthusiastic young woman, living in an illusion. I was married and we had an apartment in a courtyard in a small town called Heilbronn. We had a beautiful little tree decorated with real candles. My mother-in-law was visiting us. My husband drove us to the enormous Nuremburg Christmas Market. It was twilight and all the stalls were lit and steaming with the breath of the marketers and the hot drinks and hot treats they had to offer. They were piled high with beautifully carved little wooden figures, village houses, wooden trees, angels, reindeer, knitted hats and mittens and scarves, handcarved wooden Black Forest clocks, religious statuary, woven things, metal things, glass things, pottery things, everything! I remember my mother-in-law and my husband eating pickled herring. The signts the lights the sounds, the smells, all that rich and ancientm traditional swirl of Christmas celebration and my happy Christmas youth.

I also remember the one night madness bustle of my father and my god-father Neal Schmidt, building the Christmas platform in the emptied living room of our brick row house on Warnock Street i Philadelphia while my mother oooked for Christmas and made them food for the evening in the kitchen. Then the tree went up then the trains and the villages and the lakes of mirrors, the snow of cotton fluff and snow paper, the lights and decorations on the tree, all of it watched by two small children from surreptitious top of the stairs to the second floor bedrooms where we were supposed to be asleep. We were in our pajamas but we couldn't sleep with all that noise and excitement. Dad and Mom and Neal were all so young and happy and beautiful then. They would have been in their thirties, and Neal and Dad were home safely from the navy and World War II and Mom was in the midst of her dream of domesticity and a home of her own and family. It was all that one night. I still have a doll given to me by my god-father, Uncle Neal, the sweetest, kindness, gentlest man I ever knew.

If I spend time, more memories rise from the attic of my memory, surprisingly few from more recent years and most from my childhood. I think I can retrieve some from my daughter's childhood and from West Virginia family times, but now I am tired of it. Maybe later.

Happy trails (through the past as well as the woods, the day and the life) Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Sad Day for America and the World

Jay Gould = "I can hire half the working class to kill the other half." I remember reading this in a civics class as a child and it stuck with me. That is what happened here. The OligarchsThe man who would be TYRANT has wo used their money and power to propagandize half the working class to defeat the other half. I am not surprised, just disappointed and sad. The wave of toxic machismo and arrogance and rage that has been sweeping the country was bound to be a tidal wave that swept this trash into office again.

I noticed in the news items this morning that the press is blaming Democrats for all the alleged flaws in strategy, taking no blame whatsoever for the failure of the press to work harder to expose Trump's lies and crimes. I wrote in often to compain how the press continued to call him President when he had lost the election and by so doing, they bolstered those who claimed he never lost.

There is no way to underestimate the toxic macno appeal Trump has for so many men who would like to disempower women in every way possble - deny birth control, for starters. They want to bring America back to the 60's when women were denied a fair educational opportunity and were forced to work in service jobs that paid so little we couldn't support our children if we left abusive and exploitive domestic situations.

Add to that the racism that still runs deep and strong in this country and Kamala really had no chance but we have to keep trying. As the old expression goes, "Get knocked down 8 times but get up 9."

OI am going to take Uma for her walk now and get my mind off this sad morning news. I will try not to let fear and anxiety get the better of me. Half of all Americans have elected a criminal and a sociopath for our leader. Sigh.....

I have said it before, I feel like a good German in 1939 - appalled, frightened, trapped and yet hopeful that somehow this poison will be contained.

It's gym day and the dog walk and the gum routine will help me stay strong for the frightening future ahead of us. Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

ps: Fisk and Gould tried to corner the gold market and brought about the stock crash of Black Friday 1868? They were Robber Barons and now we have one in the presidency. When Murdock bought Fox, he used it to build the prooaganda machine that duped the dopes who elected Trump to fleece them, or bleed them dry would be even more like it. I am not a conspiracy theorist usually but this looks like a corporate take over to me.

It is said that 40 percent of the people of the world won't have access to potable water by 2025. Water is the new oil. The corporate take-over will be of water, oil, gas, precious minerals like rare earth needed for computers. Trump will take away all the safe guards of our lands and resources and open them to exploitation.

Election Day 2024

I am so happy to be able to vote. Each year, I go in person to our local voting place, MEPRI Hall on Kings Highway in Mt. Ephraim. I recognise most of the poll workers and thank them for their help. Every year I have watched one or more documentaries or movies about the monumental struggle of the Suffragists who fought for our right to vote for a hundred years. My great hero of the struggle is Alice Paul She devoted her life to the struggle and she suffered but persevered. Her grace, strength, integrity and courage are an inspiration to me. Each year women who have voted go to her grave and put their "I voted" stickers on her grave stone. It brings tears to my eyes, this gesture honoring her sacrifice and devotion. Many Quaker women hav devoted their lives to various humanitarian causes including Abolition (my personal favorite is Abigail Godwin of Salem).

Each year, I also visit the grave of Peter J. Maguire (not a Quaker) who fought for workers rights. I don't know if wherever they are, they are aware of this but it tells others who also care that they are not alone in honoring our noble, devoted, self-sacrificing heroes.

This is a good place to honor two other local heroes, Benjamin Lay and John Woolman for their work in both Abolition and in vegetarianism.

Happy Voting Day fellow Americans! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

October 28, 2024 - Saving Myself

Here is a new post under the subject of PLACeS TO GO - Planet Fitness in the Brooklawn Shopping Center.

For the past few years, I have been in a kind of rapid and shocking (to me) decline. It began with an injury to my hip joint at the Planet Fitness when I was going to the gym regularly and decided to use two machines for thigh and hip work. I used too much rigor, apparently, and pulled something in my groin/hip area that was so bad, I went to th doctor's. I got x-rayed, of course, and I was told I had arthritis of both hips, worse on the left side. That was the beginning. Shortly after, I had the first of 3 falls, first down the cellar steps (no bone injuries but a lot of joint pain). Then I fell in the driveway last summer - I was getting the dog out of the car and she tackled me by mistake while jumping out. Crash, I went down on the grass between the drive-ways which was good because it was soft, and again, no big injuries but my joints got wrenched around and twisted even worse. Two weeks ago, I fell again on a tiled floor and really banged up my hip, twisted my knee, and wrenched my back.

Meanwhile, I had been to my general practitione and to the hip doctor and got more x-rays of my back and hips and knees. Same story with the hips and knees but the news from the hip doctor was that my problem wasn't my hip but my lower back. He said the arthritis was far worse there and there was calcified soft tissue as well. He wanted me to do more physical therapy but in the past 3 years, I have tried physical therapy three times, twice at Cooper and once at Regional Orthopedics.

The main gist of it is a pt gives you a sheet print out of exercises to do at home. He then send you to a table or chair with a band, and tells you to do an exercise three times with 30 repititions each set. Then he goes to sit at his computer. When you are done the process repeats - an exercise, 3 sets of 30 repetitions until you have done an hour and about 15 excercises. I did this for 6 weeks, then another season I did it for 8 weeks. Mostly I had some minor initial improvement but the final 8 weeks course left me almost unable to walk, my hip got so sore. My gp said the repititions may have inflamed the joint.

Through all of this, I had been doing Chair Yoga which helped a little with stretching and relaxation but not with strength.

This last fall was my wake-up call. If I didn't do something to get strong, things were going down hill fast. I felt determined enough to really get motivated and today I signed up and started at Planet Fitness again. Sabrina is the person you usually see at the counter at Planet Fitness and she is a bright, beautiful, friendly, out-going and super encouraging human being.

I have had so much pain, there was no fear of me overdoing it. I could hardly turn the pedals around on the bike, my knee and hip were so stiff and painful. But I was able to do five minutes on the bike as a start, then I did each of the arm and back machines in the 30 minute room and one abs machine, only 20 reptitions on each. The seated stepper was the easiest for my legs in terms of pain and I did ten minute on that.

The main point is that when I left, I could already walk better than I was walking when I went in, the push of blood through my muscles and the loosening of my joints on the bike made a big difference. I am encouraged already by my progress and glad I took this step to save myself from the rapid and wholesale decline that was happening to me. I hope I feel ok tomorrow. My plan is to go Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, then throw in an extra short work-out whenever I have free time and feel like it. I am hopeful and confident that this is going to make a big improvement in me. It may even help me get a grip on my weight!

If you are looking for something to do for yourself that isn't expensive, I couldn't think of any better way to begin than by signing up at Planet Fitness and getting started - start small and build big! I will keep you posted on my progress.

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

A Fall and a slump and 6 steps to get out of it

Two days ago, I suffered my second fall in a year. I am at that age where falls become our greatest danger; I will be 79 in a couple of weeks. My fall was my own fault, the result of a careless move. I have been trying to be more careful and mindful in what I do and to be aware of what is dangerous and needs to be avoided.

Anyhow, as so often happens, I didn't feel the full repercussions of the fall, which ocurred on Friday, until today, Sunday! When I went to my car this morning for an errand, I could hardly make it to the car. In my fall, I was stepping up with my right leg and my left slipped out from under me and I crashed backwards on my fortunately well padded posterior and my creaky back. I used my arms to push myself up from a kneeling position, the only way I can get up now. What this brought to light was the weakness of both my legs and arms.

On Saturday, I felt well enough to walk the dog, but as the day wore on my arthritic hip and my knee with the torn meniscus and arthritis got worse. This morning I really felt it. I am forced to drag my cane around the house for safety today.

As I have written many times in this blog, I have my own tried and true recipes for getting out of a slump. I am determined NOT to WASTE any of my precious life-time in fruitless negativity. My personal 6 are: 1.Walk the dog 2.Read a magazine 3.Engage in a short art project (make a card, do a small water color painting, maybe of a botanical nature or maybe a landscape) 4.Look at my photo roll 5.Watch a tv series on my laptop 6.Listen to an audiobook 7.Talk or text a friend 8.Eat a treat (a milkshake, Tate's walnut chocolate chip cookies)

Today in my e-mail feed, NPR offered 6 tips to jump start yourself out of slump, many of them overlapped with my own, but some had surprising and useful notes: 1.The walk of course (surprise addtion - give yourself a challenge - note down 6 kinds of trees, or 6 kinds of flowers) 2.The NPR 6 tips included a cold shower. It does something to your endorphins. Good luck if you want to try this - I hate the cold and would never take a cold shower on puurpose! 3.The NPR tips mentioned a walk down nostalgia lane, perhaps through photographs or a talk with a friends about 'the old days' whatever your old days may have been. I have done this with scrapbooking! 4.Of coure NPR mentioned lunch with a friend - a stand-by of mine! 5.Do something kind for someone. (I do this as well - I have a regular list of ;rojects like the Free Books Project that I participate in) 6.Keep a gratitude journal (I do this too, every day)

So there you are, NPR and I have given you a good number of free and easy tips to lift yourself out of any funk you may have fallen into. Another one from NPR and from me i

7.Eat something good (you may be hungry) I get myself the occasional food treat and I find a Dunkin Donuts Latte' does me a world of good. I had one today!

Speaking of this moment: I don't spend frivolously but I do find a new top or shoes or a pair of new slacks can sometimes give a boost. I am wearing a plaid hooded zip up flannel shirt/jacket that I bought myself for my birthday from L.L.Bean. It is soft and warm and it was on sale! I had a latte' this morning which always boosts my mood and energy, I took my dog for a short ride since we couldn't walk due to my injury, and I have written this blog and am about to watch a tv series on my laptop called The Lincoln Lawyer - not too violent, not negative, likeable characters and clever plots! Also I must mention my cats who give me hours of enjoyment watching them, having them sit on my lap or beside me on the sofa purring, and it has been provent that petting your cat or dog will lower your blood pressure. I find it soothing! I am grateful for my pets, my home (humble though it may be) the weather, my sister, my friends, my lifetime engagement wit art and writing, and living in America, and in New Jersey, and in my nice little town of Mt. Ephraim! There is much much more that I am grateful for but I am done here for today!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happy Trails - Jo Ann