Art and Experience

Today, October 15. I decided to write a post about my Art Experience and some recent shows. For anyone new to this blog or who hasn't known me for very long, I was a teacher for my adult work life. And I have been an artist all my life. First I taught high shool English after graduating from Glassboro State College, then I took a second college degree at Rutgers and taught Art in a grade school, and finally, after some years teaching in the Saturday Lab School at the University of the Arts, I took my Masters in the Art of Teaching and became an adjunct professor in the graduate program there. When I retired and my daughter had grown and gotten a career of her own, I had the time and energy to devote myself to painting. Through all the rest of the years, I did art work whenever I could get the time and I did a lot of wood but printing and drawing. As I got older and arthritis set in my hands, I switched to acrylic painting. I had done a lot of oil painting in my graduate art program but I wanted to move away from the solvents.

Fortunately, I discovered The Station Art Gallery and Cafe in Merchantville, the town where I had gone to High School. They have a running program of classes and group art shows through their Eiland Arts Center and I was delighted when I began to enter my work and was accepted for their shows. I have been showing my work there for about 10 years. During that time, for the last five years I also entered work in the annual Haddon Fortnightly March Women's History exhibition called Through A Woman's Eyes and I have won two prizes there. This year for the first time, I entered work in the Camden County Art and Cultural Heritage Show and won an Honorable Mention and also had work in the Croft Farm Spring into the Arts Show. In a week, I will be entering three photographs in their annual photography juried exhibition.

My major at Rutgers was printmaking, but I turned to painting because it is much easier than accessing a printing press, or, as I said before, woodcut printing which gets hard on the hands over time. Two prizes I have won were in works including fabric. For the celebration of 100 years of Suffrage, I did a panel of five fabric "handbags" each having a "page" of fabric with a small painted portrait of a woman in a particular field. One bag was women in sports, with Billy Jean King in front, another Woen in the Arts, with Judy Chicago on the cover, and another on Writing with Rachel Carson on the Cover. That piece of 20 "pages" won the first prize in the show. >p/> A show this Spring about which I was very happy was the Fundraiser for Fishtails Animal Rescue. Dozens of artists contributed 6 x 6 inch paintings of anomals, each one selling for $50 which went directly to the animal rescue. I contributed 7 paintings and 4 of them sold. I have cats and a dog and it made me very happy to do this charity event for a shelter and rescue group.

My latest fabric work was for the Haddon Fortnightly Show and it was a cork board with "Pennants" in blue felt with a "medallion" on each that depicted a "Modern Woman" of some fame and xuccess. It has been the joy and accomplishment of my retirent to follow half a dozen years of volunteer work at various Historic Sites such as Red Bank Battlefield, with this flourishing career in local art shows. I have met many wonderful people and enjoyed sharing my work and seeing the work of others Also during this time, I was able to get Friends from Woodbury Meeting to help me turn an empty area in an adjacent building into a small Art Gallery where two other Friends and I have held a couple of Art Shows. Our gallery is called The Friendship Gallery. We hope to do more with this site in the future.

I hope you feel inspired to do your art whether it is woodworking, stained glass, painting, quilting or whatever your media of choice, and that you, too, find a way to share that work with others! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Caves of Mystery - a review of documentaries

On pbs passport right now, there is a series called First Peoples. It has 6 episodes. It is not only utterly fascinating but also strikingly beautiful in the landscape filmed in it. The episodes cover the departure and arrival of waves of early humans from the cradle of humanity in Africa to - 1:The Americas, 2:Africa, 3:Asia, 4:Europe, and 5:Astralia. Naturally humans didn't arrive in those places chronologically, but it is the way they decided to open the series. Humans evolved in Africa over milions of years in many branches of hominids from primates. I can't remember many of the kinds of hominids, but some of them were Homo habilis, homo erectus, homo ergaster. The evolution is NOT a straight line but more like a shrub with many branches some of which existed at the same time as others.

This is such an evolving history, that even up to 2 years ago, new species and new information has been discovered. Some of the most recent discoveries have been Denisovans in the Balkans and Homo Naledi in Africa.

My introduction to this history was through the world of Art which begins with the art in famous caves like Lascaux and Chauvet in France, and Altamira in Spain among others. Anyone who loves art must be entranced by the cave art at Lascaux and Chauvet in particular. The animals depicted on the walls, both painted on with charcoal and ochre, as well as incised into the walls, are so alive they fairly gallop off the walls! They are truly splendid works of art. And they are the first works of art done by the newest and most successful branch of humanity, Homo Sapiens - US.

If you have the patience for it there is a fabulous book by Yuval Noah Harrari which was improbably enough, a NYT bestseller, called Sapiens. If not, watch these documentaries and you will be captured by this mysterious and evolving discovery of our human origins.

A good place to begin is the pbs series First Peoples. Passport costs a one-time fee of $60 which is a great bargain because you can watch EVERYTHING PBS - Masterpiece Theater, NOVA, Finding your Roots, every pbs program there has been PLUS Walter Presents, which is a European distributor that offers all the most popular tv series showing in Europe.

If you have Netflix, you can also watch Unknown Cave of Bones. It is a great voyage of discovery that the viewer can make with the archaeologists down a cave network where early hominids, not quite apes, not quite humans, carried their dead and buried them. This is a shattering discovery because until this cave was discovered in the 21st century, it was thought that burying the dead and making and using tools was what separated us from early branches of hominids. But these small brained hominids not only carried their dead through a maze of tunnels to a burial chamber where they dug the graves and arranged the bodies, but they also buried one with a stone tool! It wasn't ever thought that hominids this primitive made tools. To go along on this journey with the archaeoogists, anthropologists, and the many kinds of experts working in radiology and scanning technologies as well as forensic reconstruction, tune into this great documentary. I felt the reverberation of their excitement at each discovery.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams, is a beautiful documentary by a long time favorite German filmaker of mine, Werner Herzog. He has the balance of being just a bit eccentric and different without losing the plot, so his films are just that little bit out of the ordinary but not so much off track that you get lost. In this film, his own personal engagement is palpable. It is like exploring with a lively friend. The filming on all of these documentaries is gorgeous but most so in this one. Also, the caves filmed by Herzog are no longer open to the public due to damage by outdoor air and breathing which brought mold and erosion to the ancient wall art, so this is your chance to see spectacular cave art that you can't see any other way.

Each of these documentaries is so engaging that I have watched them more than once. Some I have seen three or more times like Cave of Forgotten Dreams. And if you are captivated, you may want to rent a most gorgeous film which I saw three times in the theatre and half a dozen times on tv called Quest for Fire! It is beautiful in the landscape and totally immerses you in a past that is gone forever. I believe the film was loosely based on the novels of French author Jean Auel. The books were surprising best sellers at the time they were released in 1980. I read them all, but if I remember correctly the first was Clan of the Cave Bear. I gave them all away years ago.

I am always engaged in trying to pare down my enormous collection of books. Every room in my small house has a floor to ceiling wall to wall book case and living here is like living in a cosy little dusty book shop. Well I hope you are tempted to watch one or all of these documentaries and if you do and want to talk about them contact me at

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happy Trails - even back into the millions of years ago! Jo Ann

ps. If you want to visit a museum into our South Jersey pre-historical past, go to Greenwich Prehistory Musseum and see the immense collection of stone projectiles and the clay pots reconstructed from those left behind by Indigenous people. This little museum is in a town worth your visit on its own merits. Most of Ye Greate Street houses are from the 1700's.

A Child Leads the Way - 7 year old Volunteer, award winner

Naomi Fife of Louisville. Kentucky has fostered roughtly 95 animals in her short life, obviously with the support of her family. She has recieved special recognition from several National Organizations for her volunteeer work, including PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) which awarded her the Hero to Animals Award. She is certainly a hero in my book!

Another encouraging news item that I cam across recently was that in Spain they have just passed legislation to protect animals but stating they are no longer to be considered "things" but sentient beings and famiy members. The law has many provisions a good deal of which pertain to animals in families and their care as well as their disposition in disputes, but mainly what it does is it shows that people are evolving in their concepts of the rights of animals. Animal Rights groups as well as many celebrities have pleaded with the Pope to stop priests from giving blessings at bull fights. Most agree that this is a cruel and depressig show of inhumanity. Bulls are stabbed and tortured by men on horseback to make them mad with pain and weaker before they are stabbed to death by a matador, for entertainment. There is nothing brave about stabbing a weakened and tortured animal. Once, in Spain, many years ago, I went with my then-husband to a bull fight and I was crushed to see the animal trying its best to climb the fence around the ring trying to escape its tormentors before it was stabbed to death. The spectacular left me sickened and in despair that anyone would find this entertaining.

From my earliest childhood in Philadelphia, as a shy child, I found friendship and comfort in the companionship of our neibghborhood cats and dogs. In those days, animals, like children, were let out in the morning and came home for dinner (of course we chidlren went to school in the hours between). Many afternoons I spent in the gravel yards in front of the garages in an alley at the end of our street in the brick canyons of South Philadelphia. The gravel gleamed in the sunshine like gems. I sat there digging in the gravel while cats and dogs did their daily walk-about and stopped to sit with me and visit. My family has always had a few cats and a couple dogs at all times. I currently have five cats and a dog. Even though, now, as an accomplished and confident adult, I happen to have many human friends, my animal companions are the closest to my heart as well as in my life. My cats sit with me as I read or paint or watch tv, and my dog makes me take a walk every day whether I want to or not. The only sad part is when they die. One of my ways of resolving my grief at the loss, is to adopt another fur friend who needs a good home and to honor the love of my lost friend by sharing it with a new one.

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Camden County Historical Society

Camde County Historical Society not only provides and excellent magazine for members, it has a great on-line list of events:

:https://cchsnj.org/history-mon...

One of the many useful features in the magazine is the middle section map and list of all the myriad historical sites in Camden County. October is South Jersey History Month and there are a great nuber of very interesting events coming up beginning this Saturday with a tour of the Haddonfield Friends (Quaers) Meeting House and cemetery from 1:00 to 4:00 but check the time, please! I hope the link I copied and pasted works, if not, just try the cchsnj.org address and take it from there. I strongly suggest you rsubscribe to the online e-mail notification. I have tried a lot of the events they have listed over the years, most recently the railroad station visits that I enjoyed with a friend of mine. We met so many nice people and I have been a big local railroad fan since childhood.

Happy Trails my South Jersey fan friends! and in particular Happy Halloween! Oh, and before I forget ifyou are a Camden County Senior, Mount Ephraim has a huge listing of daily free classes now available at the Charles Dougherty Senior Center on Lambert Ave and the railroad. Parking is in the back and it is handicap accessible. I took the Chair Yoga class on Tuesday at 11:00 a.m. and will be taking the Chair Yoga class again today at 1:00, but there are dozens of other free classes to sign up for. You can get the brochure at the Mt. Ephraim Borough Hall on Black Horse Pike or drop in around midday during the week when classes will be in session and you can get a brochure and sign up for a class. You will find gardening, games, fitness, chair yoga, tea party, and many other classes, don't miss out on this free opportunity!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Places to Go - Happy Autumn 9/21/24

Well, I have been doing more writing about thoughts than places as I do more thinking than exploring these days, so I decided to do a post about places to visit. Last month on our monthly lunch-out, my great-niece Alex and I had lunch at the Blue Plate in Mullica Hill and it was a great lunch! We picked up a brochure while there with lots of colorful and enticing Mullica Hill Fall events listed.

22nd anual Ghost Walk (as evening descends) - Haunted Main Street Oct. 5th

Mullica Hill Fall Festival and Living History Weekend October 12 & 13 with music, craft courtyard, build a scarecrow, games and more! You can stop for lunch at the Blue Plate while there and enjoy a delicious meal!

Ghastly Tales Tour taises mone for the GAR Civil War Museum in Phila. call 856-223-5440 or www.ticketleap.com for $6 tickets.

The brochure also listes some interesting shops to visit. I would like to go to Brainstorm Books at 43 S. Main St., Mullica Hill. Looking at the ad reminded me of my loved and lost books store that used to be in Mullica Hall, Murphy's Book Loft. Among their 2 stories of many roomed book nooks, there was a room devoted to old magazines and I spent many hours and dollars buying magazines from my birth year and the birth years of my relatives and friends. Indeed those magazines felt like old friends. It broke my heart when I went there one day and it was gone. I never saw a book store like it before and probably never will again as people move more and more into tablets and amazone and the few remainin Barnes and Nobles.

Well Happy Autumn Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Whoops, I almost forgot the Batsto Glass and Bottle Show is tomorrow 9/22 9:00 to 3:30.

Harris Trump Debate - a Balancing act for smart women

Last night I watched the Sept. 10, 2024 debate and once again, not for the first time, I saw an intelligent, composed woman attempting to debate a belicose, distressed and rattled man. There is an old saying, when asked what men are most afraid of in regard to women, the rply was that they would be laughted at. Women, asked the same question replied they were afraid they would be murdered." That observation is a sedimentary layer under all relations between men and women. The overwhelming percentage of shooters are men. The overwhelming number of victims of domestic violence are women. Men have used economic power to control and force women into submission for most of our history. And one of the ways that has has endured is because until the birth control revolution, women were disabled by pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing and child rearing. We couldn't do all that and hold survival wage paying jobs at the same time. But things have changed in the past hundred yeats and everyone is still adjusting to it.

It is true in my own personal life that I have had to face up to male violence both in my family and my marriage. This implied threat is apparent to most of us women and we saw it in the Hilary Clinton debate with Trump when he stalked around her, and used loud, bullying tones of voice. And Hillaries response was so typical of the majority of women, she was polite and restrained.

Last night, I saw the emergence of the NEW woman, the professional woman, the woman who has had the tough job, prosecutor and who can be both self-controlled and focused and assertive. It is a balancing act. Intelligent women who are assertive are often called 'aggressive' and it has happened to me. Once in a group project, when the group was floundering and I had prepared a flow chart with a time and task component, I put it on the white board to help us settle down and get organized so we could finish in the time allotted to us and one of the male techers said "I didn't know you were so aggresssive!" It happened that just at that moment our first female Superintendent of Schools was coming in to check on our progress and she said, "If you show control and you are a man it is competent and assertive, but if you are a woman it is bossy anc aggressive." So true. Yet we have seen the evidence in the 20th and 21st century of women leaders who have done exceptional work. First let me begin with one of my all time favorite women leaders, Golda Meir! She led the nation of Israel in a time of desperation and conflict to rival what is going on at the present and led them skillfully and safely into the future. Second let me honor Angela Merkel who not only led Germany for 20 years as Chancellor, first woman to hold that position, but she was known as the "de facto Leader of the Europen Union." When Trump traveled to Germany he refused to shake her outstretched hand.

Even other women can get nervous when women ask for too much power in the world, as shown when Phyllis Schlafly organized middle American housewives to help her defeat the Equal Rights Amendment. She felt and convinced other women to feel that they would lose the shelter and protection of men if they got too equal and that we are not, in fact, equal. She convinced women they were safer under the protection of men than independence. She was afraid we would be drafted into the military (there is no more draft but we join and serve). She was afraid we would share bathrooms (we do have to share some unisex bathrooms but I have yet to see a crime wave resulting).

Fear! Fear of strong women has been with us through the ages. One of the arguments that has been used to support the exalted state of men in the patriarchy is that men die for us. That ignores the fact that through our entire species history women have died in childbirth at alarming rates for the whole human race. We die too.

What Kamala did in the debate was that she found the fine line of being intelligent and assertive without alarming men with her control. She faced the intimidating bluster of the orange faced bully with composure, and she hit back when he lobbed bad balls. That analogy works for me because it brings tomind the Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs tennis match which I saw again recently oon a pbs passport special called Gods of Tennis. I watched that match in a bar with my then husband. I was silent and watchful and worried because I knew there would be mockery and humiliation from the men drinking in that bar if Billy Jean lost. She hadn't wanted to play Bbby riggs but he goaded her into it. And she beat him because she was faster, stronger, more controlled and YOUNGER. That was the excuse used by several outraged male acquaintances of mine to explain this unexpected and disturbing loss on the part of Riggs. My teacher pals said, "NO wonder she won, she was younger than he was." There ha to be a reason. But what a blow that was for the rest of us women, so tired of the pinched backsides, the snide remarks, the lack of safety in dark hallways or storage rooms, or buses or speedline trains, or offices, or gymnasiums, or anywhere for that matter. It was like when the mild kid loses it finally after too much torment and socks the bully. We saw it in the Christmas movie A Christmas Story, when Ralphy beats up the yellow eyed neighborhood bully who has terrified all the children for their after-school walk home.

Kamala did it with her intelligence and composur, skills honed from her years in the courtroom, and there are more and more of us each generation, finding our places in careers and professions that were formerly denied to us: law, medicine, military service, technology, science. Our buried skills are being excavated and honed. Even in my own small town, we have our first female Mayor! She had a career as a Union Representative, another career that demands a practice of both self control and assertiveness.'

It would be the celebration of a century if we achieved our first fmale president. We have been climbing this Mount Everest for a long time, perhaps this century we will achieve the summit and the country and the world weill be better and safer because of it!

Happy Trails, Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happiness Project - Tom and Harry! Sept. 10, 2024

Yesterday when I was walking my dog with a neighbor friend along the railroad tracks, we ran into an old man I have passed often while walking that route, his name is Tom. He alway has a calm, pleasant expression and is good at a short but happy conversational exchange, often about the weather and our walking habit. I always tell him what an inspiration he is to me because he is 92 years old!. He looks fine and seems fine although I have a dim memory of him once telling me about his health issues, whatever they were; they don't hold him back! He enjoys the weather and the change of the season as do I and he is out in all of them as am I thans to my dog who WILL NOT take no for an answer when it is time to walk. In really poor walking conditions, we compromise and I take her for a drive. Tom is a happy man. He gets outdoors every day and looks at the world and has chats with others of us, the walkers, the neighbors, the mobile.

Tom is a happy man although he is alone and old. Today, after our walk, I took a drive to get myself a treat - a hot caramel latte' size large, and visit a couple of my favorite parks: Proprietor's Park, and Red Bank Battlefield in National Park (no dogs allowed so we just park and look at the river but don't get out of the car.) Being there reminded me of an old pal, Harry Schaeffer, who lives in National Park and I knew him during my volunteer days in the 90's and early 2000's before my heart 'episode' and hospitalization two years ago. It was my last volunteer job out of half a dozen. Harry was also a volunteer and during the hey day of volunteering at the James and Ann Whitall House on Red Bank Battlefield, we and the others, took many field trips related to our Revolutionary War history interest. We went to Princeton Battlefield, we went to Monmouth College Library to see the skull of Count VonDonop (not actually his skull as dna proved but that of a native American Woman) and William Penn's plantation among many other trips. Harry is retired now from Sunoco and he also volunteers at the Gloucester County Historical Society, in particular the Museum on Broad St. in Woobury. I used to volunteer there at the genealogy library in back. Harry is a happy man. He has interests and social events and purpose in his life and he does good and it is appreciated.

I compare these two men to people who are stuck indoors, have no interests except endless tv, and who are isolated and purposelesd and lonely. These two men, one my age the other 15 years older, have a gift, the gift of getting out and about and doing something every day! This is a big part of happiness!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happiness Series continued - a lunchbox and a flash of memory

In an antique store or a yard sale some years ago, for a small sum of perhaps $1 or $3, I bought a battered Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunchbox circa 1954. To be honest, I can't really remember what lunchbox I carried or if I even carried a lunchbox back in those days. I do remember my daughter's lunchboxes from a period where she was engrossed in Jurasssic Park and Star Wars. I know she had many others, but that's all I remember. Anyhow, recently I had that lunchbox out for a Seniors Group Theme of 'Back to School.'

Having that lunch box out for a week or so had an unintended consequence. Day dreams, I think, have some similarities to night dreams in that in my case, they are often inspired by an object or image or interaction from the awake world, but the imagination takes that inspiration and weaves a fictional account with it. Somethng a bit different is the flashes of memory, vague and abstract that I sometimes experience in regard to the abovementioned objects or interactions, or a song on the radio. This, I think, it a shared experience with many people.

Today, after walking the dog (Uma) and stopping at the Dunkin Donuts for a caramel latte' and then a trip to ShopRite for dog food and frozen vegetables, I was sitting on the porch basking in the marvelous early autumn weather - brilliant but gentle sunshine with equally polite breezes wafting cool air over all. And I had this distinct sense of happiness, an infinite happiness familiar to me, but one I think I have rarely recorded in my journal or here on the blog. I was taken back to a time in childhood, not an event, but a FEELING. It was a feeling of infinity, a timeless floating joyful connection with all-time. It was Saturday afteroons watching the more kind cowboy movies of the fifties, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and The Lone Ranger. These heroes were restrained, reasonable, capable, kindly and reliable, not violent or melancholy or bitter or resentful like so many anti-heroes of today. They had pals and orderly ranches and relationships with the townsfolk.

But the feeling was more about how I felt at the time, and I have had flashes of that feeling from other childhood experiences too - sitting in the wild meadow beside our housing development on a sunny free day, looking at the golden grasses waving, and watching the insects going about their busy lives. It is the feeling I had on long drives with my dad when I was young and later with my boyfriend and husband, Mike, when we traveled across Europe or across the U.S. - long quiet drives looking out the window and Quenching my ever present hunger for visual stimulation. One such drive, windows down, crossing the prairies, we were inundated with the intoxicating fragrance of sweet grass. It was a transporting fragrance, sweet and enveloping and heavenly.

These flashes of that feeling of quiet joy and infinity come when I am disengaged, after walking the dog and sitting on the porch, or driving somewhere, listening to the radio or simply sitting in silence. They are happiness, and they require a kind of neutrality in order to rise. Another one is the seashore, the smell of the salt air, especially in early fall, after the busy season is over, and it brings back my Grandmother Mabel's home, the ocean breeze lifting the sheer curtains, the peace and orderliness, and the quiet and the connection with eternity, and it brings back her, just like the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunchbox brings back those afternoons and the black and white tv cowboy shows with my beloved godfather, Uncle Neal, a quiet, calm, kind man, comfortable with silent companionship, and safe, a self-restrained man in starched and ironed shirts, clean shaven and smelling of old spice after-shave. I loved him and I still do. Those flashes are a visit with eternity and a visit with lost loved ones and they are happiness, not fraught with grief or sorrow - pure and clear moments of happiness- a bridge to the great Oneness. Happy trails, here there and everywhere!

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happiness continued September 9, Friday Night

It is an overcast evening and I am watching a murder mysteries series on pbs passport called Ridley. The murder is, of course, "up on the moors" but that is hardly relevent. The point is I just made a fresh blender of blueberry smoothie and my dog is asleep beside me amd the cats are all napping and I am happy.

A major contributor to my happiness today is that I went to Chair Yoga class this morning. It is the new 4 week session at The Station and it is from 10:30 to 11:15 in the upstairs gallery, so I had a chance to look at the new Halloween Art Show "eerie" before class began. It is a mild class so there is no anxiety about jostling any of my poor creaky joints. It is meditation in motion when you sincerely put your mind to it and don't just 'go through the motions' and I make that a practice. When I went downstairs, I bought take-out roasted cauliflower soup and a small container of cous cous salad to take home for lunch. It was my healthy alternative choice. I usually buy pumpkin spice latte' for a treat after class, but I want to sleep better tonight. My sleep has been a bit rocky lately.

So as it has been my habit to take note of when I am happy and to attempt to find the source, I am doing that here because this evening, I found myself happy! Unlike some, I am happy in quiet and in solitude and especially when I have a good mystery to follow.

Another source of happiness for me is lunch with friends and tomorrow, I will meet 5 or 6 former teaching colleagues for lunch at one of my all time favorite lunch places, Maritsa's in Maple Shade. I haven't been there for awhile and I haven't been out to lunch since Monday a week ago, so I am looking forward to it. All the happiness articles I have read put socializing up in the top three on the list of things that make us happy and I agree!

Another thing, I do love moving into autumn, especially this early start when it hasn't gone chilly yet, but autumn is in the air and the business of summer has bedded down.

Sadly, I don't have the frantic and funny racing around of squirrels this year. The diminishment of woodlands in what was once our Garden State, has brought owls and hawks into the yard and they are silently behind the scenes picking off the squirrels. My sister was here on Thursday and she found a large handsome hawk feather in the front yard. That's another thing that makes me happy, my sister comes over once every couple of weeks to help with chores. I call it the hundred dollar day because I pay her a hundred for 4 hours and we often, nowadays, also have a little lunch. She does a wonderful job for me, works far above and beyond, and I really enjoy her company. I am lucky to have a sister nearby and one I love and get along with. She is great company. Cosy up and settle in for the Autumn - Happy Trails, my friends!

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happiness Project Aug. 24, 2024 Saturday

It is a remarkably beautiful day of cool, low humidity, sunshine and I have taken the day off since all the chores are done and my dog has been walked. My pleasure of choice is a day of reading and I chose the newest DISCOVER magazine because it has a cover story about our closest animal friend: the dog, the cat, the horse. But in the article I want to discuss here, is a quote "In the late 1990's and early 2000's functional MRI technology uncovered what happens in the brain when we experience joy. The nucleus acccumbens (the pleasure center) lights up In the late 2000's the same technology also revealed the nucleus accumbens activates when we make a meaningful purchase." The article I was reading "Collecting Your Thoughts" page 44 discusses how collecting enhances memory, forges new connections in the brain, and triggers relaxation as well as the pleasure center. The article goes on to describe the difference between random item hoarding, purposeless and leading to lack of self-esteem, and collecting with purpose, goal, discernment.

I have a lot of small collections: postcards, books, ceramic teapots and cups shaped like little houses, and little wooden houses. I have a scattering of small tins, and an assortment of strange single objects that simply touched me, like a tintype photograph, a perfectly spherical river rock, some fossils, several kinds of World's Fair memorabilia. I also have a scattering of old old school supplies, a very old pencil box, and I used to have a collection of golden rule rulers which disappeared somehow. They did give me pleasure, when I found them and when I looked at them and it gives me pleasure to still have them in the glass fronted curio cabinet in my living room.

A few yars back a couple of women authors, Marie Kondo, and a Swedish woman wrote books about clearing out. One was called Swedish Death Cleaning, about getting rid of all your stuff before you die. I immediate took umbrage at the thought - I like my stuff, lots of things have connections to memories, like that spherical rock from a creek in Plattsburgh, New York where I hiked with a man I was once married to and in love with and his best friend, now deceased. That rock, even just the thought of it, conjures the sound of the rushing water and the whisper of the trees and the smell of the woods, not to mention the memory of being in love and being young with those two young, strong,lithe men, one now old and one dead.

On a practical basis, collections become museums and keep a record of our material culture and history. One of my favorite museums is the Museum of American History in West Deptford (Andoloro Way, Westville) in a farm house, the collection of a lifetime of the proprietor and his family: fishing reels, fossils, electric trains, farm implements, green glass telephone pole insulators, and Christmas train platform figures made from melted down bullet casings in Germany after World War II, my favorite items in his vast collection!

Today the pleasure center of my brain was alight with the joy of reading this much aticipated magazine and having the afternoon off to read, and finding support for my natural inclination to collect objects of interest and delight. I am glad to know that science backs me up!

On Monday, I am going to lunch with the great-neice and we are going to Rancocas Woods, Creek Road where there is a collection of antique shops that I love to visit. The fragrance of the burning scented candles and the hand-made soaps enhances the oy I experience in visiting again with objects I remember from my personal past, for example a pair of book ends made from old crank pencil sharpeners, from the days before electric sharpeners. Happy trails collectors! wrightj45@yahoo.com

The Happiness Project - Post - August 10, Saturday 2024

On Monday this past week, my Seniors Group met as we do each month on the first Monday. Our theme this month was happiness and the members were invited to write in their notebooks each time they felt happy during the month beetween Meetings. When we read off our notes, we put them on the whiteboard in categories:

1.Friends - making and nurturing friendships a priority (phone call, lunch, text, card - try all)

2.Family - visiting with family members (even something small like sending a card or postcard)

#.Nature - taking walks, taking a drive in the country, sitting on the porch or in the yard, pant something, habe some flowers on your porch

4.Entertainments - watching a good tv series, a movie

5.Health- making sure we get vegetables and fruits daily and staying hydrated

6.Spirtual - a spiritual community, meditation, if you are averse to organized relion, try YOGA or as I do - CHAIR YOGA New class beginning in a week at The STATION in Merchantville on Chestnut St. and ongoing classes at LIVE IN JOY in Audubon on Merchant St.

7.Doing good for others - participating in programs to help others (for example, my Meeting donates books to the Free Books Project in Camden at Newton Friends Meeting, Cooper Street) volunteering

8.Pets - a pet from an animal rescue shelter can not only save the pet but save you from loneliness and boredom. They are affectionate, entertaining and fun and in my case, get me out walking!

9.Hobbies - painting, collage, scrapbooking, woodworking, quilting, knitting, crochet, gardening - doesn't matter what the hobby, it is all GOOD

10,sometimes you just need a treat! I don't support unhealthful food choices but sometimes you just need a cookie and tea or an ice cream or a shake (I like a latte') or a smoothie!

11, READ Along with our personal individual lists and examples, I had photocopied articles from AARP on happiness and one from Discover Magazine: Mar/Apr 2024 Discover Magazine, Positive Psychology 101 pg. 36

AARP The Magazine, JulyAug, 2024: One Woman's Search for Happiness, pg. 60 (to be honest I don't see how it would be much different for a man.

A piece of advice I picked up from the New York Times a couple of years ago was to make a note of each time you feel happy so you know what makes you happy, I noted that I feel elated and happy after I go out to lumch with friends, on the way home, the radio plays music I like and I feel content and happy

An old tried and true and studied tip, is to keep a gratitude journal which I do, daily. There is so much to be grateful for and it is a good idea to focus on that rather than on worries or problems.

Well this gives a lot of advice and suggestions In cae you are wondering if I do all these things, yes, I do. For example this morning, I walked my dog with a friend from the neighborhood whom I met through her husband doing yard work. We are now friends and go to Seniors Group together as well as WALKING the dog every day. Writing this blog is one of my many hobbies: and I am getting resources for my next painting to go in a show at The Station in Merchantvile and just this past Monday I put a painting in the Camden County Senors Art Show; so two hobbies! I make fruit smoothies with protein powder every other day to boost my nutrition and I have been a vegetarian for years!

Has all this made me happy! You bet! Do I ever get sad or down in the dumps! Yes I do. I had a couple of unpleasant experiences in the beginning of July that knocked me into a ditch, emotionally, but I WORKED at getting myself back out again. I wrote about it, talked about it with friends, got help, made a plan, and recovered by the end of the month. Feeling sad, feeling hurt, getting anxious are all normal parts of living, but it takes a practice to keep them from taking control of your life, and I prefer to use non-medical strategies for my own occasional setbacks. I have had longer periods that could be called depression, as in when my parents died, but as deep as I fell and as pervasive as my sorrow was, i kept working at it with my strategies and I pulled myself out. During the longer periods I had a lot of pressure from friends to get anti-epression medication, but I had faith in my own strategies from a lifetime of employing them. I just had to endure the sorrow for as long as it took (and it wouldn't be human not to suffer sorrow at such a monumental loss as the death of a parent) even though in case of my parents, it took a couple of years to pull myself back out of the pond of despair.

12, EXPERIMENT- It ocurred to me to ask myself what exactly happiness felt like to me? On my way to my sister's one day, I felt really happy and when I got there, I sat in the car for a few minutes and took note of what happiness felt like. It felt like a blooming in my chest like when a flower opens, and the world felt brighter and I felt a kind of "oneness" with everything around me, the trees, the flowers, the blue sky, the clouds! I felt light and eager and lifted up. That's what happiness felt like to me at that moment.

I hope this list gives any readers who happen on to my blog some tools to keep in your emotional health tool kit! Life is too precious to waste being unhappy or bored - do something and make the most of what time you have! Final tip - keep in mind the word FOCUS and notice what you focus on. You can change your focus just like with binoculars are a radio station.

Happy Trails, Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

The Road to Publication

A lot of people have a story to tell, maybe most of us! Some of us also like to TELL stories, which is a different kind of thing. I have been very lucky in that I have had for friends a poet who actually had pofessionally published a book of his work, Dan Maguire, (recently deceased,sadly) and an author who has had published three books she has written on Pinelands history: The Forks, Ghosttowns and Other Quirkly Places in the Pine Barrens, and Batsto: Jewel of the Pines, Barbara Solem.

Both of my formally published friends got their breaks through associations. Dan knew someone who admired his work and made a connection for him with a publishing company. Most of the poets I have known with publihed books had to go the independent publishing route, which I will get to.

Barb Solem was friends with a man who worked for a New Jersey publishing company, Plexus. Her friend was an editor for the company and he was the connection that made her route open. The division headed by Barbara's friend, no longer exists and he doesn't work there any more.

I published three books 'independently' which means that I found a printing company that would print and bind my books for a fee, Perfect Printing in Mount Laurel, NJ. The man who did my editing and formatting is no longer with this company and they won't do that anymore so you now have to pay to have editing and formatting done before you submit your manuscript, tat is, unless you know how to do it yourself. Since mine was done so long ago, telling the price is almsot usseless because I am sure it is significantly higher and when I looked into an edition service in a strip mall on White Horse Pike (I no longer remember the name, the carge for editing and formatting alone was $1500). When I had my books printed it was $1000 for 100 books. Later it was $1000 for 50 books previously formatted and edited (by a friends).

Writing for pleasure or writing for publication. I was writing because I was driven by a story I wanted to tell. My father was in the Civilian Conservation Corps and I learned a lot about it and its subsidiary the WPA. When I was hiking in the Pine Barrens, which I did quite a lot in the old days, I came across a lot of CCC History since they did a good bit of conservation work. My first book: White Horse Black Horse was pure fiction involving a photographer and a writer in 1937 who were hired by the CCC to write part of the State Guide on New Jersey. Each State had one of those guides which gave a comprehensive written portrait of the State at that time. Teams of writers, photographers, and artists travelled all the roads of each state documenting historic sites, architecture, and geographical, historical, social observations of all kinds. You can still buy the WPA State Guide to New Jersey, and it is fascinating. So the two characters in my novel travel New Jersey's back roads and they write and photograph labor struggles at Seabrook Farms, the crash of the Hindenburg, and so many other adventures. Also in the plot there is a love triangle which gets resolved by the end.

I loved my book and when I read the chapters, each carefully crafted to end with a cliff hanger, the writing group I attended at the time enjoyed it. Barb connected me to her editor at Plexus and I provided my manuscript. His response wasw that he was interested more in beach reading, and that if a book didn't grab him in the first three pages, it wasn't going to sell, so he wasn't interested. Instead of being defeated, I decided to get it printed myself and I did - TWICE! That gave me the freedom to sell the books (not many) when I gave talks at various historic sites, and to give away copies (which I did freely) to volunteers at historic sites.

I had the writing bug, so since I had tried my hand at a historical novel, I decided to try a more modern relationship novel set in a high school amongst the teachers. Published this one independly as well, didn't even try to go commercial. I just wanted it in book form.

My first book White Horse Black Horse actually gathered a small fan club. They took me out to lunch. I asked them what it was they enjoyed so much about my book and they said "Road Trip" and that gave me another idea.

When I was 21, my boyfriend was drafted and we married and went to Germany together for his tour of service. After he got out, we stayed in Europe for a year and lived in a Volkswagen Van traveling a wide circuit through Europe. I decided to write about that and I did; it is called 1969 Published independently with same process as before. I enjoyed that so much, even finding the write black and white photo for the cover! I gave most of the copies away at a high school reunion since my classmates would have been in the same historic frame. No, it was't that popular, although silence may not mean they didn't like it but just that they didn't read it! My experience is that often people want to tell a story more than they want to listen to or read one.

By then, I had written a historical novel, a relationship novel, and finally, a memoir, the work had brought me to the end of my book writing phase.

My published author friend has a friend or two and who have been commercially published as well and it appears that having an agent can be a big boost to get your work into a publisher. For me, the writing was the part I wanted, beyond that, I wasn't interested - marketing,interviews, speaking tours to generate interest or any of that. So it is a good idea to ask yourself WHY you are writing the book - do you have a great story to tell and you want others to read it? Do you want to make money from it?

There is a third way I almost forgot. The husband of a friend wrote a book on how to find a partner. He had met my friend via an internet dating service and he had a lot of advice. He used an online printing and marketing service. I don't know how much he spent but his book, in my opinion, was mostly things people should know withut a book, and I don't know how much success he had as my friend and I drifted apart when I left the gym where we both used to work out.

The writing that I do now is mostly for the sheer joy of it and I don't write books anymore - that is a LOT of work! I write this blog, my daily journal, and short pieces for an online newletter and a printed journal put out by the South Jersey Quaker community. That's enough for me. Mostly the work I do for those is book reviews or promoting charitable projects like The Free Books Project in Camden, NJ.

Things I think would help: join a writing group. If you want to publish professionally, get an agent and/or editor. Get a subscription to a writers magazine where you can find information on all of that. I bought mine at Barnes and Noble and subscribed to the one I liked best. "Writer" was in the title but that's all I remember.

I hope you find this helpful and I hope you enjoy writing for the sheer joy of it! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Finding Happiness Part 3 - The Olympics 2024 in Paris

The firt day I began to work seriously on getting my happiness back, I got out of my car in the driveway and I was greeted by the exquisite pink face of a Rose of Sharon blossom. There is a lot to be said about that. First of all, I was opening my eyes to the outside world, not inside my head making a list of grievances and defenses. That pink face was saying hello to me from the plant world. It reminded me of the first plant I ever met as a real entity in its own right - a pussy willow in my Grandmother's yard in Philadelphia.

We didn't have a yard at my house on Warnock Street. We lived a couple of blocks away in the pink brick canyons - asphalt in front, cocrete in back and red brick walls as far as the eye could see. We had one tree and nothing else green. My gentle, sad Irish grandmother told me the name of the shrub in her front yard, "Feel its bud, so soft, like a cat's paw, that's why it is called a Pussy Willow."

fifty years ago, I was one of the generation that made the grand esperiment in psychedelics. I was one of the lucky ones. I experienced the classic psychedilic experience of ONENESS. Perhaps it is because I was tripping outdoors and everyone was careful about making a peaceful scene for those who were tripping. I experienced oneness with the grass upon which I was sitting and the trees and plants and all the creatures. That sense of oneness has stayed with me and colored everything I have experienced since then. It is why I became a vegetarian. Last night I watched an old movie called 'The Perfect Storm' and to my eyes, the gill netting of the swordfish and the gutting and the cutting off of their faces - a horrific mutilation - such that I wasn't surprised when nature sent a giant wave to topple their boat and drive it to the bottom of the ocean.

But to get back to happiness, I have described some of the strategies I had set in motion that have been tried and true in the past: lunch with my great-niece, a ride in the park, a withdrawal from coflict and complicated relationships that had plunged me into my quick sand of unhappiness in the first place. This week, I persevered with the help of friends in getting a streaming service so I could follow the 2024 Olympics in Paris. It is untterly wondrous to see what young athletes are capable of achieving. The unimagineable level of perfection they not only aspire to but actually achieve is breathtaking.

I don't usually like to tie food in with happiness, but today, I went to my favorite Chinese take-out restaurant in Woodbury and got the vegetable soup with white rice and vegetarian spring rolls for lunch while I watched the young men's gymnastics. The lunch was nutritious and deicious and I liked that I enjoyed an exotic lunch while I watched the internationality of the Olympic games.

Yesterday, I treated myself to a classic vanilla milkshake from Cabana on Kings Higheay to go with my film festival ,another tried and true happness booster. Every summer for 30 years I have watched Jaws and Jurassic Park. Knowing these movies so well allows me to really think about themes and the structure of the plots and also the reverberation they are of classic literature as well as great art works I know. For eample I like to compare Jaws to Moby Dick and The Perfect Storm reminds me of the painting The Raft of the Medusa, and the Olympic sport of pommel horse reminds me of the Greek fresco The Bull Jumpers.

Each day the percentage of the day that I spent in happiness grew. At first I had flashes of happiness, then, it grew to half a day, and yesterday it was about 80 percent. I am sleeping much better now too. Sunday, I went to Friends Meetin and was truly overjoyed to see my two friends Marilyn and Diana. I had an excellent meditation and when, last night, the Woodbury Friends started texting with a problem that needed solving, I was able to stay out of it and just watch it go by. I was happy with my success, I think I may have reached 90 percent happiness yesterday and tomorrow I expect the same because I will enjoy lunch with my two best friends, Nancy Thomas and Barb Solem.

One of the "FLOW" activities in which I participated and didn't mention was that I copied adn pasted several photographs from my daughter's past four or five years into a collage and printed it out and put it into a frame for a gift. It made me happy to see all the successes she and her husband, Justin. have achieved, and also to know she is married to a kind, patient and appreciative husband. Lavinia texted me that she was at the Newport Folk Festival and I was so glad to hear that she was doing something so much fun! And that reminds me to mention that I have been doing the gratitudes and my journal EVERY DAY! I am immensely grateful for the happiness and health of my daughter and her husband. It is a treasure beyond measure.

Hope you are getting on the Happiness Trail too! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com (as always use my e-mail not comments section which is completely polluted by spammers and useless)

A Perfect Day@

I work pretty regularly on creating and maintaining my happiness. About a year ago, I began to cultivate the friendship of my great-niece, Alexandra, who had recently moved to New Jersey, close to where I live. We have a lot in common as we both worked in education, though she is very young and still full time employed. I have invited her out to lunch once a month since she moved here. Each month we try a different place, most of which have been places I have frequented in the past. We have been to The Station in Merchantville many times because I have had paintings in the seasonal group shows, and Maritsa's in Maple Shade because I really like it there. We have also been to Pat's Select Pizza Grill in Gloucester City, and many times to Charlie Browns in Woodbury. Today, a beautiful, cool, fresh and bright day after a long period of humid heat, we took a drive to Mullica Hill to The Blue Plate. I haven't been there in a long time and the building looked renovated and the menu has been refreshed. I found a delicious onion tart, which was caramalized onions in a pastry crust much like a croissant crust, light and crispy. I also had crispy brussel sprouts in a sauce with a sprinkle of goat cheese on top. Delicious! My niece had a grilled chicken sandwich and fries. We were both delighted ith our lunch and the service and the lovely drive through Mullica Hill which, although it has changed a lot since the antiques business took a nose dive in the past decade or so, still has its beauty and quaint charm. My niece is a quiet and polite young woman and we get along so well that our get-togethers are invariably pleasant and relaxing. It is a great gift to be able to have a relationship with a young person, especially one as intelligent and warm and courteous as she is. Happiness is good relationships, happy social gatherings, and perfect weather! Take someone you love out to lunch one day soon and if you are looking for the best place, go to The Blue Plate in Mullica Hill!

How I lost my happiness one week and got it back the next

Happy 4th of July 2024

Increasingly as I get older, happiness and health take top biing in my personal interests. I read a lot about both and I practice the things I learn. Happiness feels good. I like it. In order to keep it, you have to cultivate it, practice it. But even so, you can get tripped up in unexpected ways, just the way we older folks fall. Everything is going just fine and your shoe catches on an uneven board (because we shuffle more because our hip and knee joints and our backs have problems) and down we go.

Just a couple of days ago, in the house, I bent over to pick up a tissue and I tipped over like a pile of blocks. Fortunately, I was at home in the living room and beside the Decon's bench, which I used to push myself up again and although my knees hurt, nothing was damaged.

In the same way, a friend who will remain unnamed, tripped me up and knocked me off my happiness. For two years now, due to my ongoing efforts at practicing positive thinking, chair yoga, dog walking and socializing, I have been mostly happy most of the time. But one morning a couple of weeks ago, my phone dinged with the text message noise and because I almost never get early morning calls, I awoke and looked at it. I thought it was family.

All of my friends (a couple of whom are avid animal rights activists) know to keep their horror stories to themelves and not inflict them on me. I do all I can for animals. I house and care for 5 cats and a dog and contribute in a number of ways to animal rescue charies. Just this summer, I donated 7 paintings to a fundraiser. Anyway, this friend's text message was one of those horror stories and having just awakened, I had no protection. It tripped me into a suffering spiral and a big anger. This particular friend has a pattern that she keeps her phone off unless she wants to call someone and then she looks at messages and calls people back. When I finally reached her that evening and told her how I felt she became defensive as though there was something wrong with me to be upset. That poured fuel on the flames and I got really angry.

That was the beginning of my downfall. Next, I entered a couple of weeks of stress activities: I met with two groups that can be of great help to my Quaker Meeting. The first is a historical group that wants to use our Meeting House for lectures. I won't go into the details except to say that a long distance member of the Meeting is blocking the necessary response. Then my second meeting, I invited three from Meeting to join us for the discussion and tour and no one showed up. An artist friend who has his studio in the building in question had said the day before that he would be there and he not only didn't show up, he didn't call or text. I was then still operating (on the outside) in a good way, but inside I was all twisted up with anxiety and resentment.

My happiness was GONE. On top of that I made a big mistake, a bad choice is a better description. I wasn't sleeping well anymore so I bought a forbidden treat each morning to give me energy to get through the day, a Dunkin Donuts caramel latte' which gives me an energy high and temperorarily lifts my mood. These coffees got me through my meetings but left a residue of anxiety from the caffeine as well as contributed to trouble getting to sleep at night and sleeping well.

Finally we get to the cure! It came about in a kind of unexpected way. I was meeting a friend for lunch yesterday at the place we usually meet which I like, Maritsa's in Maple Shade (half way for both of us). But Maritsa's was closed as my friend discovered because she got there earlier than I did, so I suggested we meet at The Station in Merchantville because the summer group art show was going up and I had 3 paintings in it. She agreed. I love this place, it is my happy place, the art, the vegetarian cuisine, the almost always entirely polite nnd friendly staff and clientelle. We put in our orders, looked at the artwork, and sat down in the cafe' to await our food.

Two young mothers arived with three toddlers, two of whom were in the 2 year old range and possibly twins and those two set up a ceaceless and ear splitting shrieking that the mother was unable to resolve. Nothing she did stopped them from screaming at the top of their lungs and we couldn't talk and the high pitched ear-splitting noise made thinking impossible, so Nancy suggested we eat outside on the patio. I usually don't like eating outside - bugs - but we had no choice, so we went out and it was the best choice, It was cool and dry and breezy. Little sparrows twittered and flitted all around us and it was just gorgeous. Nancy and I chatted away amiably and elaxed for a couple of hours. Our food was good, and the outdoor setting was splendid. I felt happy again.

Then to cap it off, when I got in the car to go home and relized I was happy again, Arlo Guthrie was singing a train song on the radio "I am riding on the City of New Orleans" and that fit the train theme! Then his father, Woody Guthrie was singing "This Land is Your Land" and I sang along with Woody Guthrie and my happiness was complete! Last night I went to Chair Yoga and later at home, I slept well and no nightmares.

Today, all I have is a couple of regular chores, the kitty litter boxes, and other than that, I will float through the day and do whatever I please, beginning with this blog post - which by the way is one of the strategies for clearing out the clouds and supporting happiness! Writing, talking, friendship, the outdoors, dog walking, chair yoga, nutritious and delicious food - all these are the medicine to cure a passing illness of melancholy and bring back the health of happiness. Also I just called my sister and brother on the phone to say hello and wish them a happy 4th of July holiday.

Happy Fourth of July! JO Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Merchantville celebrates its 150th anniversary - Art Show at the Station

For me the personal is political and it is also art! I was probably the youngest graduate of Merchantville High School Class of 1963 at 17. Not too long after, it ceased to operate as a high school. Right from high school, I went to work at W. B. Saunders Publishing Company in Philadelphia, a job I got through a high school program for the business students. It was a good, old fashioned high school that was good enough to inspire a significant number of the 150 or so graduates to become teachers, icluding me, although at a good remove in time from graduation. I didn't go to college until I was 26.

The connection with old classmates through our Reunion Group proved to be indisepnsable to me in my planning a year ago for the show that opened yesterday July 1st, at The Station - Eiland Arts Center, 10 E. Chestnut Street in Merchantville. It is the old Merchantville Railroad Depot re-purposed as a Cafe' with excellent vegetarian food, and a wonderful Art gallery that hosts group shows, special exhibitions, and recently a fundraising effort for Fishtails Animal Rescue.

When the Merchantville 150th annimversary Show was announced a long time ago, I began to think what I might like to paint for it. A classmate of mine, Butch Wetzel, was a huge train fan and remembered when trains ran along the the tracks in front of the Station, which are now a Rails to Trails bike and hike path. I told him about the show that was coming in a year (it was last year) and he said he thought he might have some old news clippings with pictures of the Station when trains still ran and he would send photo-copies of them to me. He did. I painted one feturing the Station, and another painting featuring the front of a big red train (my favorite of the two). My third painting was of the old pharmacy on the corner of Maple and Centre, which in 1963 was a soda fountain, the old fashioned kind with syrup and seltzer and paper cups in silver holders. The pharmacy wss at the back. This building always intrigued me because it was a kind of Meditteranean style with interesting red roof tiles, mosaic framing around the windows, and an unusual rose/ochre stucco surface.

Perhaps at the opening, I will meet someone who knows how old that building actually is. I don't know how old the Station is either! Actually for the first time, I kind of hope the Red Train painting doesn't sell because I like it so much, I would like to keep it! But of course, if it sells, that just inspires me to paint more and the more I paint the better I get.

I hope you can get to The Station and see the show and have a delightful and healthful lunch!

Happy Trails, Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Lot's Wife and seashore pictures

Preparing for a project for my Seniors Group, I was looking for seashore photographs. Two years ago, I had come into posession of a box of seashell frames, very nicely done, eight of them, just enough for the Seniors group at that time.

Since that time, our group has grown to 13, but not all of them come all of the time due to their own disabilities (one has cancer treatments, one has a daughter with cancer treatments) and their family members' needs.

I had sent out postcards asking the members to bring seashore snapshots because one of the things we like to do is to show and share. We have done several projects with photographs.

All of my life I have been an avid photographer of my daughter, our world, my family, just about everything I encountered. It was almost as though I loved it all so much I had to find a way to fix it in time and hold on to it. Therefore I have one entire wall from floor to ceiling lined with shelves of photo albums and a good number of wooden boxes as well.

s Because I was so reliably in love with photos, my parents and one grandmother gave me theirs and I have them too.

What I found, when I went looking for my seashore photo to show and share at Seniors was a little artful invention of mine from 1984, a flat canvas bag with two strap loops for hanging at the top. On the front of the canvas bag were sewn three clear plastic bags into which were placed seashells from a day at the shore and a strip of those photo booth black and white pictures that were once so popular and cost 50 cents. In the strip of photographs are my one year old daughter, Lavinia, with me and her father, Karl. But It wasn't that photo object that broke me, as sad as you could imagine it might be since her father and I broke up later that year and my daughter is now 40, and I am now old and I shuffle when I walk and my hip hurts dreadfully when I go up and down the steps. In that strip of photographs, I am smiling and young and pretty and I have no idea how difficult the next decades are going to be - all the stress and overwork and anxiety and heartbreak.

But, then, I got out one of the wooden photo boxes and in there were all my loved ones now gone, my mother and father, my grandmothers, my father's brother Bill. All the years flipped by in color beginning now to fade a bit, the holidays, the vacations, my whole adult life which is now coming to an end, that was the one that broke me. But I shouldn't say 'broke' because what actually happened was I got a lump in my throat and two eyes filled with salty tears and a familiar ache in my heart. I looked back and turned into a pillar of salt. It isn't that I would ever want to go back, I don't. It was all too hard. I am just sad that it is all gone forever.

It made me think of how other old people like me have murmured sadly that the young people don't want any of our old stuff like those albums. Just a couple of weeks ago, my sister was walking my dog for me and she came across several trash cans filled to overflowing with family albums, saved newspaper special sections on the moon landing, and JFK's assassination among other major events. What happened to the old lady who lived in that house I don't know. Maybe she died, maybe she went into a nursing home, but her children threw everything away - first all her furniture (the week before when I walked the dog) then the photographs. Even her formal wedding photograph, and there they were, bride and groom, young and slim and beautiful. A young husband home from World War II proudly married in his uniform and his wife in her long white gown with the train spilling around her feet like a pedestal. My sister and I put the wedding photo into a bag and hung it on the door knob to give them a second chance to keep it.

But perhaps they are right, those implacable offspring who threw it all away. Looking back makes you sad. However, when my mother died and my brothers and sisters and I were there for a week in West Virginia, we distracted ourselves briefly from our grief by putting all the old photographs that my mother kept in Strawbridge and Clothier department store boxes, into albums, each of us taking home those that were mostly our families. So they had a purpose, at least briefly, after their owner could no longer be brought to tears looking at them.

How I marveled when I was a child, at the photographs of my then stout old parents taken twenty years before when they were newly married and staying in Florida while my father was deployed in the US Navy. They were so beautiful, young and slim and smiling and happy. Where did that beauty go? I wondered how they had been transformed, and whether that was going to happen to me?

Of course, now I have the answer, it happens to all of us. We may not all get stout (I did, beginning with pregnancy) but we all get stiff and wrinkled and gray haired and splotchy with the brown finger prints of death and decay pressed onto our arms and faces. I realize, however, as I type this, that the inside world remains beautiful, even more beautiful than it was back then when it was manifested outwardly, at least my inside world.

Happy Trails, Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Today is Juneteenth

Today is Juneteenth and I have been thinking a lot about hidden history and my view has broadened out over the years from Women's lost and found history to include the history of Black Americans and First Peoples as well. today I read a piece in my e-mail news from NPR - a wonderful station both on the radio and in the news: "as moral philosophers have long known — no one is free until everyone is because oppression ensnares the oppressor as well as the oppressed." I do believe this and I also feel there are small and simple and personal ways we can honor the history of our American brothers and sisters. The easiest way I chose, about three years ago, was to buy and read Juneteenth, a lovely memoir by Annette Gordon Reed, whose work I admire and a couple of other books of hers I have read. Second, I made a display for our Woodbury Friends Meeting!

"Like a ripple on a pond, one truth...." I will look up the origin of that fragment of a quote and get back to you. But the meaning is clear. Even so small a thing as a personal initiative can spread outwards. So what you can do today to celebrate is to be aware of what day this is and what it meant to those who struggled and suffered in enforced slavery for two years after the Emancipation proclamation set them free because the violently enforced illiteracy and lack of communication had kept them from knowing the BIG TRUTH which was that half a illion brave people had fought and died to keep our nation whole and to end the crime against humanity that is enslavement.

Happy Juneteenth!

Opal Lee was the force behind the creation of the Federal holiday which is now about 4 years old. Her family home in Forth Worth, Texas, was burned down by a white mob in 1939, but Habitat for Humanity put the keys to a new home into her hands on the same lot where the family home had stood! As Mr. Rogers said "Look to the helpers" and in truth that is where the salvation lies.

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Juneteenth

On Saturday, June 15th Perkins Center joins Moore Unity and Curate Noir, Inc. to celebrate Juneteenth Freedom Day. This event will feature music and dance performers, poetry, community art making, family-friendly activities, a bounce house, and food and vendor offerings from some of our favorite local Black-owned businesses.

That paragraph was taken from the e-mail events post from Perkins Art Center; please check their web site to find which location is hosting Collingswood or Moorestown and the times.

I would like to add my own thoughts on Juneteenth. Annette Gordon Reed wrote a wonderful memoir called JUNETEENTH which I strongly recommend that you read, even if you can't attend any events to celebrate. If you don't know what Juneteenth is, it is the day that Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to tell the still enslaved people there that the Civil War had ended and the Emacipation Proclamation had granted freedom. The holiday is often called Emancipation Day and Freedom Day. Since reading and writing were punishable forbidden skills to enslaved people by the plantation owners who held them in slavery, they were not able to get the news. Can you possibly imagine the joy of a peope who had hoped for a hundred or more years to be freed from the violently enforced bond of enslavement that they were finally free? Ever since that day there have been celebrations incuding parades and parties and backyard barbecues to remember that historic day.

Happy Juneteenth all my friends and neighbors, freedom for some is freedom for all!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Red Bank Battlefield

Sunday June 23rd is Family Archaeology day at Red Bank Battlefield. What a beautiful place for a family outing! Walk along the river, picnic in one of the shelter, restrooms clean and acesible, maybe tour the Whitall House and acquaint your youngsters with some local Revolutionary War history. There will be flint napping, displays, and other events taking place. It begins at noon!

Happy Trails -Red Bak is oe of my favorite places on earth - love the sunset! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

World Environmental Day June 5th

Today, June 5th, 2024 is World Environmental Awareness Day - Established in 1972 by the UN FOOD WASTE

The two issues that struck me were ones that I felt I could actually improve in my own life so I cut and pasted them to share with you. There were five issues in the e-mia9l nes letter that I get. One was to plant a tree which we did at my Quaker Meeting in Woodbury and have each yar that I have been a member there. Here are the the two I wanted to address:

FOOD WASTE

We’ve all been there: regretfully throwing out a bag of wilting spring mix or moldy pasta that we had the best of intentions for. According to the World Food Programme, a whopping 1.3 billion tonnes of the food produced for human consumption is wasted each year. That’s enough to feed about two billion people! It’s important to remember that the food we eat requires land, water and energy — plus human labor and greenhouse gas emissions — to make it to the grocery store. On an individual level, we can find ways to reduce food waste by meal planning and shopping from a list, supporting sustainable food retailers, properly storing food, and donating extra food to those in need. 

My idea for personal improvement is to buy fresh produce only when I am sure I am going to use it. I am guilty of buying salad items and then eating out a few times and having left overs so the salad stuff goes bad. I think I have some smelly broccoli in the fridge as I type.

PLASTIC

Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past few decades, you're probably aware that the Earth is dealing with a massive plastic problem. Around 91% of all plastic ever produced has not been recycled. This has led to plastic ending up in our oceans, environment, and landfills, destined to remain there for several generations. A few ways to avoid adding to the problem include: avoiding single-use plastics, wearing clothes made from natural fibers, purchasing secondhand items and encouraging your favorite brands to adopt plastic alternatives for their products and packaging. I am working on weening myself off plastic water bottles and I am planning to start buying bamboo made toilet paper to save Canadian trees. Well this is all food for thought and I hope you get some ideas on what you personally can do - oh yes, another thing: tidying up closets and drawers may show us all that we don't need to buy any more clothes! I have greatly reduced my clothing purchases by weeding out my closet and drawers and seeing how much stuff I don't wear or need and taking those items to a volunteer who distributes the to the homeless in Camden and Kensington, Pa.

Happy Trails friends - and a though ot sorrow and loss about the death of Al Horner a fantastic photographer who loved the Pines with his whole heart. I have a book of his photographs. He will be missed by all who knew him. He was far too young to die at 77 but I know that for some years he has had serious back problems and tried everthing known to modern medicine to relieve the pain so he could continue to hike the pines and take his beautiful photographs.

The Problem with Absolutes: Quakers and the Civil War

"Thou shalt not kill" - (unless I tell you to kill your son, Abraham!) All afternoon, I have been reading about and pondering the Quaker Peace testimony in the face of modern conflicts that George Fox and the early Quakers couldn't have imagined in their worst nightmares, the conflicts of the modern period, our Civil War, for example and the legal systemic kidnapping, rape, torture, murder and enslavement of millions of other human beings for nearly two hundred years. Would Gerge Fox, whose peace testimony arose as a result of the British Civil War, have stood by idly in the face of this enslavement? After all, his testimony arose at the time of the British Civil War which was a war about Royal power including religious power. George Fox traveled around the army camps talking to the soldiers during the Civil War, some of them his followers, but he, himself was inspired to his peace testimony. Could and would he have held steady in the absolute of non-intervention in the face of American slavery in the 1800's? Should he? After all, George Fox did NOT adhere to the religious orthodoxy of HIS time; he had a different calling, heard a different voice. And he followed that inner voice.

Quakers in the time of the Civil War, and again in the period of the second World War, were sorely tried in whether to hold to the orthodoxy of peace at any cost, or to take a stand against an unimagineable evil like the imprisonment, rape, torture and eventual genocide of All the European Jews. p/> Once again today, a peaceful world is forced to confront a tyrant invading and making war against a neibhor with the intent of occupying that nation. While they invade and destry Ukraine, Russian military with apparently tacit approval of officers commit hideous crimes against the people as they occupy their territory. They have approval because these horrors they perpetrate are part of the plan of intimidation. And the free world watches in fear and horror and supplies weapons to help the Ukrainians defend themselves against this crime.

Self Defense and defense of others is a complication in the idea of total peace. Should you not defend yourself or someone else in danger? That's the problem of absolutes. George Fox couldn't have imagined slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries nor could he have imagined concentration camps and the extermination of the Jews in Europe in the 20th Century.

Enough Quakers had qualms about pacifism in the face of these two great evils that Meetins wrestled with both members who chose to serve and fight against them, and the orthodoxy enshrined against fighting. What I found most heart warming was the Meetings who welcomed back their veterans with love and understanding and forgiveness. What I found disappointing was those Meetings which stripped those veterans of membership. That reaction, I find most unloving and disrespectful of the individual inner voice.

So what is important here, to me, is how we disagree as well as how absolute rules, ie: orthodoxy, should be. It is complex. We can all agree that thou shalt not kill, or steal, or lie and deceive. The rub comes in when we are called to defend ourselves or others in the face of their iminent danger of being killed.

I fall in line with the Meetings that resolved this by stating their point of view, and loving and respecting those members who heard a different voice. Also, I am touched with George Fox vising the army camps to speak with the soldiers.

As for absolutes, I think they are a challenge to the storm and complexity of human events. I guess I like the adage "Revise your Priors" as well as the advice "Adapt and Evolve."

Happy Trails, Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com (as always, if you wish to continue the discussion use my e-mail as spammers have poisoned the well of comments)

Coping with Death - Memorial Day 2024

Another person from my childhood just died and his cousin sent me a text. That makes four people who have died this month within the circle of my friendship or acquaintance. I think it is natural on Memorial Day to consider all the many wonders of a long life that we who survived have enjoyed, falling in love, having a family, going to college, buying a house, the many many family parties and celebrations we have enjoyed, while those poor young men we remember on Memorial Day, died in the prime of their lives and never got to participate in these celebrations of life. Buy we know there is a price to pay for this long life that we have been given by some mystery of good fortune. We have to say goodbye to so many we have loved, first our parents, and then our friends as they precede us one by one into the great unknown, which might be the great nothing - it is a mystery until we get there and maybe after as well.

So this month, two classmates died, an old teen years friend, and a young man related to my sister through her grandson and I had to send this young man's mother a consolation card though there is no consolationt for a mother who has lost her 42 year old son, as there is none for the two children he left behind. That mother and those children have to go on with the greath sadness inside them, a part of them for the rest of their lives because their loss is, as my grandmother said "unnatural" - children shouldn't lose their father and mother before they grow up and a mother shouldn't outlive her son. But it happens.

We get to live, and we get the reminders of the brevity of our lives and we carry the sorrow of the loss of those we have loved. An old friend of mine, Marguerite, who died in her nineties, once said that everyone she had ever loved had died and she was alone in the world. And it is true. She had new friends, but it isn't the same as the ones who knew your family, and grew up with you, the blood relations who shared the family memories of all the relatives who are gone. Or your lovers, husbands, wives. These can't be replaced.

But our task is to find the good things around us and to carry on even with our burdens, the burdens of the great good fortune of a long life: disability, fear, the deaths of our loved ones. We can't stay too long in the shadow of sorrow because we are wasting the great good fortune of the days that have been given to us to enjoy in this wonder filled life we have now, in this world. So we have to pay our respects, shed our tears, share our memories and move on into another day, another week, another year, perhaps another loss, and for certain, another joy and wonder. To paraphrase something the Dalai Llama said, we can't get over some things, but we must not let them pull us down. Just as age weakens us, we have to find the strength to carry on.

My love goes out to all who sorrow - Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com

The extraordinary in the ordinary Monday May 27, 2024

I am a huge fan of the ordinary. The way this interest manifexts itself has been in my lifelong interest and research into journals, diaries and such personal accounts of ordinary lives. In each area of my passions, I have read whatever diaries were discovered in that subject; for example, I LOVE the diary of Frida Kahlo, whch I read regularly on her birthday (July 6 - 1907) or on Hispanic Heritage Month and because of my interest in the lives of women artists.

When I was a volunteer at Red Bank Battlefield in National Park for several years, I read Diary of a Hessian Soldier, Johan Conrad Dohla, fighting here as a mercenary for the British, as well as the diary of Joseph Plumb Martin, American Continental soldier. I have read the diaries of writers, all of Anais Nin, many others, and of war correspondents like Marie Colvin, who died in Syria. Actually, when I was a college student, I took a course in the history of diaries and journals and we began with Samuel Pepys, written 1660 to 1669.

As a volunteer for the Gloucester County Historical Society, I had the honor of transcribing the diary of Anne Whitall, whose family farm was the center of the Battle of Red Bank in 1777, a pivotal event in our Revolutioary history. It had been hand written in about 1762 and another volunteer had transcribed it into typewriter manuscript and I took her typewritten version and put it on the computer so others could read it. I did the same for an anonymous farm woman of South Jersey who joined the Mormons and left to make a new life in Utah; she was from Elk Township and married a Mormon missionary. I can't at the moment remember her name (Ruth Page Rogers) but it may come back to me.

I think it is especially interesting to read of the quiet days just before something significant happened, or the time just after. I read a fascinating 1945 diary of a German woman about her survival right after the defeat of Germany in World War II. She lived in Berlin and survived the Russian occupation as well as the bombings and the door to door street by street fighting during the end of the war. Her name was Marta Hillers, a journalist. It is "Eine Frau in Berlin," first published anonymously in German and later translated into English.

I have personally kept diaries since I was in my 20's, over 50 years. They have become more boring over the years as I recount mainly the chores I have done, but also, the mundane events in my ordinary daily life. Actually I believe at one time, such diaries were titled Commonplace books. I rarely write about politics or the news, sometimes reviews of books or movies.

So for today, the things that interested me enough to make me decide to do this entry are: We are awaiting a big storm that has battered and swatted its way across the continent over the past several days pelting with softball sized hail and flooding rain. So far theree are 21 dead and hundreds left homeless ann the storm generated massive tornadoes as it travelled East. It is supposed to reach us this afternoon about 5:00. The weather at the moment is still, overcast, humid and on the cool side, and it does feel as if the yard is waiting for something to come. My personal fear is that the trees in the front of my yard that were devasted last year by the Chinese lantern fly invasion will drop their dead limbs on the wires just below and in front of them. I should have gotten them removed but it costs thousands of dollars which I do not have.

Lethargy and pain: lately I have been experiencing more than usual days of lethargy, some of which I attribute to the pain in my hip that remains after the disaster of a month ago when I tried to turn over to get out of bed and something went terribly wrong. My hip seized up and the horrendous pain of some kind of pinched nerve kept me trapped in bed for hours and terrified to move. Since that night, I have slept on the recliner, afraid to get in bed, and I have gone to my gneral practitioner and had x-rays, blood and urine lab work, and tomorrow I see an orthopedic doctor. The x-rays just say "moderate osteo/arthritis. Something else must have happened however to cause that - some kind of jammed bones over a nerve, or bursitis, or some tendon thing.

Anyhow, today, again, I woke up so lethargic, I couldn't get my last basket of laundry up from the basement, so I gave in to the nearly foolproof remedy of going to Dunkin Donuts and getting a caramel latte' which I only do as a last resort because they are both full of sugar/calories and expensive -$6 for a large coffee - outrageous. But I wanted to get a couple of things done - I wanted to cook and eat a bunch of really expensive mushrooms I had bought along with a group of salad vegetables and I didn't want to let them go bad because I was too tired to wash and prepare them. The mushrooms were "Lion's Main" mushrooms that I had learned about from a fabulous documentary called FANTASTIC FUNGI.

The Lion's Mane mushrooms, I discovered, had to be cooked and shouldn't be eaten raw. That was a surprise. I thought I could put them in the salad but they have something called chitin in the skins and so should be cooked. They had to be sautee'd with garlic and should be served on bread like a sandwich item.

The latte' worked. I bought the latte' from a particularly morose and un friendly counter woman at the drive-thru window at Dunkin Donuts, drank it and voila! I got my laundry from the basement, cooked the wretched mushrooms, and made a big bowl of salad good for two days. The mushrooms were a most unpleasant tactile experience. I was used to the regular white button mushrooms with their pleasantly bread like texture. These had a kind of furrry-loose-sack of jelly feel, not that easy to slice either. But I did it, and I ate them in a sandwich on toasted bread. I forced myself to finish them so as not to waste an expensive item and a notabley heathful food. I would never buy them or eat them again. Then I ate my salad which I also found unpleasant. Sometimes I just don't like tomatoes in salad and lately not so fond of broccoli florets anymore either. But it is all done now. I have one chore left - to wash out my almost empty blender pitcher from yesterday's blueberry smoothy and get ready to make a new one, tomorrow perhaps.

Last night, I watched a brilliant though deeply disturbing series on Netflix called "Unbelievable." I had seen it advertised on Netflix before but I passed it up because it is about a serial rapist and I avoid shows I think will frighten me, but a friend I respect told me it was well worth my time and that it was brilliant - which it was! The acting was superb and the cast was some of the greats of this period including Toni Collette. It deals with the true story of a serial rapist in Colorado who is so skilled at erasing all clues to his presence that he gets away with raping and robbing 25 women until a duo of dauntless detectives dig into every detail to find out who he is and capture him. There is an interesting socio-dynamic theme too in the way a poor young survivor of the foster care system is bullied by two male detectives in the beginning of the series into recanting her report of her rape. They bully her into saying she lied and made it up and then they make her a criminal by charging her with false reporting with a fine and threat of jail time. I won't spoil it by giving away any more of the plot. It did scare me for awhile but my big dog and her large formidable incisor teeth always reassure me. She went berserk when the amazon delivery man left a package on the porch in the evening, and I thought, no one would try to enter a door with this polar bear behind it.

She lets me sleep at night and I feed her and offer her shelter in return and we both love one another as well. We got our walk in early today before the storm began its threat. I will let you know tomorrow how it all turned out!

Happy Trails - stay safe in the storm! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Tom Nicholas, Death Notice May, June 2024

A Classmate of mine from Merchantville High School, class of 1963, just e-mailed to tell me that an old friend had died. Tom Nicholas. Tom was actually the best friend of my ex-husband, Mike Schelpat. They were friends from their teen years and stayed close over their entire lives.

Tom would have been about 80. He died behind the wheel of his vehicle, which I seem to think was a pick-up truck, but it wasn't an accident. Apparently he pulled over; he must have felt something going wrong, maybe a heart attack? A stroke? Anyhow, I can't help thinking this is the way he would have wanted to end it.

Tom was a brilliant man, an artist who graduated from what was then Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts. He was a painter but I think his real art was in domestic architecture because he built exquisitely beautiful cabins in the woods of upstate New York where he went to live as a young man and stayed until he died. My ex-husband and I often went to stay with him during the 1970's, in the beautiful forests where he built his cabins. I remember two of them very well, a large roomy one story where he lived with his then partner whose name I thought I had forgotten but I just remembered, it was Sheila. She worked for a group home for teen girls. At that first cabin, the spacious one story, we would sit and smoke pot and I would weave baskets from the shed bark of the white birches that fell all over the woods. It is a beautiful bark, white on one ide and a creamy peach color on the other side.

Tom was a wonderful artist and I remember him making graceful and delicate botanical drawings of plants and leaves from the forest. We three often hiked in the woods and I remember one time we crossed a rocky fast moving stream and I found a perfectly spherical redish colored rock, perfectly smoothly round. I still have it.

In his youthful college days, Tom lived in Powelton Village, Philadelphia, with a wonderful woman named Elaine Simon, whom he jokingly nicknamed Nomis, and they had a dog named Alice. I don't remember any longer what took Tom to the deep woods of Schuyler Falls, above Plattsburgh, but I think it may have been an art teaching job at Plattsburgh college. Anyhow, once he got up there, he never came home.

Tom and I went to the same high school, Merchantville. He probably graduated in 1961. He was two years older than I am, roughly. His sister, Joanne Nicholas, married a classmate of mine, Ron Williams. Joanne was two years younger than I am and it is her husband, my classmate Ron Williams, who got in touch and told me about Tom's death. Joanne had been worried about him for years, worried that he didn't take care of his health and that he didn't have anyone nearby if something should happen. Tom died on Friday, May 17th, and I have no idea who found him. His dog, Brutus, who was in the truck with him, was taken to the pound, sadly.

Each year at Christmas, I would receive a hand made card with a lovely pencil drawing on it and a haiku poem. Tom loved to write haiku poems. I would send him a card as well, but we never really conversed that much and we NEVER telephoned one another. After all, he wasn't so much my friend as my ex-husband's friend, and they kept in touch regularly. I only saw Tom once in the 40 years since I got divorced, and that was when he was down visiting his siter and Ron, and picking up a case of wine (as he told me) because it was so much cheaper down here! He also sent me some photograph of elegant and beautiful furniture he had made. He was gifted.

It is an all too common experience for me now, the death of people I knew, grew up with, was friends with. In another May, I lost my best friend Christine Borget (Gilbreath) and last month a classmate, Romeo Ventura. These are all writing on the wall, but what can I do about it except enjoy my life as much as possible and try to live as healthy a life as possible, which I do. >p/> Meanwhile, my heart goes out to those closest to Tom, my ex-husband Mike, his best friend, and his sister Joanne, who loved him and worried about him. As for Tom, I think he died the way he would have wished to die, driving down a country road in the woods with his dog, but I think he should have made better provision for his dog. I just called my brother Joe to remind him that he said he would take my dog if I died and he said he would take all my pets, dog and cats. Also my hope is my sister would move in here and take care of them. I should write a letter with that stipulation, giving my sister living rights to the house so she could take care of them. I feel sadest for poor Brutus who was Tom's loyal friend and ended up in the pound.

I am glad my memories of Tom Nicholas are from his younger and healthier days because I have heard he had descended into dementia in his last years. I remember him young and talented.

I hope wherever he is, it is a good place.

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Jo Ann

Two Topics: Things that Make me happy & things that make me sad

Just sitting on the porch after a delightful dog walk with a neighbor lady who walks with us every day. Also every day, after we drive our neighbor home, my dog, UMA and I sit on the porch and enjoy the trees and the breeze for half an hour.

Today, I was especially enjoying the walk and the porch because early this morning I had to go to Cooper Med on Brace Road for a blood test and urinalysis - annual. I always dread it partly becaue I can't have my tea and muffin first thing in the morning as I am accustomed to doing. Also, even though the blood test doesn't really hurt, those techs are good at what they do - I DREAD IT. Even a week or two before my appointment, I begin to dread it. And I have to change all my morning habits. I have to get up extra early to get the dog walked before I can go anywhere and I can't take my heart pill until after the tests so I have to get there early or my heart will ache.

So today, as a treat and reward for getting up at 7:00 and getting it all done by 10:00, I got a croissant breakfast sandwich and latte' at the Station, in Merchantville. When I got home, Uma got a second walk with the neighbor which I followed with a porch sit in the gloriously cool and fresh Spring weather we are enjoying today. And sitting there, I felt happy and I thought of the things that make me happy - not in order of importance but in order of immediacy: My House - the actual longest romance of my life, My Porch, My dog, and my cats who love me, welcome me home and keep me company, A delicious meal from The Station - and especially since I don't drink coffee anymore the occasional treat of a latte' sends a caffeinated jolt of energy and well being through me. I am soothed knowing I have my sister as a strong right hand in my declining years and good company too, My friends such as my dog-walking-neighbor all of whom make socials events out of ordinary days. It is wonderful to have them to talk to.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME SAD - DEATH OF AN OLD FRIEND Yesterday, I received an e-mail that an old old friend from my far distant youth had died on Friday night driving his truck with his dog in the car. The dog wasn't injured, but Tom Nicholas must have had a stroke or a heart attack His brother-in-law is a high school classmate of mine and his wife was a year or two below us in Merchantville high school, so Ron Williams, the classmate and brother-in-law, got in touch to let me know about Tom's passing. His wife got in touch with my ex-husband.

Because I hadn't seen him over the years, I never saw Tom get old so he will be forever in my memory as the young man he was when I knew him most in the 1960's and 70's. He was my ex-husband's best friend and probably ONLY best friend as neither of them were particularly outgoing or friend- making. Tom went to PCA and he was the first artist I ever met and he often showed me his paintings. He was also a poet and each year he sent me hand drawn Christmas cards with haiku poems on them. He lived as a hermit in the forest of Northern New York, up above Plattsburgh. He built his own cabins. He had had one or two lovers over the years but he was a difficult man, needy, demanding, and not particularly accommodating. My ex-huband, and I often stayed in his hand-made and beautiful woodland cabins over the years before our divorce. I have baskets I made from birch trees in the forest up there. I would sit and weave baskets while we all smoked pot and lounged around along a stream or in in a small sun-lit pasture in the woods. I have a perfectly round stone that I found in a stream one day when we were hiking and crossed a rocky, fast flowing, clear water stream. It is PERFECTLY spherical.

This is one of the things that happens when you are my age - 78 - old lovers and old friends die and remind you that your time is nearly up. Someone recently mentioned a box in which you and others put mementos that have meaning and send it to another group which does the same and after it goes around to several groups, it comes back and goes on display. If I did that, I would put in the box that perfectly round rock and think of the stream and of Tom Nicholas. The dog was taken back to the shelter from which Tom had adopted him, sadly. I don't know anything more about the story - who found the truck with the dead man and the dog, whether it was heart or stroke that killed him, whether he will be cremated or buried. I may never know that chapter. I may never know anything else about any of it.

Happy Trails, Tom, wherever yours may be old friend. Tom wrote spontaneous haiku so here is one for him:

Old man dead behind the wheel at the roads edge Bright green Spring and yet an end.

wrightj45@yahoo.com