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

Alice munro and the Short Story

Alice Munro just died in her 90's after a long and successful career in writing which was celebrated with the awarding of the Nobel Prize for short form literature. Her most celebrated book is probably The Moons of Jupiter and her most famous short story is "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" which was made into a movie. She also won the Booker Prize and was praised for her work throghout her career. Her last book "Dear Life" talks about her life as a writer and how her short stories related to her life.

I have also written about 20 short stories over the years, in fact, I have written poetry (won a prize from Mad Poet's Society wherDearme of my work was published) and I have tried my hand at three kinds of novels: a historical novel set in 1937 called White Horse Black Horse, a relationship novel, and a memoir. My favorite form is the essay and I like the blog best of all because I can just pour out my thoughts which are like a hive of bees and occasionally must be released. Because I write for release and pleasure and because my school days and work days are over, I enjoy the freedom of the blog becaue I don't have to go back and shape it and re-shape it and edit and perfect it. It is like conversation, in a way, except I don't have the pleasure of the reverberation of a companion's stories and anecdotes bouncing back.

For a long time there was a fashion of people writing really short short stores which may be been incited by Ernest Hemingway who made a bet that he could write the sshortest short story and it would be a real tear jerker and he could do it in 6 words: "For sale, baby shoes, never worn." An interesting choice for a man like Hemingway, that most domestic of subjects. I have a shorter one for him which I think would have resonance and I can almost hear him snort with laughter and derision up in the cloud of universal consciousness or wherever we go when we are dead Here is my answer to his challenge, in 5 words: "It only took one shot."

I am wondering if I should read an Alice Munro book to pay homage to her life. The two stories she wrote that haunt me I can't remember their titles, but one is about a hobo who gets a job doing some odd jobs on an a woman's farm. She can't really manage it anymore. He is a hard worker, chivalrous and moves in and fixes things up for her, but she tries to make a romance with him and he flees. The other was about a young girl who is given the life work of her uncle, his manuscript of the history of the province, and she takes his work out of the protective metal box it is stored in for safety by his two adoring sisters, so she can use the box, and his work is lost in a flood. Alice Munro was known for her deep probe into the recesses of human psychology and the complexity of human relationships as well as for a nearly perfect craftmanship.

She had a wonderful life and a rewarding career and she did what she wanted and made a success out of it - that is a prize in itself. Alice Munro - I salute you!

Let's read a book of hers in honor of her life. Happy Trails, Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Mother's Day 2024 - My Mother said......

Just now, I finished reading an essay by journalist Tom Nichols in the Atlantic Daily, an e-mail daily news. The essay was moving, as you might expect from a professional writer. He writes about how, in a dark period in his life, after divorce, a drinking problem and several other sinking weights pulling him down, he adopted a cat from a veterinary office a few doors down from his apartment. As time went on, she kept him company and her purring and her affection helped him in his recovery and soon he had a new partner, a marriage, a home and children. His cat, Carla, adopted and delighted them all. As most cat and dog stories go, this one too had a sad ending. A quote I once saw said (and I paraphrase) “The only thing bad about dogs is their short life span.”) And that is true of dogs and cats. In my relatively long adult life, I am 78, there must have been at least a dozen serious heart attachments rent by the force of time and death. There is a small pet cemetery in my back yard for all the friends who have lived with me and died in this house over the forty years I have lived here. There are four dog graves and about the same number of cats, with white concrete statues and special plants to honor their final resting spot.

Recently, a couple of old high school classmates have been in touch with me via e-mail about their sorrow and grief over the passing of another of our classmates a couple of weeks back. He had severe diabetes and had suffered through several surgeries ending in infection and organ failure. i don’t know why these fellows chose me to contact, but I gave them both the same advice: Get outside into the healing properties of nature. If you can’t walk (and I recommend waking a dog), take a drive in the car and visit the closest historical site and/or park. Also I recommended reading and I realized I missed a really important one - adopt a pet. The best way to move out of your emotional pain is to help someone else. This, I believe!

Recently, in our Woodbury Quaker Meeting, I had mentioned one of my Mother’s sayings, well worth repeating here, “Goodness is its own reward.” And I have found this to be true. Goodness feels good! And it feels especially good to help others in need. The love you give, comes back to you enhanced, enlarged, expanded. And that is especially true if you rescue a cat or dog who needs a home. My dog makes me walk every day. Often, I don’t feel like it but it is my duty, as she reminds me, and through this, she is working to save my life. No matter what I am doing, at home, one of the triplets I adopted from my veterinarian, is always sitting beside me, or on me, or near me, purring to let me know I am loved, and their schedule helps give my day shape.

With this passing on of my Mother’s advice and my own little suggestion about adoption, I wish you a happy Mother’s Day. Remember, you may not have been a mother but we have all had a mother (and a Grandmother or two).

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Salem County Art Tour

Today, after Chair Yoga at The Station in Merchantville, I went downstaies to the cafe' area and saw the display that proprietor Nicole had made of the many many 6 x 6 inch canvases of animal paintings donated by artists. She arranged them like a quilt! I loved it! >p/> So, this blog post is to tell you three places to see some art work this upcoming week, and in two of the places there are works of mine. First, do yourself a favor and get a lunch or a coffee at The Station (also known as Eiland Arts Center) 10 E. Chestnut Street, Merchantville, NJ and see the display of art that was made as a fundraiser for the Fishtails Animal Rescue of Philadelphia. You will be enchanted! Also on display until the end of the month in the gallery as well as the cafe' are some large fascinating photographs of musicians

Second, for one more week only, you can see the art display at Croft Farms, Borton's Mill Rd., Cherry Hill, NJ have a painting in that show which will be coming down on May 16th. You should look it up online to see the hours when the gallery is open. My painting is 'the blue rail stilt shack' on the Maurice River.'

third and final, there is a Salem County Art Tour Saturday May 18 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday May 19 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. This is a free self-guided art tour to the studios of several Salem County Artists. I have never taken the entire tour but one year when they had the tour, I visited the studio of Daniel Chard, who is not only a renowned artist, but has been a beloved painting teacher at Rowan for decades. This was advertised in SJ First AAA Magazine. For more info: www.salemcountyarttour.com

At the end of this month, I will be entering three paintings in the upcoming summer group show at The Station dedicated to the 150th Anniversary of the town of Merchantville. My two favorites out of the three, are of the train station when it still operated trains back in the late 1960's. The tracks along the Train station now are paved into 'Rails to Trails' and this is a great place to take a lovely walk and a wonderful place to bike or walk your dog, after which you can sit outside the cafe' and have a nice latte' or a smoothie.

Happy Trails my friends (as always, to contact me, please use my e-mail not the comments secion of this blog. Comments is poisoned by spam - wrightj45@yahoo.com)

Age

A member of my Quaker Meeting moved this week into a nursing home due to her steady decline in function. She has dementia and is in her mid 80's. Also last week, a high school classmate died of infetions from diabetic amputations. Just two weeks ago, I had such a terrible experience sleeping that I have been sleeping on the recliner ever since. I have osteoarthritis in my feet, knees and hips, but for some reason, that night, a Friday, I awakened at midnight rolling over and my hip seized up with such a thunderbolt of pain it was mind blowing. I couldn't move at all. It took three hours for me to micro-move to the edge of the bed to drop my legs over. Once I was on my feet, I was ok. I have an appointment with a new osteopath later this month and will be getting new X-Rays on the 20th. My general physician, who I saw this week examined my hip motion and thinks it may have been/or may be as the case will prove, bursitis. She said that the front pain is the osteo arthritis, but that the pain in the side and back which left when I stood up, sounds like bursitis.

When I see really old people, tiny, white cap of hair, canes, bent and shaky, shuffling along in places like the super market, these days I take a closer look because I am seeing the future. To me now, they seem heroic! Now I kmow the pain in those bent spines and those shuffling feet, those frozen knee and hip joints. Yet, here they are, up and about and getting on with their lives. That takes courage and will.

I am encouraged in my hope for survival by the support of my sister, who is 20 years younger than I am. She is strong and she loves me and she is generous with her help. Each of us in our family has been lucky in that we have had that from some member of the family at one time or another when we were in need.

The Family should be honored in some way, the way we honor Mother's Day and Father's Day. I don't know how anyone could make it without that network of support, that safety line, that fragile rope bridge over the canyon.

When my brother fell and broke his hip in West Virginia last year, we grumbled but we all did a part in making a rescue to tide him over until he could manage. My sister and I hired cars for my nephews to take my other brother down to care for Joe for a week and take Neal back home to Phila. the following week.

That brother, Joe, did the same for our mother and father. And each of us pitched in however we could, as for example when I went to stay for a month of August to help my father when my mother came home from re-hab after her catastrophic stroke. She was entirely paralyzed and probably should never have left a rehab facility. It was far too much for anyone. Trying to lift her was like trying to lift giant water balloons, or bags of sand. Her weight was slack and shifted and she was much heavier than her actual weight which was only 150 pounds.

My father managed on his own for eleven years after my mother's death with the help of a sister in W.Va. until my brother Joe retired and went down there to live with him for his final two years. He died at 89 and those last two years were very hard for him to get around. My brother went with him to the store, the doctor appointments, and did the harder housework like the yard mowing and the laundry and cleaning. My father just wound down like a used battery and sank into his recliner.

And now I am in the recliner.

Well, to balance it out, I also just finished 4 large 20"X22" paintings (to enter the Croft Farm Show and the summer group show at The Station, Eiland Arts Gallery, the Historic Merchantville Show in June) and 7 smaller 6X6 paintings (those for a fundraiser for Fishtails Animal Rescue). It was wonderful to make the paintings, and each week I saw friends for lunch and my sister Sue came to help out with errands and household chores-the more difficult ones for me, like floors and vacuuming, and she did yard work. She is coming tomorrow for a bunch of errands and to help me get my handicapped plackard for the car, and to find Croft Farm where I drop off two of the paintings for the show end of this month. My vision makes it impossible for me to drive and find places and I can't read the street signs. Oh my, the handicaps we struggle to cope with! Thank heavens for the gifts that make the stuggle worth while.

Happy trails, however steep and rocky! Keep your eyes on the trees and ferns and wildflowers along he path. Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Remediating Loss

A friend, an old high school classmate e-mailed me recently for help in coping with the loss of one of our clasmates. Romeo Ventura died last week after a terrible battle with diabetes which involved amputations and eventually infection and organ failure There have been many such losses in my high school class so far, about 50 out of a class of about 150. We graduated in 1963 from Merchantville High School (gone since about 1965) and had our 60th reunion recently at Maritsa's in Maple Shade. Romeo was there in a wheelchair after his leg amuputation and he was doing well, brave, cheerful and optimistic.

The loss that hurt me the most was my best and oldest friend Christine Borget (Gilbreath) who had been my friend since we were both in junior high school and she was also my role model and the best human being other than my mother that I have ever known. She was a truly good person and brave. She died of gall bladder cancer just a couplo of weeks after we'd had lunch together also at Maritsa's. Maritsa's is in Maple Shade on the main street and centrally located for many of us so it has become our place to meet up. Chris's death was so devastating to me that none of my lifelong tried and true methods for rising up from sorrow were effective and I resorted to cannabis gummies for about two weeks. I can't say if they worked or if I just got over it like an illness.

First, the reason I am writing this blog post is to share my tried and true survival techniques (even though they don't work for everything).

First of all, since my earliest childhood I have had three passions and they have been my life rafts through many disasters of the kind not uncommon in a long life. I began to read at an early age and I have turned to books for diversion and for advice and understanding That has always been my first refuge.

Secondly, it was a natural flow from reading to writing and I keep a daily journal and have since my early twenties and in there I pour out my sorrows, my complaints, my fears and pain and my joys and successes. It is both therapeutic and helps you clarify things. The third diversion is painting because it is such a thorough concentration demanding activity. When you paint, you can't really drift off into a cycle of despair, or at least I can't, I have to keep my eyes on the canvas and what I am doing - focus. I have known of similar activities used by others - my father turned to stained glass and also to doll house making , also activities demanding full concentration so you can't be led astray by unproductive and diminishing thought traps.

When I am so down in the dumps that I can't even do those activities, I have turned to tv series and to audio books, both excellent and requiring little of us. Audio books are also my go to sleep therapy. Of course there have been losses that nothing but time could help to relieve, the loss of my mother and father which will always leave an indelible scar and sore place in my heart. In fact, today I was thinking - what a beautiful day! when I let the dog out and I had a memory of our home on Roland Ave when I was a kid and my mother hanging up the laundry which flapped in the breeze sending off whiffs of laundry soap, and dad working in the vegetable garden on top of the hill behind he house, our dog sniffing around, our cat napping in a sunny patch watching us. It was a puff of sorrow for all this lost world that now exists only in my memory, those real people I loved in all their physical force, vanished forever. But I am leaving now to walk the dog, having resorted to my number two therapy which is writing.

I don't want to forget two other immensely helpful divrsions from depair: DRIVIGNG and WALKING. And most importantly, my pets. My dog and my cats give me daily love and affection and attention and they make me smile. Their furry warmth keeps me warm in winter when they curl up beside me or sit on my lap and my dog makes me walk every day which I might not do without her nudging. I have had animal companions all my life and they were always part of our family and they still are. All my siblings have cats and dogs.

Friendship is another great support. My woman friends and I have lunch on a regular basis - every week or two and we listen and we confer and compare and we advise. Well, that seems like a lot of things to help us get through the hard times. I didn't count, but let me see if I can list: 1.books, 2.writin, 3.painting, 4.driving, 5.walking, 6.tv series, 7.audio books, 8.animal companions, 9.friendship, 10 - I realized I was one shy of an even ten so I though I should add a spiritual connection. At a low period, I went to a Friends Meeting (Quakers) near where I live, and three years later, I have been a member and found a new kind of family. We talk, we worship in silence, and we help one another. Helping others is very important and keeps us from becoming self-centered! And Silent Worship is a form of meditation which I find helpful.

I hope this provides some help and healing to any friends who are seeking such. It helped me! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Best and Happiest Days

A New York Times article a few years back recommended that for your New Year's resolution, you make a habit to take note of those times when you are really happy! I do. It is like the gratitudes - it changes your life. Today was one of those happiest days.

My day began with my dog walk which today was to the Post Office to mail some postcards I'd had made of my latest paintings, but that wasn't the happiest part, maybe it was for my dog, Uma though.

When I got home, I laid out her dog bones and biscuits, her treats for when I go somewhere without her, then I set off for my Chair Yoga class at The Station in Merchantville. I have written about The Station, also known as Eiland Arts Center on 10 E. Chestnut St. in Merchantville, NJ before. It is a cafe' with excellent food, the most delicious soups imaginable, and it is an Art Gallery. Sometimes, they also have live music!

In the upstairs Gallery, they have Yoga classes, and my class, Seated Chair Yoga, is at 10:15 which is the perfect time for me to get up, wash and dress, walk the dog and get to class without stress. Seated yoga is also the only yoga I can still do with my declining joints. Today, however, there was a bit of stress because on the way, there was a trash truck, a Fed Ex truck, a public service bus and I caught EVERY red light between my town and Merchantville, but I did get there close to on time. I always try to be perfectly punctual. I think I was 5 minutes late. I tried not to let it stress me out too much, though, because it is YOGA! The practice is all about relaxing. The motto is "Do no harm to others or to yourself." I love that thought.,

I have made it my special practice to forget time and concentrate all my mind on the motions, my breathing, my body, make it meditative, not an exercise class. It works. I no longer think about time when I am there. I am in the FLOW! And when I get up to leave, I am so loose and relaxed that I feel very different from the person who walked in. Today I was musing on my way in, that it used to cost about $150 for me to get my hair colored: highlights, low lights, ash blonde color, washed, cut and styled and blow dried. That would last about 2 months or so. That same amount of money bought me 8 weeks of Seated Yoga once a week! I stopped getting my hair done the year of the pandemic and I am saving a lot of money which I can now use on paying my sister to help clean and on yoga classes

After Yoga, down in the cafe' I buy the soup of the day; today it was herbed potato soup, to take home for lunch. And I bought my favorite coffee treat: pumpkin spice latte' which gives me a nice gentle energy push to get some art work done.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been working on 6 x 6 inch canveses for a Fundraising effort at the Station. Artists are picking up the free canveses and painting on it and donating the work. All money raised goes directly to Fishtails Animal Rescue. So far I have done five: 1-Girl with jumping cat 2-Man with jumping dog 3-Luna moth 4-Lucy the Elephant in Margate 5-a 3 dimensional shark advertising miniature golf at the seashore. Next I am going to do a rabbit from the back yard and maybe the T-Rex outside the Museum of Natural Science, or maybe a snowy owl, or maybe my cat Lucky on the fence like a tightrope walker. could even decide to do a cow or a chicken. Don't know yet.

Anyhow I was really happy today, really joyful which felt like sunshine inside beaming out, an uplift like being buoyed on an under tide of warmth and goodness, a kind of effervescence. And this blog post is me "taking note of when I feel happy!" Hope you find your happiness too! Jo Ann wright45@yahoo.com

Art Opportunities this Spring and Summer 2024

There is a lot going on in the local Art World and in my world in particular. My favorite Art Gallery has always been Eiland Arts Center at The Station on 10 East Chestnut Ave., Merchantvile, NJ 08109. It is a vegetarian cafe' and coffee shop too. I first found this gallery and cafe' years ago when I was searching out old Train stations. I have a soft spot in my heart for them because I am of the generation that in our childhood rode in passenger trains and it was a great adventure. It marked me forever. Also, in my childhood, trains had a major role in most black and white movies and even up into the color era, for example in White Christmas, which my family watched every Christmas for decades.

So, when I got on the mailing list and began to be included in the call for artists for juried group shows, I signed up with enthusiasm and I have been showing in that gallery in every group show to which I have been invited ever since. The next one in which I will be showing celebrates the 150th anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Merchantville, which is also where I went to high school and graduated in 1963.

For that show I have done three paintings, one of the old pharmacy on Centre and Maple which is now a photography studio, and two from old news articles about the history of the train station from the early 1960's which I used as resources for two paintings roughly 2 feet by 3 feet framed. I love the way they turned out and I liked them so much, I had postcards made of them at BELLIA Copy and Print Center in Woodbury. By the way, this is a great copy/print center. For many years, I had a wish to have my work in postcard form. I didn't know how much it would cost and I feared it might be expensive. It isn't.

For anyone who has read my blog before, you know of my passion for postcards. It stems from my childhood when my Great Uncle Yock, who worked at the post office in Ocean City, would put our home address in Philadelphia, on any postcards that came through with postage, message, but no address. So we got postcards from strangers all the time. It felt like good wishes from the Universe. I got 50 made each of two paintings, scanned, sized and printed on card stock, glossy for $60! Now I can share those railroad paintings with everyone.

EILAND ART CENTER at The Station in Merchantville - two shows coming up. 1 - Artists who wish to participate in a fundraising effort can pick up a 6x6 inch canvas at the Station and make a painting on it of any kind of animal picture to donate. The money from All paintings sold will go directly to Fishtails Animal Rescue. I have done 5 paintings and I had a ball! I did a painting based on an old photo from the 1970's of my sister and her cat, Chance, who did the trick of jumping from one brick pillar in front of our house on Linwood Ave. to the other about 5 feet away.

For that show I have also done a jumping dog painting based on an old photo from the 1980's of my dad and his favorite dog, Wonder Dog, another jumper. Also for that show I did a painting of a Luna Moth which entranced me as a young woman visiting my family in West Virginia where, often, huge and luminous Luna moths came to die on the veranda. And for fun, I did two paintings from old photogaphs of mine of a shark in a miniature golf avertisement on the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey, and Lucy the Elephant from Margate. If I'd had time, I would have done the huge gorilla from Kongo Golf, and Mighty Joe Young from the Pine Barrens.

So that's two shows coming up - the Fundraiser for the animal rescue is due May 1st, and the paintings of the train station will be delivered on May 29th for a show that will run through July and August. I am really excited about this show.

The third and final show is ARTS in Bloom in Cherry Hill to be held at Croft Farm. That show will run from May 5 through 16th and the Art is to be dropped off on the 1st. It is juried, so you pay your entrance fee and drop off the work then pick up whatever isn't accepted.

For that show, I plan to do a painting of Bercham's dyked farm on the Maurice River in Millville, the last operating dyked farm in New Jersey. It is a famous farm and the popular subject of many paintings by South Jersey artists. I have photos from so many trips on the Maurice River with Captain Dave's excursion boat. Also I have a photo of a Rail bird hunters' shack that I thought I might paint.

To be able to do all this painting takes a great deal of free time, free from housework, from errands, from lunch out, from all the other demands on time in the ordinary day. It takes me about a week and a half of 5 hour stints of painting to complete a larger painting. To do a smaller one usually takes two days of 5 hour stints.

My phases run: 1-Choose my inspiration, print out a resource. 2-draw the picture on the canvas 3-paint in the large areas of background colors 4-start detailing 5-refinement and correction after studying the painting for awhile, usually overnight 6-finishing touches 7-framing and hook and wiring DONE

I should add, finally, that painting days make me very very happy. The meditative quality of it eases my natural running stream of anxiety. Aside from the relief of anxiety due to the meditative quality of my style of painting, there is the joy in the accomplishment that I experience. I am always happy with the work - rarely disappinted in it. It closes a circuit of LOVE from my love of the look of something in the natural world to an acted out appreciation of it through translating it via my brain and hands and skill.

Right now, I can add that to my daily gratitudes and say I am grateful for the desire to paint and the ability to paint that has been a gift to me since childhood, along with my ability to write. These gifts are truly gifts. The three graces for me are Reading, Writing and Painting!

Before I close, I need to add that Woobury Friends Meeting has given me permission to open an Art Gallery in the Reception Area of the now empty Underwood Building. Jerome Barton and Susan Hagan have their Stained Glass Studio there, and now, right next door, I have the Friendship Art Gallery! There are 30 works by 6 artiss on display there and our opening day was March 10th. This show will be up until I feel like changing it. We have a Gallery Committee of 6 (the ones whose Art is on display - (the founders of the Gallery) but they pretty much leave the decision making in my hands. This is thrilling beyond my wildest dreams! I could at some point, have a solo show if I wanted! there are so many possibilites for this Gallery!

Happy Trails my Friends! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Good Friday - Suffering and Death - a poet

Just coming back from my Chair Yoga class and feeling particularly loose and comfortable in my skeleton as a result. A thread of texts from my Woodbury Friends Meeting reminded me of two things: the film - The Ten Commandments, and Shrove Tuesday pancakes!

For those of us who consume pancakes on Easter Sunday but don't any longer remember how the tradition began, here it is: On Shrove Tuesday, we frail and sinful mortals confess our transgressions and get ready for the fast - we "shrive" and hence, when we are through, we "shrove." To be thrifty, we use up our perishables (the tradition began before refrigeration) such as eggs and milk and fats, so we prepare for the fasting season by eating pancakes.

Today, for Christians, it is Holy Friday, or Good Friday. This is the day when Jesus Christ, having been tried and convicted on Maundy Thursday, of blasphemy by The Roman's puppet government in Judea (who actually thought he was a revolutionary and meant to overthrow the occupying Roman army) crucified him. He died between noon and 3:00 p.m. in pain and suffering. He actually was a revolutionary and did eventually overthrow the Roman army philosophically.

We all die eventually and many of us in pain and suffering, and I was thinking about that today because and old friend and gifted poet, Dan Maguire died recently. I only just found out because I don't have facebook any more having deleted it in protest of the junk that funneled through it like a sewer pipe. He was a brilliant, talented and vibrant human being who suffered a series of brain aneurisms, although I don't know if that is what finally killed him. He had moved to Baltimore and I lost touch with him but had tracked him down into a care facility in New Jersey. He had told me a long time ago that he was not able to take care of himself anymore and his home had fallen into squalor. His son had come to help him and undoubtedly surmised he needed full time care and gathered the other offspring to make appropriate arrangemtns. March would have been his birthday.

Like many old people, I am reminded of the other deaths that have been way staions on my own journey, my great-grandmother's death, my grandmothers' deaths, my own parents' deaths. I am the oldest sibling, so I will no doubt be the first of my immediate family of offspring to die. Usually I have said to myself and friends when we discuss age and dying, that I don't fear death but I fear disability. My mother suffered a stroke and 6 months of wheelchair paralysis before death saved her in December of 2000. I wouldn't want that fate. But my mother bore it with Christlike patience and submission.

My father's death was more rapid and he was fairly able until the last two weeks and then had hospice care before he was safely and humanely assisted out of his mortal coil. I have no idea what will happen to me.

Jesus was on the cross from 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. We know he asked God why he was forsaken. We also know that his being and his teachings went on to transform the Barbarous ancient world through the martyrdom of thousands of early Christians and disciples who spread the words of Love, forgiveness, compassion and generosity. Like Jesus they forgave their tormenters because the cruel and barbarous "knew not what they did." Thos lost souls were ignorant of and blind to the light of goodness and love. I haven't had much personal experience of committing cruelty but I am certain it doesn't feel good afterwards. I imagine it hurts like some internal bramble bush with wicked thorns.

Back to the origin of this essay, however, The Ten Commandemnts - the film! We were talking on the Woodbury thread about Easter traditions, hence the foray into pancakes. We also talked about the annual family film festival. All of us had shared the experience of watching The Ten Commandments and Easter Parade. I remembered the opening years of the great epics when Technicolor had just been invented and Cinemascope.

On our high school graduation trip to Washington DC in 1963, we were treat to the extravaganza of The Ten Commandments for the first time in Cinemascope. The movie screen was gigantic and the layers of heavy gold curtains were drawn back dramatically to the waves of orchestral music that washed over us and then BOOM! Huge, spectacularly bright and vivid colors so large and so loud that we were immersed in the film, drowned in it, swept away in it. It was as though God spoke directly to us in that film. Remember, television ahd only recently become available to those families with union working fathers who had the expendible cash to be able to buy this new luxury item. My grandfather had the first tv in our entire neighborhood, then my father bought one, and the screen was small and the images were in black and white.

I still remember the first movies I saw on the BIG SCREEN in technicolor - the great epics withe the swelling tidal wave of orchestral sound that carried them - Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and of course, that first introductory film, Ten Commandments.

I will watch that tonight on my small laptop screen through some streaming video service, probably netflix, but I will remember the glamor and the drama of the original viewing when I was a child and went to the matinee in our home-town theater with my blanket and my pillow because the Ten Commandments was sooooo long!

And all weekend, I will drift into thoughts of Jesus, how he died to show us the way to face our human destiny with the courage of gentleness and submission rather than the rage of unbridled beast-heart. I will read the Sermon on the Mount again and strive to incorporate those thoughts and instructions into my life.

Happy Easter! Jesus Christ and all he represent of the better part of human nature may have died in one way but his teachings have lived on into immortality in the souls of millions around the world.

Peace and Love!

FRIENDSHIP ART GALLERY

Five Friends, three of them members of the Woodbury Friends Meeting, came together to open an Art Gallery on the grounds of the historic Woodbury Friends Meeting, in the Underwood Building located across the adjoining parking lot. The Gallery opened on March 10, 2024 during Woodbury Friends hosting of Salem Quarterly Meeting. It will be open by appointment only and during community wide event days such as Woodbury Colonial Day. You can also reach a member in person at 12:15 on Sundays after weekly Meeting.

Beginning in Spring of 2025, the gallery will host an open group show on THE ENVIRONMENT. All exhibitions are juried shows. Works can include traditional landscape paintings, photography, botanical drawings, fiber arts such as quilts and needlework, woodworking, to name a few. All work must be framed, wired and ready to hang. For more information you can contact Jo Ann Wright at her e-mail address wrightj45@yahoocom, or if you are familiar with other friends, you can contact Carleton Crispin, property manager, or Jerome Barton, stained glass artist, whose studio is on the premises of the Underwood Bldg.

Thirty works currently on dispay include paintings, photography, stained glass art and 3-d printing. This show has no specific theme but several pieces honor March Women's History Month as the show opened on March 10, 2024.

We hope to see you and we hope you find this an opportunity to exhibit your work if you are a painter, photographer, quilter, woodworker or ceramicist. Works may be offered for sale but all sales must be arranged between artists and buyers not through the gallery. Contact wrightj45@yahoo.com for more information.

Spring is a season for beginnings! Happy Trails, Jo Ann

43rd Annual Nanticoke Lenni Lenape Pow Wow

The 43rd Annual Nanticoke Lenni Lenape Pow Wow is the Strawberry Moon Pow Wow. It will be held on Saturday and Sunday, June 8th and 9th, 2024 at the Salem County Fairgrounds, 735 Harding Highway, Woodstown, NJ 08098. Bring a lawn chair.

There will be tradition dancing in contests, music, car show and on Sunday, a church service.

Stoney Creek Singers and Red Blanket Singers will perform music.

On March 10, 2024 Woodbury Friends Meeting was pleaed to hear Chief Urie Ridgeway speak about the current world of the Lenni Lenape people in New Jersey as well as their history in the region, their history with neighbor tribes and with Colonial settlers among many other topics. He is a charming and interesting speaker and Friends learned a great deal.

New jersey Quakers (the Soceity of Friends) have had a long and warm history with the original people of the Delaware Valley which continues to this day.

It has been many years since I visited a Pow Wow, which are held across the nation throughout the year. The last one I attended was in Rancocas and it was fascinating. I had visited it two or more times both as a teacher, with students from my school, and as a mother with my daughter. We learned a great deal and enjoyed the visit. I hope to be alble to attend this year's Pow Wow as well and see how the Pow Wow has evolved.

New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Salem County Heritage Commission

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Gloria Steinem's Birthday March 25, 2024

On March 25, Gloria Steinem will be 90 years old. She has been an inspiration to me in so many many ways and now, she is an inspiration in longevity!

One of my saddest and ONLY regrets came from an episode after I left my ex-husband Michael in 1981. I took very few things because my car, a very old VW beetle had failed inspection and had a 24 hour "off the road" sticker on it, so I basically left on foot. My brothers helped me move a few sticks of survival furniture, a roll-away cot, a small table and some chairs, some art supplies and my clothes. But what I had to leave on the curb on trash day were three or four precious crates of Second Wave Feminism books and magaines It broke my heart but my back hurt even more and I could't carry those crates up all those steps into that dreary little 2nd floor apartment over a pharmacy on Haddon Ave. in Collingswood. I was done, flattened on the road like a run over cat. But I have regreted that so frequently since. There were feminist magazines that only came out twice like rare colorful mushrooms in the forest.

It is hard to describe, now, the wild fervor and enthusiasm of the Second Wave Feminists in my college from 1970 to 1974. We were doing everything, writing, painting, publishing our own magazines, one of a kind books, making all kinds of artwork. We were marching, wiping our faces clean of the costume of feminity that was eye make-up and lipstick and we were wearing earth shoes so our toes could finally spread out the way our souls were.

An avid reader, I read everything from the Feminine Mystique to Ruby Fruit Jungle and everything in between. Those early, lively, revolutionary copies of Ms. Magazine were breathtaking. There were issues featuring the latest artists and musicians and their wild forays. The one I remember best was about "Woman House" a collaborative art venture where artist took each closet and room in a house and transformed it into an installation on the female experience.

Sadly, today, Ms. Magazine is like a well meaning but deadly dull old club lady in a chintz chair editing the church bulletin. I have a couple of copies I can't even get myself to read. It isn't that the writing isn't sincere or true, but that it is unmitigated dull drudgery on the plights of women in third world countries, long dull prose pieces, well meaning but dry. The fun and the wild explorations are gone along with our youth.

The outre' vanguard of Second Wave Feminism has doddered into our old age, and we are tired. I am tired. I am busy seeing to my personal survival in a body that increasingly just can't make it up the stairs anymore, much like that day I left the crates on the sidewalk. It reminds me of an old dog I saw once, who, eagerly watching the frisbee his human had thrown, lumbered to its feet and made a whole hearted effort to go fetch it, but fell down and lay there panting.

To celebrate Gloria's birthday, I have bought a book of hers published in 2019 called "The Truth will set you free though first it will piss you off." Truth be told I have a lot of trouble reading with my failing eyesight.The last book of hers that I read was "My Life On The Road." Her life on the road started early with her childhood in the car with her traveling salesman father.

Like me, Gloria had no advantages beyond those given by physical nature. She was good-looking and intelligent and those two gifts carried her far. Like Gloria, I was good-looking and intelligent and that's how I know how much benefit those two traits bring to the life of a woman. Also like Gloria, I took a short and, in my case, dangerous, foray into the world of marriage and made my escape into what Elizabeth Cady Stanton called "The Splendid Solitude of Self." What Virginia Woolf called "A Room of One's Own." And in that state, I have resided comfortably for more than 40 years. I hope, like Gloria, I can remain in comfortable solitude of self until I reach my 90th birthday. Who knows?

Happy Birthday Gloria Steinem, My Hero! wrightj45@yahoo.com

New Starts for Old People 3/18/24

I don't know about you but I am a big fan of AARP magazine! Today, I read three articles and two were about two people who thought they were at an end anf found out they were at a beginning! One man had dropped off the end of a career in dance due to age and illness and found a new life in the Southwest where he had gone to he thought die. He went to his mother's house for care and found a community in poverty where he could show young peope the path from an interest to a career in the entertainment arts, dance, theater, music.

The second article was about a man who had started in small town journalism but had gone into a careerr running stores. After he and his wife retired, they found a new life in Edenton, South Carolina, which readers of Early American Life Magazine will recognise as one of those quaint, historic communities where people's houses are often featured in magazines devoted to American history and Colonial architecture. He started as a volunteer columnist covering things like boyscout annual breakfasts and found himself writing for half a dozen other local newspapers and even covering a corruption case of a local official paying himself unauthorized raises!

This caught my attention because I have recently found myself in a similar situation. I oined Woodbury Friends Meeting about three years ago. When they lost their 50 tenant in an outbuilding due to bankruptcy, they found themselves with a couple of serviceable but not easily rented out building spaces. At the same time, a former Art student of mine, and a stained glass artist was looking for studio space. Next thing you know, we have a flourishing stained glass studio and a brand new Art Gallery! The Friendship Art Gallery just opened on March 10 with works from three Woodbury Friends Meeting members and three stained glass artists! I never dreamed I would be running a gallery at the age of 78! Now I am so excited thinking about themes for future shows and how to get in touch with and encourage other artists to exhibit their work in our Gallery! You never know what the future may hold.

Also, on a separate note in 2019, at age 73 I won a prize at The Eiland Arts Center for a fabric multi media Art piece I did celebrating Teh Suffrage Ammendment, and last year, at age 77, I won the Founder's prize for a multi-media fabric and painting Art piece I showed in the Annual exhibition of the Haddon Fortnightly scholarship fund raising Art Show celebrating Women's History Month. Two prizes and an Art Gallery in my 70's!!

Happy Trails friends and good luck blazing new ones!

St. Patricks Day - Irish Literature

It seems only fair to write about Irish literature on the eve of St. Patrick's Day. I am watching a series on Netrlix called The Rebellion, which is excellent, but more about that later. First and foremost I want to mention an Irish Poet who was my teacher when I was in college: Basil Payne. He was the kindest, most humble and lovely man, so unlike the pompous male English Department professors I knew at the time. I just bought my third copy of his book of poetry, Another Kind of Optimism.

Also I wanted to remember Edna O'Brien who wrote The Country Girls Trilogy which was a big favorite of mine in my late teens, early twenties and which came out in 1960. It was three books that tell a coming of age story when I was coming of age myself. I can't remember much about it except that I loved it.

So these were my favorite Irish authors. According to google the following list is the most famous Irish authors:

Great Irish Writers

James Joyce. James Joyce is usually the first name that pops in to people's heads when they think of Irish writing.

Oscar Wilde.

W.B Yeats.

Roddy Doyle.

Bram Stoker.

Maeve Binchy.

Jonathan Swift.

Samuel Beckett.

I have loved W. B. Yeats poetry, and enjoyed one or two of Maeve Binchy's novels, such as Under the Copper Beech Tree, but I would't say she was greater than Edna, and why not bput Edna on the list anyhow? I have read Roddy Dole and, of course, Jonathan Swift (in my college English survey course-Gulliver's Travels). We all know Bram Stoker's Dracula though I doubt anyone has recently read it. And again, in my college survey course, I read Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest and don't remember anything about it, but I do remember the Portrait of Dorian Gray. As for Samuel Beckett, I saaw a television version of his play Waiting for Godot and that's all I have to say about that. Conession, I could only make heads or tails out of Ulysses by listening to it on audio tape (somewhat, anyhow).

Thomas Flanagan gets nary a mention although his trilogy on Irish history is probably the most well known and most widely read of contemporary writers on Ireland and the best introduction to the broad sweep of the modern era of The Struggles: The Year of the French, The Tenants of Time, The End of the Hunt. I read them all and found them thrilling and immensely informative. Big recommendation to anyone interested in what happened in Ireland in the last 125 years.

Well, it is time for me to get back to my series on Netflix, The Rebellion, which I mentioned up in the first paragraph. Starting with the Easter Rebellion of 1914, it is very well done and goes nicely with Billy Collins a very recent film nearly ruined by Julia Robert's inability to even make a ghost of an attempt at an Irish accent. The solution would have been to let her play an American character rather than an Irish woman with an American accent!

Before I leave, Lady Gregory is tugging on my sleeve! I enjoyed her play The Rising of the Moon but she is most famous for her book on Irish Myth which I didn't read. She is also famous for co-founding the Abbey Theater and keeping Irish theater and literature alive during the worst years of British repression and tyrrany in Ireland, the 1930's.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, and in case you are wondering, yes, my mother's family is of Irish descent. The family name was McQuiston and they were what was known as Scots/Irish Protestans (Episcopalians) from the North although my grandfather's family (Lyons) were Irish Catholics from the South (the Republic).

Slainte (pronounced Slancha)

Women's History Month EVENT - one of my favorite places GCHS Woodbury

New Woodbury Museum Exhibit for Women's History Month

A new Women's History Month exhibit at the Gloucester County Historical Society in Woodbury spotlights three dozen of the county's most remarkable women and their achievements. Included are entertainment and sports icons like punk rocker Patti Smith who graduated from Deptford High School and Tara Lipinski who spent her early years in Sewell; law enforcement and military officers like Kim Reichert, the county's first female police captain and Lieutenant Commander Frances Willoughby, the first female physician commissioned in the U.S. Navy; civil rights advocates Loretta Winters and Irene Hill-Smith, both NAACP Presidents; scientists like Eleanor Vadala of National Park who helped develop Kevlar, and Gibbstown marine biologist Sylvia Earle; and dozens more from the 1700s to the present whose vision and accomplishments helped make the County what it is today.~ ~ ~

MAKE A LUNCH OR DINNER ADVENTURE OF IT. The GCHS Museum is located across the street from Charlie Brown's Fresh Grill, one of Woodbury's most popular restaurants. Stop in for a cozy meal before or after your visit to the Museum. Parking is free in Charlie Brown's lot, the Museum's lot on Hunter St., or the Gloucester County Justice Complex Parking Complex that is also on Hunter St.

The GCHS Museum58 N. Broad St. Woodbury, NJ 08096 Hours: Tuesday, 6 pm to 9 pm Wednesday, Thursday & Friday, 12-4 pm 3rd weekend of every month (Saturday and Sunday) 12-4 pm

Google Map Google Map: https://bit.ly/gchs-google-map

Charlie Brown's Restaurant 111 N. Broad St., Woodbury, NJ 08096 Hours: 11:30 am to beyond 9 pm all days of the week.~ ~ ~

Organization: Gloucester County Historical Society Contact: Sandy Levins Phone: 609-505-0311 E-mail: sandy.levins@gchs-news.org Event Date: Through the month of March Event Location: Gloucester Country Historical Society Museum, 58 North Broad Street in Woodbury

My former Mother-in-law's pieroghi's

My former mother-in-law, now long deceased, was a wonderful cook of traditional Polish food. She made her own pieroghi's, cabbage filled or potato or cheese. And she made golumpki's9peppers stuffed with ground meat mixture and cooked in sauce, sometimes instead of peppers it was cabbage leaves), nad stuffed vine leaes (I forget the names of most of the things she made. She also made a delicious cherry soup.

She was a complicated woman. When she cooked for her husband, her son, and me, she refused to sit down at the table and instead stood at the stove, cooking and serving more things. I had never seen anything like that before and I was embarrassed to eat when she was seated, a big faux pas in my family. You never began to eat until everyone was seated, especially mom.

Elma was her name. She was a thin, wrinkled woman about 5 feet 5 inches tall with should length wiry gray hair with a pronounced widow's peak which her son inherited, and grayish colored eyes behind her glasses. Elma was exceptionally emotional, at least compared to my world where my father was the only one who emoted on a regular basis. When Elma wasin some kind of emotional state, usually brought on by the unheard of rudeness of her son, she cr5ied and took to her room and her husband, Herman, took to his hide-away in the basement.

Her son, Michael, demonstrated a form of rudeness I wasn't to see again until my youngest brother reached his mid teens. I am the oldes of five and when I was growing up, Dad ruled like a Medieval king and No ONE would dare be rude to him or to my mother. At my former husband's house, the temperatmental and emotionally unruly son ruled the roost.

The first time I ever met Elma, I arrived expecting the typical suburban Anglo-Saxon style family, but I met something that I recognized years later as a more European scenario. Michael's mother, Elma was dressed in a floor length beaded, circa 1920's formal dress and she had Der Rosenkavalier record playing on the record player. Michael immediately chastised her for humiliating him and she went to her room in tears. I couldn't really understnd what she had done wrong. It was surely different but how was she at fault? She was like a character in a novel and I was a child of novels. My ex-husband's behavior, to me, was far more out of line.

That was years before I knew he had emotional instability, mental illness. All I knew was that he had an explosive temper and no boundaries or awareness of others when he blew his top. It was years before I knew that offspring can inherit traits that haven't been expressed in their parents but in their aunts and uncles. For example I read a study of offspring who had schizophrenia and also webbed toes. Neither of the parents had these traits but the father's siblings had them. Elma had a brother of whom no one ever spoke but over the years I had bleaned that he had been homeless and on the streets in Camden and had a mental illness as well as a mathematical gift. He had been very gifted but his illness eventually took over and he was dysfunctional. >p/> When I married her son, Elma, who I think always had wished to have a daughter, bought me 12 ovely negligees for my honeymoon. I was deeply touched. I felt sad for her when I left her son. We never really spoke because I was afraid that any contact would attach him to me again in some way and he had intimated that he would kill me if I left him.

His company had transfered him to Colorado which was my saving grace. Funny because it was a life insurance company, Insurance Company of North America, and they turned out to be my life insurance because they took away my greatest danger.

To make Elma's pieroghi, you can skip the dough making and buy Mrs. T's piroghi in the frozen food section. So far I have only found the potato but perhaps there are cabbage and cheese ones out there somewhere. You boil the water, drop in the frozen pieroghis and cook until tender. Meanwhile you lightly sautee a diced onion in butter in a skillet and when the pieroghi are finished, use a slotted spook to remove them from the water and laightly sautee them in the onions. Serve with a dollop of sour cream. I used to make her stuffed peppers too, only with brown rice not her meat mixture which was two or three meats ground together I am a vegetarian.

I cooked so many things today and none of them turned out well plus it gave me a terrible back ache and made me think of all the old women over all the uears cooking until their backs ached.

On a lighter note. I think we shoud celelbrate "The DAy of the Window Opening" Today was the first day warm enough to open a window in each room and let the hint of spring come in and freshen the air. I hope my back recovers in time for me to get up and close them when the sun goes down.

Happy trails - through the world, through your memory - Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com Jo Ann