March is Women's History Month, and this year we have a special anniversary to celebrate with the Centennial of the 19th Amendment and Women's Suffrage! In commemoration of this event, the Spring 2020 Camden County Heritagemagazine will feature "Women of Camden County," available at local historical societies at the end of the month. Then the first weekend of May we will be celebrating our first "Women in History" Heritage Trails Day, with events at multiple sites across the county. We hope you enjoy some of these wonderful presentations, exhibits, and other activities that remember the women who shaped our past!
Yesterday, a friend and I attended the Gloucester County Historical Society Museum after delicious vegan lunches at the Colonial Diner in Woodbury. On display were half a dozen beautiful dresses from the 1800's which was of great interest to me as lately I have been studying dressmaking and seamstress work. My interest was renewed after I attended Barbara Johns WONDERFUL Presentation Straw into Gold at the Lyceum in Burlington a week or two ago. it was about flax into linen production and as always Ms. Johns did a great presentation and showed many fascinating tools for this most Colonial and Woman connected enterprise. Think what an ubiquitous presence the spinning wheel has had in our folklore and our image of women of the past and in the daily lives of women before the Industrial Revolution. Even our language has so many references as in "spinning a yarn" and even modern uses as in "putting a spin on the news."
Today I will be at Red Bank Battlefield, James and Ann Whitall House for Herbal Healing lecture and very interested in this extension from plant fibers to cloth into plant fibers into medicine. I still rely a lot on herbal teas for a variety of minor ailments that I may find myself afflicted with, especial in the digestive area. Slippery elm tea is excellent for that.
The Herbal Healing lecture begins at 11:00. Also, I just remembered how in the neighborhood where I grew up in South Philadelphia, the Italian neighbors often brewed dandelion wine which was said to have therapeutic effects. Although where we lived I don't know where you could find many dandelions! I still love the hardy little yellow flowers and I hate to hear people talk about poisoning them for a more uniform and boring lawn.
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
Hidden from history
I have often told this anecdote because it is so perfectly illustrative of how hurtful and damaging it was for young women to be denied knowledge of notable women in history, especially in their field of endeavor.
When I was a young college student studying English Literature, I had a full year, two semester course called Survey of World Literature. There were NO women writers included - not one. When I asked the professor how it could be a world survey if it didn't have even one woman author, he replied "There were no women writers worth being included." I proceeded to spend the next year compiling and reading the works of women authors who were not only notable but were 'firsts' and both popular and acclaimed in their own time, then dropped and forgotten by later male critics, authors such as the still popular Jane Austen, George Snad (pen-name), the Bronte' sisters, Japanese pioneer of the novel form, Lady Murakami, and dozens of others. It was interesting to see how later critics manipulated criteria to leave out immensely influential books like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, whom Lincoln jokingly called "the little lady who started a war."
If a man had written it, it would have been lauded as a historic icon, if, perhaps, not an artistically laudatory literary work (I am not sure about this either.) The professor did not use any of my research in designing future courses, but I had taught myself a great deal by doing it.
Anyhow, young women needed examples, role models, pioneers to show them the way and to help remove such blockades as "some can't do that." The area of math was infamous for being held up as an area that women were incapable of making a career or a work of importance.
But as soon as we got the vote, and were able to get into college, we began to right the wrongs of previous historians and find our lost role models. One of them just died. Perhaps you read the book or saw the movie HIDDEN FIGURES, which dealt not only with the obstacles thrown in the way of women in math, but also the Jim Crow style blockades erected in the path of women of African American ancestry. One of the heroes of that book and movie has just died:
When I was a young college student studying English Literature, I had a full year, two semester course called Survey of World Literature. There were NO women writers included - not one. When I asked the professor how it could be a world survey if it didn't have even one woman author, he replied "There were no women writers worth being included." I proceeded to spend the next year compiling and reading the works of women authors who were not only notable but were 'firsts' and both popular and acclaimed in their own time, then dropped and forgotten by later male critics, authors such as the still popular Jane Austen, George Snad (pen-name), the Bronte' sisters, Japanese pioneer of the novel form, Lady Murakami, and dozens of others. It was interesting to see how later critics manipulated criteria to leave out immensely influential books like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, whom Lincoln jokingly called "the little lady who started a war."
If a man had written it, it would have been lauded as a historic icon, if, perhaps, not an artistically laudatory literary work (I am not sure about this either.) The professor did not use any of my research in designing future courses, but I had taught myself a great deal by doing it.
Anyhow, young women needed examples, role models, pioneers to show them the way and to help remove such blockades as "some can't do that." The area of math was infamous for being held up as an area that women were incapable of making a career or a work of importance.
But as soon as we got the vote, and were able to get into college, we began to right the wrongs of previous historians and find our lost role models. One of them just died. Perhaps you read the book or saw the movie HIDDEN FIGURES, which dealt not only with the obstacles thrown in the way of women in math, but also the Jim Crow style blockades erected in the path of women of African American ancestry. One of the heroes of that book and movie has just died:
Katherine Johnson, whose career making vital calculations for NASA was immortalized in the 2016 book and movie "Hidden Figures," has died at 101. Johnson joined what was then called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1953 as a so-called human computer.
I am sure we will see obituary notices of her contributions in magazines and newspapers and can read more about her accomplishments and her life.
Also on the cover of Smithsonian this month there is an illustration to invite the reader to learn more about Florence Nightingale, who was not only a famous Crimean Battle nurse but according to Smithsonian's cover a "fierce reformer and pioneering statistician." I saw a movie about Florence Nightingale some years ago and I will look it up on google and see if I can get the title for you in case you, too, would like to enjoy a Women's History Film Festival on this year of celebration of the 100th anniversary of Suffrage for American Women.
I have decorated inside my house with purple lights and star shaped frames within which I have put pictures of a dozen of the most influential 'Votes for Women' activists of America and Britain: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Alice Paul, Lucretia Mott, Emmeline Pankhurst, Mary Wollstonecraft to name a few.
Happy 100th Anniversary - keep your eyes open for the many women's history articles that are sure to appear in newspapers and magazines this year in honor of this momentous occasion.
By the way, I could easily name 25 or more famous men of history in a variety of fields, off the cuff, spontaneously from a life of both learning and enjoying history featuring men, how many men or women could do the same? How many women can you name in the following fields: science, literature, art, film, environmentalism, photography, politics, journalism? Give yourself a little test and if you can't, it isn't because they don't exist, but only because you have not become aware of their contributions.
By the way, there are many historic sites you can visit in women's history here in South Jersey too - you can visit the one room school where Clara Barton taught before she went on to found the Red Cross, and you can visit the home and agricultural village site of Elizabeth White, cultivator of the blueberry and inventor of cellophane packaging for her new crop, just to name two. Also, did you know that Harriet Tubman, freedom fighter, and hero of a new movie by her name, worked in Cape May to gather funds to support her forays into the south to rescue enslaved people and guide them to freedom?
And most notably this year, visit Paulsdale in Mount Laurel, the family farm of Alice Paul where you can get a great view of the final years of the long struggle for American Women to win the right to vote in the US, and the part Alice Paul played in making that happen.
By the way, there are many historic sites you can visit in women's history here in South Jersey too - you can visit the one room school where Clara Barton taught before she went on to found the Red Cross, and you can visit the home and agricultural village site of Elizabeth White, cultivator of the blueberry and inventor of cellophane packaging for her new crop, just to name two. Also, did you know that Harriet Tubman, freedom fighter, and hero of a new movie by her name, worked in Cape May to gather funds to support her forays into the south to rescue enslaved people and guide them to freedom?
And most notably this year, visit Paulsdale in Mount Laurel, the family farm of Alice Paul where you can get a great view of the final years of the long struggle for American Women to win the right to vote in the US, and the part Alice Paul played in making that happen.
Happy Trails, fellow travelers!
Jo Ann
The movie about Florence Nightingale was called:
THE LADY WITH THE LAMP, and it came out in 1985
THE LADY WITH THE LAMP, and it came out in 1985
Sunday, February 23, 2020
Votes for Women! Suffrage Films for the 100th Anniversary of American Wmen Winning Right to Vote
March is right around the corner and hence WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH. Almost every year I have watched Ken Burns documentary:NOT FOR OURSELVES ALONE, the story of the battle fought by thousands of women with the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to win the right to vote for women.
In case you have forgotten why this had such urgency in the 1800's, it helps to remember that women had NO Legal protections of any kind. A married woman was considered 'chattel' that is, property of her husband. He could collect her wages, take her children, and if her father tried to leave her property (since her mother wouldn't have been able to own any to leave) he husband got that too. A bad husband could thereby impoverish his wife even if she came into the marriage with something of her own. Even her body didn't belong to her, and there were no laws against spousal rape or violence. It was acceptable for a man to use physical force to discipline his wife - wife battering. And a husband had control of the children.
One of the driving forces behind Temperance was that in the Colonial period and the 1800's, alcoholism and drinking in general were at an epidemic rate. American Heritage ran an article once that showed that for all the damage of prohibition, it stopped the epidemic of alcoholism and drinking never returned to the previous level. Therefore women were totally at the mercy of alcoholic and abusive husbands and fathers. At first Temperance women thought getting rid of alcohol was the answer, that if men didn't drink, they wouldn't abuse and batter. Suffragists, correctly saw a bigger issue, legal rights, and they thought the answer was to get the vote and then be able to get representation for their rights, as well as to ge to college, get professions, including law degrees, and gain independence that way.
At the time of the wave of Suffrage activity in the 1800's (It had been going on before in other places - England for example) women in America couldn't go to college, enter a profession, speak in public, or serve on a jury.
Every year when I watch a Suffrae history movie, I am shocked anew by the level of prejudice shamelessly used against women. As a woman with 3 college degrees, all with honors, it shocks me to hear an argument that we don't have the rational minds to make decisions, or that our minds are to frail to withstand an education.
This year I added a new film to my groin roster:
The original is the Ken Burns documentary NOT FOR OURSELVES ALONE, about the foundation wave that finally brought us to the gates of victory.
My next favorite was a docudrama called IRON JAWED ANGELS, next generation of Suffragist that took us through the gates, leader Alice Paul, our own New Jersey hero.
The newest addition to the roster was a documentary I found last night on the Australian women's fight for the vote. They won theirs 50 years before we won ours. I found it by diligently searching the amazon prime back list of films. I can't remember the title now. But if you looked under Women Get the Right To Vote, you can find it. It was old fashioned in its filmmaking style but nonetheless inspiring and interesting.
BIG NEWS: My Art project, done in cooperation with another retired teacher friend, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Suffrage was accepted into the nationwide project BRAVE 100! It will be on display in March. More info on that when I post again!
I would list books on Suffrage but it would take many blog posts to do them all. I believe I have posted some earlier.
Happy Trails
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
In case you have forgotten why this had such urgency in the 1800's, it helps to remember that women had NO Legal protections of any kind. A married woman was considered 'chattel' that is, property of her husband. He could collect her wages, take her children, and if her father tried to leave her property (since her mother wouldn't have been able to own any to leave) he husband got that too. A bad husband could thereby impoverish his wife even if she came into the marriage with something of her own. Even her body didn't belong to her, and there were no laws against spousal rape or violence. It was acceptable for a man to use physical force to discipline his wife - wife battering. And a husband had control of the children.
One of the driving forces behind Temperance was that in the Colonial period and the 1800's, alcoholism and drinking in general were at an epidemic rate. American Heritage ran an article once that showed that for all the damage of prohibition, it stopped the epidemic of alcoholism and drinking never returned to the previous level. Therefore women were totally at the mercy of alcoholic and abusive husbands and fathers. At first Temperance women thought getting rid of alcohol was the answer, that if men didn't drink, they wouldn't abuse and batter. Suffragists, correctly saw a bigger issue, legal rights, and they thought the answer was to get the vote and then be able to get representation for their rights, as well as to ge to college, get professions, including law degrees, and gain independence that way.
At the time of the wave of Suffrage activity in the 1800's (It had been going on before in other places - England for example) women in America couldn't go to college, enter a profession, speak in public, or serve on a jury.
Every year when I watch a Suffrae history movie, I am shocked anew by the level of prejudice shamelessly used against women. As a woman with 3 college degrees, all with honors, it shocks me to hear an argument that we don't have the rational minds to make decisions, or that our minds are to frail to withstand an education.
This year I added a new film to my groin roster:
The original is the Ken Burns documentary NOT FOR OURSELVES ALONE, about the foundation wave that finally brought us to the gates of victory.
My next favorite was a docudrama called IRON JAWED ANGELS, next generation of Suffragist that took us through the gates, leader Alice Paul, our own New Jersey hero.
The newest addition to the roster was a documentary I found last night on the Australian women's fight for the vote. They won theirs 50 years before we won ours. I found it by diligently searching the amazon prime back list of films. I can't remember the title now. But if you looked under Women Get the Right To Vote, you can find it. It was old fashioned in its filmmaking style but nonetheless inspiring and interesting.
BIG NEWS: My Art project, done in cooperation with another retired teacher friend, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Suffrage was accepted into the nationwide project BRAVE 100! It will be on display in March. More info on that when I post again!
I would list books on Suffrage but it would take many blog posts to do them all. I believe I have posted some earlier.
Happy Trails
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Friday, February 21, 2020
Not for Ourselves Alone
Tonight, end of February, 2020, not for the first or the last time, I enjoyed Ken Burns beautiful documentary honoring Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the pioneers of the Suffrage movement in America.
From the year my daughter was born, I carried her with me into the voting booth, so she could enjoy that honor with me and so she could understand how important to me it was to vote.
Many people are ignorant of the history of the movement and of the laws regarding women when Elizabeth CAdy Stanton and Susan B. Anthony began their lifelong strungle.
Women had no legal status and no legal protection. We could not go to college, or sign a contract, inherit property, or enter any profession. If we managed to find some work and earn a wage, a husband was legally able to take our wage. We had no right to our children or our home. And without the vote we had no way to make any change in this situation. Women couldn't speak in public either.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony found the courage to go against the custom of the day and create a movement of other women with the courage to flout the conventions and gather, speak, sign petitions, march, make protests and create organizations.
The first one was the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848 where a women's bill of rights was put forward and a group consensus formed around it.
Through innumerable struggles, the old leaders sallied forth, and new leaders picked up the standard and carried it forward into the next century when in 1920, the right to vote was finally won by half of the citizens of the United States.
This year is the 100th Anniversary of the significant event and that's why I watched this documentary again. I watched in almost every year. When it was shown on channel 12 as part of The American Experience, I watched it. I owned the double vas cassette when it first came out.
And next I will find and watch the documentary about our own New Jersey heroine, Alice Paul. There are two movies, as I recall, one a documentary and one a historical fiction. Also today, in the mail, arrived my book of Suffrage postcards which I plan to send to my friends, and a set of buttons, and a flag and purple lights. I will wear purple in March to celebrate as well. Earlier this year, I read two new excellent books on the movement, one of which dealt with lesser known activists.
I have a self portrait from when I was in college in a masters program, and behind and around my portrait I painted the words to Elizabeth Cady Stanton's speech, "The Solitude of Self."
A summary paragraph:
My favorite line from it:
"In that solemn solitude of self, that links us with the immeasurable and the eternal, each soul lives alone forever."
Happy Trails, and Happy 100th Anniversary of the Suffrage Amendment #19!
wrightj45@yahoo.com
From the year my daughter was born, I carried her with me into the voting booth, so she could enjoy that honor with me and so she could understand how important to me it was to vote.
Many people are ignorant of the history of the movement and of the laws regarding women when Elizabeth CAdy Stanton and Susan B. Anthony began their lifelong strungle.
Women had no legal status and no legal protection. We could not go to college, or sign a contract, inherit property, or enter any profession. If we managed to find some work and earn a wage, a husband was legally able to take our wage. We had no right to our children or our home. And without the vote we had no way to make any change in this situation. Women couldn't speak in public either.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony found the courage to go against the custom of the day and create a movement of other women with the courage to flout the conventions and gather, speak, sign petitions, march, make protests and create organizations.
The first one was the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848 where a women's bill of rights was put forward and a group consensus formed around it.
Through innumerable struggles, the old leaders sallied forth, and new leaders picked up the standard and carried it forward into the next century when in 1920, the right to vote was finally won by half of the citizens of the United States.
This year is the 100th Anniversary of the significant event and that's why I watched this documentary again. I watched in almost every year. When it was shown on channel 12 as part of The American Experience, I watched it. I owned the double vas cassette when it first came out.
And next I will find and watch the documentary about our own New Jersey heroine, Alice Paul. There are two movies, as I recall, one a documentary and one a historical fiction. Also today, in the mail, arrived my book of Suffrage postcards which I plan to send to my friends, and a set of buttons, and a flag and purple lights. I will wear purple in March to celebrate as well. Earlier this year, I read two new excellent books on the movement, one of which dealt with lesser known activists.
I have a self portrait from when I was in college in a masters program, and behind and around my portrait I painted the words to Elizabeth Cady Stanton's speech, "The Solitude of Self."
A summary paragraph:
"The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings. The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities -- for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear -- is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life."
"In that solemn solitude of self, that links us with the immeasurable and the eternal, each soul lives alone forever."
Happy Trails, and Happy 100th Anniversary of the Suffrage Amendment #19!
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Ernest Hemingway and Judy Chicago - Papa and Mama
On the way home from a friend's house this afternoon, I heard an interview from the 1990's with A. E. Hotchner who wrote the definitive biography of Ernest Hemingway, "Papa Hemingway" which, of course, like most of the intellectually active people of my age and time, I read. In fact, I read every book Hemingway wrote too, and saw every move made from his books. In case you don't remember them, some of them were: For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Moveable Feast, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell To Arms, To Have and Have Not, Across the River and Into the Trees, Death in the Afternoon, Collected Short Stories, etc.
A. E. Hotchner has just died at age 102!! He lived 41 years longer than Hemingway who died at age 61. One of the things my friends and I were talking about today was adapting to aging. We got onto the subject of overcoming the natural despair that accompanies all the losses we suffer as we age.
Speaking for myself, some of those losses have been my mobility and flexibility, days without pain, eye sight, hearing, teeth. My back is deteriorating (I have desiccated disc disease), my knees are going (same problem - disintegrating cartilage), my corneas are failing (Fuch's Dystrophy) and I have notice my hearing is failing. I have a terrible time going up and down steps, cannot stay upright for too long or my back has a pinching pain (stenosis) and I am stiff all over. I have lost my looks, am overweight with a weight that will not stay off no matter how I struggle to get rid of it. I lose it and turn around and it is back again, like a bad ghost. My once lithe and beautiful body is lumpy and pouchy, brown spotted and misshapen and I stoop.
However, I always console myself by saying that my brain is still good. For the time being, I can still read, and I can still walk, and for all I have lost in moving or dying family and friends, I have also made new friends and I have many long-time friendships such as the two friends I saw this afternoon. The heartbreak of the loss of the company of family and friends is a very heavy dark cloud. It is best to not look back on the happy family times we had when my family all got together with my parents in West Virginia, playing board games, hiking, watching tv together and eating together. Those days are gone forever, along with my childhood and the childhood of my daughter who lives in Brooklyn.
Things I say to myself: "If you can't be with the ones you love, love the ones you're with." And "ADAPT AND EVOLVE" are some of my favorites. Planning helps. Ten Year Plan: I am working on paying down all my debts by doing double payments each month (the home equity loan for my heater, for example) so that when the pets die I will be able to go into assisted living if I need to. Hopefully I won't need to. When the day comes that I can't read, I will listen to audio books. I have already adapted to my inability to read tv menus by watching netflix and amazon video on a laptop (the one I am using to type this blog). I have a cane now and I am working on adapting some of the very few steps I have, which I struggle with now. Also, I have hired help, a cleaner and a yard-man who come once a week. They may, I hope, get my through my early 80's. I hope I can live to 90, as my father before me and his mother before him.
My 75th birthday is coming in the autumn. Many of my friends are free of the disabilities that hamper me, but some of my friends have far worse things. I have a friend with dementia and two friends with cancer. I have also had friends who have died. So I am not in the bottom third, but perhaps in the middle.
Anyway, I finished an Art Project for Celebrating 2020 the 100th anniversary of Suffrage in America, that was inspired by Judy Chicago's A Dinner Party. Neither of the friends I saw today had seen or heard of it, so I brought my book, all dusty from the shelf, to show them. Sadly, they were less than impressed, and I felt that the work was somehow dated - a kind of relic of a feminist era that has morphed into something else entirely. It seemed to blatant and overstated. I was hurt that something that had meant so much to me was gross and unimpressive to them.
It reminded me of a Hemingway experience I had. I had loved, in my late adolescence A MOVEABLE FEAST, by Hemingway. I bought it for my brother, ten years or maybe 20, later. He hated it, so I read it again and I hated it too. I had changed so much it didn't appeal to me anymore and it seemed so out of date. It reminds me of a quote I ran into recently "Sometimes you go back to a place you once loved and you find you have changed."
Happy trails, into the woods, into the past, into the world of thought!!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
A. E. Hotchner has just died at age 102!! He lived 41 years longer than Hemingway who died at age 61. One of the things my friends and I were talking about today was adapting to aging. We got onto the subject of overcoming the natural despair that accompanies all the losses we suffer as we age.
Speaking for myself, some of those losses have been my mobility and flexibility, days without pain, eye sight, hearing, teeth. My back is deteriorating (I have desiccated disc disease), my knees are going (same problem - disintegrating cartilage), my corneas are failing (Fuch's Dystrophy) and I have notice my hearing is failing. I have a terrible time going up and down steps, cannot stay upright for too long or my back has a pinching pain (stenosis) and I am stiff all over. I have lost my looks, am overweight with a weight that will not stay off no matter how I struggle to get rid of it. I lose it and turn around and it is back again, like a bad ghost. My once lithe and beautiful body is lumpy and pouchy, brown spotted and misshapen and I stoop.
However, I always console myself by saying that my brain is still good. For the time being, I can still read, and I can still walk, and for all I have lost in moving or dying family and friends, I have also made new friends and I have many long-time friendships such as the two friends I saw this afternoon. The heartbreak of the loss of the company of family and friends is a very heavy dark cloud. It is best to not look back on the happy family times we had when my family all got together with my parents in West Virginia, playing board games, hiking, watching tv together and eating together. Those days are gone forever, along with my childhood and the childhood of my daughter who lives in Brooklyn.
Things I say to myself: "If you can't be with the ones you love, love the ones you're with." And "ADAPT AND EVOLVE" are some of my favorites. Planning helps. Ten Year Plan: I am working on paying down all my debts by doing double payments each month (the home equity loan for my heater, for example) so that when the pets die I will be able to go into assisted living if I need to. Hopefully I won't need to. When the day comes that I can't read, I will listen to audio books. I have already adapted to my inability to read tv menus by watching netflix and amazon video on a laptop (the one I am using to type this blog). I have a cane now and I am working on adapting some of the very few steps I have, which I struggle with now. Also, I have hired help, a cleaner and a yard-man who come once a week. They may, I hope, get my through my early 80's. I hope I can live to 90, as my father before me and his mother before him.
My 75th birthday is coming in the autumn. Many of my friends are free of the disabilities that hamper me, but some of my friends have far worse things. I have a friend with dementia and two friends with cancer. I have also had friends who have died. So I am not in the bottom third, but perhaps in the middle.
Anyway, I finished an Art Project for Celebrating 2020 the 100th anniversary of Suffrage in America, that was inspired by Judy Chicago's A Dinner Party. Neither of the friends I saw today had seen or heard of it, so I brought my book, all dusty from the shelf, to show them. Sadly, they were less than impressed, and I felt that the work was somehow dated - a kind of relic of a feminist era that has morphed into something else entirely. It seemed to blatant and overstated. I was hurt that something that had meant so much to me was gross and unimpressive to them.
It reminded me of a Hemingway experience I had. I had loved, in my late adolescence A MOVEABLE FEAST, by Hemingway. I bought it for my brother, ten years or maybe 20, later. He hated it, so I read it again and I hated it too. I had changed so much it didn't appeal to me anymore and it seemed so out of date. It reminds me of a quote I ran into recently "Sometimes you go back to a place you once loved and you find you have changed."
Happy trails, into the woods, into the past, into the world of thought!!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Without a shirt on his back.
A week ago, I was fortunate in being included in a small group of volunteers from Red Bank Battlefield who were attending a lecture and demonstration on the art of turning flax into linnen given by Barbara Johns, noted fiber arts expert at the Lyceum in Mount Holly.
After the fascinating demonstration during which Ms. Johns took harvested field flax and 'hatched it' and stripped it and spun it into linen thread for weaving, there was a discussion.
Flax and linen played a part in the Revolution. Cotton was one of the items from England that were being boycotted along with tea and paper. There is a story, known to many who volunteer at Revolutionary War sites about Benjamin Franklin's daughter Sarah Franklin Bache collecting $200,000 pound with the help of a woman's organization and buying linen to make shirts for the soldiers who were literally shirtless, shoeless, hungry and freezing in Valley Forge. Scott Flannigan set the story straight.
It was Esther de Bert Reed who actually got the ladies organization to go door to door to collect the money used to buy the linen to make the shirts, but she died and Sarah Franklin Bache took up the cause and followed through. George Washington had been offered the money but told the Ladies Aid organization that the men needed shirts more, so they made the shirts. I wonder how many shirts can be made from $200,000 worth of linen?
Behind the scenes stories are fascinating to me. There are so many war maxims about the desperate need for material support such as: "for want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of the shoe the horse was lost, for want of the horse the battle was lost" and the Napoleon quote (?) "an army travels on its stomach" and it is always worth acknowledging the part paid by so many unnamed and unrecognized background supporters. It brings to mind Clara Barton, famous for creating the Red Cross during the Civil War, but who also created an office in the government for the collection of the names and ranks and locations of soldiers who died in battle so their families could be notified.
By the way, on another topic, Clara Barton also created the first publicly funded school for children in New Jersey, in Bordertown, and her one-room school is still standing there. She was hired to teach according to the custom of the time which was that those could could afford it, paid into the hiring of a teacher who tutored the children of the subsscribers Clara lobbied the local government to provide funding for all the children, including the children of the poor whose parents couldn't afford to pay into the subscription plan. Her school enrolled over 500 children, but Clara was replaced as head of the program by a man, which in the custom of the time was considered more 'seemly' and Clara left and went to Washington to help in the war effort, first as a battlefield nurse, and then as a collector of the names of the deceased, and finally as the founder and organizer of the Red Cross.
After the fascinating demonstration during which Ms. Johns took harvested field flax and 'hatched it' and stripped it and spun it into linen thread for weaving, there was a discussion.
Flax and linen played a part in the Revolution. Cotton was one of the items from England that were being boycotted along with tea and paper. There is a story, known to many who volunteer at Revolutionary War sites about Benjamin Franklin's daughter Sarah Franklin Bache collecting $200,000 pound with the help of a woman's organization and buying linen to make shirts for the soldiers who were literally shirtless, shoeless, hungry and freezing in Valley Forge. Scott Flannigan set the story straight.
It was Esther de Bert Reed who actually got the ladies organization to go door to door to collect the money used to buy the linen to make the shirts, but she died and Sarah Franklin Bache took up the cause and followed through. George Washington had been offered the money but told the Ladies Aid organization that the men needed shirts more, so they made the shirts. I wonder how many shirts can be made from $200,000 worth of linen?
Behind the scenes stories are fascinating to me. There are so many war maxims about the desperate need for material support such as: "for want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of the shoe the horse was lost, for want of the horse the battle was lost" and the Napoleon quote (?) "an army travels on its stomach" and it is always worth acknowledging the part paid by so many unnamed and unrecognized background supporters. It brings to mind Clara Barton, famous for creating the Red Cross during the Civil War, but who also created an office in the government for the collection of the names and ranks and locations of soldiers who died in battle so their families could be notified.
By the way, on another topic, Clara Barton also created the first publicly funded school for children in New Jersey, in Bordertown, and her one-room school is still standing there. She was hired to teach according to the custom of the time which was that those could could afford it, paid into the hiring of a teacher who tutored the children of the subsscribers Clara lobbied the local government to provide funding for all the children, including the children of the poor whose parents couldn't afford to pay into the subscription plan. Her school enrolled over 500 children, but Clara was replaced as head of the program by a man, which in the custom of the time was considered more 'seemly' and Clara left and went to Washington to help in the war effort, first as a battlefield nurse, and then as a collector of the names of the deceased, and finally as the founder and organizer of the Red Cross.
Monday, February 17, 2020
Slave Market Site, Camden, NJ (February Black History Month)
Earlier today, I was reading an article about the disappearing sites of former auctions blocks for enslaved people in America. The article began with the selling of a woman separately from her five year old daughter. Honestly, as a mother of a grown daughter, it brought tears to my eyes to think of both the heartbreak and suffering of the mother, and the terror and suffering of the little girl who was sold to a man to take care of his sick wife.
The heartless way predominantly white people behaved towards enslaved African American people always makes me think of the heartless and brutal way humans behave towards other species. Of course one of the ways they justified their brutality was by classifying enslaved Africans as 'animals' or sub-humans That's the green light to deprive other living entities of all their rights and dignities and their well-being and life itself.
Many of the infamous locations of the auction blocks where this barbarity was enacted have been disappearing, engulfed by modern purpose structures, a power plant, a baseball stadium, a new court house. But the buildings of some of the profiteers from human trafficking remain and some of them have had historic markers placed nearby.
Even though I once worked as a volunteer doing Underground Railroad in New Jersey presentations, in the costume and persona of an Abolitionist I based on Abigail Goodwin of Salem, NJ, and through this volunteer work, learned a great deal about our history with slavery, I am always learning more.
Just as with Women's History, as time goes by, more and more African American historians and people interested in researching our shared African American history, more books are published and more of this list history is revealed. These new perspectives and discoveries are both thrilling and disheartening in the sense that discovering a lost world is thrilling, and seeing the brutality and inhumanity that was practiced there is disheartening. I can never get used to it.
Local History: it is with great interest that I find more and more of our local African American history explored via Camden County Historical Society exhibits and programs. It was there that I first learned about the slave market held on the shores of our own Camden County, NJ. I must admit, I was shocked. Equally shocking was the number of enslaved African America workers held in New jersey on farm/plantations during our Colonial and pre-Civil War days. Historian Giles Wright estimates about 14,000 were held in slavery in 1790 New Jersey. Although slave trade with Africa had become abolished, the slave trade between states, mostly in the South, continued and flourished until the Civil War.
Here is a copy/paste from the announcement of the placing of the marker for the slave site in Camden, NJ:
The heartless way predominantly white people behaved towards enslaved African American people always makes me think of the heartless and brutal way humans behave towards other species. Of course one of the ways they justified their brutality was by classifying enslaved Africans as 'animals' or sub-humans That's the green light to deprive other living entities of all their rights and dignities and their well-being and life itself.
Many of the infamous locations of the auction blocks where this barbarity was enacted have been disappearing, engulfed by modern purpose structures, a power plant, a baseball stadium, a new court house. But the buildings of some of the profiteers from human trafficking remain and some of them have had historic markers placed nearby.
Even though I once worked as a volunteer doing Underground Railroad in New Jersey presentations, in the costume and persona of an Abolitionist I based on Abigail Goodwin of Salem, NJ, and through this volunteer work, learned a great deal about our history with slavery, I am always learning more.
Just as with Women's History, as time goes by, more and more African American historians and people interested in researching our shared African American history, more books are published and more of this list history is revealed. These new perspectives and discoveries are both thrilling and disheartening in the sense that discovering a lost world is thrilling, and seeing the brutality and inhumanity that was practiced there is disheartening. I can never get used to it.
Local History: it is with great interest that I find more and more of our local African American history explored via Camden County Historical Society exhibits and programs. It was there that I first learned about the slave market held on the shores of our own Camden County, NJ. I must admit, I was shocked. Equally shocking was the number of enslaved African America workers held in New jersey on farm/plantations during our Colonial and pre-Civil War days. Historian Giles Wright estimates about 14,000 were held in slavery in 1790 New Jersey. Although slave trade with Africa had become abolished, the slave trade between states, mostly in the South, continued and flourished until the Civil War.
Here is a copy/paste from the announcement of the placing of the marker for the slave site in Camden, NJ:
"The now-bustling spot just feet from the Delaware River looks a lot different than it did nearly 300 years ago, when enslaved Africans, snatched from their homeland, arrived on crowded ships at the Camden docks and were sold at auctions around the city.
A cast-iron historical marker was unveiled Monday at one of three former slave auction block sites in Camden, where historians say more than 800 slaves were sold. Organizers said they want to make sure this painful part of New Jersey’s history is known.
“We are here to bring pride and dignity to those who regularly experienced deprivation,” said Derek Davis, a member of the Camden County Historical Society, who headed the project that he said was necessary “to set history straight.” His great-great-great grandfather was born a slave in Alabama in 1853.
The marker is titled, “Enslaved Africans Once Sold Here.”
By the way, I believe I mentioned before a book called STOLEN about the true story of the kidnapping of 5 free boys in Philadelphia to be sold into slavery in the South. Kidnapping, after the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, was a flourishing trade.
I have bought it but haven't read it yet as I have been buy finishing my two Revolutionary War books: The British Are Coming, and Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment. Both of the former and latter mentioned books I highly recommend to anyone interested in the Revolution. Both were extremely well written and Slaves to Soldiers was our History Book Club selection for winter at the James and Ann Whitall House, Red Bank Battlefield, National Park, NJ.
Happy Trails wither through the woods or the aisles of the book store!
Jo Ann
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Tax Aid with AARP & a Book Review
Yesterday, I had my taxes done for free by volunteer AARP tax preparers at Haddon Twp. Library. Sadly I was unaware that this year, for the first time they had instituted appointments, so I showed up early in the morning and sat in the parking lot for 2 hours waiting for the library to open and the sign-in line to form.
I was #7, so I thought it would move pretty quickly but, the appointments showed up and it took hours. Nonetheless, I repeat, it was FREE! My old tax preparer retired and when I looked into a new one, I discovered that they were going at $275 to $300, which, at the age I am now, and used to paying $75 to $150, seemed exorbitant, so I looked around and found the senior AARP tax aid. I do believe you need to be under a certain income level and also that your return has to be relativley simple, all of which criteria, I fit into.
So, while I waited I picked up a book from the book sale shelves. I may have mentioned before that I love a good mystery. My current favorite both in books and on the screen, is Ann Cleeves, author of the VERA novels and SHETLAND. Both VERA and SHETLAND are featured on amazon.com prime video, via the BritBox channel.
I allow myself this relative luxury because I rarely go to the movies anymore. First off, my vision is a problem, secondly my back and knees are a problems for sitting for that long in the theater. At home, I sit on a recliner sofa, which takes the pressure of gravity off my spine and precludes a backache.
Sitting at the AARP however, speaking of backaches, was torturous for me, so when I found a mystery on the shelf with an attractive wintry cover scene, and a back cover blurb that sounded different, I gladly paid my $1 and bought it. The author is Cecilia Ekback, a Swedish woman who lives in Canada. Her novel is based on a real unsolved murder, a historic case dating to the early 1700's in the northern part of Sweden that borders on and overlaps with Lapland.
The Colonial period, whether in America or Europe, the 1600's and 1700's is a period of particular interest to me and I have read a lot of books about it, but never one set in Sweden before.
This weaves together with so many many interest of mine - the Swedish settlers who were among the first European settlers in South Jersey, along with the Dutch, and the Swedes who built the church I attended as a child. Most recently, I discovered through ancestry dan that I have 27% specifically Swedish ancestry - a surprise because I have NO knowledge of any Swedish ancestors. I did find a Danish ancestor a few years back doing family history who was connected to a male ancestor from Jutland. Since more than 52% of my dna is United Kingdom, it is no surprise that the mysteries set in Northumberland and Shetlands, as well as Sweden, should speak to me. I might add I read ALL of the auto fiction books written by the Norwegian author, Knausgaard. They were fascinating to me.
This new novel is called Wolf Winter and it begins with a family newly moved to a remote farm in Northern Sweden from their previous home, a fishing village further south. Right away, they discover a murdered man in a meadow whom everyone at first and relentlessly thereafter decides has been killed by a bear or wolf though clearly, his wound was a clear slashing disembowlment, not a tearing or ripping wound. The Swedish farm woman on the new to her farm site, decides to investigate. The wife of the murder victim, also, feels certain her husband was killed by a human and not an animal.
The book unfolds slowly and with great subtle literary atmosphere, like the enveloping fog of a mid-winter forest morning. The writing is beautiful in regard to describing the weather and the land.
So this blog entry is a tip for tax prep and an incentive to go to the library and look on the book sale shelves for something good to read on cold and dreary February days!
Happy Trails, in the woods or in the wood of a good book!
Jo Ann
wrightj45Wyahoo.com
I was #7, so I thought it would move pretty quickly but, the appointments showed up and it took hours. Nonetheless, I repeat, it was FREE! My old tax preparer retired and when I looked into a new one, I discovered that they were going at $275 to $300, which, at the age I am now, and used to paying $75 to $150, seemed exorbitant, so I looked around and found the senior AARP tax aid. I do believe you need to be under a certain income level and also that your return has to be relativley simple, all of which criteria, I fit into.
So, while I waited I picked up a book from the book sale shelves. I may have mentioned before that I love a good mystery. My current favorite both in books and on the screen, is Ann Cleeves, author of the VERA novels and SHETLAND. Both VERA and SHETLAND are featured on amazon.com prime video, via the BritBox channel.
I allow myself this relative luxury because I rarely go to the movies anymore. First off, my vision is a problem, secondly my back and knees are a problems for sitting for that long in the theater. At home, I sit on a recliner sofa, which takes the pressure of gravity off my spine and precludes a backache.
Sitting at the AARP however, speaking of backaches, was torturous for me, so when I found a mystery on the shelf with an attractive wintry cover scene, and a back cover blurb that sounded different, I gladly paid my $1 and bought it. The author is Cecilia Ekback, a Swedish woman who lives in Canada. Her novel is based on a real unsolved murder, a historic case dating to the early 1700's in the northern part of Sweden that borders on and overlaps with Lapland.
The Colonial period, whether in America or Europe, the 1600's and 1700's is a period of particular interest to me and I have read a lot of books about it, but never one set in Sweden before.
This weaves together with so many many interest of mine - the Swedish settlers who were among the first European settlers in South Jersey, along with the Dutch, and the Swedes who built the church I attended as a child. Most recently, I discovered through ancestry dan that I have 27% specifically Swedish ancestry - a surprise because I have NO knowledge of any Swedish ancestors. I did find a Danish ancestor a few years back doing family history who was connected to a male ancestor from Jutland. Since more than 52% of my dna is United Kingdom, it is no surprise that the mysteries set in Northumberland and Shetlands, as well as Sweden, should speak to me. I might add I read ALL of the auto fiction books written by the Norwegian author, Knausgaard. They were fascinating to me.
This new novel is called Wolf Winter and it begins with a family newly moved to a remote farm in Northern Sweden from their previous home, a fishing village further south. Right away, they discover a murdered man in a meadow whom everyone at first and relentlessly thereafter decides has been killed by a bear or wolf though clearly, his wound was a clear slashing disembowlment, not a tearing or ripping wound. The Swedish farm woman on the new to her farm site, decides to investigate. The wife of the murder victim, also, feels certain her husband was killed by a human and not an animal.
The book unfolds slowly and with great subtle literary atmosphere, like the enveloping fog of a mid-winter forest morning. The writing is beautiful in regard to describing the weather and the land.
So this blog entry is a tip for tax prep and an incentive to go to the library and look on the book sale shelves for something good to read on cold and dreary February days!
Happy Trails, in the woods or in the wood of a good book!
Jo Ann
wrightj45Wyahoo.com
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Two items: Upcoming event, and a great 25th birthday history day
Please join us on Saturday, February 29 at 11am for a presentation on the history of herbal medicine. Medicinal herbalist Tiffany Soska will offer us an interactive presentation including the history of herbal healing, its use today, and hands on learning! Tiffany works with patients and students at both Lourdes and Cooper Medical Centers and is an expert in the field. She is also a fan of our gardens and brings her students to the park!
The presentation will be at the Whitall House. Please RSVP to Jen so we know how many folks to expect! Hope to see you there!
That message came from the James and Ann Whitall House at Red Bank Battlefield, National Park, NJ. I already e-mailed that I would attend. It sounds fascinating and Ann Whitall was a noted herbal healer, by oral history accounts, so I think it will be beneficial to my resumed touring volunteerism this spring.
My nephew and godson, Archie, had his 25th birthday today and since he had the day off and we were both free, I took him to lunch at the Legacy Diner then we went to AAA Hobby Shop, on White Horse Pike in Lawnside because he wanted to work on a model ship. We bought the USS NEW JERSEY because Archie had the good fortune when he was much younger of watching the ship come up the Delaware to port in Camden. Had made him a painting of the ship at night but it was burned in the house fire they suffered three or four hears ago. We went to Cam. Co. Hist. Society afterwards and Archie's favorite exhibits were the 1940 33mm film projector and the Blacksmith exhibit. Mine was, as always, the sewing exhibit and the one room school exhibit.
We were greeted by the always charming and gracious Bonny Beth Elwell and I bought Archie a couple of books, Waterways of Camden County, and Rambles down the Highways and Byways by Charles Boyer. Archie and I have had a couple of remarkable history adventures over the years and it was a great way to spend the otherwise dreary rainy day celebrating a momentous birthday!
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
ps. I believe I mentioned it before but there is a great program on
turning flax into linen coming up. Both the aforementioned herbal healing program, and the flax into linen program are of special interest to me as I resume my volunteering at the James and Ann Whitall House this Spring. There is a large walking spinning wheel in the room called Ann's parlor in the Whitall House and I will be glad to have more information to offer visitors on that important part of the life of a Colonial woman.
- Straw into Gold, Flax fiber into Linen - Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 7 PM – 8:30 PM
Monday, February 3, 2020
Wonderful Day of History Talk at Mt. Ephraim Seniors 2/3/20
Today, first Monday of the month, Harry Schaeffer an expert volunteer at the James and Ann Whitall House, joined us at our Get-Together to talk about The Battle of Red Bank which took place on 10/22/1777, on the banks of the Delaware River in what is now National Park, NJ.
Harry put the battle into perspective with a quick re-cap on what had been happening up to that point, in Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, and Saratoga. He brought us to the river battle and then to the land battle.
Although I was once a volunteer at Whitall House, there was plenty for me to learn from Harry's very informative talk. Everyone enjoyed the talk and learned a great deal about our neighbor town, National Park, and its place in the Revolution.
Harry kindly brought along brochures for everyone and I had some postcards of the Whitall House to give attendees from my time there.
Barbara Solem, author of Ghosttowns and Other Quirky Places in the Pine Barrens, Batsto, Jewel of the Pines, and The Forks, who gave us a power point lecture the previous month, came back to hear Harry's talk. Harry, Barbara and I went to lunch afterwards to continue the talk.
It was a bright and sunny day which couldn't help but add to our pleasure in our day altogether!
My next history events will be this week. First I will be attending the History Readers' Book Club on Friday at Whitall House and then on the 11th, I will be attending the Straw Into Gold presentation by fiber expert Barbara Johns along with some other volunteers from Whitall House. Ms. Johns will be teaching us about the process of making linen from flax, the colonial fabric most common in the years up to the Revolution. I have heard Ms. Johns speak before, at Hancock House on dying, for example, and she is both entertaining and very knowledgeable. If there was time enough and I had a new car, I would take her spinning classes held at Woolbearers in Mt. Holly.
By the way, if you ever wish to join us, you are welcome! We meet the first Monday of each month and we have more or less settled on HISTORY as our guiding point for conversation. In March, our History focus will be on the 100th Anniversary of the successful outcome of Womens Struggle for the Right To Vote in America. So join us, if you are free and love history!
Hope you got out and enjoyed this lovely day!
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Harry put the battle into perspective with a quick re-cap on what had been happening up to that point, in Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, and Saratoga. He brought us to the river battle and then to the land battle.
Although I was once a volunteer at Whitall House, there was plenty for me to learn from Harry's very informative talk. Everyone enjoyed the talk and learned a great deal about our neighbor town, National Park, and its place in the Revolution.
Harry kindly brought along brochures for everyone and I had some postcards of the Whitall House to give attendees from my time there.
Barbara Solem, author of Ghosttowns and Other Quirky Places in the Pine Barrens, Batsto, Jewel of the Pines, and The Forks, who gave us a power point lecture the previous month, came back to hear Harry's talk. Harry, Barbara and I went to lunch afterwards to continue the talk.
It was a bright and sunny day which couldn't help but add to our pleasure in our day altogether!
My next history events will be this week. First I will be attending the History Readers' Book Club on Friday at Whitall House and then on the 11th, I will be attending the Straw Into Gold presentation by fiber expert Barbara Johns along with some other volunteers from Whitall House. Ms. Johns will be teaching us about the process of making linen from flax, the colonial fabric most common in the years up to the Revolution. I have heard Ms. Johns speak before, at Hancock House on dying, for example, and she is both entertaining and very knowledgeable. If there was time enough and I had a new car, I would take her spinning classes held at Woolbearers in Mt. Holly.
By the way, if you ever wish to join us, you are welcome! We meet the first Monday of each month and we have more or less settled on HISTORY as our guiding point for conversation. In March, our History focus will be on the 100th Anniversary of the successful outcome of Womens Struggle for the Right To Vote in America. So join us, if you are free and love history!
Hope you got out and enjoyed this lovely day!
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
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