On Friday, June 26th, in this year of the pandemic, 2020, my daughter and her long time partner held a small, beautiful, simple wedding in the park near where they live.
No one could go for so many reasons: geographical, pandemic risk, and many other considerations.
They are committed to one another and know one another well enough to go into this new phase with eyes open. I trust them to succeed and I believe it is important to have legal power with your partner, especially in time of pandemic. They are doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons.
My opinion: It is NEVER easy to break with social conventions and the wedding industry is overpowering. People spend unconscionable amounts of money for what is in essence a solemn oath of commitment and a celebration of loved ones. Now it is huge banquet halls, professional florists, bridesmaids and bride grooms to be costumed, wedding dress to be found, menus and negotiation over who to invite and how many. All the stories I have heard from my peers, have been somewhat disheartening to me.
My own wedding was necessarily simple. I made my dress the day before. We had two weeks to get blood tests, marriage license, and all the military paperwork taken care of. My groom had been drafted, trained to be an officer, and was being assigned to Wharton Barracks, Heilbronn, Germany. I was going with him.
My mother's wedding, too, happened in World War II and my father was being shipped out in the navy. My parents succeeded in a marriage that lasted until they died.
One of the key commentators on BBC World News a couple of weeks back said that the future is unpredictable. The only thing we can be sure of is that things will change and we can only watch and wait and adapt to them. I am sad that my daughter and her partner are full on into adult life in the midst of a dangerous pandemic, civil unrest, and ridiculous new expenses for ordinary living. On top of all of that, they also endured a building fire that left them homeless last year. I wish it could be easier. I am glad it could be simpler.
My daughter was gloriously beautiful, they both were, Justin and Lavinia, and they had a splendid summer day. Everyone loved them and supported their freedom and wisdom in planning this momentous day their own way, unconstrained by family expectations, or social pressure. They got to be creative!
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
Meanwhile, 10 million cases worldwide, half a million deaths. In the US, over 2 million cases and 130,000 deaths. All the Southern States are now bright red on the television map of 'hot zones.' It strikes me as heartbreakingly reminiscent of other people wiped out by pandemics in this continent, upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous people who lived here were killed by European diseases.
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Pandemia - History Reolution and "Which Side Are You ON?"
June, a month filled with emotion laden history, both on the personal scale and the national scale.
Juneteenth, news of Emancipation reaches Afro/Americans in Texas, in the year of the 100th anniversary of American women winning the Right to Vote. The month of my father's birthday, Father's Day.
Patriarch, Patriarchy, Everything is complicated and the true lessons are often buried in obscurity and complexity. Every news event in regard to Black Lives Matter, makes me think of women's lives, Black women and white women, beige women, tan women, all women. So much of this big backlash that we are experiencing is wrapped in gender animosity as well as racial. Men are united in their brotherhood of maleness which is so often stronger than a bond to a lover or a wife, a daughter or a mother.
And as African American men are conditioned and molded by cultural expectations and projections, so, even more profoundly, are women of all shades.
We are confined within roles that many of us are never free-minded or brave enough to face the consequences of really seeing what is happening to us all the time as women in the world. We don't want to fight the power because we learned when we were very weak and little and powerless that we can't beat the power and the consequences are devastating, often violent.
We make laws because a fair, orderly, humane civilization is better for everyone, male, female, all races in all parts of the world, and we have been working steadily towards that goal for thousands of years. If only the physically powerful run things, everyone gets bullied and without cooperation and good will, it all falls to ruin. We know that. We have seen that in history.
A book I plan to buy called AT THE DARK END OF THE STREET, BLACK WOMEN, RACE AND RESISTANCE, talks about the uses and appeals of legalized rape which existed in the south before the Civil War. Since all enslaved African American Women were property, they could be and were raped at the will of the white overseers and plantation owners, slave traders and random criminals. Rape of enslaved women also gave the benefit of more children who could be sold. The depravity of ordinary white men in the pre-war south, is an extension of the depravity that many display today towards lower class women of both races, especially in the sex work and nudity bar dancing world.
The experiences of race and gender have a lot in common.
Just watching CNN for my one hour of television news programming, and the turmoil of the times directed my thoughts.
Every day, it comes into my mind that I am living, right now, in a historic moment with no clear precedent.
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
Juneteenth, news of Emancipation reaches Afro/Americans in Texas, in the year of the 100th anniversary of American women winning the Right to Vote. The month of my father's birthday, Father's Day.
Patriarch, Patriarchy, Everything is complicated and the true lessons are often buried in obscurity and complexity. Every news event in regard to Black Lives Matter, makes me think of women's lives, Black women and white women, beige women, tan women, all women. So much of this big backlash that we are experiencing is wrapped in gender animosity as well as racial. Men are united in their brotherhood of maleness which is so often stronger than a bond to a lover or a wife, a daughter or a mother.
And as African American men are conditioned and molded by cultural expectations and projections, so, even more profoundly, are women of all shades.
We are confined within roles that many of us are never free-minded or brave enough to face the consequences of really seeing what is happening to us all the time as women in the world. We don't want to fight the power because we learned when we were very weak and little and powerless that we can't beat the power and the consequences are devastating, often violent.
We make laws because a fair, orderly, humane civilization is better for everyone, male, female, all races in all parts of the world, and we have been working steadily towards that goal for thousands of years. If only the physically powerful run things, everyone gets bullied and without cooperation and good will, it all falls to ruin. We know that. We have seen that in history.
A book I plan to buy called AT THE DARK END OF THE STREET, BLACK WOMEN, RACE AND RESISTANCE, talks about the uses and appeals of legalized rape which existed in the south before the Civil War. Since all enslaved African American Women were property, they could be and were raped at the will of the white overseers and plantation owners, slave traders and random criminals. Rape of enslaved women also gave the benefit of more children who could be sold. The depravity of ordinary white men in the pre-war south, is an extension of the depravity that many display today towards lower class women of both races, especially in the sex work and nudity bar dancing world.
The experiences of race and gender have a lot in common.
Just watching CNN for my one hour of television news programming, and the turmoil of the times directed my thoughts.
Every day, it comes into my mind that I am living, right now, in a historic moment with no clear precedent.
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Pandemia - Politically Incorrect - A Movie and an author
"Throwing the baby out with the bathwater." There is a fragment of an old admonishment that comes to mind when I think about GONE WITH THE WIND, the movie and the book, and the recent slaps at J. K. Rowling for her views on gender identity.
Second, I want to put the idea out that there is more than "Either Or" and I refuse in the honor of my own mind, to be forced into a black and white, this or that resolution to a problem. I believe in Either Or And This AND That. Those are my conditions, my parameters, for my take on the current judging and shaming of people whose art, whether visual or literary, or musical, has elements in it that are politically incorrect.
Take GONE WITH THE WIND. This is a work of literature and of history. It is true that it is one person's personal vision, not a historical text, therefore it has all the flawed and wildly imaginative and brilliant pieces of its original creator. Margaret Mitchel created a world and characters out of the stories of those around her PLUS her own imagination and creativity. And if the African American characters were stereotyped in some regards, they were also honored and brought to life with the genius of the writer, and later the talented African American actors who portrayed them in the film.
Another parameter: I see things through a gender bias and conditioning sense. So, I not only see the stereotypes of African Americans of the period being used as a backdrop for the book, but also the ones for women. There is the whore with the heart of gold, the spoiled seductress who needs to be 'tamed' and the silly and frivolous incompetent Aunt PittyPat or whatever her name was. At any rate, aside from that what I also see is a patriarchal context where great achievement by women is denigrated and denounced. Gone With the Wind, by a female American author, was wildly popular, successful, and admired devotedly by two or more generations of readers and movie fans. It probably contributed a spark to the my passion for history. It awakened my imagination like the great illustrations of the Children's Classics of my childhood, the swashbuckling pirates, the desert Islands.
The actors: I think the critics and columnists who have jumped on the bandwagon to vilify GONE WITH THE WIND, have missed some of the nuances of art. One in particular is the denial of the depth brought to the portrayal of the characters by the brilliant actors in the immensely beloved film version. Vivienne Leigh gives us a complex personality struggling within the bars of her gender confinement much as the Afro/Am characters are shown trying to survive in their race confinement. The courage and loyalty of Big Sam was not insulting. These artists/actors allow you to see the conditioning of the characters in all the subtlety of their interactions, what they are forced to do to stay alive and perhaps, even thrive, on some level.
What female actor has not had to demean herself in a character? What woman under any circumstances has not had to "Step and Fetch" and what woman, in real life has not been an Uncle Tom? We do it so reflexively that we hardly notice it.
Instead of reviling and blaming GONE WITH THE WIND, let's read it and study it and find all the thoughts it has to stir in our minds as well as in the mind of a brilliant, authentic and unique artist, Margaret Mitchell. It was, after all FICTION. If we took on all the books that stereotype women, what would we have left?
And now, taking another controversy to hand, why can't J. K. Rowling express her opinion on gender issues! I have my qualms about gender claims too, though I deny NO ONE their civil rights or social rights. Where I see nuance and a need to step aside from /either- or' traps is in athletic competition. Women and men are different anatomically. Although there is great variation within each sex and certainly some women are stronger than some men, in general our biology suits us to different strengths. For instance women are better at endurance challenges, as in swimming the English Channel or the strait between Cuba and Florida. Men are probably better at log tossing, football, and, I don't know, all of that remains to be discovered over time. And women gestate and give birth which men cannot do. If we held a competition in childbirth, women would win every time.
So is it fair for a male to compete against females after he has undergone cosmetic surgery and hormone treatments to appear more female? Is a transgender woman the same as a biological woman? Should it matter? J. K. Rowling made an interesting point to consider. I have thought about this myself when I was confused about the impersonation of women by costume and make-up. That doesn't make someone a woman anymore than black face makes a white person African. That is not to say that anyone who wants to impersonate a man or a woman shouldn't have fun with it, but it is to say that dressing a man in a bear suit doesn't make him a bear.
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
Second, I want to put the idea out that there is more than "Either Or" and I refuse in the honor of my own mind, to be forced into a black and white, this or that resolution to a problem. I believe in Either Or And This AND That. Those are my conditions, my parameters, for my take on the current judging and shaming of people whose art, whether visual or literary, or musical, has elements in it that are politically incorrect.
Take GONE WITH THE WIND. This is a work of literature and of history. It is true that it is one person's personal vision, not a historical text, therefore it has all the flawed and wildly imaginative and brilliant pieces of its original creator. Margaret Mitchel created a world and characters out of the stories of those around her PLUS her own imagination and creativity. And if the African American characters were stereotyped in some regards, they were also honored and brought to life with the genius of the writer, and later the talented African American actors who portrayed them in the film.
Another parameter: I see things through a gender bias and conditioning sense. So, I not only see the stereotypes of African Americans of the period being used as a backdrop for the book, but also the ones for women. There is the whore with the heart of gold, the spoiled seductress who needs to be 'tamed' and the silly and frivolous incompetent Aunt PittyPat or whatever her name was. At any rate, aside from that what I also see is a patriarchal context where great achievement by women is denigrated and denounced. Gone With the Wind, by a female American author, was wildly popular, successful, and admired devotedly by two or more generations of readers and movie fans. It probably contributed a spark to the my passion for history. It awakened my imagination like the great illustrations of the Children's Classics of my childhood, the swashbuckling pirates, the desert Islands.
The actors: I think the critics and columnists who have jumped on the bandwagon to vilify GONE WITH THE WIND, have missed some of the nuances of art. One in particular is the denial of the depth brought to the portrayal of the characters by the brilliant actors in the immensely beloved film version. Vivienne Leigh gives us a complex personality struggling within the bars of her gender confinement much as the Afro/Am characters are shown trying to survive in their race confinement. The courage and loyalty of Big Sam was not insulting. These artists/actors allow you to see the conditioning of the characters in all the subtlety of their interactions, what they are forced to do to stay alive and perhaps, even thrive, on some level.
What female actor has not had to demean herself in a character? What woman under any circumstances has not had to "Step and Fetch" and what woman, in real life has not been an Uncle Tom? We do it so reflexively that we hardly notice it.
Instead of reviling and blaming GONE WITH THE WIND, let's read it and study it and find all the thoughts it has to stir in our minds as well as in the mind of a brilliant, authentic and unique artist, Margaret Mitchell. It was, after all FICTION. If we took on all the books that stereotype women, what would we have left?
And now, taking another controversy to hand, why can't J. K. Rowling express her opinion on gender issues! I have my qualms about gender claims too, though I deny NO ONE their civil rights or social rights. Where I see nuance and a need to step aside from /either- or' traps is in athletic competition. Women and men are different anatomically. Although there is great variation within each sex and certainly some women are stronger than some men, in general our biology suits us to different strengths. For instance women are better at endurance challenges, as in swimming the English Channel or the strait between Cuba and Florida. Men are probably better at log tossing, football, and, I don't know, all of that remains to be discovered over time. And women gestate and give birth which men cannot do. If we held a competition in childbirth, women would win every time.
So is it fair for a male to compete against females after he has undergone cosmetic surgery and hormone treatments to appear more female? Is a transgender woman the same as a biological woman? Should it matter? J. K. Rowling made an interesting point to consider. I have thought about this myself when I was confused about the impersonation of women by costume and make-up. That doesn't make someone a woman anymore than black face makes a white person African. That is not to say that anyone who wants to impersonate a man or a woman shouldn't have fun with it, but it is to say that dressing a man in a bear suit doesn't make him a bear.
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
Pandemic Journal - Black Lives Matter & History
My adventure into Africnn American History and race issues in our country began in 1974 when I was a student teacher at Willingboro Junior/Senior High School. It was the first time I had either looked at the issues, or spent long periods of time in a mixed racial population. Despite having grown up in Philadelphia, I'd had very little interactions with people of a different race growing up. Even at my high school, in Merchantville, New Jersey, though integrated, the races never interacted, or if they did, I never saw it. Whites students had their own 'hang-out' which was Aunt Jeans, a soda shop on the corner of the main street and a block from our school. I don't remember every sharing a class with the Afro/Am students, or interacting with them in any social way. I never knew even one of them.
There was a geographical aspect to our Afro/Am students that I never grasped until I took a job working as a "Suitcase" history interpreter for the Camden County Historical Society in Camden.
For the few short years that I visited schools interpreting Colonial Life in the autumn and the Underground Railroad in the Spring, I immersed myself in literature about the Underground Railroad and discovered and visited many of the small towns and little outposts that were stops on the long and dangerous journey from slavery to freedom in the north.
Then I realized that the small enclave of shabby row homes and clapboard single houses in my high school town was a model that stretched from Othello and Greenwich on the Maurice River and the Delaware Bay, on up through South Jersey as far as I got, Bordertown and Burlington. These small communities formed around farm labor and around escaped and freed Afro/Am people who worked for the "Big houses" as cooks, housekeepers, launderers, gardeners and babysitters. It seems as though every small white town in New Jersey has a nearby Afro/Am. village just like Saddlertown next door to Haddon Township. Sometimes they have their own names, sometimes they are just neighborhoods people know about but don't identify geographically, as where I grew up in South Philadelphia. There were streets we (free ranging white youth) didn't go down and neighborhoods we stayed out of, in bigger cities, there were and are 'Projects' -low income housing developments predominantly housing AFro/Am descendants of the great migration from the south to the north throughout the first half of the 20th century.
When I was a student teacher at Willingboro, I taught a course in Minority Literature (yes - I taught it - my mentor disappeared as soon as she gathered that I had some competence, which gave me great freedom undersigning and teaching the classes. My college education at the beginning of the revolution meant that we had not yet gotten around to courses in Women's Literature or Minority Literature at college, and therefore we read no works by authors in either group. I had to educate myself in both of these areas and I threw myself into it with passion.
It was a mind expanding experience to see for the first time, the view of our society from the perspective of farm laborers, agricultural workers union groups with leaders such as Cesar Chavez, or to see the world through the eyes of the great Civil Rights leaders of our time such as Malcolm X. I coupled all my research into African American History with Women's Studies.
Also, throughout my life, having been the daughter of a serious Union man, one who held jobs for the union thought his working life, on top of his work in structural steel, I had been inspired to learn more about the labor movement.
Therefore, from my earliest days, I have enthusiastically pursued the balancing of my understanding of the world with exposure to the viewpoints of other segments of society. I have studied the civil rights movement of disabled people, religious minorities, and ideology and history of groups that spring up around humanistic principles such as the Environmental Movement, and the Animal Rights Movement. Once I become interested in a subject, it stays with me for life, and so, even though I don't work anymore or do part-time or volunteer work in the history field, I still keep learning.
Currently, I have been immersed in African American contemporary topics. On Netflix, I watched a truly shocking and eye opening documentary called THIRTEENTH about the mass incarceration of Afro/Am men as a profit making new industry following emancipation and segregation. Simultaneously, I watched an immensely rich and entreatingly series called TREME' about the attempts on the part of citizens of New Orleans, to put their lives back together and save their cultural traditions in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the destruction of the sister suburb of New Orleans called the TREME' or the 9th District. Previously, I enjoyed the uplifting and inspiring book by Michele Obama called BECOMING. It was made into a film, and I watched that as well.
Just now, we are fortunate to have a few successful AFroAm filmmakers such as Ava DuVernay* and Spike Lee, to give us glimpses into the lives of people and places that are unfamiliar and inaccessible to us. I have seen all of Spike Lee's films over the years. Soon I will watch his latest Da 5 Bloods. In my bedroom/library, I have a shelf of Black History books, the most recent of which was an Isabelle Allendes novel about a slave woman in the Caribbean who flees with her family to New Orleans after the Revolution in Dominica. Also wherever possible, in my history volunteering days, I read the Afro/Am literature within my field, so I just read a history of the Black Regiment of Rhode Island that fought during the Revolutionary War and was present at the Battle of Red Bank, my most recent volunteering experience.
In the Sunday New York Times there was a column in the AT HOME section, on page 7, on books that offered context to our current historical moment:
ROLL JORDAN ROLL: THE WORLD THE SLAVES MADE THE HSTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE
RECONSTRUCTION, THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION
THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: THE EPIC STORY OF AMERICAN'S GREAT MIGRATION
BLACK WOMEN, RAPE, AND RESISTANCE
LOCKING UP OUR OWN, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN BLACK AMERICA
So if you are looking for a good book to read to help you understand the times in which we live, I hope this helps you find a start. For a heartwarming read, I strongly recommend BECOMING. The book was much better than the documentary although the documentary helps fill out the personalities of the characters and shows a slight transition from Michelle Obama's years as First Lady, to her return to private life which I found interesting. I cannot recommend TREME' enough. It is one of my new list of top 5 tv series. It is in the top 3 along with Mrs. America (hulu), High Maintenance (HBO), Treme' (amazon prime).
Of course, back in the day, I read most of there great Afro/Am writers such as Zora Neal Hurston, Tony Morrison, Maya Angelou, Baldwin, and Wright. But it is always good to REFRESH and RENEW and update your knowledge base, so happy researching!
Also, I think some other tv series that help expand understanding were also award winners and are in m top ten such as THE WIRE. And for movies, the most recent was HIDDEN FIGURES, about the AfroAm women mathematicians who worked for the Manhattan Project. And before I sign off, I want to add that the Camden County Historical Society has made great progress in opening up Camden History and Afro/Am History in its exhibits and its programs.
*The films of Ava Duvernay are a great place to start if you are just getting into it: Selma, 13th, When They See Us, Queen Sugar, Middle of Nowhere, Cherish the Day.
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
There was a geographical aspect to our Afro/Am students that I never grasped until I took a job working as a "Suitcase" history interpreter for the Camden County Historical Society in Camden.
For the few short years that I visited schools interpreting Colonial Life in the autumn and the Underground Railroad in the Spring, I immersed myself in literature about the Underground Railroad and discovered and visited many of the small towns and little outposts that were stops on the long and dangerous journey from slavery to freedom in the north.
Then I realized that the small enclave of shabby row homes and clapboard single houses in my high school town was a model that stretched from Othello and Greenwich on the Maurice River and the Delaware Bay, on up through South Jersey as far as I got, Bordertown and Burlington. These small communities formed around farm labor and around escaped and freed Afro/Am people who worked for the "Big houses" as cooks, housekeepers, launderers, gardeners and babysitters. It seems as though every small white town in New Jersey has a nearby Afro/Am. village just like Saddlertown next door to Haddon Township. Sometimes they have their own names, sometimes they are just neighborhoods people know about but don't identify geographically, as where I grew up in South Philadelphia. There were streets we (free ranging white youth) didn't go down and neighborhoods we stayed out of, in bigger cities, there were and are 'Projects' -low income housing developments predominantly housing AFro/Am descendants of the great migration from the south to the north throughout the first half of the 20th century.
When I was a student teacher at Willingboro, I taught a course in Minority Literature (yes - I taught it - my mentor disappeared as soon as she gathered that I had some competence, which gave me great freedom undersigning and teaching the classes. My college education at the beginning of the revolution meant that we had not yet gotten around to courses in Women's Literature or Minority Literature at college, and therefore we read no works by authors in either group. I had to educate myself in both of these areas and I threw myself into it with passion.
It was a mind expanding experience to see for the first time, the view of our society from the perspective of farm laborers, agricultural workers union groups with leaders such as Cesar Chavez, or to see the world through the eyes of the great Civil Rights leaders of our time such as Malcolm X. I coupled all my research into African American History with Women's Studies.
Also, throughout my life, having been the daughter of a serious Union man, one who held jobs for the union thought his working life, on top of his work in structural steel, I had been inspired to learn more about the labor movement.
Therefore, from my earliest days, I have enthusiastically pursued the balancing of my understanding of the world with exposure to the viewpoints of other segments of society. I have studied the civil rights movement of disabled people, religious minorities, and ideology and history of groups that spring up around humanistic principles such as the Environmental Movement, and the Animal Rights Movement. Once I become interested in a subject, it stays with me for life, and so, even though I don't work anymore or do part-time or volunteer work in the history field, I still keep learning.
Currently, I have been immersed in African American contemporary topics. On Netflix, I watched a truly shocking and eye opening documentary called THIRTEENTH about the mass incarceration of Afro/Am men as a profit making new industry following emancipation and segregation. Simultaneously, I watched an immensely rich and entreatingly series called TREME' about the attempts on the part of citizens of New Orleans, to put their lives back together and save their cultural traditions in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the destruction of the sister suburb of New Orleans called the TREME' or the 9th District. Previously, I enjoyed the uplifting and inspiring book by Michele Obama called BECOMING. It was made into a film, and I watched that as well.
Just now, we are fortunate to have a few successful AFroAm filmmakers such as Ava DuVernay* and Spike Lee, to give us glimpses into the lives of people and places that are unfamiliar and inaccessible to us. I have seen all of Spike Lee's films over the years. Soon I will watch his latest Da 5 Bloods. In my bedroom/library, I have a shelf of Black History books, the most recent of which was an Isabelle Allendes novel about a slave woman in the Caribbean who flees with her family to New Orleans after the Revolution in Dominica. Also wherever possible, in my history volunteering days, I read the Afro/Am literature within my field, so I just read a history of the Black Regiment of Rhode Island that fought during the Revolutionary War and was present at the Battle of Red Bank, my most recent volunteering experience.
In the Sunday New York Times there was a column in the AT HOME section, on page 7, on books that offered context to our current historical moment:
ROLL JORDAN ROLL: THE WORLD THE SLAVES MADE THE HSTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE
RECONSTRUCTION, THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION
THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: THE EPIC STORY OF AMERICAN'S GREAT MIGRATION
BLACK WOMEN, RAPE, AND RESISTANCE
LOCKING UP OUR OWN, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN BLACK AMERICA
So if you are looking for a good book to read to help you understand the times in which we live, I hope this helps you find a start. For a heartwarming read, I strongly recommend BECOMING. The book was much better than the documentary although the documentary helps fill out the personalities of the characters and shows a slight transition from Michelle Obama's years as First Lady, to her return to private life which I found interesting. I cannot recommend TREME' enough. It is one of my new list of top 5 tv series. It is in the top 3 along with Mrs. America (hulu), High Maintenance (HBO), Treme' (amazon prime).
Of course, back in the day, I read most of there great Afro/Am writers such as Zora Neal Hurston, Tony Morrison, Maya Angelou, Baldwin, and Wright. But it is always good to REFRESH and RENEW and update your knowledge base, so happy researching!
Also, I think some other tv series that help expand understanding were also award winners and are in m top ten such as THE WIRE. And for movies, the most recent was HIDDEN FIGURES, about the AfroAm women mathematicians who worked for the Manhattan Project. And before I sign off, I want to add that the Camden County Historical Society has made great progress in opening up Camden History and Afro/Am History in its exhibits and its programs.
*The films of Ava Duvernay are a great place to start if you are just getting into it: Selma, 13th, When They See Us, Queen Sugar, Middle of Nowhere, Cherish the Day.
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
White House Flower Show to go on - see below for details!
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Monday, June 22, 2020
The real danger is the KKK - a true story
David Curtis Stephenson was grand dragon of the KKK in Indiana. He became immensely wealthy and influential in Indiana politics and was responsible for reviving the KKK and massive recruiting for the KKK. By 1922, he was considered the most powerful man in Indiana. He had been married four times. I can’t imagine what life must have been like for those women. He was a brutal criminal and rapist.
He kidnapped a young white woman, Madge Oberholzer, a state education worker who worked to reduce illiteracy, kept her prisoner in his private train car where he repeatedly raped her and bit her all over her body. He had also forced alcohol into her and she tried to commit suicide while kidnapped. Madge Oberholzer. Eventually he dumped her, still alive, on her parents lawn. She was taken to the hospital where she died of sepsis from the bite wounds all over her body.
His arrest, trial and imprisonment, along with the publicizing of the heinous crime he had committed destroyed the Klan in Indiana. It became a shameful connection, as it was, in fact, from the beginning. In his attempt to get his sentence reduced, he cooperated with law enforcement and gave a list of the political leaders who were in the pay of the KKK which resulted in many arrests and convictions including the Governor, the Chairman of the Republican Party, and many party members and officials resigned rather than be exposed.
The Indianapolis Times won a Pulitzer prize for investigated reporting on this crime and the publicity helped to defeat the power of the Klan because people were repulsed by the heinous crime and all the details of the debauchery of the private lives of the klan leaders and politicians involved with the Klan.
Stephenson was paroled in 1950, violated parole and was arrested again in 1956 and sentenced to ten years. He married twice more, without even divorcing a previous wife, but was again arrested for attention to kidnap and rape a teenaged girl. His most recent wife left him as had the previous ones. He was fined and forced to leave Indiana. He died in Tennessee in 1966 and was given a veterans burial. Later, Congress added restrictions against burying veterans who had been convicted of sex offenses and capital crimes in veterans cemeteries
So much for the KKK claim, so prominently portrayed in the film of Birth of a Nation. of protecting innocent white womanhood. Needless to say, men like these were never interested in protecting innocent African American womanhood - they were more interested in kidnapping and raping them.They are and always have been, a group of criminals who kidnap, torture and murder American citizens. Shame on anyone who is proud of white supremacy leanings and the history of this stance in America. Shame on anyone using that poisonous population to push into a political power position, like Donald Trump, another immoral, criminal, self-serving despotic madman.
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Pandemic Journal - History Repets itself
Today, listening to the news again, I am surprised to find it all so familiar, a variation on a theme. The theme is the years before World War II. When I see the faces of the enraged policemen, in a trance of murderous dominance, I see the SS, the Nazi party members, the Gestapo. I recognize these men as the human embodiments of deep hatred and a distinct lack of empathy. They are both trained and conditioned by our culture of masculinity, the films, the sports, everything from circumcision on up to deny empathy, and value competition and delight in brutality.
Dialect and class. Some of my friends who are in fact not racist, and would say they were not racist, still have the strangest reflections on what they see on the news. When I say 'the news' I mean CNN, MSNBC, BBC WORLD NEWS. My friends all talk about how even "high level" African Americans can't speak the language properly. To one of them, today, I said, "well it is an accent, like being from New England, or Texas. Or even more clearly like in England, the difference between the English of someone in Liverpool, and that of a Northumberland. What someone might find charming in a Scots accent, they find inferior in another.
That said, I can remember in my early teens, making a conscious decision to change my speech. I stopped saying 'ain't' which was common to all I knew when I grew up. I stopped saying 'youse' for the plural, as in the south people say 'yawl' both groups not seeming to have learned that 'you' can speak of many not just one.
Still back to history. The sides are becoming so firm now. One side believes all Americans deserve the same civil rights and protections. The other side believes white people are superior to other shades and should get preferential treatment - the white supremacists (like the Nazi party). The 'Republican' side which represents this view, also believes women should be pushed back into a more inferior and dependent position.
The main improvement in our lives, 'women's' lives, have been the vote, and birth control, and of the two, birth control is the most important. Race isn't the only issue here, in this newest rendition of the revolution, Gender is the twin of race.
Women have been an exploited and oppressed class all over the world for millennia. Childbirth is the major stumbling block to a woman's independence. Once you are pregnant, you are dependent on help. We need to be able to control reproduction until we get more independent and ready to care for ourselves, on our own. So far as I can see, you need an education, most of the time, in order to get into a position where you could take off as much time from work as you need for childbirth, and still pay your bills. That is kind of a bare minimum for a woman alone with a baby. It is much easier to get an education and follow a career if you are not pregnant or mother of a baby, child or children. To take away this necessity, is to hobble us.
Democrats, or left wing, we want freedom of choice for women in regard to all forms of birth control. We want equality in law and in behavior in regard to the police for all people, people of color, people who are female.
Domestic abuse is sexism in action. The urge toward domination, overpowering others, while repressing any empathy for others is the root of domestic abuse, racism and most forms of violence towards other people as well as towards other species.
We need more good women in power to bring back balance in the world. There was a good column on that subject in the Sunday NYTimes by Nicholas Kristof, "Nations May Be Safer Under Women" pg. 9. He gives the data on the countries that suffered fewer deaths by percentage of the population from coronavirus. The top ten were nations with women leaders: New Zealand,, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, and Taiwan for example. And could anyone really say that Boris Johnson has done a better job than Margaret Thatcher? The male leaders that did the worst job were all "authoritarian, vainglorious, blustering such as Jair Bolsonaro, Ayatollah Khamenei and Donald Trump to name just three. We could add Putin.
Such troubled times and sometimes knowing history makes it even more frightening. I have seen the face of the right wing in old documentaries of Germany in the late 1930's. But change always makes new and unpredictable consequences. We can still hope.
Happy Trails
Jo Ann
Dialect and class. Some of my friends who are in fact not racist, and would say they were not racist, still have the strangest reflections on what they see on the news. When I say 'the news' I mean CNN, MSNBC, BBC WORLD NEWS. My friends all talk about how even "high level" African Americans can't speak the language properly. To one of them, today, I said, "well it is an accent, like being from New England, or Texas. Or even more clearly like in England, the difference between the English of someone in Liverpool, and that of a Northumberland. What someone might find charming in a Scots accent, they find inferior in another.
That said, I can remember in my early teens, making a conscious decision to change my speech. I stopped saying 'ain't' which was common to all I knew when I grew up. I stopped saying 'youse' for the plural, as in the south people say 'yawl' both groups not seeming to have learned that 'you' can speak of many not just one.
Still back to history. The sides are becoming so firm now. One side believes all Americans deserve the same civil rights and protections. The other side believes white people are superior to other shades and should get preferential treatment - the white supremacists (like the Nazi party). The 'Republican' side which represents this view, also believes women should be pushed back into a more inferior and dependent position.
The main improvement in our lives, 'women's' lives, have been the vote, and birth control, and of the two, birth control is the most important. Race isn't the only issue here, in this newest rendition of the revolution, Gender is the twin of race.
Women have been an exploited and oppressed class all over the world for millennia. Childbirth is the major stumbling block to a woman's independence. Once you are pregnant, you are dependent on help. We need to be able to control reproduction until we get more independent and ready to care for ourselves, on our own. So far as I can see, you need an education, most of the time, in order to get into a position where you could take off as much time from work as you need for childbirth, and still pay your bills. That is kind of a bare minimum for a woman alone with a baby. It is much easier to get an education and follow a career if you are not pregnant or mother of a baby, child or children. To take away this necessity, is to hobble us.
Democrats, or left wing, we want freedom of choice for women in regard to all forms of birth control. We want equality in law and in behavior in regard to the police for all people, people of color, people who are female.
Domestic abuse is sexism in action. The urge toward domination, overpowering others, while repressing any empathy for others is the root of domestic abuse, racism and most forms of violence towards other people as well as towards other species.
We need more good women in power to bring back balance in the world. There was a good column on that subject in the Sunday NYTimes by Nicholas Kristof, "Nations May Be Safer Under Women" pg. 9. He gives the data on the countries that suffered fewer deaths by percentage of the population from coronavirus. The top ten were nations with women leaders: New Zealand,, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, and Taiwan for example. And could anyone really say that Boris Johnson has done a better job than Margaret Thatcher? The male leaders that did the worst job were all "authoritarian, vainglorious, blustering such as Jair Bolsonaro, Ayatollah Khamenei and Donald Trump to name just three. We could add Putin.
Such troubled times and sometimes knowing history makes it even more frightening. I have seen the face of the right wing in old documentaries of Germany in the late 1930's. But change always makes new and unpredictable consequences. We can still hope.
Happy Trails
Jo Ann
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Pandemic Journal - Christopher Columbus statues
The latest news is the removal of Christopher Columbus statues in Camden, NJ (my county) and across the country.
The facts are that Christopher Columbus invaded a foreign land, enslaved and massacred the local inhabitants, robbed them, and claimed THEIR land for the invading European monarch.
This happened all over the North American continent, and there is nothing to celebrate about this genocidal invasion by European countries.
Various experts have estimated that European diseases and genocidal violence have accounted for the eradication of about 90% of the indigenous people of this continent.
If a force from another planet with superior weaponry and diseases to which we have no immunity invaded our planet, tortured, enslaved and murdered Homo Sapiens, then claimed this planet for their federation, that would not be an inappropriate analogy, AND we would not want memorials to their invasion on our land.
Statues of formerly victorious conquerors have been removed from countries all over the world when their regimes have been defeated.
What should be of more value than ethnic identity is American identity. Our memorials should represent American values and the interests of all Americans. Slavers, invaders, racists and traitors do not deserve places of honor in our public spaces. We need memorials to the brave men and women who have moved us toward our national ideals. Let's see some statues to Abolitionists, Civil Rights leaders, and women who sacrificed to bring the vote to half our nation's people.
We have Union soldiers in our ancestry in my family, and they did not serve and sacrifice to see the traitors and those who committed crimes against humanity in the form of slavery celebrated with statuary and flags, no more than statues to the British defeated forces should be raised in places of honor. The British were defeated by the bravery and sacrifice of the people who had suffered under the unjust rule of a colonial power. Those heroes should be remembered as well as symbols for the common folk who fought and sacrificed and suffered to establish this new democratic system BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, ALL THE PEOPLE.
It is time to throw off the dead, villainous grip of colonial history and start celebrating our home grown heroism.
The statues can be moved to specific destinations that represent the small groups who want them, Columbus can go to parks and museums that are meaningful.
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
The facts are that Christopher Columbus invaded a foreign land, enslaved and massacred the local inhabitants, robbed them, and claimed THEIR land for the invading European monarch.
This happened all over the North American continent, and there is nothing to celebrate about this genocidal invasion by European countries.
Various experts have estimated that European diseases and genocidal violence have accounted for the eradication of about 90% of the indigenous people of this continent.
If a force from another planet with superior weaponry and diseases to which we have no immunity invaded our planet, tortured, enslaved and murdered Homo Sapiens, then claimed this planet for their federation, that would not be an inappropriate analogy, AND we would not want memorials to their invasion on our land.
Statues of formerly victorious conquerors have been removed from countries all over the world when their regimes have been defeated.
What should be of more value than ethnic identity is American identity. Our memorials should represent American values and the interests of all Americans. Slavers, invaders, racists and traitors do not deserve places of honor in our public spaces. We need memorials to the brave men and women who have moved us toward our national ideals. Let's see some statues to Abolitionists, Civil Rights leaders, and women who sacrificed to bring the vote to half our nation's people.
We have Union soldiers in our ancestry in my family, and they did not serve and sacrifice to see the traitors and those who committed crimes against humanity in the form of slavery celebrated with statuary and flags, no more than statues to the British defeated forces should be raised in places of honor. The British were defeated by the bravery and sacrifice of the people who had suffered under the unjust rule of a colonial power. Those heroes should be remembered as well as symbols for the common folk who fought and sacrificed and suffered to establish this new democratic system BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, ALL THE PEOPLE.
It is time to throw off the dead, villainous grip of colonial history and start celebrating our home grown heroism.
The statues can be moved to specific destinations that represent the small groups who want them, Columbus can go to parks and museums that are meaningful.
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
Monday, June 15, 2020
Pandemic and Parenthood
When you look back at your life, which is an activity much supported by the isolation and social distancing, you count your many blessings and you strive to figure out your greatest achievements.
Although I have had many achievements of which I feel I have a right to be proud, owing to the obstacles in my path along each of those routes, there is one I think is above all others.
Motherhood fell upon me, much like many another woman, I suspect. I didn't choose that path until I was on it, and then I chose it over and over again, when I came to yet another gate. Part of my choice was my age; I knew it would probably be my last chance. Part of it was a surprising longing for a baby, which I had never felt in my life before; I watched babies that I had never noticed before, and I marveled at all they represented. I wanted to experience that.
So much fear accompanied that decision, years and years of fear. Here was a powerless little person who depended entirely on me for protection, and care. No one can be prepared for carrying around a baby most of your waking hours, being at the beck and call of a little person who needs water, milk, food, clean diapers, and the age related varieties of need, for years to come. Here is a little person whom you literally teach to speak, to walk, to color, put puzzle pieces together, to relate to other people, to read!
And when you have done all that for as long as you possible can, you can look back on that achievement and marvel. Among the fortunate, I am a mother who raised a decent, responsible, noble and wise human being. I brought her into the world, supported her development in every way I could, and I got lucky, so amazingly and 'roll of the dice' lucky that my child was born safe and healthy - something out of our hands for the most part.
I won an art contest, I won a poetry contest, I independently published three books, I did many kinds of good work for which I received achievement prizes. I have college degrees with honors and I was a young woman who barely had a clue that colleges existed. There was never any college education mentioned to me when I was growing up. There was no hint of that expectation ever given to me. Three things drove me there: a friend who was going to college, a burning desire to understand more of the hidden layers of literature, the doors to college forced open by the student revolution in the late 60's and early 70's. All these things make me proud of my life, but the greatest beauty and marvel I can claim to have had a hand in, has been my daughter.
My daughter surpasses anything I could have imagined. It is true that with my tools and my inclinations, I may have, under different socio-economic conditions, gone on to find greater accomplishments in the wider world. It took me a long time to find the wider world. Perhaps there are great artists, musicians, poets, doctors, teachers, saints, who have achievements they value higher than my greatest achievement, but I haven't felt that so I can never know.
What I do know is that a simply marvelous human being exists in the world today who gestated in my body and whom I raised for eighteen years. She is a superb human being.
Pandemic ponderings on the porch -
Happy Trails, outward or inward.
Jo Ann
Although I have had many achievements of which I feel I have a right to be proud, owing to the obstacles in my path along each of those routes, there is one I think is above all others.
Motherhood fell upon me, much like many another woman, I suspect. I didn't choose that path until I was on it, and then I chose it over and over again, when I came to yet another gate. Part of my choice was my age; I knew it would probably be my last chance. Part of it was a surprising longing for a baby, which I had never felt in my life before; I watched babies that I had never noticed before, and I marveled at all they represented. I wanted to experience that.
So much fear accompanied that decision, years and years of fear. Here was a powerless little person who depended entirely on me for protection, and care. No one can be prepared for carrying around a baby most of your waking hours, being at the beck and call of a little person who needs water, milk, food, clean diapers, and the age related varieties of need, for years to come. Here is a little person whom you literally teach to speak, to walk, to color, put puzzle pieces together, to relate to other people, to read!
And when you have done all that for as long as you possible can, you can look back on that achievement and marvel. Among the fortunate, I am a mother who raised a decent, responsible, noble and wise human being. I brought her into the world, supported her development in every way I could, and I got lucky, so amazingly and 'roll of the dice' lucky that my child was born safe and healthy - something out of our hands for the most part.
I won an art contest, I won a poetry contest, I independently published three books, I did many kinds of good work for which I received achievement prizes. I have college degrees with honors and I was a young woman who barely had a clue that colleges existed. There was never any college education mentioned to me when I was growing up. There was no hint of that expectation ever given to me. Three things drove me there: a friend who was going to college, a burning desire to understand more of the hidden layers of literature, the doors to college forced open by the student revolution in the late 60's and early 70's. All these things make me proud of my life, but the greatest beauty and marvel I can claim to have had a hand in, has been my daughter.
My daughter surpasses anything I could have imagined. It is true that with my tools and my inclinations, I may have, under different socio-economic conditions, gone on to find greater accomplishments in the wider world. It took me a long time to find the wider world. Perhaps there are great artists, musicians, poets, doctors, teachers, saints, who have achievements they value higher than my greatest achievement, but I haven't felt that so I can never know.
What I do know is that a simply marvelous human being exists in the world today who gestated in my body and whom I raised for eighteen years. She is a superb human being.
Pandemic ponderings on the porch -
Happy Trails, outward or inward.
Jo Ann
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Pandemia and the PORCH
Today, sitting, yep, on the porch, I began to remember other porches and the magic they provide of simply opening a door and entering an entirely new and different state of mind.
In the house, I had bounced from constantly running news programs covering the latest police murder of yet another African American man. Rayshard Brooks had fallen asleep in the drive thru lane of a Wendy's fast food joint.
When the police came, things appeared to be civil until the police attempted to arrest Brooks and it turned into a three man wrestling match. Brooks got a taser from one of the police and he ran for it. I am certain he suspected that taser was going to be used on him, so he grabbed it and ran for his life, but the policeman shot him dead.
While his life ebbed away, the policemen put on rubber gloves and collected their shell casings. If that isn't callous disregard for life, what is?
I have seen this before, in World War II movies, this callous disregard for whatever people have been designated as victims - Jews, women, homosexuals, immigrants, homeless people.
My heart sank. Then I got up, opened the door and sat on the porch. Suddenly it was quiet except for birds singing and the voices of children playing in some farther off yard. That quickly the world changed.
It reminded me of a balcony porch I once had back in 1974, on the back of a third floor apartment in an adapted old Victorian three story house. The balcony was part of the wooden fire escape but it was so high it was in the tree canopy, like an attached tree house. I can still feel the sensations of the cool fresh, perfumed air of the leafy bower.
And that reminded me of the veranda in the 1980's of my parents mountainside house in West Virginia. There you could escape the clamor of family life and simply become part of the pasture, the trees catching the sunlight and bouncing it around, the fragrance of the green world, the cool breath of tree cleaned air.
Porches, porticoes, verandas, balconies, all these little escapes into paradise from the interior world of the dwelling. The pandemic has forced me to spend previously unimagined amounts of free time on the porch. That has been a gift, that change of state of mind that is provided by a little escape into the trees and shrubs, the flowers and birds, the soft earth of the outdoors. Sometimes you get so busy, you forget that such a gift exists, right outside the living room door.
Happy trails, whatever kind they may be.
Jo Ann
In the house, I had bounced from constantly running news programs covering the latest police murder of yet another African American man. Rayshard Brooks had fallen asleep in the drive thru lane of a Wendy's fast food joint.
When the police came, things appeared to be civil until the police attempted to arrest Brooks and it turned into a three man wrestling match. Brooks got a taser from one of the police and he ran for it. I am certain he suspected that taser was going to be used on him, so he grabbed it and ran for his life, but the policeman shot him dead.
While his life ebbed away, the policemen put on rubber gloves and collected their shell casings. If that isn't callous disregard for life, what is?
I have seen this before, in World War II movies, this callous disregard for whatever people have been designated as victims - Jews, women, homosexuals, immigrants, homeless people.
My heart sank. Then I got up, opened the door and sat on the porch. Suddenly it was quiet except for birds singing and the voices of children playing in some farther off yard. That quickly the world changed.
It reminded me of a balcony porch I once had back in 1974, on the back of a third floor apartment in an adapted old Victorian three story house. The balcony was part of the wooden fire escape but it was so high it was in the tree canopy, like an attached tree house. I can still feel the sensations of the cool fresh, perfumed air of the leafy bower.
And that reminded me of the veranda in the 1980's of my parents mountainside house in West Virginia. There you could escape the clamor of family life and simply become part of the pasture, the trees catching the sunlight and bouncing it around, the fragrance of the green world, the cool breath of tree cleaned air.
Porches, porticoes, verandas, balconies, all these little escapes into paradise from the interior world of the dwelling. The pandemic has forced me to spend previously unimagined amounts of free time on the porch. That has been a gift, that change of state of mind that is provided by a little escape into the trees and shrubs, the flowers and birds, the soft earth of the outdoors. Sometimes you get so busy, you forget that such a gift exists, right outside the living room door.
Happy trails, whatever kind they may be.
Jo Ann
Saturday, June 6, 2020
Pandemia - isolation- old age
Sitting on my porch just now, and I have to diverge to describe the view: My porch is small, about ten feet wide and 6 feet deep. The floor is dark gray flagstone. I have a wooden, park bench style seat, a bistro table and two wrought iron chairs. Directly in front, and indeed reaching into the porch is a sturdy, youthful holly that I planted when it was 7 inches tall. It is now far above the roof and waves cheerily at me when I come out. Behind the holly is the 'oldsters.' They are five of a total of about 25 original trees from when the house was built 75 years ago, maples and an oak plus a few self planted berry trees in the back yard along the fence.
There is a pea pebble path to my porch that curves gently like a cheek. Alongside it are several plants whose names I don't remember with hand sized leaves that are rust colored on onesie and mustard colored on the other. There are a dozen small evergreens that I planted, always as small plants under a foot tall, which are now roof tall and above. We have grown up together.
A friend sent me a video of a hike she took yesterday in the woods, which were blooming with mountain laurel; I think she said it was the orange trail. Anyhow I was filled with melancholy for a lost love. I LOVED the woods, and I could feel intoxicated by the fragrances, my favorite being hot sun on pine needles. The big stillness filled with the riffling activity of the air in the leaves, the small and soothing sounds of birds or geese. These are gone from me now.
It isn't just the car being so old and untrustworthy, my knees are shot and so is my eyesight, and so I must reconcile myself to the change which has come about. Aside from being isolated by the pandemic, I am isolated by the onset of my personal aging experience. Turns out, as strong and active as I was, I am not the noteworthy oldy who competes in contests of fitness for the elderly.
My cartilage wore out. It is a fact I have to face every day in every way. So I can remember with love my years of hikes in the woods, the Maurice River Bluffs, the Cranberry Trail, Oswego, Atsion, Parvin, and my most beloved of all Pakim Pond. But I can't hike them anymore and with this car, I can't drive there either, and by the time I get a new car, my eyesight might be so bad I won't be able to drive there.
This is a new book. I feel as though, once again, I have walked out of a book in the series that is my life, and just opened the cover of yet another volume. There was the book of my childhood in the brick row home canyons of South Philadelphia, the book of my teens in Maple Shade and at Merchantville High School, my married life and the years in Germany, my motherhood years, my big freedom of late middle age retirement, and now the new and final volume in the series: Old Age.
My roots are coming in white. I am letting the style and color of my hair salon days grow out. All of this is fairly familiar to me as I was a watchful child and adult and I watched my parents age and die. I watched my mother's chestnut hair give way to commercial coloring, then wave the white flag of surrender. My mother went white in her 60's. My father kept something like a faded version of his golden platinum into his late 60's and finally subsided into a pale whitish color. I watched his knees go bad, her back. I saw their prodigious, unusual level of energy run out like a battery in a flashlight. All of these things that I witnessed, I now experience.
I may not have noticed so completely if I hadn't been in isolation for these past three months. It gives you plenty of time to think and to feel, things that the distractions of social life both protect and deprive you of.
Lately I have been feeling the tiniest flicker of inspiration to make a painting of the view from the porch.
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
There is a pea pebble path to my porch that curves gently like a cheek. Alongside it are several plants whose names I don't remember with hand sized leaves that are rust colored on onesie and mustard colored on the other. There are a dozen small evergreens that I planted, always as small plants under a foot tall, which are now roof tall and above. We have grown up together.
A friend sent me a video of a hike she took yesterday in the woods, which were blooming with mountain laurel; I think she said it was the orange trail. Anyhow I was filled with melancholy for a lost love. I LOVED the woods, and I could feel intoxicated by the fragrances, my favorite being hot sun on pine needles. The big stillness filled with the riffling activity of the air in the leaves, the small and soothing sounds of birds or geese. These are gone from me now.
It isn't just the car being so old and untrustworthy, my knees are shot and so is my eyesight, and so I must reconcile myself to the change which has come about. Aside from being isolated by the pandemic, I am isolated by the onset of my personal aging experience. Turns out, as strong and active as I was, I am not the noteworthy oldy who competes in contests of fitness for the elderly.
My cartilage wore out. It is a fact I have to face every day in every way. So I can remember with love my years of hikes in the woods, the Maurice River Bluffs, the Cranberry Trail, Oswego, Atsion, Parvin, and my most beloved of all Pakim Pond. But I can't hike them anymore and with this car, I can't drive there either, and by the time I get a new car, my eyesight might be so bad I won't be able to drive there.
This is a new book. I feel as though, once again, I have walked out of a book in the series that is my life, and just opened the cover of yet another volume. There was the book of my childhood in the brick row home canyons of South Philadelphia, the book of my teens in Maple Shade and at Merchantville High School, my married life and the years in Germany, my motherhood years, my big freedom of late middle age retirement, and now the new and final volume in the series: Old Age.
My roots are coming in white. I am letting the style and color of my hair salon days grow out. All of this is fairly familiar to me as I was a watchful child and adult and I watched my parents age and die. I watched my mother's chestnut hair give way to commercial coloring, then wave the white flag of surrender. My mother went white in her 60's. My father kept something like a faded version of his golden platinum into his late 60's and finally subsided into a pale whitish color. I watched his knees go bad, her back. I saw their prodigious, unusual level of energy run out like a battery in a flashlight. All of these things that I witnessed, I now experience.
I may not have noticed so completely if I hadn't been in isolation for these past three months. It gives you plenty of time to think and to feel, things that the distractions of social life both protect and deprive you of.
Lately I have been feeling the tiniest flicker of inspiration to make a painting of the view from the porch.
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Thursday, June 4, 2020
Pandemic & Protest
For this blog entry, I wanted to start with this quote from Harper Mag. June 2020, pg.35 THE COMPLICATING GERMS, by David Rutstein
"Influenza, a disease of the respiratory tract is spread from person to person through direct contact by direct contact through breathing, sneezing, coughing, and speaking. It is so highly infections that many thousands of persons in a city may be attacked at the same time and it spreads rapidly along lines of communication from one population center to another. This disease varies in severity from being almost asymptomatic to one that may cause death in a few days."
I think it is easy to forget these facts in the heat of passion. Having watched on television as Officer Chauvin knelt on the neck of a dying man who was crying out for help, "I can't breathe!" was enough to inflame anyone. Those who are paid by us and sworn to protect us become our murders? For what? For the suspicion of perhaps passing a bad check or a bad twenty? A life for that?
So believe me, because I am old and cannot stand or walk longer than half an hour anymore, if I had been young and hale, I may have been drawn by my conscience to join those who protested this ongoing crime against citizen of our country. Because someone MUST stand up at some time and say "No more," whether it is sexual abuse or racial assault, it must be challenged and the people have got to stand up in a large mass and protest.
I learned this as I saw my age mates taken, more or less against their will to fight in Vietnam. They didn't want to go. They didn't believe in the hocus locus of the war propaganda, and they didn't want to kill Vietnamese people or be maimed or killed themselves.
The rest of us had to stand up and say, "No, you can't take any more young men and destroy any more villages so that the fat cats in the war game can enrich themselves by selling armaments." And I did march and walk on the boulevards around the White House, always wondering if one of the infiltrators would choose me to assault to spark a confrontation. Also wondering if I would be one of the unfortunates singled out for arrest and imprisonment. There would be No One to bail me out if that happened.
However, this time is different. It is different because gathering in large crowds while the Coronavirus is among us is more dangerous than any time before. Even with masks, the ones they brought, and the ones that were handed out to marchers by concerned and generous supporters, no one in those crowds was safe from the virus which can easily penetrate two layers of cloth, or a bandanna.
And no one at home when the protesters returned to their homes, was safe from whatever they carried with them. None of us will know the damage from this for 2 or 3 weeks.
Maybe we will be lucky and the virus will have run its course. No one knows. Maybe the immune systems of the youth of the protesters will protect them. We won't know for three weeks, until we see the numbers of new cases in Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs. My 25 year old nephew/godson was one of the protesters. He used to do work for me every week or two but now I won't be able to see him till the end of June because I am old and my body is compromised by a number factors owing to natural aging and some bad habits.
I didn't text or talk to my daughter until the day or two after the massive protests because I was afraid she had gone too, in the Brooklyn, New York City marches. "Thank God, " I replied when I texted her yesterday and said that because of the pandemic, she and her partner had decided not to join the crowd.
Just as no African American mother wants to see her son murdered by police in an error driven act of aggression, I don't want to see my daughter felled by a burst of passion that results in sickness and death from a virus that has no cure. I could only hope that her common sense and serious and admirable respect for and understanding of the consequences of hurricanes, pandemics, would prevail in her decision making. My nephew is young and still in that age range that feels itself invulnerable and immortal. My daughter has passed into her mid thirties and has seen enough to know anyone can be struck down at any time by disaster or disease. She has had friends die.
Tumultuous times, like no one ever expected to see again. It is all familiar from the 1970's but I certainly never thought I would see these days again. I had gotten used to the peace and stability in which I had been lucky enough to raise my daughter. Though I must say that it was never far from my mind, after a childhood in the wake of World War II, and a young adulthood in the midst of war and riots in the 70's, that if it could happen there and to THEM, it could happen here, and to US, and to ME.
Watching the fall of Venezuela was prophetic.
I haven't watched the news yet today though I watched all day yesterday, as thousands swarmed the center of the city of my birth, and the city of my daughter's birth, Philadelphia, the center of the revolutionary war in the 1770's, the city that was occupied by foreign invading troops for nine months during the revolution, and the city that was crushed by the Spanish flu in 1918 - 16,000 deaths and half a million cases in the city. Troops returning from Europe brought the disease to the navy yard, and then the war bond parade spread it around. It was known as the Spanish flu because Spain suffered the highest casualty counts, 147,000 official county, 250,00 estimated actual count. The 75% died in the SECOND WAVE in 1919 that followed the initial epidemic in 1918.
We don't know what the next month will bring in terms of rising numbers after the protests across the country in every major metropolitan zone as well as in every large town. People in good will wish to show solidarity with those with a righteous grievance. It was like a trap.
Well, we will see what transpires over the upcoming uncharted weeks of summer and hope for the best!
"Happy trails to you, until we meet again"
By the way, I have been thinking a lot lately about attribution, so it is time to remind anyone reading this that the little quote I use to end my posts is from a song sung by Dale and Roy Evans, Happy Trails to You, until we meet again. Happy trails to you, keep smiling until then!"
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
"Influenza, a disease of the respiratory tract is spread from person to person through direct contact by direct contact through breathing, sneezing, coughing, and speaking. It is so highly infections that many thousands of persons in a city may be attacked at the same time and it spreads rapidly along lines of communication from one population center to another. This disease varies in severity from being almost asymptomatic to one that may cause death in a few days."
I think it is easy to forget these facts in the heat of passion. Having watched on television as Officer Chauvin knelt on the neck of a dying man who was crying out for help, "I can't breathe!" was enough to inflame anyone. Those who are paid by us and sworn to protect us become our murders? For what? For the suspicion of perhaps passing a bad check or a bad twenty? A life for that?
So believe me, because I am old and cannot stand or walk longer than half an hour anymore, if I had been young and hale, I may have been drawn by my conscience to join those who protested this ongoing crime against citizen of our country. Because someone MUST stand up at some time and say "No more," whether it is sexual abuse or racial assault, it must be challenged and the people have got to stand up in a large mass and protest.
I learned this as I saw my age mates taken, more or less against their will to fight in Vietnam. They didn't want to go. They didn't believe in the hocus locus of the war propaganda, and they didn't want to kill Vietnamese people or be maimed or killed themselves.
The rest of us had to stand up and say, "No, you can't take any more young men and destroy any more villages so that the fat cats in the war game can enrich themselves by selling armaments." And I did march and walk on the boulevards around the White House, always wondering if one of the infiltrators would choose me to assault to spark a confrontation. Also wondering if I would be one of the unfortunates singled out for arrest and imprisonment. There would be No One to bail me out if that happened.
However, this time is different. It is different because gathering in large crowds while the Coronavirus is among us is more dangerous than any time before. Even with masks, the ones they brought, and the ones that were handed out to marchers by concerned and generous supporters, no one in those crowds was safe from the virus which can easily penetrate two layers of cloth, or a bandanna.
And no one at home when the protesters returned to their homes, was safe from whatever they carried with them. None of us will know the damage from this for 2 or 3 weeks.
Maybe we will be lucky and the virus will have run its course. No one knows. Maybe the immune systems of the youth of the protesters will protect them. We won't know for three weeks, until we see the numbers of new cases in Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs. My 25 year old nephew/godson was one of the protesters. He used to do work for me every week or two but now I won't be able to see him till the end of June because I am old and my body is compromised by a number factors owing to natural aging and some bad habits.
I didn't text or talk to my daughter until the day or two after the massive protests because I was afraid she had gone too, in the Brooklyn, New York City marches. "Thank God, " I replied when I texted her yesterday and said that because of the pandemic, she and her partner had decided not to join the crowd.
Just as no African American mother wants to see her son murdered by police in an error driven act of aggression, I don't want to see my daughter felled by a burst of passion that results in sickness and death from a virus that has no cure. I could only hope that her common sense and serious and admirable respect for and understanding of the consequences of hurricanes, pandemics, would prevail in her decision making. My nephew is young and still in that age range that feels itself invulnerable and immortal. My daughter has passed into her mid thirties and has seen enough to know anyone can be struck down at any time by disaster or disease. She has had friends die.
Tumultuous times, like no one ever expected to see again. It is all familiar from the 1970's but I certainly never thought I would see these days again. I had gotten used to the peace and stability in which I had been lucky enough to raise my daughter. Though I must say that it was never far from my mind, after a childhood in the wake of World War II, and a young adulthood in the midst of war and riots in the 70's, that if it could happen there and to THEM, it could happen here, and to US, and to ME.
Watching the fall of Venezuela was prophetic.
I haven't watched the news yet today though I watched all day yesterday, as thousands swarmed the center of the city of my birth, and the city of my daughter's birth, Philadelphia, the center of the revolutionary war in the 1770's, the city that was occupied by foreign invading troops for nine months during the revolution, and the city that was crushed by the Spanish flu in 1918 - 16,000 deaths and half a million cases in the city. Troops returning from Europe brought the disease to the navy yard, and then the war bond parade spread it around. It was known as the Spanish flu because Spain suffered the highest casualty counts, 147,000 official county, 250,00 estimated actual count. The 75% died in the SECOND WAVE in 1919 that followed the initial epidemic in 1918.
We don't know what the next month will bring in terms of rising numbers after the protests across the country in every major metropolitan zone as well as in every large town. People in good will wish to show solidarity with those with a righteous grievance. It was like a trap.
Well, we will see what transpires over the upcoming uncharted weeks of summer and hope for the best!
"Happy trails to you, until we meet again"
By the way, I have been thinking a lot lately about attribution, so it is time to remind anyone reading this that the little quote I use to end my posts is from a song sung by Dale and Roy Evans, Happy Trails to You, until we meet again. Happy trails to you, keep smiling until then!"
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Pandemic - Living History - AGAIN!
To hold in my hand, the actual diary of Ann Whitall, written in the 1760's was an honor and made an indelible impression on me that has grown over the days since the day I held that book.
I had gotten to know Ann Whitall a little from transcribing her diary from a typed copy onto the computer so people could read it.
I think it is easily misunderstood.
Having studied diaries for decades, and having kept my own for over 50 years, I have thought a lot about their purposes. Diaries from long dead days bring it back to the personal experience.
Ann Whitall was a woman who sought a spiritual life, as she had always been taught that she should. But marriage, motherhood, and the strains of everyday life put a great strain on that goal. On top of it all, a spiritual, deeply religious woman practicing a religion devoted to PEACE, had a revolution drop, literally, into her backyard.
How hard must that have been for her? She, too, in many ways was isolated. Her deep need for a proper spiritual path put her into chafing conflicts on a daily basis. Once, on a field trip, I held her marriage page in my hand, from a Quaker log book of such events. How much joy and hope she must have felt at the outset of her long journey through life. She must have been shyly in love, totally innocent of any information regarding sexuality or reproduction, and she had eight children! Taking a year for each pregnancy and birth and a year suckling, thats sixteen long years of maternity.
Then, when things are prosperous, calm, and the children beyond all their deadly diseases such as measles and chicken pox, scarlet fever, cholera, diphtheria, typhus, small pox, a revolution is sparked.
Soon, the fields of South Jersey are burning, the farms looted, the cattle and horses commandeered, the chickens slaughtered, the bedding shredded and everything glass shattered. The women are alone on the farms, the husbands are off in the militia, only the elderly remain to shoulder the load.
Ann's diaries, the ones we have, were written in the decade before the revolution, before she had any idea that such a thing would happen to her. In one she mentions briefly how sad about "the Indians killing the people" and she has no idea that soon there will be killing in her apple orchard, a whole enormous battle with cannon, and foreign soldiers!
I feel for Ann Whitall, and I think of her. Her memory lives on because her diaries were saved, through all these years from 1762 to 2020, through all the fires and the looting and the blood and death, those little diaries were kept safe, and Ann Whitall speaks to us from before our time.
Meanwhile, on television, protestors march on the capitol, in all of the major cities, and soldiers fire tear gas and rubber bullets into them. It makes me think of so many old protest songs such as "Which side are you on?" and newer songs like "The Universal Soldier" and it makes me ask myself that question. I answer that I am on the side of peace, and I think of Ann Whitall, who was also on the side of peace in times of turmoil.
I had gotten to know Ann Whitall a little from transcribing her diary from a typed copy onto the computer so people could read it.
I think it is easily misunderstood.
Having studied diaries for decades, and having kept my own for over 50 years, I have thought a lot about their purposes. Diaries from long dead days bring it back to the personal experience.
Ann Whitall was a woman who sought a spiritual life, as she had always been taught that she should. But marriage, motherhood, and the strains of everyday life put a great strain on that goal. On top of it all, a spiritual, deeply religious woman practicing a religion devoted to PEACE, had a revolution drop, literally, into her backyard.
How hard must that have been for her? She, too, in many ways was isolated. Her deep need for a proper spiritual path put her into chafing conflicts on a daily basis. Once, on a field trip, I held her marriage page in my hand, from a Quaker log book of such events. How much joy and hope she must have felt at the outset of her long journey through life. She must have been shyly in love, totally innocent of any information regarding sexuality or reproduction, and she had eight children! Taking a year for each pregnancy and birth and a year suckling, thats sixteen long years of maternity.
Then, when things are prosperous, calm, and the children beyond all their deadly diseases such as measles and chicken pox, scarlet fever, cholera, diphtheria, typhus, small pox, a revolution is sparked.
Soon, the fields of South Jersey are burning, the farms looted, the cattle and horses commandeered, the chickens slaughtered, the bedding shredded and everything glass shattered. The women are alone on the farms, the husbands are off in the militia, only the elderly remain to shoulder the load.
Ann's diaries, the ones we have, were written in the decade before the revolution, before she had any idea that such a thing would happen to her. In one she mentions briefly how sad about "the Indians killing the people" and she has no idea that soon there will be killing in her apple orchard, a whole enormous battle with cannon, and foreign soldiers!
I feel for Ann Whitall, and I think of her. Her memory lives on because her diaries were saved, through all these years from 1762 to 2020, through all the fires and the looting and the blood and death, those little diaries were kept safe, and Ann Whitall speaks to us from before our time.
Meanwhile, on television, protestors march on the capitol, in all of the major cities, and soldiers fire tear gas and rubber bullets into them. It makes me think of so many old protest songs such as "Which side are you on?" and newer songs like "The Universal Soldier" and it makes me ask myself that question. I answer that I am on the side of peace, and I think of Ann Whitall, who was also on the side of peace in times of turmoil.
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