Tenth Anniversary

Today, January 17, 2021, just before I shut down my laptop for the night, I decided to scroll back through all my blogs. I realized, that I had been posting for over 10 years as of November. There are 915 blog posts and a quarter of a million views though only 17 followers and not very many comments - a great many spam comments however. When I began in 2010, I had been retired for 4 years and had begun volunteering at many historic sites as a docent or in other capacities. Also, my car and my eyesight being younger and in better shape, I had been doing a great deal of driving and exploring. Since those early days, a lot has changed both in my life and in the world. Sadly, in many ways, age has caught up to me and fenced me in. A torn meniscus (cartilage in the knee) started the curtailment of my active outdoor life. Osteo-arthritis struck and my back also became a problem. Eventually my car began to age out of the long drives to places such as the Bayshore Discovery Project down at Port Norris on the Maurice River, or Greenwich village on the Cohansey. Eventually between the arthritis in my knees and my back, I couldn't really manage historic house tours anymore and had to give up most volunteer work. Those avenues closed, however, I became more active with painting. For the past several years, I have participated in every show to which I received a "call for artists" e-mail from the Eiland Arts Center, as well as the first Atsion Arts Fair last summer. Then, of course, in 2020 came the Pandemic and my activities became even more curtailed. That put an end to the many Camden County Historical Society events I had enjoyed, including their history day events when all the local historical sites were open for visits. Probably the Berlin Train Station was my last historic site visit, although, it may actually have been the old Quaker Store on the Black Horse Pike! Eiland Arts Center, by the way is located in a re-purposed train station. My last piece was a group portrait of the greatest back-up singers of the old Rock and Roll period, singers like Darlene Love. My next painting will be of a building in Ocean City which was demolished in 2020, the building where my grandmother used to live on Asbury Avenue. Possibly the theme of that last few paragraphs might be that when one door closes, another opens. So I can't hike the Maurice River Bluffs anymore, but last week, I did the half hour trail of Saddler's Woods, a lovely little historic site off Cuthbert Blvd., in Haddon Township. And along with painting, I am reading a LOT: most notably at present I am reading CASTE, by Isabelle Wilkerson, a Sunday New York Times 10 Best Non-Fiction Books of 2020 selection. It deals with the racial caste system in America and the effects in our modern society, which we saw recently acted out in the unprecedented raid on the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. by Trump domestic terrorists, intent on stopping the certification of the electoral votes of the US for incoming President Joe Biden. Apparently they also intended to kidnap and possibly assassinate current Vice President Pence, if quotes and photographs (of the noose and scaffold) and videos (of them chanting Get Pence) they posted are to be believed. A large number of the groups represented White Supremacy organizations. What a start to the new year 2021. My last historic site visit post was from the visit to the train dispay at the Aerican History Museum on Andaloro Way in West Deptford. What a great little museum. I have been visiting annually since it was located in Glassboro some yeears back. I hope you can go there and visit someday soon! Happy New Year! And to anyone who sees this post, Thanks for visiting in my eleventh year on this blog!

Model Train Time! January 2021

January JAN 16 - 17 20212nd ANNUAL MODEL TRAIN , HOBBY & COLLECTIBLE SHOW - Blackwood Our Lady of Hope Second Annual Model Train, Hobby & Collectible Show 701 Little Gloucester Road Blackwood NJ 08012 January 26th 10am - 4pm Januar ... As anyone who has visited my blog before will know, I am a big model train fan. I LOVE them. My N gauge trains are put away due to cat situation. They look too much like mice! But someday they will come out again and so will my 50 year old wooden German villages purchased at the Nuremberg Christmas Fair in 1969! Meanwhile, I just bisit other train shows and enjoy the comraderie! This year I missed Railroad Days in Bordentown due to car trouble as well as the pandemic situation. I am not even sure if they held the model trin exhibits throughout the town the way they have in other years. Happy New Year and may 2021 be better than 2020! Jo Ann ps. Sorry about the minimal nature of my blog these days. Since they changed the software I have had a lot of trouble with enlarging the type, and posting images, so I have kind of lost enthusiasm, but I still want to keep you posted on fun things to do in our neck of the woods!

American Revolutiona Round Table of South Jersey presents Feeding the Forces!

American Revolution Round Table of South Jersey Food Historian and Master of Open Hearth Cooking Alicia McShulkis Will Present: “Feeding the Forces: Soldiers’ Rations and Foraging Durin Zoom Meeting Tuesday, Jan. 12 @ 7 pm Visit arrtosj.org for registration and tickets $5 Donation Requested As part of their enlistment soldiers were promised rations. Foraging was a way to supplement the rations but that came at the expense of civilians. What were the troops supposed to get and how did it change as the war wore on? Were the rations the same for the British and Hessians? What might have been made using the assigned rations? These questions and others will be discussed through slides and demonstrations. arrtosj.org

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2021

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS! Almost everyone I passed as I walked my dog this morning wished me a Happy New Year and then added that they hoped the next year will be better than the last. It is true! We all lost so much in the past year - people lost loved ones to a dreaded disease, people lost jobs, homes, and declined into financial disaster. Personally, I was luckier. I have been lucky most of my life and when I wasn't lucky, I was lucky enough to be resourceful and dig myself out. This year, good things happened toom and it is a superb habit to build to look for them. In my life, I survived an illness so severe my daughter had to take me to the hospital (not covid) and I won a first prize Art Award in a group show, and had more work exhibited in a gallery I really like. My beautiful and brilliant daughter married a sweet and gentle man and they bought a condo in Brooklyn! Her sister from another mother, got engaged! So lots of progress was achieved there. My godson got into the Electrical Workers Union, found a career had steady work as an essential worker! All my sibligs are still alive and well, and for all these many and signifcant blessings I am grateful! It was a good year for animal adoptions! Now that people are spending more time at home, more animals found homes, and I must say, my dog has improved my life dramatically. She taught me to make time and put out the effort to give her two good walks each day, a mile and a half each, to a total of 3 miles, and that has made us both healthier and made her more well behaved! I lost some friends but I made a new friend. I lost friends due to political and values chasms that were too deep to vercome. It was that kind of divisive year. My new friend is a former neighbor who rents her childhood home to my back neighbors and we got to talking via texting and found we had a lot in common! So that is my message for the New Year - Look for the Blessings in your life - they are there! and again HAPPY NEW YEAR 2021! My next post will be about an event for history lovers sponsored by the American Revolution Round Table on Feeding Soldiers during the Revolution. Enjoy!