Angela Merkel Leaves Office (SNYT9/26/21)

On the front page of the Sunday New York Times 9/26 issue there was a story about Chacellor Angela Merkel leaving office after 16 years and it said so much about values held by many Northern Europeans and Anglo/Americans. It was especially interesting to me because I have been watching movies, documentaries and reading books about Europe after the second World War, most recently Savage Continent by Keith Lowe. As is so often the case the roots of the present reality are buried deep im the past and the modern European world has both arisen from the ashes of the past, and is forced to cope with the destruction of the past as it is stil felt in so much of the eastern part of Europe, the Balkans and Turkey, not to mention the Middle East, Afghanistan, Syria and Israel and Palestine.

But we are here to praise Merkel and this is what the article says: "As Chancellor Angela Merkel prepares to leave office afer 16 years, her country is among the richest in the world. A broad and contented middle class is one factor of Ms Merkel's Germany that has been central to her longevity and her ability to deliver on a core promise of stability. But her impact has been far greater.

To travel the country she leaves is to see it profoundly transformed. There is the father taking paid parental leave in Cathlic Bavaria, the married gay couple raising two children outside Berlin, the woman in a hijab teaching math in a high school near Frankfurt where many have German passports but few have German parents......She phased out nuclear power and ended compulsary military service." <[/> The article goes on to laud her successes and to note her failures as her detractors see them. And no one can please everyone. The rising right wing fears the growth of immigrant population, and the far left blames her for not doing more to combat climate change. She leaves a country committed to the Economic Union of Europe and to peace and staility.

Last night I watched a pbs series called Hotel Sacher, about a historic Viennese hotel in the period just up to and during the turn of the century, at the start of World War I. It was interesting to contrast the world as it was at that moment with the world that is today. Women had no civil rights, Germany still spumped up with the Prussian militaristic values from the civil war that unified it was joining with Austria and Hungary to get ready for a big world war which they couldn't imagine they were going to lose. The aristocracy ruled everything and the peasants struggled along in short and brutal lives, feudalism and serfdom still reigned. Two wars and a hundred years later and a Germany exists that the people of that time would have thought more like science fiction, a female chancellor in Germany and a good one with a 16 year career! Now that is progresss. If Germany could change, any country can. Series: Hotel Sacher (pbs masterpiece.) Book: Savage Continent, Keith Lowe Book: A Woman in Berlin, Anonymous (and in a later post, I will talk about a great essay on memoir, autobiography and the voices of the maginalized)

Happy Trail - inside and out! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Harvest Festivals - Oct 9, and 17, 2021

Cherry Hill Recreation is hosting a Harvest Festival at Craft Farm on October 17. There will be music, pumpkin patch, photogrphy show, food trucks and more! If you are looking for fun things to do, this looks like a good bet! This is the season of Fall Festivals! Enjoy

Another one Greenwich, NJ - Community Day / Fall Fest will be held on Saturday, October 9, 2021 from 1 pm to 6 pm Rain Date will be Sunday, October 10, 2021

Parking for Community Day will be at Thomas Stewart Park. Overflow parking will be at the Greenwich School where you can access the park via a walking path into the park. I was hoping to find their annual Harvest Festival held on Ye Greate Street but perhaps since the pandemic that has been called off. I haven't been in two or three years but I used to love it! Actually I haven't been to ANY Fall Festivals for two or three years! First the car, then the pandemic.

I know Batsto has the Country Living Fair coming up too, but I stopped going to that about 5 years ago because it just got too darn crowded. You had to park miles away and I am not fond of huge crowds but it is a fun thing to do if you don't mind the hike and the crowding. I don't go to any of the big pines festivals nymore, the Cranberry Fest., the Blueberry Fest, or the Country Living. I had pared down my festivals to little local ones and they were vry satisfying, but the pandemic put a temporary end to them as well. I am not sure if the October Book Fest in Collingswood is on this year or now, but again - too crowded for me! Anyhow - I hope you find the fall celebration that fits you!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

October 2021 - Art Show and Opening

Eilandarts Center has a new art show up:

We will celebrate HALLOWEEN IN MONSTERVILLE and dedicate our monthly gallery show to all things:

Mystical, Magic and Spooky

Join us for the opening reception this Friday, October 1st 6-9pm. Stop by meet the artists and enjoy some refreshments.

The Show will be up from October 1st-31st. All Art is for sale!

When I was a small child growing up in the brick row house canyons of South Philadelphia, art was a scarce commodity and even more scarce as an accessible education or career to a working class child like myself. My experience and introduction to art was through the Norman Rockwel covers of the Saturday Evening Post. That they were paintings and that they told stories that I, a child, could understand had a powerful effect on me although I didn't quite comprehend it until I was much older. To be able to draw that way, to be able to express your feelings through images, these were indeed MAGICAL AND MYSTICAL things to me. I drew, but I can clearly remember being disappointed in my efforts. It was a clear goal to me - I wanted to be able to REPRESENT the world as I saw it. Fortunate child that I was, my mother (an indirectly my father) supported my interests. My mother bought for me and for herself those large format HOW TO DRAW books, How to draw trees, landscapes, seascapes, faces. And my mother bought me art kits - impossibly complicated oil painting sets which instantly repelled me witht their evil smelling potions, and Paint by number kits. One paint by number kit I remember was of a German Schepherd dog, a head in profile. A huge event in my early artistic life was when an Ironworker friend of my father's gave me a box of bond paper. Such an immense treasure - all for me - an unheard of resource, especially in the post world war 2 period when people were still used to scarcity of such items.

We didn't have Art Class in my Philadelphia public school, but our grade school teachers sometimes did art projects with us and the one I remembered with wonder my entire life was when we brought a tree leaf to school, placed it on a square of construction paper, and then dabbed a toothbrush in white paint and ran it over a screen to make a sprinkle of white that silhouetted the leaf against the paper. I was wonderstruck!

It wasn't until decades later that I was able to actually take art classes, it was my minor in college, and eventually I found my way to printmaking as a result of that leaf spatter paint experience. My first goal in college was to take a degree in English with certification to teach so that I could support myself and also so that I could show other working class people like myself that through reading and literature, you could make a better world for yourself. The standard issue path for working class girls like myself would have been early marriage to a lusty, working class man, followed by rapid pregnancy, childbirth, endless repititous household tasks, laundry to wash, hand out on the line, fold and iron, endless meals to cook, dishes to wash, grocery shopping, vacuuming, dusting, changing beds, more pregnancy, more children with their endless and incessent high pitched demands, wet pants, and a husband going out on Friday nights after work to the local bar with his buddies and coming home drunk. He would be social, then sentimental and drunkenly affectionate, then irritable and beeligerant and finally shouting and raging. That would have been my life without book and education. It was what I saw all around me. But my life detoured because I read books and saw different worlds and because we moved to New Jersey to a town that didn't have its own high school so we went to the high school in the upper middle class town next door - Marchantville. That was a different world for sure - less violent in speech and behavior, more refined, a world where kids had the goal of going to college. Even though originally my prior education and my behavior had not adjusted to land me on the path to college, still the dream had been planted, and I had a best friend who was going to go to college, so I knew it was possible. Eilandarts Center has a new art show up:

We will celebrate HALLOWEEN IN MONSTERVILLE and dedicate our monthly gallery show to all things:

Mystical, Magic and Spooky

Join us for the opening reception this Friday, October 1st 6-9pm. Stop by meet the artists and enjoy some refreshments.

The Show will be up from October 1st-31st. All Art is for sale!

When I was a small child growing up in the brick row house canyons of South Philadelphia, art was a scarce commodity and even more scarce as an accessible education or career to a working class child like myself. My experience and introduction to art was through the Norman Rockwel covers of the Saturday Evening Post. That they were paintings and that they told stories that I, a child, could understand had a powerful effect on me although I didn't quite comprehend it until I was much older. To be able to draw that way, to be able to express your feelings through images, these were indeed MAGICAL AND MYSTICAL things to me. I drew, but I can clearly remember being disappointed in my efforts. It was a clear goal to me - I wanted to be able to REPRESENT the world as I saw it. Fortunate child that I was, my mother (an indirectly my father) supported my interests. My mother bought for me and for herself those large format HOW TO DRAW books, How to draw trees, landscapes, seascapes, faces. And my mother bought me art kits - impossibly complicated oil painting sets which instantly repelled me witht their evil smelling potions, and Paint by number kits. One paint by number kit I remember was of a German Schepherd dog, a head in profile. A huge event in my early artistic life was when an Ironworker friend of my father's gave me a box of bond paper. Such an immense treasure - all for me - an unheard of resource, especially in the post world war 2 period when people were still used to scarcity of such items.

We didn't have Art Class in my Philadelphia public school, but our grade school teachers sometimes did art projects with us and the one I remembered with wonder my entire life was when we brought a tree leaf to school, placed it on a square of construction paper, and then dabbed a toothbrush in white paint and ran it over a screen to make a sprinkle of white that silhouetted the leaf against the paper. I was wonderstruck!

It wasn't until decades later that I was able to actually take art classes, it was my minor in college, and eventually I found my way to printmaking as a result of that leaf spatter paint experience. My first goal in college was to take a degree in English with certification to teach so that I could support myself and also so that I could show other working class people like myself that through reading and literature, you could make a better world for yourself. The standard issue path for working class girls like myself would have been early marriage to a lusty, working class man, followed by rapid pregnancy, childbirth, endless repititous household tasks, laundry to wash, hand out on the line, fold and iron, endless meals to cook, dishes to wash, grocery shopping, vacuuming, dusting, changing beds, more pregnancy, more children with their endless and incessent high pitched demands, wet pants, and a husband going out on Friday nights after work to the local bar with his buddies and coming home drunk. He would be social, then sentimental and drunkenly affectionate, then irritable and beeligerant and finally shouting and raging. That would have been my life without book and education. It was what I saw all around me. But my life detoured because I read books and saw different worlds and because we moved to New Jersey to a town that didn't have its own high school so we went to the high school in the upper middle class town next door - Marchantville. That was a different world for sure - less violent in speech and behavior, more refined, a world where kids had the goal of going to college. Even though originally my prior education and my behavior had not adjusted to land me on the path to college, still the dream had been planted, and I had a best friend who was going to go to college, so I knew it was possible.

A lifetime later, and while reading the Sunday New York Times and reading about Art Shows and the Art World, I reflected not for the first time, on how much I enjoy my simple, humble, low key current art life. I have a piece in the current October how at the eiland Arts Center which is in the saved and restored Merchantville Railroad Station Depot. It is so gratifying to me that they saved the Depot and made it an art gallery and coffee shop. The gallery operator, Nicole, is from Switzerland, a brilliant artist herself who has a terrific book art sculpture in a corner on the 2nd floor, is both discerning and accepting. She has gathered a very fine group of artists to her center and I am proud to be able to show my work with theirs. I became an English teacher and an Art teacher, and I never had to do the gallery schmoozing, coctail circuit or kiss the hands of the contemporary Borgia's to try and make my way in the modern art world. I have freedom to paint as I wish to, and Idont have to pander to critics or collectorss. As the old Shaker song goes "Tis a gift to be simple; tis a gift to be free!."

Hope you can make it to the show! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Places to go for Christmas 2021

Just received one of my most favorite magazines, Early American Life! Although I have only just finished decorating for Halloween and autumn, the new issue of EAL is devoted to Christmas, my favorite holiday! There is an article about a newly re-0pened Christmas venue:

National Christmas Center Family Attraction & Museum 363 Google reviews Tourist attraction in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Address: 3427 Lincoln Hwy, Paradise, PA 17562 Phone: (717) 442-7950

It was apparently closed for a long long time and was only recently bought and re-opened. Among my favorite places to visit this time of year are these Pennsylvania locations: JIM THOREPE, PA. Where I have hiked the long road along the Lehingh River, and in froen winter, hiked the frozen trail to the top of the waterfall, but in the early autumn, jsut visiting the town is a delight. There are charming places to eat lunch and the wonderful train ride. Sadly the spectacular light up panorama train set-up of the town and environs which used to light for dawn and through the day to dusk, is no longer in operation as I discovered on my last visit, before the pandemic, but there is still plenty to see just walking the streets of the historic town, the jail where the Labor martyrs, The Molly Maguires were held until they were executed, the quaint theater, the delightful back streets, the house of the railroad magnate which is open for tours, Packard estate. Also I love to visit Lancaster County, the wonderful Amish markets and restaurants, and of course the greatest of all GETTYSBURG! <[/> I have never heard of or visited the National Chrismas Center though, but in a month I will be buying a car. My old one has given 15 years of great service but we have reached a dead end road. The transmission is dying and I can't pass inspection so it is time to buy again. And when I do, perhaps one of my visit will be to the National Christmas Center. If not, at least maybe you will!

I am sure I will be back with another idea for a place to go or a thing to do before Christmas, so tune in again! Meanwhile, Time for the Cranberry Harvest so head out to Whitesbog! Happy Trails!

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Labor Day 2021

I just returned from placing a bouquet of red, white, and blue flowers at the base of the statue of Peter J. Maguire which is in a handsome memorial with a collonade behind the life size statue on a pedestal in Arlington Cemetery, adjacent to Bethel Cemetery off Cove Road in Pennsauken. I go there every year on Labor Day and place a small bouquet as a token of my respect for Maguire's sacrifice, his dedication and his disillusionment.

If it weren't so far away, I would also place a bouquet at the grave of Mother Jones the Miner's activist and Child Labor protester but she is burried in Illinois in Mount Olive cemetery, the miner's cemetery. These are my two most familiar Labor leaders except for Joe Hill and I sing his song regularly "I Dreamed I saw Joe Hill Last Night, Alive as You and Me. But Joe, you're ten years dead said I - I NEVER DIED SAID HE!" And he lives in all of us who know and honor the sacrifices of the men and women who fought in the Labor Struggle.

However, that said, what about MOVIES! The only few that I have seen and can recommend are: Matewan Ione of my all time favorite films, of any topic! It has magnificent acting and filming by John Sayles and it is based on a real Mine workers battle in West Virginia, the final home place of my mother and father and where my brother now lives. I can also recommend North Country, with Charlize Theron about a woman struggling to support her daughter and herself in the men's trade in the far north of Minnesota. She battles the hatred of the men she works with as well as the owners and managers. It is a tough watch but gripping. There is always SILKWOOD, a whistle blower movie worth its weight in gold, and Norma Rae. So these are the ones I know. I am going to google around and see if I can find one I haven't seen but that I might like to watch.

Happy Labor Day! Jo Ann

Camden County History Alliance

The Camden County Historical Alliance has put out the calendar for OCTOBER HISTORY MONTH. I tried to paste it here but no luck! Still haven't quite got the hang of this new software on blogspot. Only just mastered paragraphs with html - had to buy a book.

Meanwhile, if you have followed the posts, you know I have become immersed in the years after the end of WWII in Europe. As if to support my interest, PBS Masterpiece, to which I subscribe through amazon.com prime video, has run several series, the most recent of which LINE OF SEPARATION follows a small town which is divided right down the middile, into the Easter Soviet Russia sector, and the Western American setor. This divides everyone, families which find themselves half on one side and half on the other other, farmers forced forced into Communist collectives against their will, large land holders dispossed, and their ancestral lands divided into small parcels. It is a great series, well acted and very authentic in every way.

At the same time, I looked up Best Books about Postwar Europe and found a 5 BEST BOOKS reviewed by experts site. I have ordered two books, and one has arrived. The one that hasn't arrived yet is an overview of the postwar years in Europe whereas the one I am reading is one woman's diary of the first few months after the war when the Russians occupied Berlin. It is gripping and fascinating. The author who was anonymous in the years of the first publication due to the controversial subject matter, was a journalist before the war and has an eye for the most moving details of daily existence when there is no food or water or electricity, and people group up in bands of strngers in whatever parts of bomb shattered dewellings can still be used for living. Mostly they congregate in basements for bomb shelters.

The book was controversial because the author details the widespread rape of the German women by Russian solders during the occupation. For instance, I didn't know that as a rule, Russsian soldiers didn't get 'leave' so most of them by the time they reached Berlin, had been at war for four years non-stop! Like many a woman before and since, the author survived by alligning herself with a higher ranking officer who offered his protection from the roving bands of predatory drunken soldiers who went on the hunt at night for women to gang rape. he also provided hard to get food stuffs, canned goods, coffee, butter, and most importantly BREAD. At the time of the first publication, the author was scorned and her book was lambasted. She was called a traitor and a whore, because although hundreds of thousands of women survived this way, the Germans returning from war didn't want to know about it and th women kept their mouths shut. This author has provided a remarkable and unique look at survival in a land destroyed and bereft of any civic order, police force, fire department, or any organized way to get food or water. Many women were raped when they ventured out to the few sources of water in the public domain. This account is in Berlin. In other places, civilians were rounded up and put in concentration camps, slave labor camps, and murdered en masse. This author survived to the age of 90!

Well, tomorrow is Labor Day and ususlly I would be paying a visit to Peter Murphy's grave, not too far from me, but I don't know about this year, car not in great shape! Still I wish all a Happy Labor Day and let's not forget the man and the unions who made a Labor Day possible! Also, let's all say a silent thank you for all the veterans, mostly dead now, who saved the world 75 years ago!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com