A Historic Place and a lifetime memory - Orchard House, Concord, Massachusetts and Shakers

When I was a child, my Grandmother Lyons allowed me to borrow books from her bookcase in the basement. One she allowed me to keep - Little Women. It had a cold cloth binding with an embossed and colored portrait in the front cover. I loved that book for so many reasons. It had everything - a character who was so like myself, the real feelings of real girls, a big family, a setting that was emotionally evocative. It was a beautiful and very old book. All the books from that shelfing unit were very old, maybe my grandmother had inherited them. No one but me ever seemed to read them.

Sadly, I made the mistake of thinking others were like me for many years in my life which led to many losses, disappointments and mislaid expectations. I gave that book to one of my sisters who never read it, never cared for it, and eventually it was lost. I should have kept it in honor of my grandmother.

Many many years later, in the 1980's, I took a friend and my daughter on a road trip to visit all the extant SHAKER villages in New England. If you are not familiar with the shakers, they were a utopian religious sect that flourished in New England in the first half of the 1800's. They established about 18 villages, communities, which were celibate, egalitarian, and devoted to all works and actions as devotion. They are mainly famous today for the elegance and beauty of their furnishings and their furniture sells, if original in the many thousands of dollars. They were a farming community and aside from furniture, they sold seeds and absolutely gorgeous storage boxes that stacked within each other. Everything they made was beautiful to a remarkable degree because every single thing they made from brooms to fabric was made with religious devotion. They are also famous for a song "Tis a Gift to be simple tis a gift to be free, tis a gift to come down where you ought to be, and when you find yourself in the place just right it will be in the valley of love and delight." There was a show of their works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York which I went to see.

The Shakers were named the Shaking Quakers because they were Quaker like in simplicity, humility and equality, and they sang with a religious ferver that often had them shaking.

We three traveled to every Shaker community in New England from Sabbath Day Lake in Maine, near where Poland Springs water comes from, down to Concord Massachusettes where the Transcendentalists had their commune. They are famous for Henry David Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. When we went to see the Shaker house which had been moved to Fruitlands, we didn't know that the Alcott family had lived in it briefly. The house is now a museum in Concord. It isn't the family seat of the Alcott's which is Orchard House, it is another dwelling them inhabited for a time when trying to establish the Transcendentalist commune, but it turned out everyone was starving and cold and it wasn't so easy to start a commune as they had hoped.

Over the many yers since my childhood, I hve seen numerous film versions of Little Women starring, from the beginning for me, Katharine Hepburn, and with my daughter, Winona Rider, and tonight for Christmas Eve, I rented the newest version by filmmaker Greta Gerwig. And despite a bit of confusion that I think would throw viewers not familiar with the story (it jumps around in time in a peculiar and confusing way) it is my favorite of all the ersions for the reason tha the characters seem to have more life and color than in the other versions. It is also a gorgeous film. The acting, espedilly in the secondary characters is remarkable - they are actors at the top of the craft and bring their characters to life.

In an era of tawdry, criminal, and violent film fare, it was rewarding and enriching to watch a film about ideas, about growing up, about people trying to live good lives and live out their noble values. I highly recommend this film. Also it is an interesting view of the homefront during the Civil War, and a glimpse into the suffering of German immigrants. Sometimes we forget that Germans were once immigrants. In fact, on my father's side, our ancestors were German immigrants at nearly that period of time, the early 1800's. They had to flee Germany because of the Civil War raging at that time when Prussia was attempting to conquer and unify the various feudal principalities that existed at that time. For Revolutionary War fans, I might add that my Catholic German ancestors came from Hesse Cassel, the place where the dreaded Hessians came from during the Reolution when they were in the employ of the British.

Merry Christmas

Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com Merry Christmas!

If I could go anywhere for a Christmas special event it would be this one!

Holiday Train Display at Battleship NJ

Now through December 26th | 3pm-6pm

Battleship NJ

Experience a Holiday Train Display Aboard the Battleship!

A new Holiday model train display will be available for guests to experience in the Wardroom from Saturday, Dec. 11 through Sunday Dec. 26.

This display, courtesy of the South Jersey Garden Railroad Society (SJGRS), will be free to experience with a tour of the Battleship.

The Battleship will be open for tours everyday in December, except for Christmas, Dec. 25.

Happy Trails, my friends! Unfortunaetely my eyesight is so poor I would be afraid to drive there by myself and I am not sure my knees would permit the climbing I seem to remember is involved with touring the Battleship. But if you can go, you definitely should! MERRY CHRISTMAS! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

A Remarkable Person Born on Christmas 200 Years Ago

Most of us are aware of Clara Barton as the pioneering Red Cross originator in America. Not as many know about her remarkable educational crusade here in our own state of New Jersey. In Bordentown there is a charming one-room school where Clara Barton taught as a young woman still in her teens. In those days education was often by tuition subscription. Families that could afford it would hire a tutor, and in some communities, families with means would pool their money and hire a tutor for children whose parents had subscribed to be taught in a one-room school. The poor children were left illiterate to continue on the path of their poor parents as hired out field hands, servants and people condmmned to eak out lives of poverty.

When Clara Barton was hired to teach in the one-room school in Bordentown, she strove to convince the townspeople that it was in everyone's interest to see to it that ALL the children were educated and literate. The enrollment rose over a few years from a handful of well-to-do children to 500 local children. Clara Barton had been so successful that the town hired a man to become her supervisor! Needless to say this was both shocking and insulting and Clara Barton was hurt. She left to become a clerk in Washington D.C., a battlefield nurse in the Civil War, and to originate not only the Red Cross, but a beaurocratic department to collect the names of the fallen soldiers so their families could be notified of the deaths of their sons. Before that office was developed by Clara Barton, families sewed the names of their sons into their clothing and depended on the kindness of survivors and strangers to notify them of the fat of their loved ones. Clara not only cleaned up and organized the field hospitals, she made sure the families knew what happened to their boys both in the hospital and in the battlefield.

Clara Barton had see the Red Cross at work in Europe and she struggled mightily to get our own government to develop a version of it to aid the victims of disasters in our own country but the president at the time, R. Hayes, turned down her requests over and over. So, undaunted, Clara Barton developed her own Red Cross and called for donations to aid those who had suffered in the great fire of 1881 in Michigan. She was wildly successful and her effort was so popular, the Red Cross was established formally. Clara Barton was born on Christmas Day in 1821. Her formidable drive despite the ceaseless obstacles, her boundless compassion, and her civic devotion are truly astonishing and worthy of both respect and gratitude.

This year, I will be wishing Merry Christmas to Clara Barton in my heart and here on this blog! Thank heavens for citizens such as Clara Barton, a true hero!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and if you are looking for a place to visit, stop in at Bordentown and visit the little school where it all began for Clara Barton, here in our own state of New Jersey! Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com

If I were going anywhere this weekend, this is where I would go!

By the way, if you are reading this and you ever wanted to observe or comment on a post, please don't bother with COMMENTS as it is entirely co opted by spam and robot messages. You can reach me via my e-mail wrightj45@yahoo.com

I love holiday markets and if I were looking for things to get for Christmas this year, I would go to these markets: "Handmade Holiday Market & Family Day December 11th | 11am-4pm Whitesbog Preservation Trust Bundle up for some fun indoor and outdoor shopping in the Historic Village! Shop local, support local artists and makers while supporting the farm. Make a dent in your Christmas shopping at the Handmade Holiday Craft Fair at Whitesbog Historic Village: This is a festive family favorite, get your holiday wreaths and check out all of the cool wares our local makers have made. We’ll have a range of art, crafts and gifts. We will be outside and inside for this event so dress for the weather!"

The 1619 Project and my Thoughts!

I really shouldn't be writing this blog entry right now becaused I am meeting a friend for lunch and I have to walk the dog first which takes an hour, but my mind is very active, like my dog and this blog is a way for me to take that active dog for a walk. For my friend's birthday, I am taking her a copy of the 11619 Project because like me, she has been a lifelong feminist and believer in social justice and equality. She worked far harder at it than I did though. Nonetheless, I am hoping we can read our copies over the long winter and talk about our reactions and responses.

To help with that, I am also giving her the latest Vanity Fair magazine issue which has an interview with Nikole Hannah-Jones and also a short half page review of the book fro The Week Magazine. Having read numerous reviews including the first publication of the 1619 Project when it was the cover story of the Sunday New York Times, I have built up quite a lot of anticipation for the reading which is why I am bloghging about it before I actually read it. The 1619 Project kicked up a political firestorm which eventuated in Repulbican legistlation AGAINST teaching what is known as Critical Race Theory in the schools! Free Speech? I saw a cartoon where there was a mask and a protest against mandates next to a cartoon of a woman's reproductive system. The point being hypocricy - Don't tell me I have to wear a mask - it is my body and I am free to make those decisions regarding my health - while at the same time Republican efforts have been building an succeeding in legislation against abortion all over the south beginning with Texas. Same thing with 2nd amendment 'right to bear arms' but forget Free speech.

Anyhow I don't have time and never intended to go off on a political tangent here. I wanted to address one criticism from The Week book review: "Chrtis Surewalt, in The Displatch.com observes that N.Hannah-Jones never addresses criticism of her claim that slavery is at the foudation on which our country was built. I think if that idea was taken too narrowly and too specificallt, the idea is ruined. Our country was built on an aggregate compound like Roman concrete on with many ingredients. Each founding colony had its own purpose whether escape from religious persecescape, or the search for precious metals like silver and gold, or the fountain of youth. Every ship that came here was filled with a variety of purposes that became the foundation and the bigger ingredients, the colonization of the new world by Britain and France and Spain were even larger shares of the aggregate. Certainly the economy of this nation was increasingly built not only on the labor of enslaved people but on the backs of hordes of starving and displaced immigrants as described by Emma Lazarus in her famous poem.

A friend of mine wrote a wonderful book about the ruins one stumbles upon in the pine barrens when hiking. She did a lot of research into the attemps to establish various industries, iron, and glass, and to build housing developments. When she published her book, many old time archaeology and botony and pine barrens buffs were irritated and criticised her effort. At the heart of the matter was jealousy. Lots of people want to write a book and do not. It is a lot of hard work driven by a current of passion to tell a story. I have written three books, independently published. The effort to write them was enough for me, I couldn't then fight the battle to get them published. My friend who wrote the Pine Barrens book went on to write three books on Pine Barrens history - all of them immensely popular.

Every story is part of a bigger story. The story that hasn't been told about African Americans is now becoming more widely dissseminated and the shame and guilt that breeds resentment is rising in the eotions of bigots who do not want that story told. There are many who harbor tribal notions of the superiority of their particular race or nation of origin. They have their notions built on the stereotypes of popular culture that have also always existed in regard to gender. I remember growing up with the scorn and mockery that was everywhere in regard to women drivers UNTIL it came out that women drivers got better rates because we were LESS likely to have accidents than men. Then those same sexists raised a howl to get "equality" in insurance rates with women. Unenlightened self interest is at the heart of a lot of criticism of The 1619 Project. My suggestion is read it and learn, take what is valuable and what you never knew and build on it. What you don't agree with, you can leave behind.

Gotta get going so I can give the book to my old dear friend. We have been friends for almost 65 years, since we were both in junior high school. We have turned 76, me in November and her ih December.

Happy Trails - Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com (don't bother with the comments section of the blog - it just gets filled with robot crap. If you want to talk - e-mail me!)

How to make your own holiday

In years gone by, it was my habit to enjoy my holidays by driving to various places to see things I love like model train exhibits and Chritmas tree lightings, decorated historic houses, and candlight tours. Now, however, my eyesidht doesn't permit these excursions. Still, I will not go into the dark. I know a lot of people, like my brother who is 2 years younger than I am, who do not bother to put up decorations or lights or anything because they are alone at Christmas. He lives in West Virginia and he comes here to New Jersey at Christmas, so he doesn't see any point to decorating.

My feeling is that living by yourself is the best reason to decorate. Although I have simplified my decorating, for example, I have dropped down from 12 tubs of decorations to about 2, I still have a tree, and I decorate the stair bannister from the attic to the living room, the room divider between the kitchen and the living room. My tree this year is very siple, just snowflake lights and Swedish straw ornaments. The doorway and the bannister are artifical pine garland with red berries and snowflake lights and I have stockings in red plaid hanging from the bannister with treats in them - chocolate covered cranberries!

In addition to the interior decorations, my nephew came over and put up my yard lights which these days is assorted colored lights strung around the large juniper and evergreens that fence in my yard.

Along with the decorations in the house, I will burn a holiday scented candle and waatch old favorite holiday movies such as A Christmas Carol (the old one with Alistair Sims) and It's a Wonderful Life with James Stewart, and my most recent annual favorite, A Christmas Story the Gene Shepherd classic. I used to enjoy Gene Shepherd's short stories on the radio, and on audio tapes and the few fine short films he made.

So that takes in sight, smell, and I usually play my collection of holidays cd's which are the classics - R&B Christmas favorites and that sort of thing. Next, is tqste, and I will buy fruit cake for myself and one for my brother since we are the only ones who like it, but to me, it isn't Christmas without it!

In this way, with my pets and my Christmas cards arriving from friends, I greet and warm the winter season, simply, humbly, and happily! If you are stuck at home due to eyesight or age or whatever, I hope tis recipe for holiday happiness inspires you to light it up! Happy Trails - Jo Ann

Taxes and the Common Welfare

Fortunately, I don't know many tax cheats and at my income level, most of my friends are solidly in the lower middle or middle class. None of them are wealthy. But the two tax cheats I know of make me think often about the purpose of taxes. There was a time in human historyk our city history especiallyt, when the poor died of starvation and cold in the streats and orphans ran wild and also died of starvation and cold - think of the old classic story The Little Match Girl. The gutters ran with raw sewage and people died of cholera, typhus, and a variety of other terrible diseases born of ignorance and neglect. There was a time when we all agreed to share the burdens of public utilities like water, sewer and road maintenance. In the old days, each farmer or landowner would be responsible for his own stretch of the highway. If he were civic minded, he kept his part of the road maintained, if not - the por traveler jolted through the ruts and flooded out portions. Greedy land owners put up toll booths and made the traveler pay for the road repaairs and made a tidy profit on it. But we agreed as a community and as a nation to take care of these problems together.

To contribute to the common good is to see orphans housed and fed, and the old and the disabled cared for adequately and not to have to face that horror on the public streets, or the squalor of sewage thrown onto the public footpath or the gutters. We established public utilities such as sewer, electric lighting, water distribution, and public education! We provided for the literacy of our population!

As always, however, there are those self centered and greedy individuals who want to share in the public utilities and the common good but not pay their fair share in it. They are taxe evaders, those who hide their profits offshore, or in cash hidden in various places.

Tax cheats cheat us all. They excuse their behavior by saying they shouldn't have to pay for education because htey have no children, or they shouldn't have to pay for Welfare Queens - people they suppose who have one child after another and sit around on the public dole. Same for workers, they don't want to have to pay for the elderly or the out of work, as though these things could never happen to them.

It reminds me of a group with whom I went out to dinner once. When we all paid in our share for the dinner, we came up short and one suggested that we short the waiter his tip. The group refused and we began to try to figure out what had happened. It turned out one man hadn't put in for his wife. She had actually given him the money, but he put it in for his own share and didn't pay for her share. I was shocked, and so was his wife. That's the kind of man who is a tax cheat. He would have rationalized cheating the waiter rather than kick in his own share of the meal. Although I don't make much money, less than half of what I made before I retired (because I don't have my university pay anymore) I am glad to pay my share of the taxes to support this wonderful civilization within which I live. Every day when I walk the dog, I marvel at the tidy, friendly, safe and well cared for little community where I live and I am grateful!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Fabric Show Dec. 2021

As I have mentioned before, VISIT NEW JERSEY has a fine e-mail listing of wonderful events in South Jersey. The one that caught m eye today was this:

Mayan Traje: A Tradition in Transition Now through December 31st | 11AM-4PM WheatonArts, Millville This exhibition features masterpieces of fiber arts created by Guatemalan Maya artists over a hundred years till modern days. These displays of weaving and embroidery encourage a deeper conversation about the preservation of traditions and adaptation of folk arts to the contemporary way of life.

I have always beeen interested in Fiber Arts as well as the arts and culture of our southern continental neighbors. If I can get there I will certainly try.

For all the rest of the fine offerings, please try to sign up for the e-mail of VISIT SJ it is well worth it! Happy Holidays, Jo Ann

ps. My copies of 1619Project and the Jill Lepore book mentioned in the previous blog both arrived today - so excited to start reading!

Slaves of the Founders

Reading a feature article recently in Dec. issue of Vanity Fair on Nikole Hannah-Jones who wrote the 1619 Project feature in the Sunday New York Times a couple of years ago. That issue sold out on the newstands, and was sold even over the internet! It was so popular, she enlarged it into a book.

To me, the main point was a familiar one to a woman, that is the erasure of our presence in history in general and American history. She begins by stating the fact that the first enslaved Africans came to America in 1619, before the Mayflower, and needless to say their labor made thiss country what it became. Their unpaid labor powered the agricultural wealth of the South. It must be mentioned ago, that the unopaid labor of enslaved people BUILT the United States Capitol!It goes without saying that I cannot summarize the entire magazine in this blog - you should get a copy or as soon as the book is avvailable you should get that - I certainly plan to!

What I wanted to mention here were the slaves of two particular presidents: George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. Two of the enslaved people of George Washington escaped slavery and were never recovered. One was Hercules, Washington's famously talented chef. When Washington brought his enslaved workers up north, he circulated them back to his plantation to make sure that they didn't meet any legal circumstances to achieve their freedom. The second one to escape from George Washington was Ona Judge, Martha's talented seamstress. Neither escaped person was ever recovered though George Washington spent a fortune on slave hunter/Investigators to get them back. There is a book about Ona Judge which I bought and read on the recommendation of a fellow volunteer from Red Bank Battlefield.

Thomas Jefferson took as a concubine a young enslaved woman named Sally Hemmings, very near the age of his own daughters and a companion to them. Jefferson was the father of several children with Sally Hemmings, some of whom were freed at adluthood, others not until Jefferson died. His descendants claimed for decades that the rumors that the Hemmings were Jefferson descendants was a scurrilous lie and that Thomas Jefferson would NEVER have sexual intercourse with a Black slave. Well DNA tells a different story an the best book I have seen on that final reckoning is written by Annette Gordon-Reed.

the STORY of History is written by the people with education, college degrees, professorships and access to print media. Until the days of my own college education, women were often locked out of the access to either of these routes to see that our own part in history was acknowledge. Now, of course, thanks to the Women's Movement, we are a force in higher education, we have the degrees, the access to print media, and the access to publication and for women in general there has been a great effort to even out the narrative since the 1970's. Being locked out of literacy, first, and later through poverty, access to higher education also kept African Americans from being able to participate in the creation of the narrative of history, so they were left out as well, and now we experience the bits of pieces here and there that remediate this lsos. think of the emergence of the stories such as the Tuskegee Airmen, or the Code Talkers - bits of hero history that were buried until revealed by the new pioneers of history.

I joyfully bought the books that introduced me to my own progenitor female heroes many of whom I have mentioned in previous blogs, women like Margaret Sanger, and Clara Barton, Harriet tubman and Sojourner Truth, the names could go on and on to the bottom of the blog but that isn't my point in this entry. My point in this entry is my own appreciation of reclaiming my lost and erased female history has made me appreciate the effort to reclaim African American history and so I have made it a point to read it when I come across it. For example CASTE, by Isabel Wilkerson, was one of my most recent readings in the study of the lost history of African Americans in the United States.

The Vanity Fair article mentioned several books that Nicole Hannah-Jones read and that we could also read, that introduce us to the story of African Americans in the time of the Revolution. i plan to get a few of these and here are some I can list for you if you want to make the effort to balance the story of our history!

The Negro in the American Revolution by Benjamin Quarels, Forced Founders, by Woody Holton, The Internal Enemy by Alan Taylor, the Counter Revolution of 1776 by Gerald Horn, Propaganda and the American Revolution by Patriia Bradley, Slave Nation by by Alfred Blumrosen, These Truths, by Jill Lepore.

I want to know the whole story, or as much of it as I can find. I have always made an effort to balance the story with readings in the FArm Workers Movement, and Indigenous Culture and Politics and will continue to do so. I hope you love history that way too - the way that it is always enhanced, expanded, made more inclusive!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com