Additional Comments on reading FINDING THE MOTHER TREE, Suzanne Simard

Still enjoying this book but dismayed to discover during chapter 3 that Dr. Simard's awareness of the interconnectedness of the forest systems, a broader consciousness, didn't yet embrace other entities. I am referring to her supporting her brother, Kelly in his rodeo ambitions. Somehow her awakened consciousness didn't spread far enough to take in the tortured, suffering, enraged bull her brother was riding and lashing with his metal spurs for the entertainment of the crowd.

Many people, like myself, saw, even early on in our lives how various animals were suffering in what others saw as entertainment. Somehow, no matter what the exhibition, I couldn't help but be aware of the fear and suffering of the animals unwillingly caught up in it. The most intense suffering I encountered from this kind of experience was at a bullfiht in Spain which I wouldn't have ever thought of attending except that I was 21 and was taken there by my husband when we were traveling around Europe during his US Military deployment. It was, to me, heartbreaking. The bull kept trying to jump over the wooden fence around the arena to escape the stabbing spears of the men on horseback. The crowd shrieked and screamed in bloodlust and barbaric cruelty. It reminded me of the Roman Collisseum. Even as a child, I couldn't help but read the expressions on the faces of the animals imprisoned in the zoo. There eemed to be an invisible barrier betwen other people and these animals, but I didn't have it. I felt their sorrow, loneliness and fear.

I am not the only one. I have several friends with a history in the animal rights movement, and I remember once one of them and I went to the Camden Aquarium and we saw the poor alligator entrapped in a narrow plexiglas coffin like enclosure and his sorrow was palpable. We were both repulsed and depressed. Once, back in the 1970's I was at a friend's house and they had an enormous white fish almost as big as the aquarium in which it was imprisoned. They were proud of it, but I was disheartened and I had this overwhelming feeling that the fish was about to die, which I, impolitely I must confess, expressed outloud. I said, "I think he is dying." He died that night. They kind of blamed me as though I put a spell on him, but it was his unhealthy an depressing confinement that killed him, but they didn't want to face their own guilt.

Another story of awareness is when a friend of mine who has no such sensitivities to animals, was given a lobster. She called me on the phone and said she couldn't boil it, and every time she opened the fridge, his eye stalks looked at her. I told her I would go with her the next day to put it in the ocean, but it died durin the night. Sometimes the invisible rays, the radio signals of emotion can penetrate even the most hardened human and give an insight into the reality of another species.

No such thing happened with Dr. Simard and his brother, the Rodeo champ. I wish she could read one of the web sites devoted to ending this barbaric and cruel form of animal torture for human entertainment, so that she might know what suffering the animals endure for the ego and fake bravado of these "Cowboys" - as the old cowboy song goes "It's your misfortune and none of my own. Yippee tie yi yo."

AS soon as I finished that chapter, I sent a donation to PETA.

And just in case someone reads this and sks the usual questions of anyone who feels for other creatures - No, I do not eat meat, and No, I do not buy leather products, and No, I do not buy lumber - I buy already fabricated 2nd hand furniture, and I buy recycle paper products whenever possible. I do what I can. No, I do not use pesticides and I have no lawn and my cats do not roam free to kill birds - we have an outdoor chain link catio for them to enjoy the outdoors without predation on other creatures.

Consciousness is a many layered resource and perhaps in time, Dr. Simard's will increase to include the well being of other sentient creatures as well as the forest.

Jo Ann

Reading: FINDING THE MOTHER TREE, Suzanne Simard

Some few years ago, I was fortunate enough to sign up for and take a workshop and tour with the Saddler's Woods Conservation Association. The tour took us on the hiking paths through the 25 acre Saddler's Woods and the tour guides were so immensely knowledgeable about the plants and trees that I was deeply impressed. One of the guides picked up a bag and gathered trash throughout our hike. I can't begin to tell you all they told me about the watershed, the berries, the invaders and the indigenous plants. You need to take their workshop and tour next time it is offered! I found it through the Audubon Adult Education program, but I noticed it wasn't on their Winter/Spring online brochure, so perhaps the best thing to do would be to contact the Saddler's Woods Conservation Group directly. I can give you their mailing address right now because I am going to send a donation today, but you can look them up online to get a phone number. Saddler's Woods Conservation Association, P. O. Box 189, Oaklyn, NJ 08107

This fits in with a couple of conversations that sprang up recently in my days about what to do to help, how to focus on a worthy cause when so man clamor for our attention. My answer was that generally the causes drop in my lap. Twice a year, I make a series of small donations when I get a windfall - my Income Tax Refund, and my Property Tax Reimbursement. On the Income Tax Return, let me say what I told the tax preparer when she said I didn't need to have so much taken out: "It is a good way for me to save. Also, it is MY Government, and I don't mind allowing them to use my tax money to keep our country the rich and comfortable place that it is, for me, anyhow. At the end of the year, I get my money back just like when I was a young working woman in the city and I had a Christmas Club at the bank!."

So, when I get my windfall, I usually send small sums (consoling myself by thinking that if everyone sent such sums, these charities would be well provided for!) to various animal charities such as Alley Cat Allies, PETA, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, and sometimes environmental groups such as the Arbor Foundation and Greenpeace. This year I am adding two new ones, Funny Farm, and Saddler's Woods Conservation Association. The rest of my charitable effort goes into taking loving care of the animals I have rescued from the neighborhood or from shelters. I rescued a cat from a cemetery, three kittens from the Vet., a survivor of a house fire, and a dog from the Animal Orphanage in Voorhees. They are expensive and take a lot of work, so I consider that a volunteer job - and all of that came to me, I didn't have to go seek it out! The book I mentioned above is the selection from the Book Club in the Meeting I attend - Woodbury Meeting. As it happens, I had bought the book months ago after reading about it in the New York Times Sunday paper Book Review section. I LOVE trees! Here is a little poem I wrote about trees after a snowy lunch time walk when I was still working.

Trees are neither silent nor still

They move into the minds

of those who walk among them

Leave love letters on sidewalks in chemistry

and red love letters in snow.

I know I mentioned before that I was raised in the city, in the brick canyons of South Philadelphia down near the stadiums, the airport, and the highway. We had one tree on our block, trapped in a sidewalk size square of dirt. When I had the great fortune to get to New Jersey, I was permanently enchanted by the woods, the trees, the beach, the ocean, all the magical wonders of the natural world that city children never get to know.

In my town there is an ancient and enormous tree with a huge spiral turning trunk that I think is a willow oak, but I am not sure. I have looked it up. It has been the subject of a few ofm my paintings and I like to visit with it every day when I walk the dog. I love the way the vivid green lichen grows in the folds of its huge paw-like exposed roots, and the way the snow lays in those same folds in winter, and the leaves are captured there in autumn.

The book I am reading is very interesting to me so far (though I am only in early chapters) for two reasons: One - it is a memoir, and Two - it is a transformation story. It has been a life long matter of inquiry to me about what events or experiences cause the profound transformations that some people experience in their lives. For example, one day a slave ship captain had a lightening strike to his conscience and he became a monk and wrote AMAZING GRACE! In this book, the author was an employee of a logging company and the descendant of a logging family, but she has her eyes and heart opened while examining a plantation of new sickly seedlings in a clear-cut forest area. I will let you know more about this book as I read more, but I wanted to say that sometimes I am filled with despair when I see another tree cut in my neighborhood, or another small patch of woods destroyed to build more houses, not to mention fertile farms turned into housing developments here in our Garden State, but I help ameliorate my despair by doing whatever small things I can for whatever has dropped in my lap, and in this case, it is a donation to Saddler's Woods to help the dedicated people protecting this little irreplaceble treasure in our midst. Also, I protect the 25 trees on my own property and have planted several over the years.

Happy trails! And by the way, you can find Saddler's Woods and hike there, it is an easy and short hike. It is located on MacArthur Road, just off Cuthbert Blvd. in Haddon Twp. It is between a shopping center and a diner and there is a light at the turn to MacArthur Rd. Just a short way down the road there is a historic marker and there are two trails you can walk. Jo Ann

What's In a Name - Bits and Pieces

It is interesting to me how I get tricked into the rabbit hole of family history from time to time, and what better time than a rainy afternoon while doing the laundry and after walking the dog.

Let me see if i can remember what I was doing before I walked through the Looking Glass of the Farm Directory of Gloucester County. Nope, I can't remember. Anyhow, I got seduced by the gorgeous photographs of old farms - Oh, WAIT - I remember now! I was looking for information on Platt's Form in Clarksboro after looking at the Mickleton Friends' Meeting web site. My sister lives in a bungalow on Platt's form with her son, my nephew, and I thought since I was down that way on the internet, I would look up history on the Platt's farm. Instead, I found myself going through page after page after page on the Farm Journal. May the Gods look with favor upon whatever volunteer took the time to digitize that Farm Journal Directory! What a treasure trove to anyone interested in New Jersey History! (Weavers and Tinsmiths!) As always when I get into anything with a directory, I began to look for my family names: Cheeseman, (Rachel Cheesemean) Garwood, (William C. Garwood married Rachel Cheeseman in the early 1800's in Turnersville), Goldy (Levi Goldy married Sarah Garwood) and I always look for Wrights though there are so many it is like looking for a stalk of hay in a haystack.

I found lots of information on the Cheeseman family because Major Peter Cheeseman was an early pioneer of Turnersville, New Jersey. At the time that he lived there, as did my other ancestor, William C. Garwood, in the early 1800;s, there were about 150 to 200 people living there, and there were two saw mills owned by Cheeseman millers, a grist mill (First one built by Peter Cheeseman prior to 1800) a store or two owned by the Turner family and a school where my ancestor William C. Garwood was teacher. All of this was the first half and middle of the 1800's. Rachel and William had two children and Rachel died very young. The Garwood trail eventually led to my Grandmother Sarah and her sister Lavinia. But back to William C. Garwood: I haven't been able to find out much about him before his busy days in the mid 1800's, but he was township assessor from 1849 to 1851 and Town clerk from 1857-1859 and he was trustee in 1855 of the Methodist Episcopal church established in 1780. His middle initial stands for Collins and I wonder if he has some connection with Isaac Collins who built the earliest local saw mill about the same time that Peter Cheeseman built his grist mill, prior to 1800. Since to a large extent women lost their identities early on when they married, they often gave their sons their maiden names for a middle name. I wonder if a Collins female descendant married William Collins Garwood's father?

Speaking of names and tracing family history, on one photo of the Farm Journal, there was a big farmhouse with five people standing out in front, three men, a woman and a child. They named the famer father and his farmer son, both farmers who subscribed to the Journal but not the woman or the farm worker. When I gazed at all the lists of people, mostly male names unless a wife appeared in (parenthesis) I couldn't help but think ALL of those listed had been born to a woman who had become more or less invisible. It is very hard to find your female ancestors. I named my daughter after five of her famale ancestors who live on becasue their first names were used again in subsequent generations. The first Lavinia came from Ireland in the early 1800's, to Philadelphia. My daughter was born in Philadelphia in 1983.

Anyhow, hours went by and I was lost in the world of the past, wondering as I always do about those blood relations of mine, forgotten by everyone else in the family and scattered and buried hither and yon in graveyards I don't know about and graveyards that may be paved over by malls or overgrown by weeds and saplings somewhere. Some of the cemeteries I have found, like that of Sarah Garwood Goldy, and the graves of my German ancestors on my faather's side, the Sandman family, all in Philadelphia. I have a cat sleeping beside me on the sofa who came from the cemetery where the Germans are buried. He walked over to the graves where they were buried, New Cathedral Cemetery in northern Philadelphia, and the grounds keeper said the cat needed a home so I took him with me and he is my favorite cat. I named him after my German Uncle, Joseph Frederick Young, know to one and all as Uncle Yock. Since the cat is much smaller than that formidable old Uncle, I call him "Little Yock."

I always look for these names whenever I slide down the rabbit hole into New Jersey history or family history: Cheeseman, Garwood, Goldy, and sometimes Jaggard and Wright. My Gloucester County ancestors married into the Jaggard family (Randall and Mary Cheeseman Jaggard for example, and later the Jaggard who ran the Gloucester County almshouse married a female ancestor of mine). Wrights abound. The most interesting Wright I found so far was on a Revolutionary soldier veterans role at a historic church site in Salem, South Jersey. He was listed with soldiers who had been paid for their service with land grants in Indiana. That was interesting because the earliest Wright I had been able to find before that was listed by the LDS as crossing the Ohio River into Indiana in 1810 with his wife Edna Crow. My father's male ancestor came to Philadelphia from Franklin, Indiana, his father, Franklin Allen Wright, to join the Merchant Marines.

Well, back to the laundry!

Happy Trails wherever your wanderlust may be taking you! Jo Ann

Post Script: I had to return to add this name piece. Throughout my wanderings in South Jersey history and my own South Jersey family history, I came to understand that most of the early families became connected to one another due to proximity and small populations. I remember when Megan Geordano, the brilliant historian anc one-time curator of the Whitall HOuse who was an inspiration to me and so many other volunteers, asked if Anne Whitall was related to the Coopers of Camden. I had come across a family history essay about the Cooprs when I worked as a volunteer for the Camden Historical Society as a suitcase school visitor, and sure enough, Anne Cooper Whitall was sister to John Cooper the Woodbury Committee of Correspondence Revolutionary War activist and early Continental Congreessman who was a descendant from the branch of the Camden Coopers who had migrated south to mingle with the Clarke family. Turns out, we, too are related to the Coopers through:

When Jemima Roe Cooper was born on May 8, 1712, in Gloucester, New Jersey, her father, John, was 40, and her mother, Grace, was 29. She married Richard Cheesman on October 27, 1727, in her hometown. They had ten children in 21 years. She died on July 20, 1798, in Gloucester, New Jersey, having lived a long life of 86 years.

Which is a clue I found today in ancestry.com where I have a family tree and dna record. I often think of Anne Whitall and what it must have been like for her. She gave birth to nine children. Childbirth wa without doubt the most traumatic thing that ever happened to my body, I can assure you, and most of the women I know who had babies would say the same thing. I can't imagine what it must have been like for poor Anne with no pain medication, and nothing but just powering through and enduring. True, she was a well-to-do woman with servants and household help and could afford to take many hours off to go to meeting and sit in silent worship, what a great luxury that must have been. But still - nine children! Yikes! Well that's it for me. I think since I am in the family history mood I will watch some FINDING YOUR ROOTS!

Book lists and CAUSES

Book Lists and Causes

Today, I was reminded of a favorite place, Saddler's Woods off MacArthur Blvd. in Haddon Township, a right hand turn off Cuthbert Blvd. It is a 25 acre old growth forest which has been miraculously protected from the ravenous grasp of both a local school wanting to make it sports fields, and the local shopping center wanting to make it a parking lot. It has been protected by the Estate Will of Joshua Saddler a once enslaved man who worked for a local Quaker farmer named Evans back in the 1800's. Saddler bought the land and a small village grew around him called Saddlertown, which is now one street and a school and church on the eastern border of the little 25 acre woods. Saddler left the forest to be kept in its wild and natural state for perpetuity! I took a tour there once with the Saddler's Woods Conservation Association, a representative group of four tour guides, outstandingly knowledgeable and dedicated women. They have a small science center and meeting hall across Cutbhbert Blvd in a little corner of a street I think is called Buttonwood. Anyhow, they were able to point out the poisonous berries from the nutritious and healing plants, and were able to show how to tell how old a tree was and how to triangulate its height among many many other things.

The hiking paths through Saddlers woods are small but they make you feel you have left the urban environment behind and entered a different world. Suddenly it is quiet except for the whisper of the trees, the chatter of a squirrel or the call of a bird. You don't smell the car exhaust or the smoke from the local burger joints, only the sweet exhalations of the trees. Sometimes, when there has been a significant rain, you can hear the gurgle of the water meandering through the gullies and stream beds in this small patch where the water of Newton Creek still flows in a natural state. Mp/> I was reminded of Saddler's Woods, where I walk whenever I can, by the theme of a book club of which I have recently become a member. We are reading In Search of the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard. The book deals with the interconnected networks both above ground and below ground that are the community of trees and fungi. This theme of the family network nature of trees and forests was first brought to my attention by another book The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Woleben, a German forester. I have read many other books on this theme since and here is a list:

The Forest Unseen, David Haskell

Teaching the Trees, Lessons from the Forest, Joan Maloof

You may have heard about the healing forests of Japan. I had a book about them but I have lost it. In Japan there are forests of specific breeds of trees the exhalations of which have been shown to heal various human diseases in the people who walk among them. Some forests help heal for example, Diabetes!

A few people I met this morning were talking about various causes and we were discussing vegan, vegetarian advocats. I am a lifelong vegetarian. At least two of my freinds are dedicated vegans. An overarching structure is concern for the environment as well as concern for animals. As we speak, the Amazon rain forests, known as the lungs of the planet are being cut down for farming and animal agriculture. My first introductionn to the wastefulness of animal agriculture, besides the ethical consideration, was in the book Diet for a Small Planet, when Frances Moore Lappe shows the amount of grain it takes to make a pound of meat compared to how many people the grain could have fed. On top of that there is the impact on climate change from animal agriculture. Although the book came out around 1970 and was a best seller, you can still order it and it is still relevent.

We were talking about how to prioritize your causes, and I said mine fall into my lap. One of my causes is to care for homeless animals. I have adopted half a dozen cats and the latest in several generations of dogs, a big beautiful Husky Lab mix who was exploited as a back yard breeding dog until the people moved away, taking the puppies but abandoning her in the yard. It is my privilege and my pleasure to give these animals a loving and responsible home environment for the extent of their natural lives. As you may have guessed from the opening paragraphs, I have been a vegetarian most of my adult life, and I have a natural tree filled yard, no lawn - as part of the movement away from wasting water on lawns and using pesticides against wild flowers such as dandelions. In small ways that are available to me, I do what I can to help my fellow creatures, and my environment. Soon it will be spring and time to get bck out and about. If you feel like it, you may wish to join the Saddler's Woods Conservators in their spring clean up. Check out their website for details. If you have a yard, plant a tree, and try to bring some plants that help the butterflies into your yard; I have Rose of Sharon in mine. Also, I keep my cats indoors except for a chain-link CATIO (intended as a dog run, but very useful as a place for the cats to go out through their cat door in a window and sit in the sun without excercising their natural desire to hunt and kill).

Happy Trails! Jo Ann

Canadian Truckers and A Passport for Europe from 1969

On my living room wall is a 20 inches by 16 glass front display box with my 1069 passport, vaccination booklet, German Driver's liscense plus a packet of postcards from several countries in Europe that I had sent my Grandmother and she saved for me, tied with a ribbon. The year I decided to put them in a display I had read an article about a passsport collector and the photos accompanying the essay were so evocative to me, the way they spoke of this enormous transitions in people's lives, people emigrating from their homelands, fleeing war and destruction, getting married and starting life in a new country and so many more stories.

It was my vaccination booklet in particular that I was thinking about when I went to bed last night after watching a news report on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's efforts to move the blockade on his border with US. I thought of all the shots I had gotten to travel as a military dependent after my marriage to a drafted soldier during the Vietnam War. After his draft, my ex had done basic training successfully and then gone Oo officer'Candidate School. The military suited him just fine. He was obsessive by nature and his outward penchant for control was a manifestation of his lack of inward control, although he could control everything about himself when he was in the army. When he was discharged, his uncontrollable rages and other destructive behaviors took over and ruined two marriages and a good deal of his life, but that is another story. Suffice to say, he was eventually diagnosed with bi-polar disorder after a suicide attempt in a state out west long after we had divorced.

But back to the innoculations booklet. When I was told that I had to ge the shots and show my booklet at the borders, I didn't demur, I got the shots. I could clearly see even at that young age of 21, why a country would want proof that I was vaccinated against deadly diseases that were once the scourge of the world like Typhus, Diptheria, Cholera and so on. Also, I was well aware that I could come across bad water, or any other conduit of a bad disease in any of those countries aw well, so I rolled up my sleeve and got my shots.

When I watched the outrageous behavior of the truck drivers at the border to Canada, blocking the bridge, I thought, "This isn't about Freedom! What it is it about?" They weren't forced to get the shots. If they didn't want to follow the border regulations, they could simply not drive over that border, tell their bosses they wouldn't get the shot and take the consequences, not shut down the border to everyone else. And there was a key - they werent' concerned with everyone else, the autoworkers whose shifts were cut, the people trying to get to work, the people who had been sick and the families of those who had died of Corona virus. They got belligerant over a puerile, toddler size idea - NO, they wouldn't do it! They were angry at having their regular lives disrupted by a pandemic. They were tired of it and they were impatient and angry. They looked like children. >p/> Sometimes I think that what saved my father and made his life work out so well was that he did so much time in various services; the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Merchant Marines, and the US Navy. He couldn't display a temper over a vaccination there, and furthermore, they taught him to be neat and tidy and organized and self-disciplined. Self-discipline is the key.

I don't know what the answer is to this whole cohort of people who are overt in their display of unexamined prejudices, and who show no shame in their immature display of temper at having to endure the restrictions of an epidemic. But, I was heartened by Trudeau's measured and patient and diplomatic handling of the situation He didn't give in to temper or impatience. He used conflict resolution attitudes and told them he heard them and understood their growing impatience with the restrictions of the epeidemic and he gave them warnings and enough time to move out of their position before he sent in the police to further move the blockage and let the life blood flow again. That was the hopeful thing I got from the situation, a good leader stepped forward and displayed mature and intelligent responses to a situation that could have gone even worse.

Conflict Resolution should be taught in school, but school is so burdened with things that need to be taught it is as though schools have to take over where mothers and fathers and churches and other institutions used to fulfill a role in raising people.

By the way, here is a short list of 6 steps to resolve Conflicts.

1. Take Time to Cool Off

2. Use "I messages" to state feelings-No blaming, no name calling, no interrupting

3 .Each person states the problem as the OTHER person sees it.

4. Each person says how they are responsible.

5. Brainstorm solutions and choose solutions that satisfy both.

6 Affirm, forgive and thank each other.

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Hurricane Hawkins and Magic Moments

On February 10, 2022, Hurricane Hawkins turned 106. A year ago at 105, she set a world record for sprinting for people in her age category. Frankly, I am astonished that there are people in her age category sprinting at all! Ms. Hawkins has been a lifelong athlete and before she took up sprinting, she bicycled. She looks really good too. I have seen pictures of centenarians and they looked frightening, Jeanne Calumet, for example, the oldest woman in the world before her death, I believe in France. The oldest 'documented' person in the world, she was what was termed a 'wupercentenarian' who died in 1997 at age 122.

Last night I watched an episode about long life in a series called Explained, where they talk at length about topics of interest and they (the narrators and interviewees) said the cut-off for humans is 120. There was a lot of information about telomeres and genetic mutations that accumulate over time, I can't remember it all, but I know from personal eperience both my own, and that of my friends who are my age, that whatever we do, we all wear out. In fact, there was a little graphic that showed what wears out on most if not all of us, our hearing diminshes, our eyesight, our muscles weaken, we get high blood pressure, and decreased mental acuity. So given all that, one wonders why anyone would want to live to 100, let alone 120, but if you could live like Hurricane Hawkins, maybe it would be good. I don't know how she fares off the track, they didn't go into that very much, but I do remember something a friend of mine who was 90 said - "At my age, everyone you've ever cared about it dead." It was mentioned that Ms. Hawkins had children and grandchildren, so people she cares about are still living. My friend, Marguerite, a fellow volunteer at Gloucester County Historical Society for some time (she was there for years, I was there for months) was still mobile and had her mental bilities, but she died of cancer. She had never had children and she was widowed and everyone in her family had died except a niece with whom Marguerite didn't have close or positive relationship. The niece borrowed money and didn't pay it back.

Anyhow, one of the things Ms. Hawkins mentioned was the enjoyment of what she called Magic Moments. One of her examples was the enjoyment of a particularly beautiful sunrise. For some reason, this made me remember a bonfire in the woods at Ridley Park in Pennsylvania at ngiht in the spring. A group of poets I knew met there once or twice a year and spoke or sang their poetry at the camp fire. That was magical, especially one night when a youngish man sang a Scots ballad in Scots dialect in a clear and beautiful voice. It was deeply moving, perhaps especially so because I have branch of family ancestry from Scotland adn the bagpipes and Scots music and poetry has always touched me. Another Magic Moment before I leave the Scots - I was pulling out of the driveway at my bank one day and a man dressed in full Tartan regalia was marching alone around St. Mary's Church playing the bagpipes. It was sos solemn and beautiful, I was transfixed. I learned later that he was a local policeman and was playing for a funeral that hadn't arrived yet.

I found the story of Hurricane Hawwkins very inspiring. It was when I was driving to meet a friend for lunch yesterday, that I heard it on on the radio on NPR. When I got home, I looked her up and I was struck by her forward momentum in life, not just the sprinting, but the energy to try something new, to keep on going. Needless to say, we can't all be like her. She has some rare genetic gift, but she can be a lighthouse for the rest of us poor voyagers! Happy Birthday Hurricane Hawkins and thank you for reminding me to look for the Magic Moments!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann

Pam & Tommy, Tara and education

Last night I watched a tv series via Hulu? I am not sure which streaming service because I pop back and forth from one to another a half dozen times before I find something I want to watch. To be honest, I never would have chosen Pam & Tommy except for an article I read during the day about the show and how it affected their lives and careers.

My only experience with Baywatch was one day when my daughter and I were babysitting my nephew who was an EverReady Bunny of relentless energy. We had taken him to the park, the playground, and my daughter and I were TIRED! But he was still a firecracker. My sister had told us that in the evening, if we were tired and he was still on the go, we could turn on Baywatch, that he was mesmerized into a kind of trance by it. I laughed at the idea and had never seen Baywatch. To be honest, I have been a kind of intellectual snob and I thought shows like Baywatch were beneath my intelligence. Frankly, in another program I watched on The Mind, a narrator had made the observation that attention and how we spend it was what it is all about. I wasn't going to waste my valuable attention on some bathing suit, woman-insulting-mockery when I could be watching a documentary or reading a book. That evening, however, we were running for cover. We needed a break, so I put Baywatch on and the magic happened. My nephew settled down into a kind of beatific stupor and we got to rest.

I thought about that but it simply became a family anecdote about my nephew (who is now 28) not a topic worth exploring or resolving. In fact, I really didn't give Baywatch another second of thought. I had never listened to the rock group Motley Crue either. But the article that I read about the Pam & Tommy show talked about the impact of a papparazzi event on the lives of Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee. They had made a home movie of themselves having intercourse which had been stolen and sold over the 'new' World Wide Web. Ironically, the release and popularity of the video had slut shamed Pam Anderson into the dust bin of history and it had re-energized the fading career of Tommy Lee. That's what the article was about, how Pam Anderson became a late-night talk show joke, ridiculed and humiliated, while Tommy Lee had become a kind of raucous cultural hero. I couldn't say if this was true or not because I didn't follow the story at all, and the tv series has stopped at episode 4 which is when the video is stolen and sold on the internet. It hasn't gotten to the aftermath yet.

My initial reaction to the four episodes of the show that I did see last night was, first, humor at the roguish Seth Rogan and disgust at the depraved and shameless lifestyle of excess Tommy Lee displayed. Needless to say, I wouldn't be on the team celebrating Tommy Lee's snagging of his cultural sex symbol Pam Anderson. I was with the proletariat chafing at the exploitation of the rich against the working class. Tommy Lee had hired a team of home renovators to create his fantasy bedroom for himself and Pam. He keeps changing the plans and never pays the the construction workers for anything, leaving them holding the bag for all the materials they purchased and the labor they did, when he eventualy fires them in a fit of temper. He also threatens the contractor, Seth Rogan, with a shotgun. Seth Rogan burglarizes the house in revenge and finds the sex tape in the safe he steals.

I am still processing the emotion that I felt through most of the episodes and afterward which was sadness and pity for these hollow, shallow people who had nothing to talk about and lots of money but no real interests besides intoxication and sex. And poor Pam was derided and exploited although being well paid for her humiliation. Inside the major plot there is also a sex worker in the porn industry which kind of underlines the point about the varieties of exploitation that women at the bottom of the sociodemographic financial strata are prey to.

This morning I was reading a very interesting essay by Tara Westover, who wrote a 2018 best seller called EDUCATION. It was about her escape from a horror movie version of a fundamentalist Mormon childhood in rural Idaho. She and her siblings never went to school, saw a dentist or a doctor; the children taught each other what they could. Through a series of almost miraculous events, Tara is rescued, gets to go to school, get dental care, and an education and career. Her book was of great interest to me espcially in light of a never resolved argument I had with a professor/friend when I was in colege. She had written a book extolling Home-Schooling. She had come from fundamentalist background herself, and was a kind of Sarah Palin prototype, a right wing conservative sexy swinger. Her sense of morality was all over the place. She seemed to want to restrict others while being permitted to flout whatever moral rules didn't fit her desires. We argued and argued over Home-Schooling and I said it would give crazy parents the opportunity to shield themselves from being exposed as neglectful and even abusive towards their children. Aside from the children being denied one of the few ways they had to contact the outside world about living conditions at home, I felt there would never be the kind of oversight that would protect the children from not getting educated at all at home. This became demonstrated to me in at least two cases of home-schooling I ran across in later years. In both of these cases the children weren't educated at all. The mothers were, in both of these cases, feckless, sentimental, and ignorant and the children were let to run wild and not educated at all. In another case, a young man I met in an adult education program where I taught, was denied further education because he had been home-schooled and had no diplomas. We helped him get an Adult High School Diploma so he could go to Community College.

All of these things made me think about education and what it meant to me and what it means to other people. My college education was my greatest love affair. I didn't go to college for a career, but the career came out of college and saved my life. It did, indeed, lift me from what would have been a life of drudgery and poverty, into a life of comfort and security. I went to college as an adult of 27 because I was a reader and I wanted to know more about the magic and the mechanics of litereature. I went to college to learn. In those days I could work my way through college and I did at the jobs that would have been my future without an education: waittress work, Kelly Girl and Manpower Temp work, factory work, and nurses aide work in a nursing home. When I got to college, it was the best of times to be there becasue thanks to the student revolution. I had marvelous teachers, real poets like Basil Pyne,and real authors like James T. Farrel, and teachers who were passionate. I became a teacher to show more kids like the child I was how to get to this nirvana, this paradise of learning which would lift them from lives of poverty and intellectual deprivation.

I spent 35 years in education from my early days teaching in high school to my last days teaching at a university. What I found in the early days was that none of my students were like me. Just because I was working class and poor, didn't mean that our shared culltural and economic milieau made us alike. What I found myself teaching were classes full of Pamelas and Tommys. They were interested in sex and intoxication not literature, not writing, and I spent all my energy researching ways to turn that tide and open those doors.

My experience underscores for me, the miraculous nature of a Tara Westover story. It wasn't just our circumstances that were filled with extraordinary twists and turns, but it was the extraordinary nature of our own minds that made us want to learn, to study, to know more, to rise up. My own daughter was a good example. I could make it possible for her to go to college and yet she rejected it and quit in her freshman year to fly to California and become a movie star. She survived and has a fine creative life in Brooklyn, New York with a whole tribe of talented and accomplished young men and women who rejected college and made their own way in the world through film, music, theater and art. The world changes and with it the resources and paths that new generations take and travel. She didn't want or need a college education and she has made a very satisfying and fulfilling life for herself. I guess the only conclusion is that no one can know where the journey will take us when ww set sail on adult life and the weather on the oceans is always changing.

Tara Westover, in her essay, lamented that financial circumstances have made it impossible for young people to do what she did, and indeed what I did (college was even less expensive when I went - $1400 per year in 1970). All I can say to any of that is ADAPT and EVOLVE, and maybe the education route isn't the only or even the best answer any more anyhow. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac were both drop-outs from college, and they managed to find the vein of gold in the mountain that brought them unimaginable success if not necessarily personal happiness. Maybe that is a different kind of journey after all.

Happy Trails whereever your journey is taking you. Jo Ann

TwoSides to Every Story

Just a few minutes ago, I read an essay from Friend's Journal which debunked the William Penn "Carry the Sword" anedote. The author (and I apologize that I lost the e-mail when I went back to find the author's name) reminds us of the zealous belief of early Friends and how George Fox would have felt the need to take a more zealous stand in regard to the non-violence doctrine when with William Penn. And speaking of 'doctrines' the essay went further to take a more nuanced look at the Hicksite/Orthodox split which I have never really understood, but of which I now have a somewhat clearer picture. Apparently in the "free thinking" Hicksite meetings which were heavily on the side of the individual conscience and individual understanding of the voice of God speaking from within, things were said that Orthodox Friends found both "UnFriendlike" and insupportable and so they veered more towards an old style Friends approach, more self-contained, more orthodox, more in line with the religion as it had evolved. What surprised me was that they had gone so far as to "strike-off" those in each side who disagreed with the other side.

It strikes me as particularly interesting in this age when our nation is so clearly, evenly, and deeply divided by values and passions. Whether or not the episode ever happened in regard to George Fox admonishing William Penn to"Carry the Sword as long as you can," the anecdote is still a useful one in explaining the tolerance in allowing people to follow their own conscience but it is also true that the effort at persuasion, or intervention must not be neglected.

Lately there is a new movement in regard to coping with loved ones experiencing alcoholism. It used to be said that you had to let them "Hit bottom." Then they would have to rescue themselves. Many family members found this a hard and cold choice to make. New theories say you could lose your loved one to death before they hit bottom and that on the way to the bottom they often take everyone with them, and that intervention is a better plan. But what kind of intervention? Loving persuasion, patient support, provision of useful support strategies, phone numbers, connections and so on, are suggested. This seems to me a kinder approach, a kind of Hicksite approach.

This also reminded me of the diary of Anne Whitall which I transcribed from a typed copy onto the computer so people could access it. She was often criticized as a complainer and a strict zealot and indeed she had complaints which to the modern mind seem nagging and trivial. But we take her out of context. She did believe as she had been taught to believe, in hell and damnation and the personal struggle to live a righteous and pious life. She struggled with it with herself and she struggled to intervene and remind her loved ones of this necessity as well. Anne would have been an Orthodox Friend.

It is interesting how as the saying by Faulkner goes, "The Past is never dead, it's not even past"

Happy Trails, Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

"Carry the Sword as Long as You Can" Struggling with Peace Testimony 2/3/22

This morning as I had my coffee, I was shuffling through the basket that holds my ever growing pile of magazines, journals, budget books and so on, looking for a magazine to read. The heavy and substantial MUZZLELOADER, still in its plastic wrap made its presence felt, and this time, in stead of burying under the New Yorker and more favored magazines, I took it out.

I am not stupid although it is still possible for me to make stupid mistakes from time to time and this magazine is a perfect example. I must explain: Because it was advertised in Early American Life, which was for many many years my favorite magazine, I was entirely mistaken in what I assumed would be its content. I know, when something says "GUNS" it is probably about guns, but, they always listed in the advertisements in EAL that it was also about log cabins (which I used to love) and early American crafts, so I made an entirely erroneous assumption that it was called Muzzleloader just because that was an item of the period (just as in a case where a magazine might be called Spinning Wheel but might be about many Colonial crafts not just spinning wheels) but Muzzleoader magazine like EAL would be about Colonial life and re-enactors. It isn't. It is about guns.

Last week in the newest issue of Harpers, I read a shocking article about the proliferation of "permitless carry" laws in most states in the US as wwell as the tidal surge of sales of guns such that there are 120 guns for every 100 citizens in the US now. I am against guns. They have no purpose but to kill. They kill animals and people. And since the next question faced by anyone saying they are against guns is usually "Well, you eat meat don't you!" My answer isn that NO I do not eat meat and have been primarily a vegetarian sind the 1970's and I am perfectly healthy thank you - no choloesterol problems for example, no polyps in my ten year colonoscopies either. Unlike dogs or cats, we do not need to eat meat to be healthy. I have many vegan friends who are similarly in excellent health in our seventies. They are even healthier than I am because they hike more.

Over the many years of my life, it has grown in me to respect life in its myriad and miraculous forms. There is a comradeship in the flow of the life force through all of us sentient beings that I am in tune with. It breaks my heart to think of the miraculous being of life cut short unnecessarily, or worse, for entertainment.

Yesterday, when I was reading the Harpers article on the proliferation of guns and the avid marketing and purchase of them, I was thinking of GUnsmoke, an old tv show that was highly favored back in the days when families had one television and everyone had to sit in one room and watch the same thing. I do not in any way wish to return to those days for many reasons including that back in those days in the place where I lived and grew up, fathers literally ruled. So whetever Dad wanted to watch on tv, the rest of us watched. After all, Dad was the only one who worked or had money. He bought the house and he bought the television, so he ruled! There were compromises such as when Ed Sullivan had the Beatles on his show. And I didn't mind The Champagne Hour with Lawrence Welk. But to get back to Gunsmoke, there were elements of that show that already made me uneasy but I accepted it as the 'past' and as fiction. For example the only notable female character was the good hearted ever accepting and supportive Miss Kitty, barmaid at the local saloon. Did Miss Kitty have kids? Did she have sex with the Sherriff (played by James Arnett) Where were her kids? She wasn't married, that's for sure, but the sexy outfits and other hints suggested that some form of sexuality was going on in her life.
There was a lot of shooting and gun play in Gunsmoke, indeed, it was the way things were resolved. Bad men came into town and shot it up, robbed people, murdered ranchers, attacked the stage coach, drank and insulted and assaulted other people in the bar and on the street and the Sherriff and his trusty sidekick had to shoot them or use their guns to shoot enough of them that they could round up the rest and put them in jail. Those bad men were indeed scary, and I couldn't help but conflate them with the Nazi's in the war movies we also watched constantly as my father had served in the CCC, The Merchant Marines, and the Navy in the Pacific during WWII. WWII was his primary historic period of interest and another example of how violent force was necessary to curb and repulse the forceful energy of Bad Men like the Nazi's also a very scary bunch who robbed and murdered and had no compassion or mercy, only the power and the will and the weapons to destroy and to harm.

When I first was drawn to the Society of Friends everything about it seemed to fit me perfectly, the meditative silent worship, the respect for the inner light, the kindness and compassion of the people, the adoption of a sane and sober lifestyle without the greedy pursuit of wealth, and the equality of women. The one thing about which I could never feel quite certain, however, was the peace testimony because I had seen those bad men, the Nazi's and the outlaws and I knew they still existed because I lived in the city and evidence of their continued existence was clearly visible all around me. Could peace and compassion really stand up to the energy of violence, lust and murderous rage? I wasn't sure I was ready to die on the cross like Jesus for the peace testimony, although his message did go on to enlighten a good part of the world. He lived on in a remarkable way. I didn't feel that if I had to face up to a Nazi, my goodwill and Christian compassion would be sufficient. I thought I might prefer a gun.

I didn't have to decide immediately however, because the Friends allow for independent development and personal conscience, you can be a seeker, you don't have to buy it all hook, line and sinker, you can develop toward it. When William Penn faced the same confusion in regard to the peace testimony, he was told to "Carry the Sword as long as you can." In other words allow you conscience and the light within to show you the way.

I am pleased to say this was the last issue of Muzzleloader. I felt so uneasy about it, I didn't even pass it on as I usually do with my magzines. One image from within the attractively and evocatively photograph laden magazine was especillay disturbing to me, a father had passed on his legacy of shooting to his daughter and she was holding upside down the swan she had just killed. It was a tall as she. It almost made me cry, but I turned instead to writing this blog entry. I wonder how that daughter felt later, thinking of the beautiful creature she had destroyed, after the glow of her father's approval wore off and after her conscience and her consciousness had a chance to once again peek through. I thought about the swan's mate left to grieve for the rest of its life and the black lake left in darkness without the bright light of the swan, like a candle, to brighten it.

In my electronic news feed, which pops up when I open my cell phone to see if I have received any text messages or calls while I was sleeping and my phone was off, there was a short piece about President Biden sending 3000 American troops to Poland and Germany to reassure our NATO allies considering the massing of thousands of Russian troops on the border of the Ukraine, ready to invade and possibly spark World War III. The January 6th Insurrection and the article on the proliferation of guns, the many articles on the increase in road rage caused accidents and even the short piece I read on the truckers striking in Ottawa because they don't want to vaccinate against covid or wear masks, these and mamy other indications are that there is a green haze of violence and anarchy rising in the world and it frightens me, it is like an algae bloom suffocating a lake, or like the Covid epidemic itself, a madness and sickness of the soul.

A sad note but an example of the way, is that Thich Nhat Hanh died recently, the Zen Buddhist monk from war torn Vietnam who helped bring the Buddhist way to Americans. All you can ever do, I suppose, is work on yourself, and walk your own path, carrying the message that is in you. Sadly, Muzzleloader made me realize I am not as fond of the Colonial period as I once was. My path has diverged. For many years, I volunteered at a number of historic sites relating to the American Revolution and the colonial period, and I was raised in Philadelphia, south of the center of liberty in America. Now, however, I feel myself turned more and more away from that time when lives were limited in so many ways, but there was then, carried from England, the message of the Society of Friends, the LIGHT in the darkness of times of turmoil.

Happy Trails, Jo Ann