About FACE

May 25, Wednesday, noon 2022

Yesterday I met a friend for lunch. She had just come from the hair salon the day before and spent $400 on her hair. She was lamenting the high cost but she had been going to the same salon for so many years, they knew her and they knew her hair. Two or three weeks ago, I had all my hair cut off, all 14 inches of it, and I have a perpetually dishevelled short hair cut now. I don't care. Most of the people who know me have avoided commenting on the hair cut due to the perpetual dishevelment of it and the fact that it doesn't conform to any of the conventional hair styles for my age group which I think of as modified helmets.

Everyone my age, 70's, is sporting some version of what is known as the "bob" which is straight, close to the head, smooth, with bangs or bangs brushed to the side, and hair is jaw length. Most everyone I know also has eye make-up still and foundation, and blush and lipstick. I have given over with all that. These days I demand that the world accept me as I am - I don't blush and my eyes are wrinkled and my skin isn't a smooth unvarnished surface. Some of my friends even have injections in their faces to plump up lines and wrinkles. One recently had her upper lip done. She claimed to have lines going down over her upper lip. Now her upper lip is plumped up with a deep groove in the center for that furrow that goes from the center of the nose to the lip. It looks vaguely goatish.

It should be noted that I have diminishing eyesight along with all the other dimishments time extracts from those who survive to old-age. I can't see her lines or wrinkles. I probably have them too but I can't see mine either. First, I gave up eye-makeup. No more using a little liquid felt tip eye pen to outline my eyes in black. What for? Not only that, but I couldn't help noticing that in older women, the lines are squiggly and tend to run into the surrounding estuaries that surround their eyes. They can't see it. They can't even really see how they are putting on their eye liner because most people my age, though they may not have my eyesight disability, still can't see very well.

We do talk about these things, we older women. I spoke of it just a few days ago with a woman at the waiting room to my 2nd booster appointment at Cooper Health. She looked very pretty in a turquoise swirling design blouse, matching turquoise button earrings, dyed hair and the modest make-up of the older woman, foundation, mascara, lipstick. She told me she doesn't bother with rings or bracelets anymore. I gave all that up even before I stopped the rest of the masquerade. The first thing to go for me was the eye makeup - no more liner. I never bothered with foundation. Next I gave up blush and jewelry. It is just too much trouble and the rings get in the way of everything, most essentially washing your hands. Also I tended to lose the rights places where i took them off to wash my hands.

All the accoutrement of women's masquerade are CRIPPlING - they all hinder your progress from hair that can't cope with the wind, to rings that get caught in things and get lost, to bracelets, the same problems, and for younger women in the professional world, those crippling painful high heeled shoes. They throw you off balance and hurt your feet. They are awful. So are skirts, especially tight ones. You can't sit down without squeezing your thighs together and crossing your ankles. You are forced to constrain yourself! Bad enough being constrained by circumstance.

I don't even need to go into the topic of finger nails because I never went down that road - getting fake nails glued to your fingers with paint and decorations on them - essentially crippling use of your fingers for most everything.

I think about the word FACE - 'Facing up to your problems,' 'Putting on a good face,' 'About face,' the part of you that you put forward to the world and what it means. My current face is, "This is how I really look, this is the real me, face it.!" People don't care. It is your behavior that matters. I am obviously, by my uncolored white hair, an old lady and we get certain freedoms and respects at the same time that we are invisible and pushed to the outer spheres of most people's lives. We are the grandmoms even if we have no granchildren. We are everyone's grandmoms.

My grandmoms Lavinia and Mabel, were plain faced women. Lavinia wore no masquerade paraphernalia at all - plain long wispy white hair she coiled in a bun at her neck, plain sad, falling face. I loved her. I could see her beauty, the beauty of her soft wrinkled aging face. Grandmom Mabel took more pains for the public and she wore those snap on terribly painful earrings, had her hair cut and permed and wore lipstick, broaches, scarves, things like that. Lavinia was sad, Mabel was jolly. Mabel had been widowed in her 30's and got used to freedom, but Lavinia had been widowed in age and was permanently plunged into grief. Both wore rayon like dresses, narrow belts around their middles (no waists left here) and Cuban heeled lace up black shoes and stockings. Grandmom Lavinia wore faded cotten housedresses and house slippers at home, because she didn't go out much. I have a photo of the two of them that I keep within view everywhere in my house because they remind me of survival and resilience. Grandmom Lavinia has just allowed her middle aged daughters to take her to a hair salon where she had her long wispy white hair cut short and permed. She has a cap of white curls now, and even a rayon like pantsuit insted of the dress and crossed legs. Frankly, it is apparent that she doesnt' really care, like a baby or a doll, she simply permitted them to move her from place to place decking her out. They wanted to do it and she complied.

All that masquerade is about "attractiveness" as my friend and I were discussing at lunch yesterday. My friend would like to not be compelled to spend all that money for "roots, highlights, trim, glaze and blow-out. But she has a stronger desire to retain what she feels makes her attractive. She has a boyfriend, too, so that counts. She must maintain the appearance she had when she met him through on-line dating. It goes without saying he has always expected to be accepted as his natural self, with maybe the only nod to attractiveness being a neat haircut and neatly trimmed mustach. Also he keeeps clean and wears clean clothes. Giving up in old age can too far, when people give up on basic cleanliness - easy to do when taking a shower becomes a dangerous activity involving slippery surfaces and closed eyes uner running water. It's a whole big deal taking a shower and shampooing your hair - part of the reson I got mine cut off, the longer and heavier your hair the harder it is to shampoo safely in the shower (those hair products make the tube even slipperier) and then blow dry it. Short hair is safer and easier.

STATURE - I noticed the other day in the 7-11 convenience store, that when you are bigger, and I am 5 feet 7 the average height of a man, people give you more room and more respect. Also along with my height, I have some sturdy bulk. There were two or three men in the 7-11 behind me in line, and the two Middle Eastern counter workers. They notice you and how you are different and they even have thoughts you can almost see as cartoon bubbles. I had on jeans, a hooded sweatshirt over a black long sleeved tee shirt and my short hair and natural face. I could see one or two of the men kind of studying me discreetly, as animals will do when encountering one another, trying to figure out where I belong in the gender spectrum and I think they thought I was a lesbian, the careful studying way they observed me until I finished my purchase and left. The countermen struggled with conflicting emotions: they wanted to be brusk and rude and dismissive, as they usually are with second class women, but I was an American and so large, they had to maintain a basic level of store-keeper courtesy though there was definitely suspicion fighting its way into their expressions and mannerisms.

Women have been fighting the crippling effects of the female masquerade for hundreds of years and we have made significant progress but there is far far more to be done. From Amelia Bloomer fighting for pants and away from hoops and corsets, to the stripped down costumes of the roaring 20's the opening salvo in the twentieth century women's fashion revolution, and the origin of the bob, to the battle for comfortable walking shoes on the part of city workers slogging from the bus to the train to the airport and refusing the do it in high heels. They wore their sneakers and toted the awful high heels to work. Why do they wear them? Someone has convinced them it makes their legs more attractive but I think it makes them more attractive because it cripples them and shows they are willing to martyr themselves for the male gaze. Those shoes seem to say, "Sure, I'll give up my comfort, my welfare, my true self to please you! Choose me!"

One of the many things I like about this stage toward my final curtain, is the release from the trap of romance. I am free, on my own, and have no more torture of desire or wishful effort toward companionship of the romantic kind. I don't want a man in my house or the gravitational pull of companionship with a male/female parnership wihere what he wants and needs always comes before what she wants or needs. I don't want to cook or worry about meals or his moods, or changing the bed, or indulging in his sexual satisfaction. It is breathtakingly open spaces without all that encumbrance in your life. Same for parenthood. I didn't need to climb dangerous high mountains to get a big view, I just had to get old and free of all encumbrances, except for those I still manage - the dog and the cats. In fact, I have to stop writing immediately and get back to work on my mountain of laundrey from the traumatized big fat old cat I rescued who pisses on the furntiture covers regularly creating big piles of stinking laundry. Even though everything is covered, all the covers get pissed on and musth be washed and air dried to be used after the next boy-cat battle for territory leaves the furniture with large wet shadows of stinky cat urine.

Putting your best face forward (I know it is foot, but I am adapting.) Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

My Post World War 11 Bungalow

Recently I met a woman who is renovating/restoring a late first period Conolinal house in Woodbury. It is a timber frame dwelling. Many years ago, I attended a lecture given by Joan Berkey on Timber frame houses of Cape May County. It was a fascinating talk and I bought her book which I never got around to reading until today.

I took a short lunch break and contemplated, again, my own somewhat historic house, which becomes more historic as time goes by. My house was built as a single house (as contrasted with a development house) in 1947 by a single man. When I bought it, it had a parlor, kitchen, bedroom and bath and a short attic. The attic was actually built to replace the flat roof with a pitched roof, likely because of the leaking that flat roofs are prone to. I surmise this because of the phantom light switch in my bedroom and the obviously replaced ceiling, which was done rather roughly. The dry wall seams are not very carefully taped and plastered. At one point there must have been a ceiling light in the bedroom that went with the now defunct switch, but ehere is no ceiling light now.

When I was teaching adult classes back in the 1980's, I had the good fortune to meet a woman whose aunt had once lived in this house. The aunt's name was Elsie Finch. This lady gave me some papers in a cardboard box which I have since lost, buried in the attic, which described some of the history of this house, the date it was built and that the land it was built upon had been a glue factory. Some years after this house was built, a development of bungalows was built around it, somewhat larger than this original house.

Among teh many things I have loved about this house from the firs time I saw it, has been that the original large trees that were here are still here. The trees, some of them, probably pre-date the house. Others were no doubt built at the time of the house due to their placement right next to the house on every side. The roof overhang is now not much more than a foot from the trunks of these trees, maples mostly.

My land is pie shaped so that at the street we are ten sidewalk squares along the street but at the back, my yard borders five other backyards. All the trees that were here when I bought it, nearly 40 years ago, are still here and I have added planted Christmas trees, many holly trees and the holly trees have propogated some offspring of their own.

We don t often think of houses from the 1940-s and 50's as historic but increasingly they are! We are a scant 20 years from these houses being a hundred hears old! I hadn't thought of my houe that way until I had a piece of EXCELLENT advice from a nice man, now deceased, who was married to an old friend of mine. I was ontemplating putting aluminum siding on my wooden clapboard house and he advised against it. He reminded me that there are FEW wooden sided houses around anymore, and that the aluminum siding would destroy the wooden siding because the wood, not being able to breathe and dry out, would rot. As it is the wooden siding is in good shape. I never burned adn re-painted as you are supposed to do. It has been painted twide over the eyars and wll we did was dust and wash the old siding, scrape off some of the old paint and paint over top of it. This seems to have protected it well enough and I have never even had any additional peeling. The windows are original too. This is all comforting to me in a strange way becaue it is the architecture I was brought up with, the old sash windows, the wooden siding, tree shaded yards, a nice little porch that I sit on at least once or twice every day.

It is a shame that there isn't more scholarship on houses from this era, such a very interesting period - the post Eorld War II Baby Boom era, the era of tract housing in New Jersey. Coincidentally, since I have always been a second hand store furniture hunter, the kitchen set I bought at Bill's 2nd Hand furniture store in Mt. Holly (I don't know if it is still there) was made in 1947 at Van Sciver's. And my bedroom furntirue is circa 1930's Waterfall Art Deco. I have a chiffarobe in the back room which is also 1920's 1930's era. It just happened that the furniture I bought was correct period to the house.

My big fear is that after I die, flippers or realtors will come here and demolish this 'histori bungalow' and cut down all these old trees in order to put up some huge modern house, and another piece of New Jersey history will be destroyed.

That's all I have to say about my Baby Boom bungalow for today, but who knows, maybe some day I will expand upon this. There are no books on this topic, I have looked! There are probably books about tract housing of the 1950's, such as Levittown and so on, but the 1940's seems underrepresented in literature.

Hope this gives you pausse to consider your own home and the history it no doubt has! Happy Trails - Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Memorial to a great person and a great friend - Christine Gilbreath Borget May 2022

Last week, May 10, 2022, the friend I knew for the longest time of my life died. We were exactly the same age, 76. Christine Gilbreath Borget was the most wholly good person, aside from my mother, that I ever knew. She was loyal, dedicated, had immense personal integrity, and used her energy in good causes throughout her life.

Christine was a school teacher, as was I. She taught in the Cinnaminson School District and was beloved by her students and admired and liked by her teacher colleagues. Chris attended what was then called Beaver College in Glenside, Pa. Like my old alma mater, Glassboro State College, Beaver has since changed its name to, I think, Arcadia. When I think of my old friend, and we were friends from about the age of 12 or 13, I have a flutter of old photographic memories, and one of them was from her college. Chris changed my life in so many ways, and one of those ways was the vision she provided of college. I remember one autumn I visited, maybe it was the first visit after she matriculated. The trees were full but some leaves were beginning to drift down, and there were small winding paths throughout the college grounds with girls in plaid skirts and knee socks peddling bikes rolling around. Chris took me to tour the building I always called the tower but it was like a castle, and I remember girls sitting in the window seats in the turret with books open, studying. Chris got to live in the castle for part of her years at Beaver. She showed me a world I had never known existed, and one I never had dreamed of or wanted until I saw it, then I wanted it for the rest of my life, the way some girls wanted a wedding. My old school is now Rowan University.

Chris was a scholarly girl all the time I knew her. In the beginning we were very different, but over the years, I became more and more like her. She was one of, if not the most, profound influences on my life. When we met, we were both strangers in a strange land. She had been the daughter of a Coast Guard father and so she and her mother and brother had lived in many places, most recently, Hawaii. She was new in our small town and I was new in our small town. I was a weird kid from the City of Philadephia, an unbalanced kid wobbling clumsily like an animal from a dark place suddenly forced into the bright sun. I didn't know where I was. Christ always knew where she was. She was at home in herself. I truly loved her. I believe she truly loved me too. One of the things we had in common was books. We both loved to read. Another thing we had in common was intellectual curiosity and a desire to know and understand. Something she had in full bloom but which lay dormant (or nascent) in me, was a spiritual guidance. I didn't know what to be or how to be and I was pulled by the winds of vagrant emotions, unstudied and unexamined. Chris was circumspect and steady. She had a clear and compelling sense of right and wrong. She taught it to me with endless discussions on all sorts of urgent questions of the times in which we lived, racism, sexism, the war in Vietnam. And we marched together in all of those causes. We marched against the war in Washington D.C. and we marched for Abortion Rights in Trenton, NJ. We both loved Gloria Steinem and books and history about the Suffrage movement. For my birthday this year, she bought me a subscription to MS. Magazine, which I had dropped decades ago. When I read it I will think of her.

Chris's brother, Mike, was two years younger than she as is my brother, Joe. Mike became an infectious disease expert and worked with the CDC. My brother, like our father before him, became an ironworker and a war veteran. Both of our brothers still live. Our mothers died relatively early. Chris's mother died of Lupus, a disease she suffered throughout our adolescence but of which I, as a feckless teen, took little notice. Her mother was acerbic, biting, and witty. Pat Gilbreath and my mother became best friends and they strolled through the Cherry Hill Mall together, took ceramic classes together, and hung out together when the kids were all in school; they sat in our kitchen drinking coffee and smoking menthol cigarettes. My mother's brand was Salems, but I can't remember Pat's brand and I can't ask Chris now either. That's something that happens when someone dies; you can't call them up for fact checking anymore.

We teens lived in a cul de sac in a new development somewhat cut off from the rest of the town of Maple Shade by the Pennsauken Creek on the north, a huge meadow on the east, that may have been part of the farm where the development was built. The other Shaders had all grown up together. Another of the Roland Avenue kids died recently, Jo McGuigan, and some years ago, Diane Judge. We played in the meadow and we swam in the creek until I came down with hepititis from the raw sewage being dumped by the overwhelmed municiple sewage plant into the Creek. Several kids got sick. I spent months in the hospital at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden and the rest of the year in bed on home-bound instruction. Chris was spared that time. I became an even more passionate reader and artist.

Chris and I shared an ardent Feminist awareness and she acted on it. She helped a group of women save and establish the Alice Paul Institute on the farm of the Paul family in Mount Laurel and for the rest of her life Chris was involved with the API. She was also a passionate Democratic political activist and worked for the Andy Kim campaign the past several years. She put action behind her views.

Although to this day, I wouldn't claim to have ever reached the level of goodness and self sacrifice and dedication that Chris embodied, she showed me the way to be a better person. We were just different. I was alway more drawn to the worlds of Art and Literature and I was more introverted and solitary. Chris was more outgoing and political.

All the memories of our childhood that I have, being teenagers together, going to high school together. We didn't stay as close over the intervening years but we also made sure to keep our contact open and alive, and we got together regularly for lunch, and we talked on the phone regularly, though there were long periods when Chris had no time to herself. She cared for her husband Art, who had diabetes which killed him. She rose from the awhes of her grief because they were so completely in love with one another, and she summoned the energy to take care of her father after her mother died. He father lived into his 90's and I always thought Chris would as well. She didn't smoke or drink, and didn't indulge in the drug fueled counter culture that I did, but cancer got her anyway. Well, both of us outlived our mothers, but I did hope for an old age toether.

Needless to say, her death brings mine ever closer and almost every day I feel as though I am saying a long last loving farewell to this exquisite and heartnbreaking world.

Sometimes the Happy trail is a trail of tears - Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com (if you wish to write me use the e-mail not the comments section which is basically an Outhouse for spam these days Thanks.

Reading and Writing - Old Books

Sometimes reaading the Sunday New York Times reminds me of the people of my tribe - the Intellectuals - and the things we share value in like books. It feels often as though the world is moving away from books and towards a world of screens, impermanence, temporary rendezvous with a text rather than a long term relationship.

I may not look at a book in my vast library for ten years but suddenly I will NEED that book and I will search my shelves u;ntil I find it. There are some books that happens with on a regular basis: BE HERE NOW is one and there have been an unfortunately large number of times when I have had to buy that book again because I just needed to have it and I couldn't find it. Another one I have looked for over and over again is The Dutch and Swedes in South Jersey, and the WPA GUIDE to New Jersey.

In the Sunday Styles section of the SNYT there was an article about rare book merchants and one of the books they entioned was a copy of Alan Ginsburg's HOWL That had belonged to singer Amy Winehouse who died of drig and alcohol abuse at a very young age. She was almost immediately famous when her son "My Dady Said to go to Rehab and I said No No No.
Her distinctive voice and delivery shot that song to the top of the charts and anyone who heard it would have taken immediate notice of it not only for the voice and style but the content - her struggle with drugs and alcohol. Anyway, she had been working out the lyrics to songs by writing in the margins of the Ginsburg book. They were looking through and getting ready to auction her 220 book collection. I thought that was an interesting valuation since both Ginsburg nd Winehouse are contemporaries not the kind of books you usually think of s rare books.

I love my books and I have loved books all my life from my earliest ages. They have been my road maps through the Wilderness that is life.

Happy Trails Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Walking Around the Neighborhood

Some years back, I read an article about a woman who took photographs of her hometown at sunrise every day for a year. I found that inspiring. Perhaps it helped me to look at my own daily walks around the neighborhood with new eyes.

So here is today's walk from the view of the "Sidewalk Garden tour" of my neighborhood in Mt. Ephraim. First let me set the parameters of my neighborhood. On the East is Kings Highway. My town spreads to the eastern side of Kings Highway but I am on the western side. To the South of my neighborhood is Market Street which tuns wetward to Route 130. On the West of my neighborhood is Northmont Avenue. There are streets westward of that but that isn't in my range, which is the daily 2 mile walk I take with my dog Uma.

To the North of my neighborhood is the Railroad and I believe the street on my side of the railroad is called Station Avenue. It has the Mary Bray School on the corner of Kings and Station, then the next landmark would be the Doughtery Senior Center, which is where i have my Senior Group first Monday of each month, and also where I deposit my doggie bags after I scoop behind Uma.

We start out on Hartka, because another dog walker friend of mine was recently attacked by two frustrated and angry yard dogs as she walked down the street. They knocked her to the ground and caused a crushed hip, broken femur, broken clavicle which almost hit her heart. Needless to say, Uma and I stay clear of that end of our street nowadays! The dogs are still there.

So the azaleas, sadly are almost finished. My neighborhood tends towards deep pink although one neighbor, Mark, who has a notable flower garden border, has a lovely pale purple azalea and two lovely white flowering trees. I am not up on my trees so I don't know what these trees are, the blossoms are four petal, open and about 2 1/2 inches across.

On all the lawns, I really enjoy the confetti sprinkle of tiny blue and yellow blossoms, which are the size of small shirt buttons and seem to me to be joyful. Always, I have been likewise fond of greeting the little arctic whites (that's what I call them - I don't know their real names. I should find out. Some yards on Hartka also have tiny purple cluster flowers in their lawns; one yard has remarkable deep purple, almost black tulips! >p/> The stars of the show, however, are the pink blossom trees along the railroad, maybe they are cherry blossom trees? There are about 50 or 60 of them all in a row, but they are now bare. Their pastel pink petals lie in puddles of color in the gutters along the street where they were blown by the windy weather we had last week. It is glorious when all those trees are in bloom at the same time.

Some notable yards are on the street behind mine where one clever and creative neighbor has broken free from the green lawn straitjacket of common yards adn has put in a "hardscape" rock garden which has a number of plants that do different things in different seasons.

My own yard is noteworthy because I have a wooded landscape, no lawn either. My frotn yard is graced with half a dozen old trees that were here when I moved in and to which I have added about ten or twelve hollies and other shrubs, especially forsythia, those early announcements that the sun is about to return. Today I was thinking how easy it is to understand th Egyptians worshiping the Sun God RA. The sun is the engine that runs the whole planet along with the water.

My neighbor across the street, Mike Hughes, has the BEST rhododendrun I have ever see outside a fancy formal garden park like Longwood Gardens. It is a story tall and so profuse with flowers when it blooms that I have to stand and stare.

Not one to settle for 'sight' I also have spreading patches of Lily of the Valley which provide a FRAGRANT path to my porch. I cans smell them when I get out of the car even. I also have Rose of Sharon, Day Lilies, and a Heliobore a gift from a certified gardener friend of mine who also gave me the Lily of the Valley, three in a small pot which have flourished in my yard. There are also irus which I moved from the front where they lived until I moved in and the trees and shrubs crowded them out of the sunlight. Now I have a round pond of them just beyond my stone patio.

Each season provides its own interesting display on my daily walk but spring is definitely the time to notice plants. Halloween it is decorations that catch the eye and naturally, at Christmas, it is lights. In summer I mostly long for and seek shade patches as I am not fond of the heat or too much sun, so that is the season I mourn the loss of the trees. For some years now, I have winced when I heard the unmistakeable grind of the tree cutters and I have shed a tear or two at the sight of the stumps, like tombstones, where trees and shade used to live.

What is that old song "You'll find your happiness lies, in front of your eyes right in your own backyard." Too True! I am grateful for my dog who gets me out every day whether I want to or not, because once I get out, I am so glad to be there in the sun and under the blue sky and in the company of the trees and flowers.

Happy Trails - Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Simple happiness in a small town

As I have written many times before, I LOVE my little bungalow! And I have been really happy in this small town for nearly 40 years. I have been blessed with the gift of good neighbors, unlike some of my poor neibhborhood acquaintances. Ever since I moved in I have been trying to put in a fern garden in the front yard. I always seemed to me to be the perfect conditions, shady and party sunny in mild patches, but it is true that the soil isn't terribly healthy and the trees take up a lot of the nutrients, still, ferns grown in the forext and my yard is like a micro-forest. Eventually, after many failures, both of the seed and plant type I resorted to hanging ferns on the perfect little porch. Last spring, I tried yet again. I bought three ferns advertised at PLATT'S Farm as shade loving and hardy and my nephew and Godson Archie planted them for me.

They grew and I had hope they were going to flourish. I watered, but still we hait a time in late summer when the extreme heat dried the ground faster than I could keep it hydrated with my watering can. They got dry and brown and my nephew accidentally weed whacked them. He said, "It's Okay, Aunt Jo Ann, they were dead anyway." But being optimistic, I had hopes that they weuld somehow come back.

Just today, I went out to get something from the car and I was thinking, as I walked down the three steps to the yard how I wished I had a fern garden, and there, like some fairytale wish fulfillment, were three thriving ferns joyfully lifting their fern arms to the sky! I was so thrilled, I had to call my brother on the phone and tell him. And that's not all. The Lily of the Valley are all in bloom now too!

Walking the dog today, I met an old man I have seen many times before but usually I see him walking along the railroad. I said Hi and congratulated hi on expanding his walking distance. He said he had been over to Rob's auto shop. Then he told me he was about to have, this week, his 90th birthday. He said he has survived two open heart surgeries, cataract removals, blindiness in one eye and diabetes but he can still enjoy a walk around town in the Spring. I told him he was a great role model and that I wished to live to see 90 as well.

It is really the simple, humble little things that can really make your day! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com