Good Friday - Suffering and Death - a poet

Just coming back from my Chair Yoga class and feeling particularly loose and comfortable in my skeleton as a result. A thread of texts from my Woodbury Friends Meeting reminded me of two things: the film - The Ten Commandments, and Shrove Tuesday pancakes!

For those of us who consume pancakes on Easter Sunday but don't any longer remember how the tradition began, here it is: On Shrove Tuesday, we frail and sinful mortals confess our transgressions and get ready for the fast - we "shrive" and hence, when we are through, we "shrove." To be thrifty, we use up our perishables (the tradition began before refrigeration) such as eggs and milk and fats, so we prepare for the fasting season by eating pancakes.

Today, for Christians, it is Holy Friday, or Good Friday. This is the day when Jesus Christ, having been tried and convicted on Maundy Thursday, of blasphemy by The Roman's puppet government in Judea (who actually thought he was a revolutionary and meant to overthrow the occupying Roman army) crucified him. He died between noon and 3:00 p.m. in pain and suffering. He actually was a revolutionary and did eventually overthrow the Roman army philosophically.

We all die eventually and many of us in pain and suffering, and I was thinking about that today because and old friend and gifted poet, Dan Maguire died recently. I only just found out because I don't have facebook any more having deleted it in protest of the junk that funneled through it like a sewer pipe. He was a brilliant, talented and vibrant human being who suffered a series of brain aneurisms, although I don't know if that is what finally killed him. He had moved to Baltimore and I lost touch with him but had tracked him down into a care facility in New Jersey. He had told me a long time ago that he was not able to take care of himself anymore and his home had fallen into squalor. His son had come to help him and undoubtedly surmised he needed full time care and gathered the other offspring to make appropriate arrangemtns. March would have been his birthday.

Like many old people, I am reminded of the other deaths that have been way staions on my own journey, my great-grandmother's death, my grandmothers' deaths, my own parents' deaths. I am the oldest sibling, so I will no doubt be the first of my immediate family of offspring to die. Usually I have said to myself and friends when we discuss age and dying, that I don't fear death but I fear disability. My mother suffered a stroke and 6 months of wheelchair paralysis before death saved her in December of 2000. I wouldn't want that fate. But my mother bore it with Christlike patience and submission.

My father's death was more rapid and he was fairly able until the last two weeks and then had hospice care before he was safely and humanely assisted out of his mortal coil. I have no idea what will happen to me.

Jesus was on the cross from 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. We know he asked God why he was forsaken. We also know that his being and his teachings went on to transform the Barbarous ancient world through the martyrdom of thousands of early Christians and disciples who spread the words of Love, forgiveness, compassion and generosity. Like Jesus they forgave their tormenters because the cruel and barbarous "knew not what they did." Thos lost souls were ignorant of and blind to the light of goodness and love. I haven't had much personal experience of committing cruelty but I am certain it doesn't feel good afterwards. I imagine it hurts like some internal bramble bush with wicked thorns.

Back to the origin of this essay, however, The Ten Commandemnts - the film! We were talking on the Woodbury thread about Easter traditions, hence the foray into pancakes. We also talked about the annual family film festival. All of us had shared the experience of watching The Ten Commandments and Easter Parade. I remembered the opening years of the great epics when Technicolor had just been invented and Cinemascope.

On our high school graduation trip to Washington DC in 1963, we were treat to the extravaganza of The Ten Commandments for the first time in Cinemascope. The movie screen was gigantic and the layers of heavy gold curtains were drawn back dramatically to the waves of orchestral music that washed over us and then BOOM! Huge, spectacularly bright and vivid colors so large and so loud that we were immersed in the film, drowned in it, swept away in it. It was as though God spoke directly to us in that film. Remember, television ahd only recently become available to those families with union working fathers who had the expendible cash to be able to buy this new luxury item. My grandfather had the first tv in our entire neighborhood, then my father bought one, and the screen was small and the images were in black and white.

I still remember the first movies I saw on the BIG SCREEN in technicolor - the great epics withe the swelling tidal wave of orchestral sound that carried them - Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and of course, that first introductory film, Ten Commandments.

I will watch that tonight on my small laptop screen through some streaming video service, probably netflix, but I will remember the glamor and the drama of the original viewing when I was a child and went to the matinee in our home-town theater with my blanket and my pillow because the Ten Commandments was sooooo long!

And all weekend, I will drift into thoughts of Jesus, how he died to show us the way to face our human destiny with the courage of gentleness and submission rather than the rage of unbridled beast-heart. I will read the Sermon on the Mount again and strive to incorporate those thoughts and instructions into my life.

Happy Easter! Jesus Christ and all he represent of the better part of human nature may have died in one way but his teachings have lived on into immortality in the souls of millions around the world.

Peace and Love!

FRIENDSHIP ART GALLERY

Five Friends, three of them members of the Woodbury Friends Meeting, came together to open an Art Gallery on the grounds of the historic Woodbury Friends Meeting, in the Underwood Building located across the adjoining parking lot. The Gallery opened on March 10, 2024 during Woodbury Friends hosting of Salem Quarterly Meeting. It will be open by appointment only and during community wide event days such as Woodbury Colonial Day. You can also reach a member in person at 12:15 on Sundays after weekly Meeting.

Beginning in Spring of 2025, the gallery will host an open group show on THE ENVIRONMENT. All exhibitions are juried shows. Works can include traditional landscape paintings, photography, botanical drawings, fiber arts such as quilts and needlework, woodworking, to name a few. All work must be framed, wired and ready to hang. For more information you can contact Jo Ann Wright at her e-mail address wrightj45@yahoocom, or if you are familiar with other friends, you can contact Carleton Crispin, property manager, or Jerome Barton, stained glass artist, whose studio is on the premises of the Underwood Bldg.

Thirty works currently on dispay include paintings, photography, stained glass art and 3-d printing. This show has no specific theme but several pieces honor March Women's History Month as the show opened on March 10, 2024.

We hope to see you and we hope you find this an opportunity to exhibit your work if you are a painter, photographer, quilter, woodworker or ceramicist. Works may be offered for sale but all sales must be arranged between artists and buyers not through the gallery. Contact wrightj45@yahoo.com for more information.

Spring is a season for beginnings! Happy Trails, Jo Ann

43rd Annual Nanticoke Lenni Lenape Pow Wow

The 43rd Annual Nanticoke Lenni Lenape Pow Wow is the Strawberry Moon Pow Wow. It will be held on Saturday and Sunday, June 8th and 9th, 2024 at the Salem County Fairgrounds, 735 Harding Highway, Woodstown, NJ 08098. Bring a lawn chair.

There will be tradition dancing in contests, music, car show and on Sunday, a church service.

Stoney Creek Singers and Red Blanket Singers will perform music.

On March 10, 2024 Woodbury Friends Meeting was pleaed to hear Chief Urie Ridgeway speak about the current world of the Lenni Lenape people in New Jersey as well as their history in the region, their history with neighbor tribes and with Colonial settlers among many other topics. He is a charming and interesting speaker and Friends learned a great deal.

New jersey Quakers (the Soceity of Friends) have had a long and warm history with the original people of the Delaware Valley which continues to this day.

It has been many years since I visited a Pow Wow, which are held across the nation throughout the year. The last one I attended was in Rancocas and it was fascinating. I had visited it two or more times both as a teacher, with students from my school, and as a mother with my daughter. We learned a great deal and enjoyed the visit. I hope to be alble to attend this year's Pow Wow as well and see how the Pow Wow has evolved.

New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Salem County Heritage Commission

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Gloria Steinem's Birthday March 25, 2024

On March 25, Gloria Steinem will be 90 years old. She has been an inspiration to me in so many many ways and now, she is an inspiration in longevity!

One of my saddest and ONLY regrets came from an episode after I left my ex-husband Michael in 1981. I took very few things because my car, a very old VW beetle had failed inspection and had a 24 hour "off the road" sticker on it, so I basically left on foot. My brothers helped me move a few sticks of survival furniture, a roll-away cot, a small table and some chairs, some art supplies and my clothes. But what I had to leave on the curb on trash day were three or four precious crates of Second Wave Feminism books and magaines It broke my heart but my back hurt even more and I could't carry those crates up all those steps into that dreary little 2nd floor apartment over a pharmacy on Haddon Ave. in Collingswood. I was done, flattened on the road like a run over cat. But I have regreted that so frequently since. There were feminist magazines that only came out twice like rare colorful mushrooms in the forest.

It is hard to describe, now, the wild fervor and enthusiasm of the Second Wave Feminists in my college from 1970 to 1974. We were doing everything, writing, painting, publishing our own magazines, one of a kind books, making all kinds of artwork. We were marching, wiping our faces clean of the costume of feminity that was eye make-up and lipstick and we were wearing earth shoes so our toes could finally spread out the way our souls were.

An avid reader, I read everything from the Feminine Mystique to Ruby Fruit Jungle and everything in between. Those early, lively, revolutionary copies of Ms. Magazine were breathtaking. There were issues featuring the latest artists and musicians and their wild forays. The one I remember best was about "Woman House" a collaborative art venture where artist took each closet and room in a house and transformed it into an installation on the female experience.

Sadly, today, Ms. Magazine is like a well meaning but deadly dull old club lady in a chintz chair editing the church bulletin. I have a couple of copies I can't even get myself to read. It isn't that the writing isn't sincere or true, but that it is unmitigated dull drudgery on the plights of women in third world countries, long dull prose pieces, well meaning but dry. The fun and the wild explorations are gone along with our youth.

The outre' vanguard of Second Wave Feminism has doddered into our old age, and we are tired. I am tired. I am busy seeing to my personal survival in a body that increasingly just can't make it up the stairs anymore, much like that day I left the crates on the sidewalk. It reminds me of an old dog I saw once, who, eagerly watching the frisbee his human had thrown, lumbered to its feet and made a whole hearted effort to go fetch it, but fell down and lay there panting.

To celebrate Gloria's birthday, I have bought a book of hers published in 2019 called "The Truth will set you free though first it will piss you off." Truth be told I have a lot of trouble reading with my failing eyesight.The last book of hers that I read was "My Life On The Road." Her life on the road started early with her childhood in the car with her traveling salesman father.

Like me, Gloria had no advantages beyond those given by physical nature. She was good-looking and intelligent and those two gifts carried her far. Like Gloria, I was good-looking and intelligent and that's how I know how much benefit those two traits bring to the life of a woman. Also like Gloria, I took a short and, in my case, dangerous, foray into the world of marriage and made my escape into what Elizabeth Cady Stanton called "The Splendid Solitude of Self." What Virginia Woolf called "A Room of One's Own." And in that state, I have resided comfortably for more than 40 years. I hope, like Gloria, I can remain in comfortable solitude of self until I reach my 90th birthday. Who knows?

Happy Birthday Gloria Steinem, My Hero! wrightj45@yahoo.com

New Starts for Old People 3/18/24

I don't know about you but I am a big fan of AARP magazine! Today, I read three articles and two were about two people who thought they were at an end anf found out they were at a beginning! One man had dropped off the end of a career in dance due to age and illness and found a new life in the Southwest where he had gone to he thought die. He went to his mother's house for care and found a community in poverty where he could show young peope the path from an interest to a career in the entertainment arts, dance, theater, music.

The second article was about a man who had started in small town journalism but had gone into a careerr running stores. After he and his wife retired, they found a new life in Edenton, South Carolina, which readers of Early American Life Magazine will recognise as one of those quaint, historic communities where people's houses are often featured in magazines devoted to American history and Colonial architecture. He started as a volunteer columnist covering things like boyscout annual breakfasts and found himself writing for half a dozen other local newspapers and even covering a corruption case of a local official paying himself unauthorized raises!

This caught my attention because I have recently found myself in a similar situation. I oined Woodbury Friends Meeting about three years ago. When they lost their 50 tenant in an outbuilding due to bankruptcy, they found themselves with a couple of serviceable but not easily rented out building spaces. At the same time, a former Art student of mine, and a stained glass artist was looking for studio space. Next thing you know, we have a flourishing stained glass studio and a brand new Art Gallery! The Friendship Art Gallery just opened on March 10 with works from three Woodbury Friends Meeting members and three stained glass artists! I never dreamed I would be running a gallery at the age of 78! Now I am so excited thinking about themes for future shows and how to get in touch with and encourage other artists to exhibit their work in our Gallery! You never know what the future may hold.

Also, on a separate note in 2019, at age 73 I won a prize at The Eiland Arts Center for a fabric multi media Art piece I did celebrating Teh Suffrage Ammendment, and last year, at age 77, I won the Founder's prize for a multi-media fabric and painting Art piece I showed in the Annual exhibition of the Haddon Fortnightly scholarship fund raising Art Show celebrating Women's History Month. Two prizes and an Art Gallery in my 70's!!

Happy Trails friends and good luck blazing new ones!

St. Patricks Day - Irish Literature

It seems only fair to write about Irish literature on the eve of St. Patrick's Day. I am watching a series on Netrlix called The Rebellion, which is excellent, but more about that later. First and foremost I want to mention an Irish Poet who was my teacher when I was in college: Basil Payne. He was the kindest, most humble and lovely man, so unlike the pompous male English Department professors I knew at the time. I just bought my third copy of his book of poetry, Another Kind of Optimism.

Also I wanted to remember Edna O'Brien who wrote The Country Girls Trilogy which was a big favorite of mine in my late teens, early twenties and which came out in 1960. It was three books that tell a coming of age story when I was coming of age myself. I can't remember much about it except that I loved it.

So these were my favorite Irish authors. According to google the following list is the most famous Irish authors:

Great Irish Writers

James Joyce. James Joyce is usually the first name that pops in to people's heads when they think of Irish writing.

Oscar Wilde.

W.B Yeats.

Roddy Doyle.

Bram Stoker.

Maeve Binchy.

Jonathan Swift.

Samuel Beckett.

I have loved W. B. Yeats poetry, and enjoyed one or two of Maeve Binchy's novels, such as Under the Copper Beech Tree, but I would't say she was greater than Edna, and why not bput Edna on the list anyhow? I have read Roddy Dole and, of course, Jonathan Swift (in my college English survey course-Gulliver's Travels). We all know Bram Stoker's Dracula though I doubt anyone has recently read it. And again, in my college survey course, I read Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest and don't remember anything about it, but I do remember the Portrait of Dorian Gray. As for Samuel Beckett, I saaw a television version of his play Waiting for Godot and that's all I have to say about that. Conession, I could only make heads or tails out of Ulysses by listening to it on audio tape (somewhat, anyhow).

Thomas Flanagan gets nary a mention although his trilogy on Irish history is probably the most well known and most widely read of contemporary writers on Ireland and the best introduction to the broad sweep of the modern era of The Struggles: The Year of the French, The Tenants of Time, The End of the Hunt. I read them all and found them thrilling and immensely informative. Big recommendation to anyone interested in what happened in Ireland in the last 125 years.

Well, it is time for me to get back to my series on Netflix, The Rebellion, which I mentioned up in the first paragraph. Starting with the Easter Rebellion of 1914, it is very well done and goes nicely with Billy Collins a very recent film nearly ruined by Julia Robert's inability to even make a ghost of an attempt at an Irish accent. The solution would have been to let her play an American character rather than an Irish woman with an American accent!

Before I leave, Lady Gregory is tugging on my sleeve! I enjoyed her play The Rising of the Moon but she is most famous for her book on Irish Myth which I didn't read. She is also famous for co-founding the Abbey Theater and keeping Irish theater and literature alive during the worst years of British repression and tyrrany in Ireland, the 1930's.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, and in case you are wondering, yes, my mother's family is of Irish descent. The family name was McQuiston and they were what was known as Scots/Irish Protestans (Episcopalians) from the North although my grandfather's family (Lyons) were Irish Catholics from the South (the Republic).

Slainte (pronounced Slancha)

Women's History Month EVENT - one of my favorite places GCHS Woodbury

New Woodbury Museum Exhibit for Women's History Month

A new Women's History Month exhibit at the Gloucester County Historical Society in Woodbury spotlights three dozen of the county's most remarkable women and their achievements. Included are entertainment and sports icons like punk rocker Patti Smith who graduated from Deptford High School and Tara Lipinski who spent her early years in Sewell; law enforcement and military officers like Kim Reichert, the county's first female police captain and Lieutenant Commander Frances Willoughby, the first female physician commissioned in the U.S. Navy; civil rights advocates Loretta Winters and Irene Hill-Smith, both NAACP Presidents; scientists like Eleanor Vadala of National Park who helped develop Kevlar, and Gibbstown marine biologist Sylvia Earle; and dozens more from the 1700s to the present whose vision and accomplishments helped make the County what it is today.~ ~ ~

MAKE A LUNCH OR DINNER ADVENTURE OF IT. The GCHS Museum is located across the street from Charlie Brown's Fresh Grill, one of Woodbury's most popular restaurants. Stop in for a cozy meal before or after your visit to the Museum. Parking is free in Charlie Brown's lot, the Museum's lot on Hunter St., or the Gloucester County Justice Complex Parking Complex that is also on Hunter St.

The GCHS Museum58 N. Broad St. Woodbury, NJ 08096 Hours: Tuesday, 6 pm to 9 pm Wednesday, Thursday & Friday, 12-4 pm 3rd weekend of every month (Saturday and Sunday) 12-4 pm

Google Map Google Map: https://bit.ly/gchs-google-map

Charlie Brown's Restaurant 111 N. Broad St., Woodbury, NJ 08096 Hours: 11:30 am to beyond 9 pm all days of the week.~ ~ ~

Organization: Gloucester County Historical Society Contact: Sandy Levins Phone: 609-505-0311 E-mail: sandy.levins@gchs-news.org Event Date: Through the month of March Event Location: Gloucester Country Historical Society Museum, 58 North Broad Street in Woodbury

My former Mother-in-law's pieroghi's

My former mother-in-law, now long deceased, was a wonderful cook of traditional Polish food. She made her own pieroghi's, cabbage filled or potato or cheese. And she made golumpki's9peppers stuffed with ground meat mixture and cooked in sauce, sometimes instead of peppers it was cabbage leaves), nad stuffed vine leaes (I forget the names of most of the things she made. She also made a delicious cherry soup.

She was a complicated woman. When she cooked for her husband, her son, and me, she refused to sit down at the table and instead stood at the stove, cooking and serving more things. I had never seen anything like that before and I was embarrassed to eat when she was seated, a big faux pas in my family. You never began to eat until everyone was seated, especially mom.

Elma was her name. She was a thin, wrinkled woman about 5 feet 5 inches tall with should length wiry gray hair with a pronounced widow's peak which her son inherited, and grayish colored eyes behind her glasses. Elma was exceptionally emotional, at least compared to my world where my father was the only one who emoted on a regular basis. When Elma wasin some kind of emotional state, usually brought on by the unheard of rudeness of her son, she cr5ied and took to her room and her husband, Herman, took to his hide-away in the basement.

Her son, Michael, demonstrated a form of rudeness I wasn't to see again until my youngest brother reached his mid teens. I am the oldes of five and when I was growing up, Dad ruled like a Medieval king and No ONE would dare be rude to him or to my mother. At my former husband's house, the temperatmental and emotionally unruly son ruled the roost.

The first time I ever met Elma, I arrived expecting the typical suburban Anglo-Saxon style family, but I met something that I recognized years later as a more European scenario. Michael's mother, Elma was dressed in a floor length beaded, circa 1920's formal dress and she had Der Rosenkavalier record playing on the record player. Michael immediately chastised her for humiliating him and she went to her room in tears. I couldn't really understnd what she had done wrong. It was surely different but how was she at fault? She was like a character in a novel and I was a child of novels. My ex-husband's behavior, to me, was far more out of line.

That was years before I knew he had emotional instability, mental illness. All I knew was that he had an explosive temper and no boundaries or awareness of others when he blew his top. It was years before I knew that offspring can inherit traits that haven't been expressed in their parents but in their aunts and uncles. For example I read a study of offspring who had schizophrenia and also webbed toes. Neither of the parents had these traits but the father's siblings had them. Elma had a brother of whom no one ever spoke but over the years I had bleaned that he had been homeless and on the streets in Camden and had a mental illness as well as a mathematical gift. He had been very gifted but his illness eventually took over and he was dysfunctional. >p/> When I married her son, Elma, who I think always had wished to have a daughter, bought me 12 ovely negligees for my honeymoon. I was deeply touched. I felt sad for her when I left her son. We never really spoke because I was afraid that any contact would attach him to me again in some way and he had intimated that he would kill me if I left him.

His company had transfered him to Colorado which was my saving grace. Funny because it was a life insurance company, Insurance Company of North America, and they turned out to be my life insurance because they took away my greatest danger.

To make Elma's pieroghi, you can skip the dough making and buy Mrs. T's piroghi in the frozen food section. So far I have only found the potato but perhaps there are cabbage and cheese ones out there somewhere. You boil the water, drop in the frozen pieroghis and cook until tender. Meanwhile you lightly sautee a diced onion in butter in a skillet and when the pieroghi are finished, use a slotted spook to remove them from the water and laightly sautee them in the onions. Serve with a dollop of sour cream. I used to make her stuffed peppers too, only with brown rice not her meat mixture which was two or three meats ground together I am a vegetarian.

I cooked so many things today and none of them turned out well plus it gave me a terrible back ache and made me think of all the old women over all the uears cooking until their backs ached.

On a lighter note. I think we shoud celelbrate "The DAy of the Window Opening" Today was the first day warm enough to open a window in each room and let the hint of spring come in and freshen the air. I hope my back recovers in time for me to get up and close them when the sun goes down.

Happy trails - through the world, through your memory - Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com Jo Ann

Overcoming depression

Personally, I have found it to be a lifelong practice and struggle to ward off depression. Here's an example - A week or so ago, I saw a film called THE LAND OF STEADY HABITS. It was an interesting film with good acting but the part that stuck with me and tortured me for days afterward was about a depressed young man who was accustomed to using drugs to enhance or excape from him emotional state. In the film, he is drawing a graphic novel about Laika the dog the Russians sent into space. He says "One of the scientists regretted for years having sent the dog into space because he said they learned nothing of value to justifiy the death of that dog." I actually remember that Sputnik event and the dog, Laika.

It makes me cry every time I think of that betrayal of trust and hope that they displayed toward that dog. Some of the Russians actually felt the same but went along with it anyhow. One of the dog handlers took Laika home for a few days to be with his family to do something nice for the dog - What a horrible betrayal to show that dog a family that might be hers and then turn her over to die from a torturous rise in heat in the capsule. Her heart and respiration rate displayed her terror at take-off and a few hours later the cabin got hotter and hotter until it killed her.

They knew when they sent that dog up into space she would be going to her death. They had no plans for return. They rounded up a bounch of homeless dogs and picked the female that was friendliest and most docile.

I was driving in the rain today, with my dog in the car, running errands and in the drive-through at Walgreens, I suddenly became overwhelmed thinking about Laika and began to cry. I used my magic mantra to save myself BE HERE NOW. And I stopped thinking about anything beyond the moment and focused on a beautiful evergreen tree beyond the fence of the parking lot. It saved me once again.

All of my life I have practiced and struggled escaping from the quicksand of melancholy; mostly I have become skillful at not allowing it to drag me down and crush me. I have read many books that dealt directly or indirectly with mood control and emotional balance and most effective of them all has been Pema Chodron's books. She is the Buddhist teacher and abbot of Gumpo Abbey in Nova Scotia and she has written two dozen books on coping with fear and uncertainty and the many 'derangers' of the army of melancholy. I have read them all and listened to all her cd's. She has saved me.

I read up some more on Laika and the Russian Sputnik era, we Americans also are guilty of animal abuse and have used primates, our closest relatives for space and many other lab crimes.

A graphic novel actually has been written about Laika by graphic novelist Nick Abadzis, but I won't be reading it. I have to leave that story alone and simply do what I can in my life to help the animals I have adopted and care for. Also, I have to care for myself.

It gave me an insight into my daughter and her efforts to protect herself from my sometimes contageious anxiety and melancholy. I inherited the melancholy from my father. The anxiety runs through the whole family for many generations, most markedly on my mother's side. If you don't get a grip, it grips you and you smoke, or drink or take drugs to get awway and none of that helps. Those tools are the tricks of the evil demons of depression.

The helpers are meditation, nutrition, the outdoors, books by Pema Chodron and many other Buddhist teachers, and all kinds of mindfulness training like yoga. I am now signed up for Chair Yoga - very helpful.

Happy Trails, my friends, and I hope these breadcrumbs help you find your way out of the woods when you are lost. Jo Ann

Women's History Month Projects

This morning, I dropped off my Art Project for Women's History Month - it is called PENNANTS. It is 8 pennants with portraits, cameo style, of famous and successful modern women like Opra Winfrey, Kamala Harris and others. It will be on exhibition tomorrow at Haddon Fornightly for the Annual Through A Woman's Eyes Art Show that is held in cooperation with a high school group called the 50 - 50 Club. Last year I won the prize for "most on theme Art Piece" but I don't do the work to win, I do it to celebrate Women's Accomplishments and it always make me learn something new. In my e-mail today, the National Women's Hisory Project invited everyone to participate in this event, which I thought was wonderful, although I can't participate because my eyesight has become so poor from the Fuch's Dystrophy (a chronic degenerative disease of the cornea). Back when my eyesight was good, however, I transcriped the typed version of Ann Cooper Whitall's Diary, housed at the Gloucester County Historical Society Library. The original is held at Swarthmore in the Quaker Collection. I was grateful to the kind person who transcribed the script version to the typed version, for sure. So here is the notice for the Clara Barton transcription event. By the way, what will you do for Women's History Month? You could do something simple like watch a movie! Or you could even think about our mother's lives compared to ours! Happy March Women's History Month!

This Women’s History Month, join us to transcribe Clara Barton’s papers held at the Library of Congress! Help unlock the past, one word at a time, by delving into the archives! This virtual, free event is open throughout the month of March to anyone who wants to be a part of an essential, crowdsourced public history project! How much you transcribe is up to you. Try it once or join every day—every little bit counts!

Transcribing historical documents is the process of taking (generally) handwritten documents and putting them into plain text. Transcription improves the searchability, readability, and accessibility of historical documents for people who use screen readers or other assistive technology. It also makes them searchable by keyword and easier to read. The Library of Congress’ By The People project supports the transcription of documents in their archives.

This March, the National Women’s History Museum encourages you to help transcribe Clara Barton’s papers! Nurse, educator, philanthropist, lecturer, and founder of the American Red Cross, Clara Barton (1821-1912), kept diaries throughout her life. We need your help to make her writings more accessible and, by extension, more widely known!