The extraordinary in the ordinary Monday May 27, 2024

I am a huge fan of the ordinary. The way this interest manifexts itself has been in my lifelong interest and research into journals, diaries and such personal accounts of ordinary lives. In each area of my passions, I have read whatever diaries were discovered in that subject; for example, I LOVE the diary of Frida Kahlo, whch I read regularly on her birthday (July 6 - 1907) or on Hispanic Heritage Month and because of my interest in the lives of women artists.

When I was a volunteer at Red Bank Battlefield in National Park for several years, I read Diary of a Hessian Soldier, Johan Conrad Dohla, fighting here as a mercenary for the British, as well as the diary of Joseph Plumb Martin, American Continental soldier. I have read the diaries of writers, all of Anais Nin, many others, and of war correspondents like Marie Colvin, who died in Syria. Actually, when I was a college student, I took a course in the history of diaries and journals and we began with Samuel Pepys, written 1660 to 1669.

As a volunteer for the Gloucester County Historical Society, I had the honor of transcribing the diary of Anne Whitall, whose family farm was the center of the Battle of Red Bank in 1777, a pivotal event in our Revolutioary history. It had been hand written in about 1762 and another volunteer had transcribed it into typewriter manuscript and I took her typewritten version and put it on the computer so others could read it. I did the same for an anonymous farm woman of South Jersey who joined the Mormons and left to make a new life in Utah; she was from Elk Township and married a Mormon missionary. I can't at the moment remember her name (Ruth Page Rogers) but it may come back to me.

I think it is especially interesting to read of the quiet days just before something significant happened, or the time just after. I read a fascinating 1945 diary of a German woman about her survival right after the defeat of Germany in World War II. She lived in Berlin and survived the Russian occupation as well as the bombings and the door to door street by street fighting during the end of the war. Her name was Marta Hillers, a journalist. It is "Eine Frau in Berlin," first published anonymously in German and later translated into English.

I have personally kept diaries since I was in my 20's, over 50 years. They have become more boring over the years as I recount mainly the chores I have done, but also, the mundane events in my ordinary daily life. Actually I believe at one time, such diaries were titled Commonplace books. I rarely write about politics or the news, sometimes reviews of books or movies.

So for today, the things that interested me enough to make me decide to do this entry are: We are awaiting a big storm that has battered and swatted its way across the continent over the past several days pelting with softball sized hail and flooding rain. So far theree are 21 dead and hundreds left homeless ann the storm generated massive tornadoes as it travelled East. It is supposed to reach us this afternoon about 5:00. The weather at the moment is still, overcast, humid and on the cool side, and it does feel as if the yard is waiting for something to come. My personal fear is that the trees in the front of my yard that were devasted last year by the Chinese lantern fly invasion will drop their dead limbs on the wires just below and in front of them. I should have gotten them removed but it costs thousands of dollars which I do not have.

Lethargy and pain: lately I have been experiencing more than usual days of lethargy, some of which I attribute to the pain in my hip that remains after the disaster of a month ago when I tried to turn over to get out of bed and something went terribly wrong. My hip seized up and the horrendous pain of some kind of pinched nerve kept me trapped in bed for hours and terrified to move. Since that night, I have slept on the recliner, afraid to get in bed, and I have gone to my gneral practitioner and had x-rays, blood and urine lab work, and tomorrow I see an orthopedic doctor. The x-rays just say "moderate osteo/arthritis. Something else must have happened however to cause that - some kind of jammed bones over a nerve, or bursitis, or some tendon thing.

Anyhow, today, again, I woke up so lethargic, I couldn't get my last basket of laundry up from the basement, so I gave in to the nearly foolproof remedy of going to Dunkin Donuts and getting a caramel latte' which I only do as a last resort because they are both full of sugar/calories and expensive -$6 for a large coffee - outrageous. But I wanted to get a couple of things done - I wanted to cook and eat a bunch of really expensive mushrooms I had bought along with a group of salad vegetables and I didn't want to let them go bad because I was too tired to wash and prepare them. The mushrooms were "Lion's Main" mushrooms that I had learned about from a fabulous documentary called FANTASTIC FUNGI.

The Lion's Mane mushrooms, I discovered, had to be cooked and shouldn't be eaten raw. That was a surprise. I thought I could put them in the salad but they have something called chitin in the skins and so should be cooked. They had to be sautee'd with garlic and should be served on bread like a sandwich item.

The latte' worked. I bought the latte' from a particularly morose and un friendly counter woman at the drive-thru window at Dunkin Donuts, drank it and voila! I got my laundry from the basement, cooked the wretched mushrooms, and made a big bowl of salad good for two days. The mushrooms were a most unpleasant tactile experience. I was used to the regular white button mushrooms with their pleasantly bread like texture. These had a kind of furrry-loose-sack of jelly feel, not that easy to slice either. But I did it, and I ate them in a sandwich on toasted bread. I forced myself to finish them so as not to waste an expensive item and a notabley heathful food. I would never buy them or eat them again. Then I ate my salad which I also found unpleasant. Sometimes I just don't like tomatoes in salad and lately not so fond of broccoli florets anymore either. But it is all done now. I have one chore left - to wash out my almost empty blender pitcher from yesterday's blueberry smoothy and get ready to make a new one, tomorrow perhaps.

Last night, I watched a brilliant though deeply disturbing series on Netflix called "Unbelievable." I had seen it advertised on Netflix before but I passed it up because it is about a serial rapist and I avoid shows I think will frighten me, but a friend I respect told me it was well worth my time and that it was brilliant - which it was! The acting was superb and the cast was some of the greats of this period including Toni Collette. It deals with the true story of a serial rapist in Colorado who is so skilled at erasing all clues to his presence that he gets away with raping and robbing 25 women until a duo of dauntless detectives dig into every detail to find out who he is and capture him. There is an interesting socio-dynamic theme too in the way a poor young survivor of the foster care system is bullied by two male detectives in the beginning of the series into recanting her report of her rape. They bully her into saying she lied and made it up and then they make her a criminal by charging her with false reporting with a fine and threat of jail time. I won't spoil it by giving away any more of the plot. It did scare me for awhile but my big dog and her large formidable incisor teeth always reassure me. She went berserk when the amazon delivery man left a package on the porch in the evening, and I thought, no one would try to enter a door with this polar bear behind it.

She lets me sleep at night and I feed her and offer her shelter in return and we both love one another as well. We got our walk in early today before the storm began its threat. I will let you know tomorrow how it all turned out!

Happy Trails - stay safe in the storm! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com