From NPR Tips to get out of a funk!

This morning in my e-mail feed there was an NPR piece on tips to get out of a blue mood, a slump, a funk, or whatever you call it. It was illustrated in a kind of comic book style and there were perhaps half a dozen tips. I thought them interesting enough and helpful enough to share with you! Most of them I already know and use, and one I would NEVER use, but, put simply (paraphrased) here they are:

1. Take a walk down memory lane, look at some old photographs, nostalgia can give you a perspective on your life. (My note: I just posted about my solo-retrospective art show, so you know I have done this one, and currently I am writing a book based on each piece of art and that phase in my life. It is a kind of Marcel Proust style memoir)

2.Take a Walk, even for 5 minutes, especially if you are a desk walker. Get up every half hour and walk around a bit. If you can, walk outside. (I have done this all my life, take a daily walk, although now the temperatue is so low and I am so old, the past couple of weeks I have had a couple of days between each walk)

3.Eat something. Often what you feel is your body telling you that you need some nourishment (nutricious food! I just made a pitcher of Nutella Smoothy, which, by the way, is really good hot too!) 4.Do some Art: Gather some art supplies, colored pencils, markers, water colors, paints of any kind or even scissors and colored paper and spend some time creating. (It goes without saying I have done this all my life but when I am too down to do a big painting, I have several small water color pads and Windsor Newton water color sets, and I do a few quick water color sketches - usually still life paintings, but also of my pets, or something from the yard - recently a branch of seed pods from my sleeping Rose of Sharon) 5.Watch cute animal videos (I do NOT do this because I live with cute animals so I watch them and they are immensely comforting. I am watching one right now on a cat perch on a window sill watching a fat squirrel run up and down a tree close to that window) My dog is snoring lightly beside me on the sofa - oh bliss!) 6.Take a Cold Plunge - they give health and brain reasons for this one in the NPR piece, but I can tell you I would NEVER do this! I hate cold water and any unnecessary discomfort. I have enough of those naturally with arthritis and old age. I recommend buying a good quality electric lap throw and getting cozy with that and a book or audio book or an album! This week was the 50th anniversary of Blood on the Tracks - Bob Dylan)

7.Take a Walk down Memory Lane AGAIN, look at some old family photos, your vacations snaps, look at your life. NPR gave reasons why this is good for you. (I have done a lot of family history and it has made me more connected to my family, my ancestors and history I recommend watching Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, a pbs show and then start your own family tree - you might also contact a family member to get some family history)

8.This one they left out but I will add - Phone or Text or Meet up with a friends. Yesterday two of my neighbor friends and I went to a new local place for a delicious lunch - I had cheese ravioli in marinara sauce and a small salad - and an even more delicious long conversation! Afterwards I felt lighter and mildly elated! I have lunch with friends on average once or twice a week,) 8.Write - my suggested tip. I keep a daily journal and it has helped me through some dead ends and bad turns in my travel through life. It has been a road map and a record. Also, I like to keep this blog! Writing helps us remember and it helps me understand and figure things out. Write a blog and read a blog!

Little Stories

Some time in 1969 or thereabouts, a young army wife had boarded a plane to meet her new husband in Frankfurt, Germany. Her husband had been drafted and had received the very fortunate assignment of the Signal Corps in Germany rather than Vietnam. He'd asked her if she would wait until he came back and having serched her soul she replied quite honesty that she couldn't promise anything because two years was a long time. There was a time when she would have promised to wait without hesitation because she loved him so whole heartedly, but something had happened a couple of years before, and she had been given an insight into the possibility of another young man. That is a little story for another time.

Alright, here I drop the pretense and admit the young woman was me. I was 21 years old. We'd had a worlwind marriage - blood tests, marriage license, justice of the peace, and a honeymoon at the World's Fair in Montreal, Canada.

Among the significant traditional gifts parents gave their almost adult daughters, I had been given a set of Samsonite luggage, creamy oyster white. There was the large suitcase, the medium sized one, and the ittle rectangular toiletries box.

I am an old lady now, and if I had kept to fiction, I could have filled in imaginary details to repace the ones I have forgotten, such as, what time of year was it? I have a vague impression it might have been summer, but I am not sure.

When I boarded the plane (from where? I don't remember) I saw my parents out the small airplane window with my brothers and sisters and my parents were crying. In contrast, I was thrilled! This was the adventure of a lifetime.

At the home of the Justice of the Peace, I had looked into the mirror on the other side of the lace covered dining room table, where we were pledging our vows and I had said to myself, "This is the biggest mistake I have ever made." Already, I had been given a peek into the mental illness that had only just begun to emerge from my young husband's behavior. He was prone to excessive rage, temper tantrums generally triggered by automobile problems or his mother, but generously sprayed across anyone who happened to be present. In those days, it was common for serious young couples to spend a lot of time together. We were together most week nights and every weekend.

But here was offered to me the opportunity to not only visit Europe, but to live there, in the brightly colored posters of Toulous Lautrec. Among the many books I had bought as a young working woman; I had gone to work directy from high school, and I mean directly - I finished high school on a Friday and went to work at W. B. Saunders Publishing Company on Monday. My job provided me with my first discretionary money, and I spent it at the Cherry Hill Mall. In those days, there were book stores, attractively arranged and fairly expensive. There was also, however, at the book store in the Cherry Hill Mall, a rediced price table at the entrance to entice passers-by into the store. On that table I had foun an art book of the paintings of Toulous Lautrec, and from what had apparently been a set, another of the work of Gauguin, and a third of the work of VanGogh.

Now I was on an airplane on my way to visit the birthplaces of these heroes of mine. I felt very grown up and also a bit frightened, not about the flying or the plane, but about going to and being in a foreign place, managing. My fear was mediated by my faith in the practicality and resourcefulness of my young husband. He was brilliant and he could do things like fix cars, read maps, plan trips, and he had been through basic training and officer's candidate school and he was proven and certified to be up to the job, whatever it might be. He had already arranged an apartment for us in a small town called Heilbronn.

Germany was part of the recycling of soldiers to and through Vietnam and back to the United States. There were so many soldiers stationed at the post World War II military bases that the housing was all full and offers were given the option of off-base accomodation which my young husband was more than happy to accept. Some officers wanted their families on base, but Michael was eager to live in the 'real' Germany not the military base one.

I am interested to look back and realie that I wasn't frightened of flying. We had spent a great many of our date nights at the Philadelphia airport dringking coffee and watching planes arrive and take-off. Maybe that was why. Of the flight itself, I remember almost nothings, who sat next to me or what we were served - all that has gone with time. What I remember is the announcement that there was going to be a slight detour in our flight. We were going to land in Thule, Greenland for slight repairs adn then we would resume our flight.

We departed the plane, somehow with our luggage. I remember that clearly because we all made kind of nests and forts out of our luggage. We were all army dependents, families of soldiers, and a few soldiers scattered amongst us. We were held in a vast cavernous hangar. We were there for many hours. No one told us anything. Mothers struggled to tend to sqwaling babies and to corral and control rambunctious toddlers and small children. I remember clearly being relieved that it was just me and I didn't have to cope with children in those hours of waiting in the cold, airplane hanger with no snack bar or any kind of comfort.

At nearly the days end, we were all told to board the plane again and we did, docile as sheep. And we proceeded to Frankfurt Am Man where my young husband awaited me in our new car. He took me to our little apartment on the third floor of a complex of new concrete residences, with its sloped ceilings and feather comforter on the fat little bed, the modern, no European style nonsense furnishings, and my favorite piece of all, a buttery kitchen cupboard with a slide out sifter for baking.

Years later when my family was all together at one of our holidays dragging out our stories, i was retelling this one and my father said, "I ws crying at the airplort because I saw the airplane they put you on was an old World War II plane and I didn't think it was going to make it!" To this day, I am stunned that my father thought my plane was going to go down. And that we had engine trouble and could, actually, have gone down!

A Fire Story and a Story of Neighbor Love

Thirty-Eight years ago, I was a struggling single mother living in a third floor walk-up on 8th Street in Philadelphia. Our building had mice and roaches. Aside from my apartment being three floors up, the laundry facilities were in a dark dank basement an additional set of steps down! Hauling my stroller and my baby, groceries and diaper bags and my school bag up and down all those steps was an ordeal, matched by the ordeal of walking several blocks to get the bus or the speedline to New Jersey, then walk several blocks to my babysitter's house before I walked to school. At the time, I taught junior high school, the classes where all the students had failed the minimum basic skills test, Remedial English. The students were hardened riverfront kids largely born into families with alcohol and drug addiction, often neglected and abused. They were angry and uncooperative students and I was a brand new teacher, "thrown into the shark tank" you could say.

My romance with my daughter's father was mysteriously deteriorating but I hadn't the energy to try to figure out why and my romantic partner who had been such a short time ago, passionate and loving, had become distant and indifferent. Still he was the babysitter on the one night a week when I was forced to take the bus back to New Jersey for a night class I taught in the library.

It was all too much - new mother, hard work, difficult travel, and I used every ounce of character and resilience I had to rise to the challenge for the sake of my daughter whom I loved with a deep bond that defies description. Because of that, I determined, when Governor Murphy, in New Jersey, gave all teachers, across the board a two thousand dollar raise, I was going to look for a house in New Jersey.

I had visited the school in Philadelphia that my daughter would be attending if we stayed there and it was grim. It reminded me of the hideous grade school in South Philadelphia that I had attended, a brick factory style fortress reminiscent of a Dickens brick workhouse. I wanted better for my daughter, a green yard, a new and attractive school with nice children.

As it happened, the best friend of my baby sitter saw a house for sale around the corner from her, a tiny bungalow with a big yard right off the bus route and a couple of blocks from a beautiful grade school. She told my babysitter who told me and I begged a teacher friend to give me a ride over to have a look. Immediately my heart leapt out to the little house which was identical to the cookie jar I had from my mother and which I had played with as a child when I was sick in bed.

Several varieties of obstacles fell into my path which is always the case in 'hero and holy grail' stories. The realtor was an obstacle, down payment was an obstacle, and my quest coincided with my parents' retirement to West Virginia so they were largely unavailable financially and in person to help me.

Despite it all, I persevered and in August of 1985, forty years ago this year, the house became mine. My first big obligation/and promise for my daughter had been realized, we had a home with a yard in a nice little town with a good school, a place where she could grow up safely and securely.

There is too much to tell about the next 40 years in the little house, but let me get to the crisis that ensued a year ago in summer.

My now grown daughter, Lavinia, who lived in New York City was home for a visit and we were walking my dog around the neighborhood when Lavinia noticed a fire in a wicker chair on the porch of the woman who had told us about the house for sale all those years ago. Her name is Kitsy. My daughter called out "Mom, Kitsy's porch is on fire!" I immediately ran to the house on the corner and banged on the door for a neighbor while Lavinia phoned the fire company. Then I ran to another neighbor. The first neighbor ran over with a fire extinguisher and began to squirt the wicker furniture all of which was on fire now. The second neighbor ran over and turned on the garden hose in the back of Kitsy's house and began to wet down the porch walls and roof which were also, by now, on fire.

Bu the time the fire truck came, just a few minutes later, the neighbors had put out the fire. At a ceremony at the Borough Hall I was presented with a pink fire hat, and the fire marshal tod me the fire had gotten into the roof and entered the ceiling and had broken through the porch window so the speedy help of the neighbors had actually saved the whole house from burning down.

The home of the neighbor who had found the 'forever home' for me and my daughter had been saved by the people she saved, and neighbors had saved neighbors!

"On Saturday, January 4, President Biden signed into law the Women's Suffrage National Monument Location Act, authorizing the placement of a monument honoring the women’s suffrage movement on the National Mall.

In a statement issued from the White House, President Biden said, "In addition to commemorating the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the Women’s Suffrage National Monument will recognize the generations of women who fought to ensure an equal voice for women in our democracy and honor the leaders who fought for the enfranchisement of all women long after the 19th Amendment was ratified. Vice President Harris and I are committed to defending equal rights for all Americans, to strengthening the federal government’s recognition of women’s contributions to our nation’s history, and to inspiring the next generation to create a more equal future for all."

The National Women's History Museum is a proud partner of the Women's Suffrage National Monument Foundation."

Although I was fortunate enough to visit the National Women's Art Museum in Washington D C back in my heyday, I haven't beeen to this museum and my travel days are over. But I do enjoy their news in my e-mail and I am still an avid reader of Women's History. Since women were able to rise through college to the doctoral level and gain entry into previously all male levels at Museums and Publishing, we have had the opportunity to learn more about our historical heroes. One of my favorites has always been Alice Paul of Mt. Laurel right here in NJ. You can visit the Alice Paul Institute and learn more about her lifelong efforts that eventually gave women in America the right to vote. Isn't it hard to believe that there wa a time we didn't have the right to vote?

Happy New Year friends and Happy Trails always!

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Friendship Gallery, Woodbury, NJ

I realized today that you couldn't find the Friendship Gallery with an online google search so I am posting this to get it out there. We began the Friendship Gallery about 2 years ago when the former SODAT tenants of the Underwood Building on the grounds of the Historic Woodbury Friends Meeting 122 N. Broad Street, Woodbury, went out of business. A small group of five cleared out the reception area and painted it and turned it into an Art Gallery. The five of us on the original committee held a group show to begin. Jo Ann Wright, painter, Jerome Barton and Susan Hagan, stained glass artists, Diana Brose, member of Friends and painter, Carleton Crispin, Property Manager at Woodbury Friends added 3D printed sculptures and a wood burned piece.

Currently, Jo Ann Wright has her first solo-retrospective up until January 31st. There are about 30 pieces including paintings, prints, and photographs and multi-media pieces from a variety of art shows. After Jo Ann's show, Diana Brose will put up her solo retrospective show.

The future of the Friendship Gallery remains to be seen as the South Jersey Artists Collaborative may be able to rent the Underwood Building if their grant comes through, under the direction of Loren Dann, painter.

Visits to the gallery are by appointment only. Call 856-430-5769 for the solo retrospective of Jo Ann Wright. Contact for Diana's show will be posted when her show goes up.

It gave me great pleasure to rescue a charming space from abandonment and turn it into a cultural arts space and it was a special delight for me to be able to have my first and only solo retrospective. I plan to do a memoir based on the paintings because seeing them in the show brought back so many memories of the 60 years represented by them. Each painting or print represents a dozen or more that were related by theme or media over that period of interest or that medium. For example there is one lithograph although I was a printmaking major at Rutgers The State University and did a wide range of print forms from woodcut to lithography. There is one colored pencil 'painting' to represent the dozenor more city store front portraits I did during the 80's when I lived in Philadelphia.

So far I have taken my friends to see the exhibition when we have lunch together in Woodbury. It is enough for me to have my friends enjoy my life's work. I have no interest in selling and many of the works on display are one of a kind and I wouldn't want to sell them. For example, I lost ten of the colored pencil city storefront portraits in a house fire in 2015 at my sister's home in Mickleton. Anyone interested in seein the show before it closes can contact me at 856-430-5769. Also I am on the grounds attending Meeting at Woodbury Friends every Sunday from 10:00 to 12:00. You can find me in the Meeting House.

Happy Trails! Happy New Year 2025 wrightj45@yahoo.com

A Good Man - Honoring Jimmy Carter 1924-2024

You know, I never understood why Jimmy Carter lost the eletion for his second term in office until I watched the pbs AMERICAN EXPERIENCE documentary on him, last night, 1/1/25. That was the way I celebrated New Year's night this year. I needed something positive. Jimmy Carter was my ideal of a really good man, honest, decent, caring and hard working. It was nothing short of a miracle that someone with such humble beginings could aspire to and actual achieve the presidency of the United States.

He began by joining the navy and moved up the ranks to become an officer in the submarine corps. He was very successful in the navy and I can tell you, from having read an autobiography of his many years ago, that he LOVED the submarine corps and would have made a career of it had his father not died and left him in charge of the family farm.

A lot of people depended on that farm, families of share croppers and his own family, so he left his chosen career and went back to Plains, Georgia to run the farm which was not prospering at the time. Jimmy Carter put his heart and his experience to the task of turning the farm into a profitable and stable business and then he turned his attention to politics. He became a senator and then governor. Amazingly, Carter won by convincing people he was an honest man and by proving that indeed he was what he said he was.

He was also careful to keep to a middle road in a segregated and intensely bigoted Georgia. He simply sidestepped the issue, but somehow, peope of both races sensed he was a good man, not a hateful one and that he would do the right thing, which he did.

He was a complete unknown, yet he put his shoulder to the task and made a dedicated and ceaseless effort with the unstinting support of his wife, Rosalyn. Often the profound support of women/wives/mothers/assistants is neglected in history, but in this documentary, he work both before and after he achieved office was acknowledged.

I have been making an effort to put a focus on the positive - doing the 5 gratitudes every day, trying to focus on the good things people are doing so I don't drown in the despair of the bad things which tend to catch the headlines, so I was really happy and grateful to spend an hour or two learning more about a really good man.

Jimmy Carter was a practicing Christian by which I mean not that he advertised as such, but that he practiced Christ's princples: PEACE, love, compassion, honesty, decency. And his greatest achievements reflect that, the SALT Treaty, the Camp David ACCords (please look them up if you don't remember) and he devoted his life after the presidency to helping provide housing for the homeless through Habitat for Humanity!

By the say, one neighbor has kindly volunteered to give my dog a really good walk every day, and my neighbor across the street just put out my recycle can and brought it back. I want to honor good men today!

Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happy New Year 2024 to 2025

Last night, I watched the ABC New Year's show to see the ball drop at Times Square. I am no fan of celebrity news or celebrity anything, really, but what I did enjoy was seeing crowds of happy, smiling and joyful faces! Happy JOYFUL faces!! Afterwards, I relfected how there was so much anger and violence in 2024 that seeing a million people dancing and kissing and waving and laughing was like a balm for the spirit.

My New Year's Resolutions tend to be the same each year but that is fine because it is a new start to an old effort to improve my health - I started the New Year off right with a New Year's walk this morning with a neighbor, from Lambert to Northmont and back - about 2,890 steps. My intent is to add some stretching and elastic band strengthening exercises to my day. Also, after my fruit cake is gone, I am cutting out sweets! I need to work on my diet - more nutrition, less snacks and much less sugar. I have altready succceeded in one effort to cut out sugar - no more caramel latte's for me from Dunkin Donuts.

My next plan was to write up the big news from 2024, but since most of it was vulgar gossip or criminal actions involving sexual harassment, exploitation and cases around these acts, I decided to skip the news and focus on positive events in my personal life in 2024 instead, so here goes.

Art was the big success story for me for 2024 I had work in 7 different group shows: The Station- 4 shows, Camden County College Annual Exhibition, Cherry Hill Arts in Bloom at Croft Farm, Haddon Fortnightly Annual "Through a Woman's Eyes Show. I sold one painting - a winter Pine Barrens landscape, and gave away a Batsto painting and a few smaller 10x12 paintings. I opened a gallery in the reception area of the abandoned Underwood building on the grounds of historic Woodbury Friends Meeting and we have held one group show of 5 participants and now I have a Solo retrospective show up until January 31st. After my show, Diana Brose will have a solo show. After that, we think the building may be rented by someone and we may lose the gallery. If that doesn't happen, we can figure something out.

On the family front, I am grateful that all my siblings are alive and functioning, my daughter is in some period of transition but is successful in her career in film production and seems to be coping well. A few relatively new friendships have been developing and I feel surrounded by friendship. My pets are all well after some dangerous health scares, and my stalwart little ark of a bungalow remains standing and in good shape. I am a lucky woman with wonderful neighbors and a great life!

I did lose a couple more friends this year, one from high school - Romeo Ventura, and one from my teen and married years, Tom Nicholas. The only news item I feel worthy of note is that Jimmy Carter died at the age of 100 - a man I truly admired and feel is a model for what a good man is. May they all be at peace with the spirit in the sky. Also I found out that I lost some distant aunts and uncles this year, my Uncle Joe Lyons and his wife, Rosalie and his sister Susan Lyons Atmore. I think of them from our childhood in South Philadelphia. No one got in touch with my sister or me despite the fact that my address hasn't changed in 40 years, but I put that down to the trauma and shock of losing a loved one and the struggle to get through the aftermath. A cousin, Mark, the son of Joseph Lyons, has been in touch with me via e-mail. I was glad he renewed connection.

All the usual bad news continues, the horror of war in Ukraine and Israel, the continual criminal assault on our communities from madmen - mass shootings, cars driven into parades, and the usual crimes involving madmen killing people in subways. Homelessness continues to increase as does drug addiction. Those are the bad news stories that follow from year to year in this our new millenium.

But at least the whole world is not at war and this morning I read that statistics show a decrease in murder and violent crime in America in general. In my own little patch there is heavenly peace and order and contentment. I hope that is true of you as well!

Happy Trails to You! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com