Finding and Holding onto Happiness

June 16, 2025 - As many of you who have visited are aware, one of my most frequent post themes has been on how to be happy. I get my tips from several wellness newsletters, magazines, friends, books, all kinds of places. Today from THE WEEK magazine comes this Yale University Study: "Take a few moments, a few times a day to slow down, pay attention and expand on those awesome moments." The awesome moments to which this sentence is referring were detailed in the article and included such small ordinary acts as stopping to admire some flowers, up close, on a walk with the dog, or the study the sky and the clowds while in a paprking lot, or to enjoy the swirl of a rising flock of birds leaving the ground and entering the sky. You can examine the veins in a dew dropped leaf on a tree beside your driveway, or enjy the yellow layer of buttercups in bloom rising up over a green yard, or the first bloom of the orange tiger lilies (which I just saw in their warm elegance along the fence at the end of my driveway. One of the ways I admire and get close to such things is to paint them! I keep a small 6 by 8 watercolor pad in the table by my sofa and a small Windsor Newton water color set there too and sometimes I just make some small watercolor paintings of, for example a group of red tomatoes from the supermarket joined by their green twisted branch, or a plucked branch of my neighbor's hydrangea which is a glorious shade of perriwinkle blue.

Anyway, the article goes on to say how these moments of awe and admiration can stave off depression. I believe that to be true and I believe it to be part of why I am so happy so much of the time.

Believe me, I am just as subject as anyone else to the sorrows of the world and the anxiety caused by the chaos and violence in our current period (the assassination of the Minnesota political couple, or the young Jewish couple in Washington DC the ongoing bombins in ISrael and Iran, the famine in Gaza, the suffering of the people in Ukraine). You would be blind and stupid to be unaware of all this, but as the serenity prayer reminds us all, we must be aware of what we can control and what we can't. I only have a few years left in this experience of being alive on planet earth and it is enormous - much bigger than these passing troubles.

One thing that reminds me of this regularly is to sit in silent worship at my Quaker Meeting in Woodbury where the Meeting House is 300 years old. As I sit on the benches made by the families of the founders and contemplate all the generations that have sat there worried about childbirth, crop failures, smallpox, wars (at least 4 in that span of time) the deaths of loved ones, the births of new ones, I am reminded that all things pass, but the aged trees in serene watchful splendor outside in the burial ground, and the old building are still here. All things pass. I will pass too, and my ashes will sit in the earth next to all the other human worriers who lived and loved an died and re-entered the earth from which we all originally sprang. So let me enjoy the infinity and power of the leaves, the trees, the birds, the clouds, the oceans, rivers, the squirrels, the purring affection of my companion cat and be grateful for what I have in this world of wonders.

Really importantly, if you are feeling down - GET OUTSIDE! Go for a walk or if you are too droopy to get up to a walk, go for drive and park in a nearby park and roll down the window!

Happy Trails!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

A small Father's Day memory

In the summer of 1985, my Dad came up from West Virginia to help me turn the attic of the house I just bought into a bedroom and playroom for my daughter. A new peaked roof had been put onto this little bungalow and the floor of the attic was a lumpy mess of the old melted roofing tar and asphalt scraps which I had to scrape off. The roof wasn't insulated, just the beams, boards and the asphalt shingles.

Over two excruciatingly hot weeks that summer, Dad showed me how to put the insulation between the beams, then put up the dry wall, then tape and plaster the seams. It was hard work and a short ceiling, so we couldn't ever stand upright and by then my Dad was in his 60's.

Because I am human, and a sibling, I got slyly competitive and asked, "Dad, do you think I am better to work with than my brothers? I fully expected him to say I was because I was following orders and working quietly and carefully. He said, "You're better in one way, you don't know what you're doing and you know it. Your brothers always think they know what they're doing and they don't."

It was a disappointing complement but so typical of Dad, and it was a great sacrifice of him to spend that summer in that baking attic.

Happy Father's Day

wrightj45@yahoo.com

NO KINGS Protest Saturday June 14, 2025

HADDON TOWNSHIP, NJ — Protesters in Haddon Township and across the country will take to the streets Saturday in "No Kings" rallies nationwide to coincide with a military parade commemorating the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary, which also falls on Donald Trump's 79th birthday and Flag Day.

"No Kings is a nationwide day of defiance," says nokings.org. "From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, we're taking action to reject authoritarianism — and show the world what democracy really looks like."

Just a few of us will be gathered on the hill of the Woodbury Friends Meeting site with our own signs protesting Tump's ICE raids which have kidnapped people at work, at school, at college, and at municipal buildings where they have gone to work on their permits and visa applications. They claim through the propaganda Fox channel to be deporting gang members and criminals but in fact, they are kidnapping citizens, workers, students, families, storekeepers and farm workers. It is horrible that people working in the fiels must flee to the woods and hide from these ICE enforcers.

One trespass against our rights follows another. Trump is working on defunding public broadcasting, defunding colleges and universities, and criminalizing protest. In Los Angeles he sent military and National Guard against American citizens exercising their legal right to protest the invasion by ICE into communities to kidnap people, and his propaganda channel magnified the violence to inflame the public and lied about the people being arrested and detained.

What have we come to?

Here are some ways you can take action. Sat, Jun 21 @ 12:30pm

Roadside Rallies Against Fascism › Sat, Jun 14 @ 12:30pm

Safety Marshals for No Kings March and Rally › Sat, Jun 14 @ 1pm

No Kings South Jersey › Mon, Jun 30 @ 6:15pm

Learn Spanish Meetup! › Fri, Jun 13 @ 7pm

Pre-Mobilization Call for June 14 ›

All Information from Cooper River Indivisible

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

June - Tips for Creativity

One of my health and happiness e-mail newsletter has been offering tips for boosting creatity and I thought I would share 5 of them with you:

1. Doodle! The propt they offered with this one was to take 10 circles and make something different out of each one.

2.Write a poem: What I would suggest is to learn a classic poetry form like the sonnet or the villanelle, read some of the greats and then work on one of your own. I suggest you leave the haiku alone unless you are going to try to do the form which is a season, a philosphical insight, and a 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable form. Again if you do this, try reading some of the good ones first. Or ignore what I said and just write freeliy for the heck of it!

3.Daydream - observing free thought trails (not rehearsing ists of chores to be done) This is best done while engaged in a thoughtless activity like walking.

4. Do 10 percent more.

5.Try one new thing - take ukelele lessons, learn a language, try a new sport, attend a historic event, Try Origami

I just did my version of this when I did 3 art pieces for the neew show at th Eiland Arts Center at The Station, Chestnut Ave., Merchantville, a gallery and coffee shop. The theme was travel and collage was the suggested medium. >p/> Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

Small Town Goodness 6/4/25

Yesterday when my sister and I took my Husky/Lab mix, Uma, for her daily walk around Martin's Lake in Gloucester City, she was fine! Last night, she started to be 'not herself' in that she didn't want to get up and go out before bed and she refused her bedtime dog treat - unheard of! This morning, before I even awoke at 7:00 she had had an accident on the landing to the back room, about a bucketful! I cleaned it up but I knew something was really wrong because she NEVER has accidents in the house and it was a ridiculously large puddle, like a small swimming pool of urine. She usually goes about a cup of uring on her walks.

She was collapsed on the floor when I finished the clean-up and she couldn't get up. I went to get my sister who often walks her for me and Uma ALWAYS wants to go in the car, it is second only to a walk in her list of most favored treats! She wouldn't get up.

When I got back with my sister, whom Uma LOVES, she did try to get up and we were hopeful. My sister got her as far as the sidewalk and Uma collapsed and couldn't get up. My sister yelled to me to get a bath towel that we could use together to hoist her up and carry her to the house and in the span of time it took for me to get the towel, a young man passing by came over to offer his help. His name wa Ely. Ely was able to pick her up gently in his arms (and she weighs 80 pounds!) and carry her into my house. He said "Dogs are in the center of my heart" and we agreed that was how we felt too. Also in that time, two neighbors from the across the street came over to offer help, and a police car stopped to ask if we needed help. After we were in, a neighbor who was doing yard work came over to ask if there was anything he could do.

Uma is collapsed on the gloor in the living room at present. I took my sister home. My vet, Dr. Sheehen in Fairview, is a wonderful veterinarian, but closed on Wednesdays so tomorrow morning, I will call and ask him to see her. As has sometimes been the case, she may be back up by then, who knows.

The point of this post is that in the face of all the horrible news of cruelty and murder that is headling right now like the smoke coming from the Canadian wildfires, here is a breath of clean, fresh, hope! All these people stopped what they were doing and came generously and lovingly to offer help to my sister, my dog Uma, and me. This is small town goodness.

Sometimes the goodness I experience in this small town of Mt Ephraim seems almost mythical. One neighbor told her babysitter about the house I live in when it was up for sale, 40 years ago. I saved her house from burning down when I walked by and saw her porch on fire. Her husband walks my dog every day. I helped a neighbor once who was stranded in a parking lot when his car broke down, he takes out my recycle and trash every week. When I thought his mother was alone too much after her husband died, I started a senior group for her which we ran together for 7 years!

My neighbors don't complain about the leaves from my trees and I share my driveway with them when they leap frog parking their two cars. We are all good to one another. This is the America of the Saturday Evening Post and Norman Rockwell. It isn't gone and it isn't a myth. It is alive and well in probably millions of small towns around America. I am so lucky to have found mine!

Happy and hopeful trails my friends, whoever you are who may be stopping by my post fence to chat! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com