If like me, you are feeling the tingle of autumn in the air, you may be interested in one of the many many wonderful farmers' markets we have in South Jersey, after all, we are still the Garden State! This one has alwayeen my favorite:

Collingswood Farmers Market

Saturdays Now - November | 12 PM

Downtown Collingswood

Called “One of the State’s finest markets” by Charles M. Kuperus, the New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture, the Collingswood Farmers’ Market started as the dream of community volunteers and from the interest of the New Jersey Department of Agriculture to bring fresh produce directly from local farmers to communities.

There are also music festivals and performances everywhere and since it isn't blazing hot anymore it seems like he perfect time to check them out. As always, I post for my old favoite The Albert Music Hall!

Albert Music Hall – Saturday Night Show

August 23rd | 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM

Albert Music Hall

Running since 1974, the regular Saturday Night Show features a mix of Pinelands, Bluegrass, Country, Americana, Folk, and Old Timey music each week. This week there will be 5 bands: Crown Acoustic, Eric Sommer, Fish & Whistle, Easy As Pie, and Billy Penn & The Inside Drivers.

Happy Trails everyone - wrightj45@yahoo.com

September Walking Tours at Red Bank Battlefield 2025

If you love Red Bank Battlefield like I do, you may find these walking tours of interest:

Sept 13 - Her Story - Colonial Women in Revolutionary Times

Sept 20 - The Road to Philadelphia 1777

Sept 27 - Crossfire - Descendants talk about the Whitall Family Plantation during the Revolution

Oct 11 - The Fall of the Forts: Mifflin and Mercer

Oct. 28 - Hessian Soldiers, Hidden Stories

The Walks are 1 hour and Free! For more information call 856-853-5120

Just checked the flyer again and it says registrationn is required.

Health update - the low down on Walking

From an npr nesletter in my morning e-mail

A new study reviewed data collected from more than 160,000 adults around the world on the link between step count and a variety of health outcomes, and suggests a new goal. After 7,000 steps, “there seems to be diminishing return on investment for increasing more steps," says Melody Ding, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney who headed up the data review. Compared to people who got in just 2,000 steps a day, 7,000-steppers’ chance of developing Type 2 diabetes fell by 14%, cardiovascular disease by 25%, symptoms of depression by 22% and dementia by 38%.

And don’t worry if you’re a slowpoke – researchers found a health benefit no matter the speed of your stride.

If you’re not into walking, that’s also fine. The point is to get physical activity. You can translate 1 mile of walking (approximately 2,000 steps) into one-fifth of a mile of swimming or 5 miles of cycling, says Dr. William Kraus, a cardiologist who studies exercise at Duke University.

"Everybody wants to know how little I need to do. That is the wrong question," says Kraus, "Anything is better than nothing — more is better than less."

The Biggest Loser, 20 Years Later

There is a 3 episode documentary on apple tv about the aftermath of the hugely popular show The Biggest Loser which aired 20 years ago as of 2024. It ran for about 18 seasons (or episodes) and the documentary follows up on the winners of the weight loss cmpetition. In case you weren't a watcher, Obese people auditioned to be on the show in a kind of weightloss race involving low calorie diets (as low as 800 calories) and all day work-out routines (of up to 8-10 hours a day).

Millions of people watched both apprehensively and hopefully, I think. At the time, I was, myself, about 50 pounds overweight. It is a 50 pound companion I have had since I was 38 and got pregnant. Before that, I had always been about 125 to 130 pounds. During my pregnancy, I ate carefully but with an eye to nutrition and nourishment for my baby not with an eye to my figure. It was the beginning of the personal sacrifice that marks the role of motherhood. Within 6 months after the birth of my daughter, however, I had lost the 50 pounds because at the time, I lived in the city of Philadelphia, worked in New Jerssey, and I had no car, so I walked everywhere carrying the baby in a backpack and a diaper bag and a school bag hanging on my arms - a workout of its own kind.

Once I moved to New Jersey and got a car, however, the weight didn't stay off, those sneaky 50 pounds that had hovered watchfully and waited for a chance returned at an average of about 10 pouds a year.

I was working all the time. I had a full time teaching job, two after school jobs teaching English as a second language and tutoring homebound children, and a full Saturday job from 9-5 at the University of the Arts. Sundays, I did the laundry the grocery shopping, and once I bought my house, the cleaning and yardwork. Needless to say, I was eating fast food and not looking after myself, though I tried. When you are cooking for two and one of them is a skinny and obsessively picky eater, you are trapped in the cycle of trying to tempt your child to eat something/anything that they like (mac and cheese) at the same time you try to get something with nutrition into them (carrot coins and chicken cordon bleu wa her faorite.)

Befor that life changing event of mothernood, I had been very involved with fitness thanks to a team of phys ed teachers I had the good fortune to eeet in college at Glassboro State College in the early 1970's. They were young and modern and interested in fitness. They allowed us to research and design our own fitness programs, and get our grades by charting our progress with their guidance. At the time, I was interested (as was just about everyone else thanks to Jim Fixx) in jogging and running. My program was to start out walking around the three sided park of Knight's Park in Collingswood, and slowly add jogging from telephone pole to telephone pole with the goal of eventually jogging one whole side, then two, then finally, all three. I did it, it worked and I got an A and an understanding of how to get fit. At that time, I was married and my ex-husband a competitive and inconsiderate man by nature was into both running and bicycling. Although I could do a 15 mile ride with pleasure and without pain, he found ways to force it into 50 mile rides which killed me and took the joy out of the experience. He had been in the army and his introduction into fitness training was forced marches with backpacks at Fort Gordon, Georgia. That kind of punishment suited his nature anyhow. So he often turned our outdoor experiences into painful forced marches.

After college and before divorce. I also had taken a course in Modern Dance, taught by a gifted and fascinating professional dancer/goat farmer. She was the old hippy stock, back to mother earth, organic produce in a truck garden, chickens, and goats for milk, cheese, and sale. She had been a lifelong dancer in first ballet, and then modern dance. The birth of her sons followed by her husband's desertion changed the course of her life. They had started the farm together but he had left for New York and a career in design and a wealthy younger woman, unencumbered by pesky disabled children. She was on her own with a deaf son and a handicapped daughter. I loved her class and for the first time in my life, I began to love and honor my body and to understand it. I found grace.

During that time, I also had become a vegetarian thanks to the life changing book Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. It was the time of the greatest fitness of my life. I worked in a library and I got there by bicycle while I also went to college part-time and alternating full time.

Divorce, a move to Philadelphia, dating and we zoom forward to my later years (middle aged), I was about 50 pounds overweight, raising my daughter, working all the time, and not eating mindfully, also I was still taking college courses and earning my third post- graduate degree. And in whatever time was left, I drove my daughter to her classes, her shows, and her athletic events. Then, my daughter grew up and left home around 2002. I was free.

First, I started walking at night, but I fell and broke my arm. Then I fell down the attic stairs and seriously injured my back. I realized I was not only fat but dangerously out of shape, I had to do something, so I joined a local gym that had a program where if you got 5 people from your work to join, you got a discounted rate Five teachers joined, but soon, I was the only one going. Every day, directly after school (I gave up the tutoring job) I put on my gym clothes and went straight to the gym (Royal Fitness in Barrington). I rode the bike for an hour and did a variety of strength building machines. People at the gym were helpful and supportive which helped me overcome my intimidation in the face of machines I had never used before and an experience beyond my comfort zone.

On the way home from the gym, I stopped at Audubon Lake and did an hour walk. On average, I did 2 hours at the gym and an hour walking and in one year, 52 weeks, I lost 50 pounds. I looked and felt marvelous, like a new person. The neon sign that kept blinking in my mind was "YOU CAN GET IT BACK" but the gym had stirred something else in me, a renewed interest in romance. Several years of unsuccessful and deeply disappointing dating followed during which I slowly gained the weight back. Then I watched The Biggest Loser! Like the contestnts I was sad and hoping for some kind of progress, some kind of FIX. Over the 20 years of the program, I, too, joined the gym again, walked again, cleaned up my diet again, and again and again. And each time, I lost 20 pounds or 30 pounds, and within the next couple years I gained it back again and I got old.

Unexpected Disabilities began to pile up in my late 60's and early 70's. First, I got degenerative spine disease which I discovered while taking a kayak off a car rack. It took a year for recovery from the damaged disc that impinged on the nerves in my spinal cord and caused the pain. That ended my outdoor life. I couldn't turn my head, or drive, and moving my shoulders was always dangerous. It got better eventually though, but the orthopedic doctor told me it would spread down my spine and it was not going away; it was dessicted disc disease. Then my eyesight failed - things got blurrier and I couldn't read anymore or read street signs while driving; the cornea specialists told me it was degenerative and genetic and it was Fuch's Disease - a break down of the pumps that dlean and protect the cornea. Then I tore the meniscus in one knee, and at the gym, I developed a stabbing pain in my hip while on the treadmill. the Orthopedic doctor said I had arthritis is both knees and both hips and the treadmill was bad for both. No more treadmill walking.

Still, I could always walk outside. And I have. I kept mainly to a simple diet with enough casual diversions into bad habits (ice cream, milk shakes, potato chips, cheesecake) to keep me 50 pounds overweight. But I stayed vegetarian. It wasn't enugh. Eventually I added two new afflictions to my resume' - a case of diverticulosis so severe I ended up in the hospital (Virtua in Voorhees) - (my daughter came home to help me establish a new routine of soups), and then a couple of years later a cardiac event which sent me to the hospital (Lady of Lourdes) and ended my volunteering at Red Bank Battlefield. My sister came to my aid this time and once again, I endeavored to help myself stay alive by going to the gym and walking the dog. That's where I am today. The diverticulosis was caused by my high blood pressure medications drying out of my intestines. The cardiac even twas caused by calcified soft tissue around my coronary artery.

The trajectory of The Biggest Losers has been somewhat similar. They were fatter and lost more but they, too, gained it back and are still engaged in the great struggle. Only one kept it off and he said he is an obese man in a fit body and every day he is hungry and every day is a struggle. Iterestingly, at age 51, one of the trainers, Bob Harper suffered a massive coronary heart attack. He was fit, but his cholesterol was high and he had a meat based diet; when he recovered, he became a vegan.

Perhaps that is the fact and the theme of this EVERY DAY IS A STRUGGLE. Whether your struggle is with nutrition or exercise, depression, family life, life purpose, home maintenance and independence in living while aging, cognitive decline, loneliness, we are all engaged in a struggle every day, and perhaps in my case, a great big gratitutde is that I have the will and the fortitude to engage in the struggle and that fortitutde may be the thing that buys another year of healthy life.

By the way, we (my dog and me) are just back from our walk around Martin's Lake, about 1500 steps, 1/2 a mile, and very good for meditation because it is peaceful, beautiful and usually pretty empty. I am listening to Dr. Dean Ornish's book UNDO IT! on audio book each night and trying to implement the lifestyle advice from his research. Also, I am doing the workbook each day. Just this week, my brother was in the hospital for his hear - congestive heart failure (which killed our father) and atrial fibrillation. He is now determined to clean up his lifestyle - no more drinking or smoking.

Good Luck on your Great Struggle whatever it may be!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

August is Wellness Month

Try these simple wellness tips: Stay Active – walk, dance, or try yoga Eat Healthy – focus on fruits, veggies, and whole grains Think Positive – practice gratitude daily Connect – spend time with loved ones. Manage Stress – try mediation or deep breathing Sleep Well – rest is key to good health

Collections - August 14, 2025

This headline item mademe think about collections today

Are you a collector?

A married couple, they died in a car crash in Italy. Mario Paglino and Gianni Grossi, designers who turned Barbie dolls into one-of-a-kind works of art that sold for thousands of dollars, including one that fetched more than $15,000 at a charity auction, died on July 27 in Italy. Mr. Paglino was 52; Mr. Grossi was 54.

Well, I haven't been a collector unless books count. I have thousands of books and have been donating dozens of large containers of books to the Free Books Project over the past 5 years because my eyesight is failing from Fuch's Dystrophy and I can't really read anymore. I am happy for my books to go to those who can read.

Other than books I don't have much in what you could call a 'collection' which is defined as a group of related objects. My daughter did have many Barbi dolls in her childhood and all the accessories including the converible car, the ice cream stand, the hair-dresser's salon, the recording studio, and the bargecue shop, among others. But perhaps her main collections were her Jurrassic Park action figures. She had a dinosaur encyclopedia and all kinds of accessories to that film, lunch box, t-shirts, posters, all that. She also collected American Girl Dolls and has Four of them. I forget their names. Actually almost anything that counts as a collection belongs to my daughter: she has an antique bottle collection given her one piece at a time by her father, probably a couple dozen bottles dug from privies in Northern Liberties in Philadelphia.

I am more of a one-of-a-kind collector. I have one doll from my own childhood, not particularly valuable in terms of cash but she means a lot to me because she was given to me by my Godfather, Neal Schmidt, who was possibly the nicest man I ever knew, kind, gentle, thoughtful and serene.

I gave away my seashell collection to my sister's grandson, and my fossils. For a time, I had an eye for house shaped teapots and I think I have three sets of them. Once, my daughter and I had a tins collection, added to by her vintage/antique buying and selling father, but Lavinia sold or disposed of most of them during a summer when she was getting ready to make her break-for California. She held a sureptious yard sale. I had forbidden it because I didn't want her gathering anything she decided might sell, loading it up out front and then disappearing leaving the remnants on the lawn which was a probably scenario for that period of her life. She held the yard sale when I was away and threw away trash cans of things that didn't sell. I was heartbroken when I saw some things I had given her - a little cupboard with an antique lead cowboy and an Indian to go with teh book The Indian in the Cupboard, for example. I just turned away and let it all go, not the first time in my life I had to make that move.

When I left my ex-husband, I was so exhausted, frightened and overburdened with worry I couldn't carry one more box of my stuff up to my apartment over the Drug Store on Haddon Ave. in Collingswood, so I left my entire collection of first and only edition feminist magazines and books on the curb. I had called some women's groups hoping someone would come to get them but no one was willing and I couldn't carry them up those stairs.

Collecting is an interesting and vauable pursuit, to me. First off, collector's save and conserve material culture for the future. Especially in this 'throw away' culture in which we live, stuff isn't saved, it is disposed of and replaced by new stuff.

I had a '3 Diminsion Art' course in college, taught by sculptor John Giannotti, where he once discussed the future of material culture and furnishings in a time when houses are built without attics. In my childhood most houses had attics and Grandparents and Great-grandparents things were stored there. Attics and chests of the antique and vintage items featured in many novels about treasure maps and shipwrecked ancestors forced into cannibalism. Our modern post World War II lives didn't include attics. Our modern New Jersey Development houses had no attics or basements. Nonetheless, some old family heirlooms managed to survive and float down to me and live with me at present. I have no idea what will become of them because, so far, in our family there is no one remotely like the kind of child I was which is how these objects came to be in my possession; I was that child, the reader, the saver, the Grandmother's girl. I have Sandman/Young Great grandmother's 1929 sewing machine, Merchant-Marine Wright Grandfather's mahogany deck chair, a wing chair in poor condition from my mother's McQuiston side of the family and some fading photographs from 1869. It is impossible for me to say what will become of these refugees from time after I, their conservator, am gone from this world.

I have been divested of my things several times over through divorce and moving. This house where I have lived for 40 years is filled with things which I suspect will have no value to anyone when I am gone, and this is a sad observation I hear all around me from people in my age group who are preparing for the final divestiture. Nobody wants all that old stuff.

I know there are collectors out there who would like to have and to hold many of the interesting items I have but I don't have the interest or motivation to make those arrangments; for example, I have a 1947 German made portable typewriter and an even older 1919 typewriter. The stories they tell from the times when they lives, but I don't feel like looking for homes for them.

Who knows, maybe a day will come when old things will become popular again and it will be easier to find homes for these wonderful things like my Great Grandmother's sewing machine. I can only hope so. Maybe a web site called The Old Curiosity Shop.

Happy Trails

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Collingswood Arts & Crafts Fair August 16

Join Perkins Center for the Arts in celebrating arts and culture from across South Jersey at the COLLINGSWOOD CRAFT AND FINE ARTS FESTIVAL!

Discover a vibrant mix of art and community at Artist’s Alley on Irvin. Emerging artists showcase their talents alongside hands-on crafts for the whole family. Perkins Center for the Arts brings together local artisans and is, again, partnering with Bancroft, a nonprofit serving people with disabilities, to feature student artwork in the Bancroft space in Artist’s Alley. Artist Kathy Casper will also be there, leading a hands-on art activity for visitors. Don't miss the stunning exhibition Visions of the Idyllic by Shutian Cao inside the Perkins galleries!

Festival Details: Explore, inspire, and support local talent August 16-17, 10:00 am-5:00 pm.

Special Events on Saturday, August 16:

Exhibition Docent Tours - 10 am - 1pm

Artist Talks and Stories in the Folklife Zone: 10:30 am - 2:30pm

Creation Station with Bancroft

Shutian Cao Artist Talk and Demo: 3:00 pm

Gallery Reception: 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Join in the Folklife Zone, part of Artist's Alley on Irvin! Established by the NJ Folklife at Perkins in 2022 as part of the Collingswood Crafts and Fine Art Festival, we honor contemporary living cultural traditions and celebrate those who practice and sustain them in South Jersey.

Enjoy free demonstrations, displays, and other activities featuring master artisans and tradition bearers. This year, we present a series of workshops on Sunday, August 17, presented by folk artists and tradition bearers who presented the day prior.

Full Schedule: https://canvas.perkinsarts.org/events/292

NJ Folklife at Perkins is a co-sponsored project of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com

Pineystock, a 60s-Themed Music Show

August 10th | 2 PM

Albert Music Hall

We’re throwing our very first Pineystock—a far-out, 60s-themed music show inspired by the legendary summer of ’69. It promises 3 hours of peace, pickin’ and harmonies. You might hear some Janis, CCR, and the Grateful Dead renditions—but this isn’t just a tribute show.

If you have never been to Albert Hall, you should go! It is a long ride to Waretown but how I loved that long dark ride through the mysterious pine woods to get there the many times I went in years gone by. I haven't been there in ages because 1.my eyesight has dimished with a cornea disease and I can't drive in the dark. 2. The adventurous friends I went there with have gone on their own path years back and we don't see one another any more. Nothing happened, we just drifted apart. 3.I can't get any of the people I know now to go with me! The last time I went about ten years ago, was with my daughter and she really enjoyed it. She even bought an Albert Hall bumper sticker for her car!

Wish I could go with you!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Anne of Green Gables and Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn

A random set of thoughts: when I was walking today I was thinking of Anne of Green Gables as I often do. It was probably the most influential of the books I read as a child and being a total book worm, I read a LOT of books. I read adult literary classics right alongside girlhood favorites like Nancy Drew, and Cherry Ames-Student Nurse. But the one that touched my heart and influenced my life was Anne of Green Gables. Her profound response to the natural world matched my own. Her attempts to do the right thing even though they sometimes went awry matched my own. I realized with Anne of Green Gables that I wasn't odd or singular and that there were others in the world with a similar set of aspirations and sensitivities. Anne of Green Gables has walked through my long life with me. I am so glad I visited Nova Scotia twice although both times I was with a male companion who was captaining the expedition and so despite my desire, we didn't visit Prince Edwar Island. Nonetheless, I got the feel of the air and sky and sea from my visits.

Of course, being a girl in the last half of the twentieth century, I read the boyhood books as well as the girl books. So I read Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and in fact, most if not all Mark Twain's novels, although some of them were completely incomprehensible to me like A Connecticut Yankee i King Arthur's Court. But those boys, Huck and Tom, never reached my heart in any meaningful way and I never think of them now even though I have watched the film versions of the books as well.

It seems to me in some profound way, these two novels of youth represent the female and male worlds even through the vast stretch of time and change from when they were written to now - something more on the psychological level. And if I were in a literary program, I think I might want to explore this relationship. Anne of Green Gables still has spin-offs appearing on streaming tv services and has perhaps had more film inte rpretations that Tom Sawyer or Hickleberry Finn. Maybe women cling more to the literature of their childhood than men do. In fact, I knew very few boys who read for pleasure, neither of my brothers, for instance and non of the boys I knew in the neighborhood or in school. It wasn't until college and the literature program that I was in that I met young men who loved books and wanted to talk about them. That was a revelation and a joy!

Anyhow since this literary pondering wasinsisting on being put down somewhere, here it is.

wrightj45@yahoo.com

UnDo It update - Day 2 Aug. 4, 10:00 a.m.

Well, a small victory and a small defeat (so far) I did manage our walk to Martin's Lake and I went with a neighbor who often walks with me and Uma, my Lab. I did NOT get to the gym, at least not yet. One of the reasons I was so keen on trying this Ornish program was because I have been having a symptom for about a year - a queasy stomach in the morning, often before I awaken and it is pronounced enough that it wakes me up. I googled it and the result was probable low blood sugar. I am still trying to figure out what to eat or drink and when to eat or drink it. But I hoped that if I followed the program, I might be able to ward off diabetes if that is the cause of the nausea.

By the way, the grocery shopping that I did yesterday only cost a total of $40. I will make the salad again today for lunch because I am determined to have fresh vegetables EVERY day for the 8 week program.

Also, I had hoped to get to the gym today to help raise my daily step count which, yesterday, by the end of the day was 3300 and I am aiming for 5000. Today, the park is only 1500; it is a half mile park and takes about 30 minutes at my glacial pace. Because I have arthritis in my feet, knees and hips and a bad back, I walk very slowly. Also I have to be careful walking because of my eyesight problems, one issue is I can't see depth properly, so a crack in the sidewalk can be a fall for me if I am not slow and careful. My back holds up just enough to make it around Martin's Lake which makes this walk perfect for this stage in my fitness attempt.

wrightj45@yahoo.com

A New Start - Dr. Dean Ornish's book - UnDo It! Tracking my progress

Yesterday I began to listen to Dr. Dean Ornish's new book UnDo It! about reversing and preventing chronic diseases. I was familiar with his Reversing Heart Disease book and I was hoping this new book would get me back on the track to improving my health and mobility.

For 3 days, I have done my morning walk around Martin's Lake with my dog Uma. The weather has been superb. Today, after Woodbury Friends Meeting, I stopped in the ShopRite and from the organic dept. in produce I bought: broccoli, shredded carrots, baby leaf spinach, and tomatoes. It is my goal to make a fresh vegetable salad every day at midday. The two areas I have fallend down on most are eating vegetables and getting to the gym for my half hour workout.

I will track my progress here: So today, Sunday August 3rd (It is good to start at the beginning of the month!) the full process, at least the walking and the fresh vegetable meal begin! I forgot to get mushrooms, and I want to add sunflower seeds and black olives. Oh yes, I also had an ear of corn microwaved in its husk - delicious! I am on chapter 2 of the UnDo It! book. I will keep you posted.

The main idea I take away so far is that instead of compartmentalizing heart, separate from brain, and diseases separate from each other, like diabetes separate from diverticulosis, they are all in one system and that system needs the proper fuel and maintenance: vegetable based diet, and strength training with cardio - walking and the gym. That way, the cardiovascular system can deliver the right stuff to the brain and the organs and can keep modulated the balances of sugar and fats and such. Forgive me if my explanation is less than AMA ready.

Happy Trails! And may your trail run through good weather and fair skies! wrightj45@yahoo.com