It is Halloween 2025 at my house

Just adding this as a post script but in the front of the blog post instead of at the end. Please use my e-mail to contact me as the comments section of the blog is polluted by spam. The moderators do their best to trash the spam but it is a pplluted river, sadly. But you can reach me by e-mail at wrightj45@yahoo.com (cut and paste the e-mail as the link doesn't seem to work either)

Along with being Haloween, it is also 'clocks back" and two weeks until my 80th birthsay! Many of my friends in this age group say they can't believe they are 80 or 79. I do have to add that it is somewhat shocking to find myself 80 year old. That is OLD! But in my has grown a different sense of awe, that in this world of many dangers, I have been so fortunate to have lived this long and made it to this monument - age 80!

On a different subject - the anonymity of this blog is interesting to me. Since the comments section has been completely poisoned or I should say 'polluted' by spammers, no one really uses it which is why I put my e-mail on my closing. This week I had an e-mail from the deep past - the 1970's to be correct. When I was married, my ex-husband and I often visited and stayed with his best friend, Tom Nicholas. They had been friends since their youth. Tom was an interesting and talented man. He was an artist and went to Philadelphia College of Art. He was also a poet and he built at least three beautiful woodland cabins on land in the woods outside of Plattsburgh, New York. Tom's sister was a fellow high school student at Merchantville High School with me and her husband was in my class - 1963 graduates. So we had a couple of additional connections. At one of the period when we visited Tom was living with a lovely, warm, kind and intelligent young woman named Sheila. She worked as a counselor in a group home for young women called The Robin's Nest. I am the kind of persona who makes connections, so I always wondered about Sheila, after I got divorced and she and Tom split up, we never were in contact again.

Tom was a couple of years older than I am so I supposed he was 80 when he died. Apparently, according to his sister, he must have had a heart attack while driving his truck in the woods and his truck slowly drifted to the side of the road and came to a stop against a tree. Sadly his poor dog was in the car with him. Someone found them and the police took his dog to the shelter. Sad it is was, I couldn't help but think that the woodsman that he was, Tom wouldn't have wanted to die in a hospital or a nursing home, and would probably have wanted that kind of death, in his truck in the woods.

Anyhow, I wrote something for this blog about Tom and his death and it even prompted me to contact my ex with whom I had little or no contact in the nearly 50 years since we separated but I didn't know if anyone would know how to reach him to let him know his best friend had died. We had a brief flurry of e-mails and that was that.

Apparently, however, Sheila had come across my blog post about TomNicholas and she reached out to me. She is fine, she had moved to Florida and married and had a child and she had just found out about Tom's death. It was really wonderful to hear from Sheila. I can't help wondering about the people shose paths crossed with mine through my life. Unfortunately, too often when I looke them up on google, I find that they have died, as was the case with Salmon Harris the Canadian Artists, as well as my maternal Aunt, Susan Atmore, and some of the men I knew from the Edward Payson Weston 6 day Marathon, Wesley Emmons, and a man I once was going to marry, Rob Sweetgall.

In my death wishes letter, I should write a postscript and ask my daughter to make a last post on my blog to tell anyone who randomly runs into me here, that I have gone on to the "Spirit in the Sky."

eanwhile, though, I am here and celebrating my life and the seasons - gotta run to get ready to have Happy Halloween lunch with Debby Longo and Eleanor Hoffbauer, two neibhbor/friends of mine. We are going to the little Train Station Cafe in Woodbury today for lunch.

I plan to do somekind of record of the 14 days up to my 80th birthday, and maybe this is the beginning!

Happy Halloween everyone! wrightj45@yahoo.com