February Black History Month 2026

"On January 22, 2026, the National Park Service (NPS) removed the "Freedom and Slavery in the Making of the Nation" exhibit from the President's House site at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. The exhibit, which opened in 2010, detailed the lives of nine enslaved people in the household of President George Washington."

borm 1748 in Va. died 1812 Hercules Posey was held in slavery at the plantation of George Washington. He was brought to Philadelphia to cook at the president's mansion. He was a renowned chef who served faithfully until at one point after some perceived transgression he was demoted to field labor. He escaped and lived free in New York City for some time, until he was manumitted by Washington's weill in 1801. Another excaped slave named Oney Judge or Ona Sudge Staines, born 1773 escaped and ived free until her 75th year when she died. Washington kept slae catchers after her throughout her life, but she was never caught and a book called "Never Caught" was written about her, author Erica Armstrong, published 2019.

Trump can take down the markers but we can keep the memory alive in our hearts and on our blogs and in our discussion groups! Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com

Review of the documentary Queen of Chess, Netflix February 2026

Last night I watched the documentary Queen of Chess on Netflix. I had read about it in the news magazine The Week to which I subscribe. I have followed chess from a distance with an affectionate interest kind of like that of an aunt following the exploits of a distance cousin.

When I was a high school English teacher, I sponsored The Chess Club in our high school which was a working class sociodemongraphic in a run down river town. As a new teacher, I was given the lowest classes in terms of behavior and achievement, the students who had failed the 'new' minimum basic skills test, ninth graders (for those who don't know - the worst grade to teach in terms of behavior management). It seemed to me that one of the things my students, mostly boys of about 15 years of age, in the midst of the physical turmoil of adolescence, needed was something to teach strategy, patience, and an eye to a few steps ahead.

I found the boy popularly deemed to be the toughest of the touch, a skageboard hero, six feet tall with a mohawk who had been mostly home-schooled by his mother due to his problems with behavior in school. Bohemians often hit it off with outsiders and the outsider world leaves a little room for art of many kinds, spray paint, comic books, etc. I just had a feeling this boy, very bright, would be intrigued by the game of chess. He was. And because he took an interest, his followers did as well. I bought a dozen cheap sets at the local 5 * 10 store for $2.50 a box and proceeded to teach them the basics. In about one game, they could all beat me. I am not particularly crafty or competitive, and they all had those traits.

We formed a chess club which seemed to confer an extra cache' of glamour on the bad boys. I took them on class trips with field trip money to chess tournements. Sadly, I was not a good enough chess teacher to make it possible for them to win, but I showed them a wider world.

I would have liked to be a better chess player but I lack a most essential ingredient, a trainable memory. My memory works bery well on things it likes, but I cannot force chores on it, they slide right out. At the time, I knew so little about chess, that I didn't know about chess magazines or books but our chess club didn't last long anyhow because we met on lunch hour and the maintenance staff complained about potato chip bags and wrappers in the classroom trash cans. I couldn't do after school because I was a single parent and i had to get home to my little daughter. They closed us down. No matter, I had other programs including an annual trip to the theqter in PHiladelphia where my students got to see the Nutcracker, and an opera.

Back to chess. This was another of the ubiquitous regions entirely dominated by men. At the time of my youth women weren't even permitted to compete in tourements with men should they have so desired. Few women did. The prevailing 'masters' publicly announced on a regular basis that women would never compete in chess with men because we weren't intelligent enough aggressive enough, and we lacked the concentration.

So from a distance, though, I kept my eye on the chess world as indeed most people did in the era in which I grew to adulthood. Everyone knew the names Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov and people sat breathlessly awaiting the results of games that pitted Americans against Russians. It was like the space race, a tribal competition of national epic proportions.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered via the review in The Week, that there had been a Chess superstar who had actually been in the top 10 of Grandmasters, and had actually beaten Gary Kasparov! Needless to say, I couldn't wait to see that documentary. It was really well done, too. Judit Polgar, Hungarian, had been trained from early childhood by her father who had the great experimental goal of trying to raise a genious, He was of the nurture rather than nature disposition. He and his wife home-school their three daughters and they had 3 training chess sessions each day. All three young women became successful chess champions, but Judit was MORE! She set her goal on becoming a Grandmaster and beating Gary Kasparov, at the time, the greatest chess master in history. Judit won her way up through the women's tournement heirarchy then the mens. Finally, she came face to face with Kasparov and I will leave that to you to watch in the documentary because it is a subtle and beautiful portrait of two greats coming together in the spirit of championship level sportsmanship.

Some of the male competitors that Judit beat refused to shake her hand after the match, a very surprising thing in that world of extreme honor for rules and correct behavior. To me. her demeanor throughout this journey to greatness was so admirable that it brought tears to my eyes. She met every disappointment and every slight and i nsult with grace and determination. Judit Polgar was the Grandmaster of sportsmanship.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am working on a project for the Haddon Fortnightly and HMHS March Women's History Group Art show. I am doing a group of 15 miniatures of great women often overlooked by history. The theme is "Remember the Ladies" the famous quote from Abigail Adams in Revolutionary America. At first I planned to stick to women of that period, the 1700's but some caaled out to me and I had to move up the centuries and add some of my favorite heroines. Now I am adding Judit Polgar, Happy Trails as we endure the Polar Vortex, the Arctic Blast and the third rider of the frigid apocalypse, the Bomb Cyclone! wrightj45@yahoo.com

The Polar Vortex and being 80!

Ok, just so you know, there is an upbeat to each of my crises. Right now my ongoing crisis has been coping with transportation in regard to grocery shopping since the Polar Vortex dumped a bunch of snow on us and the Arctic Blast froze it into white concrete.

Crisis number one was getting my car out of the driveway because small drifts had formed against the tires and froze there. I hadn't prepared in advance for this event because it was somewhat unprecedented. This had never happened to me before, and I was unprepared because my neighbor said he would shovel me out when he shoveled his drive, but after he did it once, more snow came and he had so much to do, he couldn't keep up with my driveway too and his back went bad.

Neighbors scrambled for sold out ice melt products. I had asked my nephew Archie if he could stop on his way home from work and pick up some Ice Melt at Tractor Supply and I would give him $100 to spread it on the driveway and he said "NO."

My nephew, Godson, Archie is a good case in point for the late learned lesson that it isn't always 'us' who are to blame for the anger of a man, often it is self generated and we are simply the target. We used to have a fairly good relationship and he would do the occasional small job for a whacking good pay out. I always remembered his birthdays and Christmas with nice gifts. Then about 2 years ago, he took against me. I think it is because my sister and I are close and he has become deeply angry at her and dumps all his rage on her and I am connected to her, so I am now the 'enemy' as well.

On his birthday last February, I gave him a $99 AAA automobile service membership, a birthday card with some cash $25, and took him, his son and my sister for brunch at The Station in Woodbury. His reaction to his gift was "Why'd you buy that? I don't need that." followed by a dismissive little temper gesture. Needless to say, he has used the AAA membership three times this year. He has been so mean to my sister that she and I decided to stop appeasing and enabling him. He has never remembered my birthday or Christmas, or hers, and I decided to boycott his February 5th birthday this year. Neither my sister nor I gave him a card or a gift this year.

My sister came to the rescue after a week of being frozen in when I began to run out of some essentials - mostly cat stuff. She took an Uber over to my house and used a shovel to chip away the ice behind my back tires and then got in the car with me as I manuevered out between the high shoulders of plowed street snow that stood 3 feet high like the straits of Gibralter beside the driveway. We did a shopping and I took her home.

One of the problems I have had since then is that I have to put 'trax" (a kind of cleats, on the bottom of my shoes to get me safely over the frozen path and driveway to the car, but once in the car, because my back is so stiff and my knees don't bend I can't get the shoes off and remove the trax from the soles of the shoes. The tracks make walking on flooring treacherous because they act like tiny ice skates.

It has been a week stuck indoors - I didn't go to church, and I began to run out of some things I needed but my sister isn't available this weekend, so I was on my own. What to do?

Things were piling up because on top of everything else, all the sewing and painting, and the leaning on things to get to the car had caused my right wrist to go bad again. This is an affliction that assaults me every time I get into a period of over use. It is like a stress sprain that gets so bad, I can't lift a cup or a saucer, my wrist just gives out with some shocking pain. If I immediately put on a wrist brace and immobilize for a day or two, my wrist recovers; whatever has been aggravated calms down, and I can use my wrist again, so that is what I did yesterday. I took the day off and did nothing, and my wrist recovered.

But what that meant was that the dishes piled up, the litter needed scooping, some broken things needed repair and I had to go to the ShopRite for groceries today. How to get those cleats off so I could walk safely into the store myself instead of waiting in the car while my sister did it for me. In the car, I used the short snow scraper to lift my shoes up to my lap after I kicked them off on the floor, took off the cleats, dropped the shoes on the pavement and slid down into them, did the shopping, back in the car, I lifted the shoes up again and put the cleats so when I got home, I could safely carry the three heavy bags, one at a time of course, into the house.

This morning and yesterday morning, I was on empty in the happiness tank. I felt old and weak and helpless, even a little humiliated and unwilling or unable to think how to get help. But I dug down and found my character and got to the store, had a rest, did the dishes, put the groceries away, fed the dog and now I am typing this. Success! Triumph over adversity! I also sent text messages to two of my old Senior group friends who have it much harder than I have. One has a wheelchair bound husband and has just been diagnosed with liver disease herself, the other has no car and has to find ways to manage her three huge dogs with minimal help from her son.

What I learned from my experience is next year have the Ice Melt on HAND and use it! Also, look into ShopRite home delivery! AND do not sign up for any more classes.

Another crisis hanging over me had been that I spent a lot of money to take a quilting course which I thought would be good for me learning something new and meeting more women. The course was $120, the materials $120 and I don't like it. It is too hard for me - too much measuring and sewing machine use. I am the least experienced in the class and they are all too young for me - in their 60's mostly. My sewing machine needle broke, and I replaced it but the replacement needle fell into the machine and I can't get it out. The sewing machine repair guy has not returned my call. I am behind in class and this is another chore I need to resolve today. I have to see if the machine will work as I am advised by a google search on what to do if your needle falls into the machine.

The description of the course never mentioned that I needed a machine. I thought we would sew by hand (ha!) and it said they had machines for us to use. Turns out they do but it is required that you do most of the work at home!

Unfortunately this sewing takes place as I am trying to finish the art work for the annual March Women's History Group Art Show at the Haddon Fortnightly, and again, I have spent too much money and time to let it go. I have to get it finished! Pressure - stress - chores.

The added stress is keeping hte kitty litter empty of poop becaue the dog has become obsessed with eating poop every chance she gets and the fat left in the excrement from the cat food causes her to have a relapse of her pancretitis, so I am on consant alert to keep the litter done (wrist problem) as well as to keep the gates chained (every time I have to go to the bathroom myself) so she can't get out of the living room to eat out of litter boxes in the bath or bedroom. All these little obstacles.

My painting table came apart and had to be glued together too. - small stuff but it piles up, like used up stuff you need from the grocery - cat food, toilet paper, milk, crackers, cheese.

Right now the "severe weather warning Polar Vortex Wind" is smacking every loose thing against the house and shaking the windows and puffing on walks like it is the wolf blowing my house down. Even the animals show concern - looking up from their naps when a particularly vigorous gust rattles our little pig hovel made of twigs.

It's all ok. I am home from my trip to the store, the groceries are away, we are supplied well enough to last until my next pay day and I have treats for the end of the day when everything is done and I am on the sofa wrapped in my electric lap blanket and watching something on my laptop - stand-up comedy by Tom Papa or Mick Birbiglia or Kathleen Madigan, or perhaps this weekend - The Winter Olympics in Milan! Although when I tried to sign up with peacock streaming service to watch it, my password was denied, then my e-mail was denied with the caution that my e-mail was already belonging to someone else (probably me from the summer Olympics when I had subdcribed to Peacock and then after the month, canceled.) They don't seem to have software programmers who have expected such an ocurrence, which I would thing was pretty common, so I don't know if I can find a way to see the Olympics. I would like to, and I bought microwaveable popcorn just in case I figure it out.

For next year - 1.a supply of Ice Melt early in the season, 2.Home delivery option from Shop-Rite, 3.No joining any courses and it may be time to re-think entering the Women's History Group Show - it turns out to be a challenge I relish but spend far too much time and money on. I have to respect the needs of my deteriorating joints too.

Well, today I overcame most of my obstacles and I have gotten a confidence and lift from it which helps me feel like I can manage the rest of my chores. I also have to do the laundry! Maintaining means getting chores done EVERY day and taking a day off here and there causes a pile up. Fortunately, this time, I got lucky and with a latte' found a little wave of optimism and energy to tackle the pile up and probably get it all done, and that gives me a sense of hope that I am ABLE. This too shall pass - and Spring will come and summer, and I will work on getting in better shape to face the next winter. And feel encouraged about managing this one. My friends who are my age have looked into the future and seen friends a relatives a few years down the road and we are seeing tough times ahead - we have to prepare. Hope you are managing through the Polar Vortex, the Arctic Blast and the Bomb Cyclone too! wrightj45@yahoo.com

NEW JERSEY'S REVOUTIONARY WAR MUSEUM

For may volunteers in the South Jersey History World, the rescue and renovation of this survivor of our Revolutionary War era is a miracle and a dream come true.

The more you learn about the pivotal place of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War, the more you marvel at and mourne our lost opportunities in showcasing it. Just recently as you probably know, the long surviving historic home of a revolutionary war hero who mortgaged his property to raise a militia to serve with our Continetl forces was destroyed in an early morning attack by the Department of Transportation while the History community was fighting to save the building, the Huggs Harrison House which stood on St. Mary's Cemetary grounds off Browning Road in Bellmawr.

Anyhow, back to vicotory, the Camden Co. Historical Socity just posted this news item about the progress on the restoration of this rescued building.

merican Revolution Museum of South Jersey

$4M Rehabilitation on Track for Completion by June 20th

Camden County Historical Society has been making waves in restoration and preservation, planning to open the newly renovated Cooper House Museum just in time for the 250th birthday of the United States. The Cooper House will be the trailhead for Camden County's planned 34-mile LINK Trail system and is located just north of the Ben Franklin Bridge at 60 Erie Street, Camden.

The two-story museum will include rotating exhibits and details of South Jersey’s role during the American Revolution, such as battles and skirmishes. Other rooms with focus on South Jersey counties, as well as The Declaration of Independence. To read more, Click Here.

note: I have visited this building many times over the years along with a coupe of other propeties once belonging to the founding Cooper family Sadly, one that existed in ruins is entirely gone, and another, last time I saw it was a burned out shell. I am so glad this wqs saved and I can't wait to go visit! So many milestone events happened right here during the Revoution and you can begin with the Battle of Red Bank in National Park, and follow up with a visit to Batsto and learn about the Forks. Books oon both places have been written by Barbara Solem, a local author.

"A Problem to Solve or A Part of Life "-

Reading The Week magazine today (issue 1270, Jan.23rd, even though today is February 1st, I ran across this phrase in an article about Amy Pohler's podcast A Good Hang, which won a Golden Globe. I have not listened to this podcast, nor, any podcast for that matter. No reason why, just haven't added it to my daily routines. The observation was made in regard to the occasional emergence of observations about menopause. Speaking from the cliff top of age 80, I can see Menopause dimly in the mist from the spray of the waves hitting the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, on the beach far below.

What I remember from that time is the HEAT which came from a small generator just below my throat, roughly above my sternum. It radiated and the red spread on my skin up to my face and it felt like I had generated a 85 degree humid summer day in my own body. Along with it came irritability, impatience, and restlessness. I did often go out into the yard as I have read other women have done, to cool off in the refreshing winter air. I had menopause for 10 years from about age 42 when my orderly body began to count down periods at one month intervals, to 52 when they were ceased entirely. That decade happened to coincide with the most stressful and occupied decade of my life. I worked two demanding jobs and raised my daughter, bought a house, and had no car.

What I did was I endured it, got to know it, and lived with it. At the time there was a pharmaceutical push to get all of us menopausal women onto "medication" Horonal replacements. I have always had a suspicious nature and in particular with the pharmaceutical empire which is, to me, a cousin to the military empire, hungry and crafty predators who do serve a purpose in the environment but must be watched with wariness.

Aside from menopause, however, I think that phrase from the review of Amy Pohler's podcast, has larger and wider implications. So many things in life are part of the process and not necessarily problems to be solved. We all know that from the times when we are just venting about some issue to friends and they dump a basket of onions of options on us - how to solve the problems. Most of the solutions are things we have already thought of and tried, and many are completely beside the point. I have so so many friends who have sought medical solutions to problems I have personally felt were things that could be solved privately with lifestyle changes, attitude adjustments, or which could be just endured.

A [erfect example is the many friends I have who immediately seek antibiotics for the common cold. And one kind makes them sicker and they demand another kind. I have freinds who are encyclopedic in their knowledge of antibiotics and they go from one to another when my opinion (which I now keep to myself because I realize the emotional dependence is beyond my scope) is best endured with soup and tea and rest and usually gone in a week. My antibiotic addicted friends can spend 3 weeks in their fruitless circuit wile damaging their gut biomes and depleting their bodies attempts to heal them.

Same for insomnia. I have friends with 30 year Ambien habits when they know long term use has been linked to cognitive decline. But they will not give up the habits of tv watching in bed, laptop scrolling (blue screens) in bed, and drinking copious quantities of caffeinated beverages during the day. I don't say anything about any of this anymore.

I have divested myself of zealotry regarding my opinions on people's choices. Now I just think they have a right to both live and die as they choose. Same for me.

So many things in life, though, I think are to be endured rather than solved, especially in the realm of emotional pain. People turn to so many emolients for relief from emotional pain, alcohol, marijuana, (my favorite is food treats like ice cream and cookies) when the easier, simpler, less expensive and inevitably most successful strategy is to endure it. Some good helpers, I find, for enduring these admittedly deeply painful emotional situations include observing what I am experiencing and writing it out. This is an age old, trusted way of coping, and to some extent, the wellspring of literature and poetry, and maybe art.

I often think of Marcel Prousts Remembrance of things Past and how he resolved his confinement and debilitating illness by this poetic and enlightening trip in his mind and memory. I never got through the whole 6 volumes, and in fact, gave them away to the Free Books Project now that I know I will no longer be able to read anything like that due to my vision impairment, but I read and listened to enough to get this function of this particulary work of art. In fact it is a profound bit of knowledge to ponder, that a man debilitated and confined to his bed and room broke free and created a lasting literary monument.

Another short article that I read that touches on this idea was about a woman who was severly sickened by genetically inherited sickle cell to the extent that her hands and legs were amputated. But she realized she still had her sense of taste which was awakened by the gift of a b rown butter cornbread, so that when she was released from rehab with her prosthetic hands and legs and wheelchair, she opened a culinary venture with the support of a devoted assistant. This is some profound level of endurance and maximizing of the miracle of a life.

This is a particularly good time to ponder endurance because we in New Jersey, are in the grip of our own little Ice Age! Temperatures trapped in the teens, snow frozen into concrete layers on every surface and little icebergs on every sidewalk, so that both driving and walking are impeded and dangerous. I have to use my crampons to walk from the house to the car, and then I am trapped in the car because I can't walk on ordinary floors in them becaue they become like ice skates on linoleum.

People my age are in terror of falling because so many of the skills that keep us upright are being slowly stolen from us - muscular strength, joint flexibility, mental/brain and muscle coordination. I know, it doesnt' happen to everyone, but it happens to most people. We are everywhere, shuffling, holding on to stuff, and, sadly, falling. But all the challenges of AGING itself fall into the category of things that must be endured and like Marcel Proust, we must find other avenues into beauty.

Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com

Winter like a Scandinavian

Perhaps it is my ancestry, I am half Irish, half English and German with a large percentage of Danish. But maybe it is my lifelong practice of turning my mind into positivity as a survival strategy, but I did take notice of the Hygge some years back. I am cosy at home today, with candles ready, a great Art Project ready to work on, supplies of water and canned goods, my chores all done, and a bunch of chili in the fridge and freezer, so bring on the SNOW.

We are all gearing up for the much hyped Big Snow Storm that was presaged by weather terms like Polar Vortex (my personal favorite) and Arctic Blast! Each day we get updates and weather maps in beautiful colors showing us the track of the ice blue storm. Today it hit Texas. Our own forecast here in New Jersey has gone from 12 to 20 inches, down to 4-6 inches. Whatever - I am ready. and as of this morning and my wonderful neighbors have checked in on me offering reassurance they will dig me out; my dog is walked, we have taken note that my heater exhaust is above snow level, and I am dressed in fleece lined sweat pants, thermal underwear, Columbia hiking socks, and a flannel hoody from L. L. Bean. I am warm and cozy. I have many blankets and quilts available as needed too. Living in a fairly urban place, Camden County, I doubt I will have very long to wait if we do lose power. Urban areas get the power up and running in no time, unlike places like where my brother lives in West Virginia! I willl call and see how he is but since we are of the same ancestry, I am sure he is facing the storm with apositive attitude.

Here is part of an e-mail article I saw today:

"Remember the late-2010s craze for “hygge,” the Danish concept of coziness and comfortable well-being? The Scandinavians, the rest of the world realized, might know a thing or two about optimizing for winter. They know from long, dark seasons, but still rank as the happiest people on the planet. Kari Leibowitz, a psychologist who moved north of the Arctic Circle to study how people thrive there during winter, wrote in The Times in 2020 that the secret is a “positive wintertime mind-set.” It’s possible, she found, to cultivate this, even if you’ve always associated the season with dread.

A mind-set shift involves changing what you notice, what you remark upon, where you place your focus. Leibowitz advises concentrating on what you like about winter (cooking, cozy indoor reading, the quiet after snowfall) over what you don’t (don’t get me started). “Appoint yourself a wintertime ambassador this year,” she advised, “and encourage everyone around you to notice what they like about the winter as well.” I imagine this self-designation might read as irritating to one’s shivering friends and family who would prefer to partake in the time-honored January tradition of complaining about the weather, but I’m already the unofficial publicist for summer, so maybe a new seasonal enthusiasm would read as refreshing.

Horowitz also advises people to get outside, to figure out the layering situation such that experiencing the Norwegian concept of “friluftsliv,” or “open air life,” isn’t excruciating. The Swedish author of “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather” (I think that sentence usually completes with “only bad clothes”) told Horowitz, “There are some days when it’s harder to get outside than others, but I know that if I do, I’m never going to regret going outside.”

Happy Snow Storm Weekend my freinds and neighbors! wrightj45@yahoo.com

Journal Prompts

If the five gratitudes aren't enough for you, here are 5 journal prompts for the New Year.

1.What in the past yeaar are you proud of?

2.What did this year leave you yaarning for?

3.What is causing you anxiety?

4.What resources, skills and practices can you rely upon in the upcoming year?

5.What are your wildest and most hair brained schemes and dreams?

I am most proud this past year in making the contact between the South Jersey Artists Coalition and the Woodbury Friends Meeting, also I got a book ark for our Meeting to give away free books. Also, I am proud to have been in more Art Shows at the Station in Merchantville.

I am left yearning for greater mobility and physcial fitness. I listened to an audio book on weight training and I really wished I were doing that, even in my state.

What has been causing me anxiety is my fianncial situation. I attempted to ameliorate some of it by cutting cable out of my Verizon bill which brought the price down by 50 percent (from $200 to $90), and I just talked to my insurance agent about a lower auto insurance policy (it will also be cut in half from $370 to #180 a month). I am working on curbing amazon impulse buying and in the past two weeks, I have stopped myself four times from buying things (pictures frames, books) by reciting: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without! I succumbed once by ordering paints and one book. My resources and skills are painting for pleasure and distraction, my sister's help is a great resource and I help her in any way I can. My practice is doing gratitudes daily and avoiding letting our political chaos upset my mental and emotional balance. I speek with and meet friends daily. I need more exercise.

I don't have any wild or hair brained schemes or dreams although sometimes I fantasize winning the lottery, but I don't buy tickets due to wariness about addiction. I am a pretty sober and practical realist. I have hopes, though - I hope I can win a prize in the upcoming March Haddon Fortnightly Art Show, or perhaps sell a painting!

Hope you find these entertaining to answer and perhaps, enlightening for yourself.

Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com >?

Shards of memory - an aging experience

Monday - January 18, 2025 9:30 a.m. Frozen snow on the ground, four paintings waiting to be framed.

One of the odd little phenomena of my current aging process is the flash up of fragrments of memory, unbidden and seemingly out of nowhere. This one came to me this morning.

A psot divorce anecdote

About 45 years ago when I was married, my ex-husband Mike and I would visit his parents in New Port Richie, Florida. There was a beach (Dunedin?) that was littered with an astonishing array of different kinds of seashells. Having only ever experiened the seashell varieties of Ocean City, New Jersey, clam shells, this was a revelation to me. I collected those shells like a gold miner collecting nuggest from a river. At my favorite antique store on Haddon Avenue in Collingswood, I bought an antique wooden type case (very popular in the 1970s craft movement) and cut little squares of green felt to line the small square compartments. I identified each of the shells I had collected, plus some that I bought, and put them in the compartments then I bought a sheet of plenxiglass at the hardware store for a cover, and put eye hooks and wire in the back for hanging.

I have always had an interest in certain aspects of science, archaeology, evolution (I read Darwin's Voyage on the Beagle), animal life and the history of classification, genetics, all sorts of things. I had a great full year science course at Trenton State extension college in the 1970's "History and Foundations in Science." >p/> When I left my marriage, I left a lot of my things behind. I took nothing from the walls, only my art supplies and my clothes and a few necessary furnishings. I left the seashell collectin on the wall. I never thought about any of it.

About 15 years later, late 1990's, my former mother-in-law phoned me and said she and her husband were moving from my old marriage house which they had moved into when my ex moved to Colorado and they came home from Florida. They were going into assisted living. She asked if I wanted my seashell collection.

My daughter (not from my marriage, but from a relationship after my divorce) was about 10 and just an age to appreciate something like that so I said that I would like to have it.

I want to interject here that while married, I had paid half of our bills and mortgage, at a struggle since I didn't make much money in my library job, my biggest expwnse was my college tuition $700 per semester at Glassboro State College, which I paid. When I left Mike, he emptied the bank accounts and kept everything. I didn't fight him because he was clearly metnally unbalanced and psychotic. It was, after all, only stuff. I wanted freedom from fear and intimidation, safety, peace and my life back. He could keep the house. And he did. I signed no fault divorce papers that he sent from Colorado though he was clearly at fault in many proveable ways I will not discuss here.

To get the seashell collection, I drove to Collingswood and the mother met me outside the assisted living building and handed in the seashell collection. We spoke only briefly and I left. A few days later, I had a phone call from her, very distraught, crying, and hoping I would be kind enought to bring back the seashell collection because she had told Mike she had given it to me and he had pitched a full on rage display and she was crushed and intimidated.

I understood. I had taken Mike's most prized psosession, myself. And he had at first done what he could to prevent my ability to survive on my own by taking all the money from the shared banking accounts, and then selling the house and keeping all the contents, things I had bought as well as his own. Even after all these years, his vindictiveness was potent like the burning underground coal fields in Pennsylvania. Naturally I gave back the seashell collection and drove home (the house I bought myself with my own earnings), glad to be free of them - Mike, his mother, and the world he created with his mental illness. I felt then and now, pity but also a wary fear of the power of this mental unbalance and the destruction it can wreak upon the lives of those near.

This kind of possessiveness and control is a big plot device in much classic European literature, think Anna Karenina. Men keeping the children when the women leave, depriving them of the means of support in the days when women had no legal rights and couldn't inherit or even keep their own wages if they had any. And it is very evident in our contemporary American politics - Trump's infinite vindictiveness toward former adversaries. The far right threat to take away women's right to vote along with our reproductive freedom.

That seashell collection is kind of a symbol of the poison in my marriage born of Mike's mental instability for which I can't blame him as it was inherited, but he never did anything to heal himself and refused to take responsibility in any way for his own misfortunes - both his first and second failed marriages and all the trouble in his life. He wouldn't or couldn't see it and do anything to fix it. He took the easy route of blaming everyone else and acting out his seething anger on those closest to him - his mother, his wives.

At 80, often when these memories from the past arise, I realize that most of the people in them are now dead! By 80 a lot of people are dead, so I recognise it is a privilege to succeed to this age. Many of my former boyfriends and lovers are dead. My daughter's father lives, at 70, and Mike is still alive in Colorado at 82. His parents lived well into their 80's so he might too. I wish the LSD, the pot, ad all the reading about Zen Buddhism and other books on enlightenment he experienced in the 1970's could have helped Mike more to understand he was making the world he lived in and could have helped him get a better focus and insight on himselfand his emotions.

This blog is like a trunk in the attic with old letters and photographs in it. This memory is another old letter. I wonder where the seashell collection is now, and perhaps I should have left those shells on the beach anyhow.

Happy Trails in the here and now, as well as in the there and then. wrightj45@yahoo.com

What does a good man look like? the Good Coach

Tonight I was watching a documentary on one of my favorite actors, John Candy, and the things his friends said about him made me think of what makes a good man, a loved man. They said he was kind, generous, devoted to his family and his friends. He was NOT quick to take offense although often things were said about his weight, for example, that hurt him. He moved on. He was a man who picked up the tab even when he was with actors who were making the same money he was making. He was expansive.

My favorite movie with Joh Candy was

Cool Runnings

because his character as a coach was like that - humorous, kind, generous, funny. It was not the usual image of a coach. The antithesis would be J. K. Simmons as the coach in the movie Whiplash, where the coach is so demeaning, insulting, enraged and demanding that his student ends up committing suicide. John Candy didn't have a cruel bone in his body.

We are all waiting for the new season of Ted Lasso, another film about a good man, a coach who cares more about character than exploiting his team to generate money. Money cannot be the most important thing - it is material - it goes away - it really does not buy happiness. It may buy stuff but stuff doesn't make us happy for more than the few seconds after we buy it - if that long. What makes us happy is connections with other people, love makes us happy. Being good makes love and happiness.

If you haven't seen Ted Lasso yet, I heartily recommend it In this era of bullies and crass, ignorant, cruel public figures, it is nice to be reminded of what good men are like And it is good to remember the good men we have known and what it was about them that made us love them and made us think of them as good. Happy Trails wrightj45@yhaoo.com

Overcoming obstacles and T. S. Eliot

I came across a quotation from the last work of T. S. Eliot that I really liked. Perhaps I already wrote to you about it. There were three that I found and that spoke to me. I actually like a couple so well that I put them in calligraphy in my Art Journal with an eye to doing some artwork on them at some point. When I was in college for the first time, in my 20's, I studied The Wasteland, which of course is what Eliot is most famous for writing. Later, of course, his lasting fame would be cemented by his Old Possums Book of Practical Cats which became the still popular musical Cats!

The quotations sent me on an old college style research mission which was complicated by the fact that I can't read books anymore due to my visual disability. So I searched my free library app - Hoopla - for a biography of T. S. Eliot on audio book. No luck. Then I tried my subscription to audible - again - no luck. I could get readings of his poetry but no biography on audiobook. I searched amazon, then pbs for a documentary - doors closed.

Then, I was talking on the phone with my sister and she was watching something on YouTube and I got the idea to search there and found a great documentary critiquing his work by literary scholars. It was so interesting and informative. Although The Wasteland is touted as his post World War exploration of the emptiness and despair of people after the devastation of the war, Eliot himself said it was more about his emotional state after his separation from his first wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood. She was described by all their contemporaries as intensely mentally unstable. Virginia Woolf said she was like a bag of ferrets around Eliot's neck./>

Although she had been experienced in love and life; it was said that Eliot was probably a virgin. He was besotted but she was so mentally unstable that he had to flee back to the US and take a teaching job at Harvard for a year to get away from her. He got legally separated from her and never saw or spoke to her again. Her brother had her committed for life and she died in the asylum at the age of 58. What a tragic story.

Having had a mentally unstable spouse, I can clearly feel Eliot's pain and confusion, despair, and betrayal She had also betrayed him with an extra marital affair with a friend and mentor of his! What is wonderful about this story though. is that Eliot (a famously shy and introverted man) turned his pain into art, used writing as his diversion from mental suffering and turned that negative energy into creativity. One of the things they mentioned in the documentary was that Eliot and contemporaneous poets were called 'landscape' poets because their experiences and the works were grounded in the natural world around them. One of the scholars said you could follow the Four Quartets right around the gardens and the property around the estate where it was written and the tiny chapel in little Giddings. It really made me think about PLACE in our lives.

Today, when I felt listless and uninspired, lethargic and flat, I got in the car with my dog and we drove to a park where I used to live when I was married, and then to a park along the Delaware River where I went daily with coffee on my breaks at school when I taught in that riverfront town. These rides which I take frequently always feel like hauntings to me. The scholars also mentioned Eliot's obsession with time and how we are trapped in time though we have the concept of infinity.

They mentioned many lines in which he reiterates that the past is alive in the present and the future exists in the past and the present as well. It made me think of the Faulkner quote which doesn't go quite as far: "The past is never dead; it's not even past." Which is true in a sense but only, to me, in the sense that it exists like a well worn garment in the closet. It is still there and bears the wear and tear of its use, but we aren't wearing it anymore. To me it is more ghostly than powerful. It exists like invisible waves, magnetism, electricity, radiation, gravity.

The sun is shining here today, a break from the gray filmy foggy days of the past week. I was just gathering the tools I have for the quilting class i am signed up for beginning next week. I have lost some of the shiny hope I had because I thought from the description that it was a traditional quilting class but apparently it is a modern traditional class and we use sewing machines. Well, I will give it a chance anyhow. I had to reserve a sewing machine (I am not dragging mine over there) and tomorrow I have to go spend money on some 'modern' quilting supplies - special cutters and rulers. It is getting much too much of a 'mathy' feel. There will be 5 weeks of it! I have rarely to never signed up for something and then not shown up or finished the course. I hope this doesn't turn into something I dread - the last ones I didn't continue with were fitness classes!

By the way, T. S. Eliot finally achieved a happy marriage at the end of his life with his secretary, half his age, who had been a devoted fan of his since her adolescence. She gave him a new lease on life in his last decade and spent her life devoted to his literary legacy. Fortunately, in recompense, the money from the royalties of "CATS" kept her financially well off.

Happy Trails in the past, the present and the future!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

How inspiration happens on a winter's day January 2, 2026

"We shall not cease from Exploration

And the end of all our exploring

will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

T. S. Eliot from poem "Little Gidding"

I came across this short excerpt from the long poem Four Quartets by Eliot, but I didn't know at the time where it came from. I just knew that it spoke to me about the leaving and arriving in our lives and how the returns to places of our past reveal things to us at the same time as it remains familiar - never quite the same.

When I meet my friends for lunch in Maple Shade, I drive by the places where I spent my teens, those years so fraught with the fires of emotion and which mark the major transitions in life, the leaving of the family home and the setting off into the world of independence. I see the place where I swam in the black water of the Pennsauken Creek and the little bridge I drove across a hundred times in the car of my teenage sweetheart. This is the creek where I contracted a deadly liver disease which also changed my life due to my Proustian confinement to my bedroom for nearly a year, the time it took to recover from the advanced ravages of Hepititis A.

Visiting the poem to find the context of this remarkable set of lines brought me back to another kind of memory, the kind of memory a dog might have visiting, in dead of winter, a park where it romped years ago in summer. It reminded me of college and the excitement and passion that I experienced in studying literature, the beauty and mystery of the use of words by brilliant minds.

Many people feel the desire to voice their strong feelings in what they call poetry, or some call music lyrics. I subscribe to an e-mail that sends me a poem a day, but I rarely find them inspiring or even very interesting. I guess I got spoiled by my exposure to serious and scholarly poets who were profound and visited big themes like life and death, war and survival, the immense passage of time in human lives; these are the poets who have stood the test of time itself and remain in our collective memory. Too much of the 'poem a day' offerings are pedestrian in wording and revolve around romantic disappointment complaints. They never offer a set of lines that grab me and make me want to write them down in my journal and look up the origin.

The lines above were written by T. S. Eliot during World War 2 when he was a 'fire watcher' during the blitz. He remembered the chapel in a village called Little Gidding. Reading some of the people who studied/analyzed and experienced this poem, I discovered it was the last poem Eliot ever wrote. Number four in a quartet.

Here is another quote that I chose from the poem:

"....for history is a pattern of timeless moments.

Sp while the light fades on a winters afternoon in a secluded chapel

History is now and England."

Surprisingly, T. S. Eliot was not a born Englishman but an American born in Missouri. He moved to England in 1914 to study at Oxford but World War I changed his plans. He stayed in London to work as a teacher and a bank clerk. He became a citizen in 1927 and a major figure in literary 'modernism.' His most famous work is probably The Wasteland.

I think this excerpt speaks to how events change our plans:

"Either you had a purpose

or the purpose is beyond the end you figured

And is altered in fulfilment."

Happy trails through your own drear midwinter afternoon - may a line of poetry make a flame in your mind. wrightj45@yahoo.com

Ringing in the New Year around the world 2026

I was just looking at photos of the celebrations around the world to mark the start of the New Year and it struck me how we all have agreed, globally, on this calendar. It wasn't always the case. Just thinking, so no evidence or facts to offer, only my musing this morning 1/2/26 - but peope have used other calendars and other ways to mark the year as we know from archaeological discoveries. Of course, the solstice has been the most famous archaeological and astronomical time marker I suppose. Civilizations from the Americas to Europe have created monuments to mark the Winter solstice which I should say is probably the most resonable way to mark the end of one year and the beginning of another - an agricultural time marker when people depended on crops to stay alive and the winter was a waiting game: Will the things we dried and smoked and salted and preserved last until we can plant and gather again?

Memories of famine are not far from the minds of people or our domesticated creatures like my dog. My dog carries the millennial memories of hunger with her at all times, she is always searching for that morsel. And I was raised right after World War II when people had made gardens in every possible place to grow food during the shortages caused by transportation disruptions among other causes. In South Philadelphia, where I was raised until I was 12, the people had created commuity allotments and worked together with their remembered skills. Below our neighborhood was a now lost settlement called "Schoolhouse Lane" which was the still thriving remnant of a Colonial era swamp reclamation created by German immigrants, off the grid. They had no municipal services and paid no taxes. They raised chickens, pigs, and after having made canals and drained the swamp that was the estuary of the Delaware River in that area, they did truck farming and brought their produce to the city in horse drawn wagons. My grandmother and other homemeakers went out into the alleys beyond the brick row homes and bought produce from these farmers.

My parents put in a truck garden in the backyard of our development house in the 1950's and my father had built a pantry underneat the second story stairs where he and my mohter worked mightily to preserve the bounty from that garden for the winter: stewed tomatoes, breen beans, jellies and jams, all sorts of things in sterilized Ball jars.

Now, I am not quite certain what the New Year means in terms of the civilization in which we live at present. We are so cut off from the sources of our food which arrives continuously all through the year from places all around the world because there is growing season all around the world so there is no interruption for winter.

The New Year means something social now, a re-setting of our lives, a kind of opportunity to start over, start anew. I have to go now but this is something I will ponder all day today.

Happy New Year (whatever that may mean to you!) wrightj45@yahoo.com A thought: maybe I am slow to get this but I suppose the big glittering ball dropping at Time's Square to mark the New Year is a symbol of the sun! Interesting!

Happy New Year 2026!

Last night I watched the ball drop on Times Square in New York City as I have for so many years. Actually the past 3 to 5 years I have not watched but have gone to sleep much earlier. This year, I was awake. What struck me most was the happiness on all the faces, the smiling and waving and the kissing and hugging -all the good will gathered in those thousands upon thousands of people standing peacefully in that Square, swaying to the music and looking dreamily at the world. I felt our common humanity and I felt hope.

The Morning - a news column in my e-mail news feed wrote about how it always brings us bad news: wars, mass shooting, natural disasters, political chaos, climate doom and then it went on to talk about how this morning, it would write about HOPE - not the sticky sweet kitschy sign kind, but the real kind, that helps us go on. Here is a little excerpt:

"To cultivate hope, people need three things, Zaki said: They first need to be able to envision a better future, either personally or collectively. Second, they need the willpower or motivation to move toward that future. And third, they must be able to chart “a path from where they are to where they want to be,” he added."

I keep lists because I hae always found comfort in them, order out of chaos. A plan, a map is indeed helpful in offering a view forward. Today I have one chore which is to empty and order my table drawer which can barely close now. My next item is to shower and dress in warm clothes and spend the day writing in my hournal, Art Journaling, and contemplating my resolutions and my state of existence.

It is freezing cold outside and when I awoke this morning, early, and let the dog out into the yard, the world was encased in a white frozen shell. The powerful sun has forced that frozen shell back into its water form and it has disappeared back into the soil mostly, but it is till too cold for me to walk the dog. Fortunately, Uma isn't tormenting me for a walk. She is sleeping on the sofa beside me. I am thankful for that little bit of peace. I am thankful for the bowls of creamy potato soup I have in the freezer too, that I bought at Pat's Select Pizza and Grill yesterday, which ensures me good hot midday meal that I don't have to cook. Thanks to my sister, I am fully stocked for the weekend. We went shopping at ShopRite yesterday despite her injured shoulser (which is better today) and Chewy delivered Uma's canned food and treats, so we are warm, well fed, and grateful on this first day of the new year. I cannot believe it is 26 years into the new millennium! I can't believe I am 20 years retired - or - for that matter that I am 80 years old! It is a shock and a gift all wrapped in one. Among the things I cannot believe is how all the relatives who were older than I am, are now dead - all the family I knew growing up are gone, most recently my Aunt Vinnie who died in Texas at the age of 87. These were my contemporaries as a child, Aunt Susan (dead and buried at Gloria Dei Old Swede's Church in Philadelphia. Cousin Ricky Hoffman dead in NJ - these three are the most recent and the ones who were my age and I knew in my childhood. The older Aunts and Uncles are long gone along with the grandmothers, grandfathers, and my parents - hardest of all to think of especially at the holidays.

WEll, more on resolutions later, but for now, I am signing off! Happy New Year!

wrightj45@yahoo.com