Invisible friends February 24, 2026

this morning, I was texting with my daily texting pen pals and we were talking about the things that people find interesting. One of my friends is very very interested in the up-to-the-minute home decor and in particular things like kitchen counter materials and appliances. She recently (in the last 5 years or so) had a decorator come and she re-decorate her entire home. She now has stainless steel appliances and custom made furniture. I remember when her talk was about Coreon counter tops and then at some point I think the desirable counter material became granite. I don't know what it is now beause I really don't listen or hear it. To me it is like listening to men talk about sports teams and trading players and tourenements.It is like a foreign language. This friend is now into travel - many trips a year. I don't travel and haven't for 25 years.

I am not saying these things have no value they just have no value to me, the same way the things that interest me have no value to the people I know. For example my brother Joe and my sister Sue (I have two other sister and brother so I thought it best to use names) are obsessed with politics. Every day they watch pundits examine every detail of each new occurrence. I can't engage, not because it isn't important, but because the constant state of outrage engendered by the criminal world which we inhabit at present, is beyond my help and the outrage is bad for my health. They can go on about "Can you believe Trump did this?" and "Did you hear about Jack Smith's testimoney, and the investigations" interminably. I am satisfied with the headlines then move on. I can't do anything about it and outrage is bad for my health, both physical and emotional.

So, what am I interested in? Well, last night I watched The Roman Empire by Train, narrated by Alice Roberts current favorite British archaeologist. I have watched just about all her shows and many other British archaeologists (as well as Americans like Doug's Geology Journal on pbds). I can understand why this isnp't important or interesting to others but it is compelling to me. Here is one reason why - I was a book worm. One of the books I read when I was 10 and reading from my Grandmother's basement book case was The Last Days of Pompei by Edward Bulwer Lytton in 1834. It came to life in those pages, the people screaming and fleeing in the cloud of burning gasses and the burning ash storm enveloping them and burying their city for 2000 years. That book was seered into my imagination - a city of thousands of people suddenly and unexpectedly baked to death and buried! A resort city of the most powerful empire the world had ever known - gone in a day! Later, as more excavations were being done over the years, I saw photographs (National Geographic) of the plaster casts of the bodies in their contorted and hopeless attempts to protect themselves, so real, so immediate. I never dreamed that I would one day go there and walk those streets. I do remember once, however in my teens, my mother poured a pot of boiling water over an ant colonly on our front sidewalk at the steps to the house, and I saw the connection - those hundreds of ants going about their daily work, cleaning and carrying and suddenly from above, a devastating and deadly scalding that destroyed their entire world. To me this was worth pondering - the immediacy of unexpected death and destruction that wipes out the ambitions and accumulations of thousands in a flash. Many years later in my early twenties, my husband and I visited Pompei and again I was struck by the magnitude of this event. Those houses and shops, streets, bordellos and baths, and the twisted ghosts of the fleeing people preserved in plaster. How quickly and completely it all can be erased.

Of course, that was on the back of my having been born in the year the World War 2 ended and the shadow that cast over my childhood of another event in which, again, whole cities were destroyed in no time flat - like Dresden in the firebombing.

Archaeology is interesting to me and it puts things in a perspective that i find compelling, more compelling than stainless steel refrigerators or who won the World Series. But that's just me.

Only it isn't just me becasue I have been watching all of Alice Roberts' Digging for Britain programs on YouTube, so apparently thousands of other people find this subject interesting as well.

One of my friends is deeply invested in her Quaker family history. I get it. I spent about 15 years passionately gathering information about the geneology of our family and I still find it interesting, but it wasn't possible to interest anyone else. Although all of us can find the clubs and groups of people who share our interests. That is what I discovered in the history volunteer world. How wonderful to get together with people who were passionately interested in a historic site or event and to trade information and books and discoveries about it. When I was a volunteer at Red Bank Battlefield, we took field trips to various Revolutionary War battle sites and the homes, estates, and buildings connected to important figures of the period from William Penn's estate on the Delaware River to the Trenton Barracks. Similarly with Alice Paul's home, now Institute - how wonderful to find others interested in women's history and the Suffrage movement, another of my passions.

When I think of it, I am aastonished at how many of my adult interests arose from those books of my childhood. For example, my grandmother also had a collection of European classics (maybe it was a book club) including Emile Zola and Guy deMaupassant. Those two authors had a number of works with gender politics at the heart of the story: Nana is one by Zola, about a prostitute, and Ball of Fat, a famous short story by deMauppasant, also about a prostitute. Both of them look at the mutual entrapment and enslavement of men and women by sexual dependence and economics. The women depend on the money from the men to survive and the men depend on the women for sexual satisfaction and intimacy. A very bedrock concept in gender politics.

One thing all my texting pen pals and I have in common is interest in our animal copanions, mostly cats. And, indeed, they are fascinating creatures who share our lives. My oldest cat has been with me for 16 years and I have had him since he was so little he had to be bottle fed. We have been close together all those years, sitting on the sofa watching shows together, sharing our meal times, providing one another with interesting activities throughout the day. Another topic we share interest in is family dynamics - everyone has that!

Other interests I have immediate and ongoing interest and involvement with are ART (I have two shows coming up in the week ahead) and Books! Although I can't read any more I do listen to audio books and I still am interested un books and reading. That is a topic that doesn't seem to have any current interest among the friends I see or text with.

Writing is something in which I engage both here on this blog and in my daily diary but I only have one distant text friend with whom I share interest in that and my friends don't even read my blog.

Happy Trails to you whoever you are! wrightj45@yahoo.com