Pandemic dog May 4, 2020

It occurred to me while I was sitting on the porch, a short time after my dog's incessant barking drove my nephew off the porch, that
living with a difficult dog is like living with a difficult person.  

After my nephew left, since we could barely talk what with the wind chimes jangling and the dog bark bark barking, I had to bring the dog inside the house and out to the porch so she could smell the trail my nephew took going through the house.

Fortunately or unfortunately however, you might weigh it, I have had plenty of experience with living with difficult people, rarely with a difficult dog.

The two dogs who might have been deemed difficult, were, to me perfectly understandable and righteous in their own scheme of things.  One difficult dog was our boxer.  I don't remember how he came to us; my folks would never have been the type to buy a pedigree dog from a breeder for so so many reasons.  There are so many homeless dogs, for one.  We always had dog but almost every time, they came to us rather than being sought or bought or rescued from a shelter.  

The boxer was deemed 'difficult' because he went after my father once, when during a family quarrel my father was lunging towards one or more of us to give us a slap.  Duke, like the true film star he was, bared his teeth and menaced my father in protecting us.  My parents gave him away.  I loved that dog but my father said he would NEVER have a dog in the house that threatened him!

The second 'difficult' dog was rescued somehow by my sister.  Having been taunted one to many times by stick wielding little boys in the school yard, he lost his composure and went over the fence after them.  Someone intervened and he knocked that person down.  It all ended with two policemen coming to arrest him, but my sister stood her ground and said, "Do you have a warrant?"
They left to get a warrant and we called my father and said, this dog has got to go live with you; the cops are after him.  So my father took him in and they were soul mates from that day.

He was called difficult because any time any moved too quickly near my father, or bent over him to whisper or something, he would 'nip' them on the buttocks - just a little warning gesture with his small, even, white front teeth - not the big sabers.

People took offense.  My brothers tried to dominate him with brusk tones and imperial forces commands.  He was not impressed.  My father wanted him put down if father should die before the dog, now named "BLIZZARD" because he struck fast, silently, like a blizzard.  I argued with my father, as was our habit, and said, "He has been a loyal friend to you, if you die first, he comes to live a good and peaceful life with me."  My father didn't argue back and in fact, he may have been conning me into just that promise of care for his good buddy.

Anyhow, the day came, as it must, and my father left us.  I told my brothers in clear, simple, no argument tones, that Blizzard was coming home with me.  One brother tried to protest, "But dad said he wanted Blizzard put down and their ashes mixed."  I just repeated the final decision; "Blizzard is coming home with me.  I will be by in the morning from the motel to pick him up.

Next morning I went to pick him up and Blizzard was sitting in the driveway.  I swear to you, if he had anything to pack, it would have been a little suitcase sitting beside him waiting for he driver to pull up.  I opened the door to the car, and he hopped right in.  He had two more years of nice long walks in the park, too long for him, sometimes, I think now that I am old too and I know how hard it is.

So my difficult dog, Uma, who was treated horribly before I adopted her from the shelter, has some problems.  She doesn't like visitors, other dogs, thunder, baseball caps, sunglasses and so on.  As long as she isn't confronted by these she is mostly all right.  Except if she wants her walk, or I put on the television.  She has phobia about the television.  When she wants to go for a walk, she shouts at me and if I am on my feet, she tries to jump on me and paws at me with her great big grizzly bear claws.  If her claws are extended, her paws are as big as my hands.  

Of course I have tried all of the usual measures to break the jumping habit, but that seems like only preliminary steps in the negotiation.  I have had two trainers and have used all their tips.  She still jumps.  The only cure, I think, is time.  In time all of her bad habits have softened just a bit so she is endurable all the time and downright restful the majority of the time.  

She has been great company during this pandemic.  She has made me walk a mile every day and she has helped to persuade me to keep to at least a semblance of a daily routine, as I had drifted into staying up later and later and sleeping longer in the morning.  She is very moderate about that and doesn't demand that I get up and let her out, until it becomes unreasonable to her, around 10.  I have to agree; no doubt about it, I should be up by 10. 

So my relationship with my dog begins to resemble so many other relationships I have made, with parents, siblings, boyfriends  a husband, a daughter, friends from work or school, each side decides by trying them out where they can dry the line and where you will draw the line, and you learn to live in peace.

Happy trails and happy tails!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Pandemic May 3, 2020 - at home with history EAL

One day visiting a local library I passed a "FREE Give Away" table with stacks of Early American Life Magazine being offered to take.
At that time, I was a docent at the James and Ann Whitall House in Red Bank Battlefield, National Park, NJ, so I picked up an armful of the magazines and took them home.  It was love at first sight!  
I have been subscribing now for years, more than 15 years.  

First I had to give up my volunteer work due to deteriorating knees and spine and I couldn't stand for 4 hours, our usual shift, and at that time, there were no chairs permitted to be sat upon.  Most of the furnishings, with some notable exceptions, are reproductions, but apparently they had been getting more fragile in their joints, too, so we couldn't, under that governance, sit in them anymore.  So I had to leave.  

The administrative staff has taken many turns since those days, and now we can sit, and we can wear regular guide style clothes and are not required to wear authentic Colonial clothing - not comfortable those heavy and may layered outfits.  So I joined back up, but have not been able to start the new season due to the pandemic.  

In fact, for some years after my retirement in 2006, my car was in good shape, I was in good shape, and I drove all over South Jersey finding historic places, tracking dog log cabins, noting down the names of places where something happened and then driving to them, Hancock's Bridge, for example.  Then my car got old and I got old and I stayed mostly in the rich historical environs of my area, Gloucester County, Camden County, and the Pine Barrens.

So now with the pandemic, we are all really living circumscribed lives and reading EAL is the only way I can visit historic sites.  
This latest issue, June 2020, features a wealth of interesting and personally touching articles.  The one on 'yellow ware' pottery reminded me of family china that I have, and the article on Thomas Paine reminded me of the sites in Bordertown which I visited where he lived for a decade from 1778 to 1787.  There is a historical marker there, if I remember correctly.

If you are craving some interaction with Colonial historical places and things but are confined to home, get a subscription to Early American Life and you can travel with the authors by pictures and essays since you can't go in person.

Happy trails, whatever kind you follow! Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com 

Pandemic 2020 and the value of a human life

Today, I heard Governor Murphy say we had 1000 less cases this week than we had last week.  It seems as though each week has a different focus in the one hour of news I watch each day, CNN, MSNBC, BBC World News.  One week it was finger pointing "What did Donald Trump know and when did he know it."  He took that theme and decided to get himself off he hook by blaming China and demanded an investigation into "What did the Chinese know and when did they know it."  He always takes things a bit further and so he is accusing China of engineering the virus and leaking it onto the world.  Scientific experts had investigated and assured everyone that this virus was NOT Lab engineered or modified in any way.  They are certain it was animal/human spread and originated.
Some places that have opened early, as in Georgia, have seen a return spike in the numbers of people going into the hospital.
On the radio, on the way to the hardware store, I heard an economist describing how they decide on the value of a human being in order to come up with a scale to use to weigh 'bills' a kind of cost versus life saved equation, as in 'how many lives will be lost if we don't do it; how many lives will be saved; what is the comparison of cost versus live.  
The answer is that by government economics calculation, a human life is worth 10 million dollars.  They had to argue over gradations of value as in "is a child or a baby worth more than an old person?"
They concluded that they had be valued the same regardless of any other considerations.
Personally, if it came down to me or a young person or a child who needed a ventilator, I would sacrifice my welfare tell them to give the ventilator to a young person, but I would be hurt and offended if that decision was made by someone else.  I am not an old farm horse or dried up cow that can't give milk.  Also I feel a bit more gratitude and less exploitation of farm animals at the end of their lives of service should be more prevalent too.  
I was a productive citizen of the nation and did a career that was good for the nation and I have value to the pets I care for who would lose their home and family if I died.  And I have value for my volunteering, and to my friends.  I hate to think the society has no value for me now that I am old.
Just then on MSNBC an elderly patient was released from hospital after two weeks in the ICU, having recovered from Covid 19, so just because you are old doesn't doom you to die, or make you of less value.
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Happy Trails! I sincerely hope you stay safe and well!
Jo Ann

Wind Storm 3/Pandemic 2020 & Neighbors

This morning, the last day of April, we got another roaring powerful and violent wind storm.  With the last one, our wires were blown down and we had no electric power for 2 hours.  This time the two young women next door came and got my car keys and moved my car because they saw a limb that looked as though it was going to come down.
It did come down and is lying across my fortunately sturdy chain link fence, alongside a disaster twin that fell from another nearby tree.
My trees are almost as old as I am, most of them around 70.  They were planted when the house was built, some may have already been here, and that was 72 years ago.  I am 74.
I feel as though I am the newcomer, the 'new neighbor' to the trees, so I try to live in peaceful harmony with them, as all trees try to do wherever they live.  But when big windstorms come up, they lash the house and hurl down solid vertical canon balls on me.  Although to not think of them as weapons but as limbs, then I have to feel sorry for the trees getting older and weaker, as am I, and having their limbs torn off them!
My neighbor across the street heard the crash and came over to see if I were alright, which obviously, I am.  
How kind of these neighbors to think about me and take the time to check on me.  They are all young - the young women next door are around 30, and the young man across the street is in his 40's.  My neighbors are good like that, ready to help but never intrusive or troublemaking.  
It is times like these when you recognize and appreciate goodwill when it comes knocking on your door.

Marcel Proust, Remembrance and the Pandemic Apr. 25, 2020

Sitting on the porch today with an old college friend, I was saying that this much isolation and inactivity, coupled with fear and anxiety was taking me back to my childhood.

I didn't spend much time in the past when I was young, I was too busy working, raising a child, keeping a house, going to college part-time, so that my life was reactionary, adrenaline filled, busy in the clamoring present.

Now, I am shut in by the pandemic, rarely seeing another person to talk to, let alone a friend, and I am plunged into the far past of childhood.  Then, I stop and think, don't all old people spend more time in their far past when they get old?   Not the middle years, the hustle and bustle interaction with the wider outside world.  We don't go back to those so much.

The one I had last evening was a sensory memory.  Sitting on the porch, smelling the cool, fresh, grass scented air of happy spring, watching the dazzle of the rain drops still sitting on leaves, I had the sense memory of running on wet new spring grass in my barefeet.  But, then I remembered the time I stepped on a bee amidst the dandelions of our summer lawn.  The fall, the shiver, as the bee's sting toxin spread through my central nervous system, and the instant stinging pain of it in the soft inner part of my foot.  
And, quickly behind came the time I stepped on small shards of broken glass that were in the grass.  One piece remains embedded in my toe, a reminder of the danger of bare feet.

And so, I think that Marcel Proust's isolation and entrapment lead him down that dusty summer dirt road of memory and perhaps as with the hermits and aesthetics of all kinds discovered, if you stay alone and inactive long enough, you reach a different state of mind from your usual contingent one.  We may not be able to write like Proust, we may never choose the life of Proust, but our current situation of isolation and deprivation of former outside stimulations, have certainly given us a ticket to ride back in our lives like Proust.  Or, and I cannot leave him out, Karl Ove Knausgaard.  He didn't write from the far past as a result of imposed isolation by illness, or circumstance.  He sequestered himself and willed himself back.  And then shaped the narrative into art.  

Happy Trails to you, wherever you are traveling,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Pandemic pondering about Cuba

Since I have had far more than the usual time for lofty speculation, now that I am old and retired and provided for, at least NOW, by my pension and social security, and stuck entirely indoors with only non-conversational animal companions, I have though a lot about the Caribbean, Cuba and Dominican Republic specifically. 

As learned people who study African American history have often said, American history is the history of Slavery.  And the wider your perspective, the more you see how true this is.  I became interested in Dominican Republic via a novel I have been reading by Isabelle Allende, The Island Beneath the Sea.  It is an epic of the Gone With the Wind, or Dr. Zhivago variety.  There is a central romance, if it can be called that, a major revolution, failed uprisings and immigration in it.  There is the history of the exploitation of the "New World" by the old world in it.  First the Spanish, spear-headed by Christopher Columbus come and annihilate the indigenous people, then set to major exploitation of whatever can be taken, by theft, mining, lumbering, the destruction of native species, the enslavement of first the indigenous people, then the slaves to produce the first in a variety of exploitable crops, sugar cane.
When all the natives are dead, people are kidnapped wholesale from Africa and sold into bondage.  The average lifespan of a sugar cane slave was 18 months.  At first they were cheap enough that they could be easily replaced.  When the slave trade was outlawed by sea, internal slave breeding and selling took over but that drove the price up.  Meanwhile, slaves were escaping, forming bands and rebelling, usually to fail and be slaughtered, but the groups formed and formed and grew and eventually succeeded.
Colonial exploiters fled to Cuba and the US, in particular to cheap land and a familiar climate in Louisiana.  Then Napoleon sold us the land.  
The successful revolutions had to find some support until they puled themselves together and found a source of income different from the old one.  When the oppressed peasants revolted under the leadership of Castro in Cuba, they turned to Russia, another communist/socialist state.  For a long successful period Cuban products went to Russia and loans and investments and materials went to Cuba from the USSR.  Then the communist state fell, the Berlin wall came down and Cuba had no sponsor.
The Cubans, under the leadership by then of Batiste, turned to the US where mobsters were happy to invest via hotels and casinos to launder crime profits.  The Revolution was being hijacked by capitalism and crime and Castro founded a new revolution and took 
Cuba back.  But without Soviet help, the country declined from its pinnacle of free education and free medical care, into decrepitude and abject poverty, bread lines, shortages, no more electric power and plumbing.  Castro turned to dictatorship to hold things together while he tried to figure it out.  He never did.
And I can't either.  Communism is a failure, capitalism is so destructive it has to eventually fail.  I thought maybe I should have studied economics, but so far, no one seems to have come up with an answer.  The Scandinavian countries are doing well, but only so long as the balance of power stays stable, between the two, seemingly insane super powers, Russia and America.  
So, slave culture came here and made America what it was before the Civil War, and the affects of that trauma upon an entire population can still be felt as can the deep prejudice of white people against people of color.  
My final thought was, I can't figure this out.  Far ore intelligent and gifted people than I am haven't figure it out, maybe I should look inward rather than outward for answers.  As in the Carle Woese, life is a stream, a child puts a stick in the stream and eddies and swirls are created, then they are absorbed back into the stream and keep on flowing.  
It seems that all I can do at this point, is observe and wait to see what will happen next.  
After Cuba Libre on Netflix, I watched Castro and the Cameraman, an independent documentary, then I watched a clever and interesting film on Che Guevara, where a man reading a biography of Che Guevara travels to all the places in C. G.'s life and explains the import of that time and place in the life of one of the most recognized and revered historical figures of the 20th century.  
It made me think how little we know or are taught about our closest neighbors, Mexico, Cuba, Canada.  I imagine few of the people I know could even name the leaders of those three countries.  Miguel Diaz--Canal is head of Cuba, Andreas Manuel Lopez Abrader is president of Mexico and as we are all most likely more aware, Justin Trudeau is prime minister of Canada.   All of these countries as does our own, have a bloody, long history of struggle to exploit the Americas through colonialism, escape from exploitation by a revolution against colonialism, and the struggle to find a successful economic system for the people.  We haven't struggled enough with finding a solution to save our land and water, however.
Happy Trails, whether in the world or in your head!
Jo Ann

Watching intelligent argue with stupidity - tv news

EARTH DAY 2020

Watching Anderson Cooper talk to the mayor of Las Vegas about re-opening which is the big debate right now.  First I watched Governor Cuomo explaining why we cannot safely open up shops and restaurants until we have testing and some kind of tracing to see where clusters are and contact tracing to see where it has spread and might continue to spread.  He exhorted people to be patient and not be impulsive and reckless because some Southern states are doing exactly that, from Florida through Georgia they are opening beaches and sports arenas, gyms and hair and nail salons and tattoo parlors.

66,000 have died in the US so far.  All the health experts have agreed that it is not safe to relax social distancing, but the local governors in the Southern states are ignoring that information.

The first death has been pinpointed to much earlier February 6th, not in Washington, but in California.  The virus was moving through communities earlier than anyone thought.  The earliest cases had no travel history, but in fact got the virus through community spread, so it was here.  We know people have been carrying it asymptomatically.

Anderson Cooper was not polite with the mayor of Las Vegas, I think because she was an older woman and easy to get on the run, but for the most part, it has been interesting to me the way intelligent people have had to be restrained and courteous in the face of the stupidity they are confronted by.  

In India, the craziness goes even further and local people have been attacking health care workers on the ignorant assumption that the health care workers are bringing the disease to them.

I think, at this point, as in so many other less intense and dangerous circumstances, the biggest challenge is for intelligence and informed decision making to defeat ignorance and impulsive reckless behavior.

Of course it is easy for me to say since I am old, and retired and have an income, at least for now, so I am not struggling to provide for children and pay bills with no income.  

All I can say is that I wish our government had gotten busy to provide the testing equipment we need so people can safely go back to work and resume a more normal life.  Day after day, that is the obstacle - not enough mobilization to provide widespread testing.
About 80% of carriers are now presumed to be asymptomatic but spreading the disease, we cannot go by symptoms only, we must test!

Take a walk by yourself or with your dog and enjoy the clean air and beautiful flowering of our spring!  Dress warmly, though, it is nippy!  I could have used gloves on my walk and I DID wear a winter coat and fleece lined walking shoes.

Happy 50th Anniversary of EARTH DAY!!  Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Earth Day during the pandemic 2020

Happy Earth Day 2020
When I finish this entry, I will put on my socks and shoes and my winter coat and walk the dog our daily mile, down Hartka to the railroad, along the railroad to Northmont and back home.
No doubt the big storm we had yesterday has torn off all the blossoms on the 30 cherry trees that line the railroad.  
I will stop as I often do to give honor to the ancient, giant willow oak along the residential side of the railroad street and I will ponder all the things that tree has seen over the couple of hundred years it has been standing there.  
The storm we had yesterday was truly frightening!  The wind made unusual noises and I am surrounded by trees in my yard, so our roof got pelted by broken branches as we always do, but no trees came down here.  What we had were burning electric lines, boxes exploded as the wind ripped the wires out of the boxes on the trees. We lost power for 2 hours and even though it is spring, it got surprisingly cold in my house in that short time.  I did worry, but I countered it by making plans.  I put on warmer clothes, found my Brooklyn Lantern, put a good flashlight nearby and a candle and matches and waited it out.  Some of my neighbors got in touch to find out if all was ok in my yard.
I was worried about the food in the freezer since I had stocked up because of the shortages caused by the disruption of supply chains and I was afraid that food would all spoil.  But even more, I was worried about the sump pump.  In the rainy seasons, I have a running stream in the earthen basement of my old house.  In one corner there is a kind of well with a sump pump in it.  The stream caused by heavy rain, flows down into the well and the sump pump pumps it out again.  One year when we had a power failure during the night, I awakened at 6 a.m. to find over 3 feet of water in the basement which took out my washer, dryer, water heater and heater motor.  Now I have a new heater and a big fat loan to pay off for installing it and I didn't want that new heater ruined.  
We were saved.
But it all reminds us of the fragility of our existence, and reminds us to be mindful and empathetic for the others, not so lucky, the ones who had the tornado, flooding, and who were already struggling by being out of work and having no money to rely on while they wait out these disasters.
Hoping you are well and stay well! Hoping you find some way to enjoy the great natural world in the midst of these disasters!  Happy Earth Day 202!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Update of corona in our area:

Two Haddon Township residents and two Oaklyn residents were among the additional 125 new cases of the coronavirus that were reported in Camden County on Tuesday, bringing the totals to 2,215 cases with 86 fatalities.

One new death was also reported after a Cherry Hill man in his 70s died after testing positive for the coronavirus.

History in our own time - WACO & Ruby Ridge

Last night, I watched a 6 part Netflix series on the Waco tragedy.  
I remember it all, of course, vaguely, but I never saw the inside story to whatever degree this can be called the inside story.  I call it that because the series was based on two books, two points of view:  one of the cult members wrote a memoir of his survival, and the hostage negotiator working for the FBI wrote his version in a book.  I wrote the titles of the books somewhere on a scrap of paper but I don't know where it is now.  The survivor's name was Thibodeaux and the FBI negotiator's name was Noesser.  
Interestingly to me, they began with the stand-off at Ruby Ridge, where, once again, some innocent woman was killed in the prideful rage stand-off between two violent and deranged men.
Speaking personally, when I found myself in a situation with a man who seemed incapable of controlling his rage, I got out.  I only wish the women in both of those situations would have had the strength and faith to get out and find help.  They stayed and they died and their children died with them.
Also, some interesting points to me were the considerations of using military force agains our own citizens especially when they haven't actually committed a crime yet.  It was suspected that both of those places were stockpiling guns and the spark that set off the explosion was when the agents tried to execute search warrants to determine if there was s stockpiling of weapons.  The men didn't want their private territory invaded, and the agents would tolerate NO resistance.  At Ruby Ridge, the wife/mother and her son died, and at Waco, a total of 76 people (maybe more) were gassed and burned, trapped in their bunker, twenty-five of them were children.
A point that was being made about, I think, by showing this series at this time, between the Ruby Ride incident, the Waco tragedy and the rise of the Right Wing.  You could see their point.  We are supposed to be protected by the law from search and seizure and violence.  We are supposed to be protected by proper procedure when we are accused of a crime.
You can also see how the provocations of a mad man in a death struggle with a hyper-controlling, rigid personality of another man can set off a violence storm that ends with innocent people suffering and dying.  
It is astonishing to me that anyone believes in a messiah, or views the bible as anything more than a historic document of the upheavals of a period of history in Judea and the ancient world.  Then, poor individuals who have inherited a variety of chemically induced unbalance or dysfunctional brains, suffering mental illnesses that causes them to hear voices and think they are chosen representatives of some almighty creation figure are somehow able to persuade weaker people to follow in their delusion.  That first 'prophet' showed them the path that evolves from that trip - you preach, people follow you, the state steps in and kills you.
The eternal war between Caesar and God, King and Creator.
Watching MSNBC now to catch up on what's going on - the topic is as it has been for some time now, TESTING!  Who is going to provide for it and how is it going to be put into effect and how will it enable re-opening stores and restaurants.
They are saying it will probably begin with smaller commuities where it will be possible to test, since we have so few numbers of test kits.  But so far, it isn't being done.
Happy Trails, Living in Historical Moments
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Numbers and the Pandemic of 2020

There are 4,597 people living in my town.  When people talk about numbers, a half a million people confirmed cases, or my state, 48,000 cases, or when New York talks about 500 dead today down from a high over the weekend of 700.  When they talk about a couple of trillion dollars in stimulus money, the numbers can hardly reach you.  A friend of mine likes to say "it's only a fraction of one percent in the world..."
But when I think of the number of people in my small town where I have lived in peace and comfort and contentment for 35 years, I imagine if they said 4,597 people died and it was every single one of us in my town, it would have a far greater impact.  If I thought Rob and Debby in the car repair died, and Mark and his mother,Linda, across the street, or Mike Hughes who works for the Borough across the street and once got a cat down out of a tree for some little girls in my yard, or the two young women who moved in next door a year ago and who brought me two shopping bags of toilet paper when the local grocery ran out, and the dogs I know from walking my dog every day, then it all takes on a different view.
This is a living historic moment, the "Pandemic of 2020" and everyone will remember it, far longer than a black-out, or ice storm, or even a hurricane.  We are living in the eye of a historic event, a monumental catastrophe, as great as one person's life ebbing away alone in a quarantined ICU, the end of one unique, unlimited potential for anything, gone; thirty years in the making and gone in three days.  There's a number to ponder, too, how quickly this killer can choke you to death if it gets a good grip.  People have seen their loved ones wheeled into the Emergency room on Friday and heard about their death on Monday, not even a chance to say goodbye or I love you.
We have been here before.  I just read an article about the War Bond Parade in Philadelphia that poured fuel on the fire of the Spanish Flu.  Imagine that, living in my home town during both a World War AND a pandemic!
Happy Trails through Time,
Jo Ann

Diaries and Disasters - Pandemic 2020

A good deal of historical interest is as much involved with TIME as with People or Places.  So in April of the Spring of the Pandemic, I am not going to historic places, but I am still here and visiting other kinds of historic places - places in time.
As I have no doubt mentioned, if you have visited my blog before, I was born and raised in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  It was living in a warren of red brick row homes with porches that were either enclosed or factory issue open.  Sadly, our porch was enclosed, which gave us a kind of additional room, but blocked us off from the life in the block.  
Since I have been isolated for 5 weeks, having seen only the people in the Supermarket once a week, or a neighbor to yell "hi" to across the street, and one brave risk taking friend who has come to walk and have lunch a couple of Fridays.
But back to Philadelphia - when you live there and you are the kind of child who takes notice of things, you become acquainted with the long, episodic, mysterious and horrible history of the city.  There is the eternal flame in Washington Square Park, which I was always told was created as a monument to the 1500 soldiers buried beneath who died of camp fever, smallpox, or wounds at the time of the Revolution.  There is the large, ornate water fountain that says "A merciful man is merciful to his beast."  It was a reminder to  cart drivers to let their thirsty, tired horses have a drink.It makes you imagine the throngs of horses and carriages in the Philadelphia streets.  Not too hard to have to imagine as my vivid new isolation induced memory reacquaints me with the memory of the huge, old, monumental creatures that were the horses that pulled the produce wagons up the alleys where we lived.
I wrote a blog entry about Stone House Lane here a long time ago, that's where the vegetables were coming from - the truck farms south of where we lived, before they took the farms by eminent domain and built the airport.  
There was so much history still alive and current then; we took school trips to the Abbots milk bottling plant, those rattling wind chimes of milk bottles zooming along on conveyer belts.  
Many many years later in my daughter's childhood, we spent a lot of time when I picked her up from my mother's in New Jersey, after work, and we went back to the city in time for a couple of hours at Independence Park Mall, so green, with a row of hidden yard gardens on a side wing of the park.  
Sometimes the film industry would be in town during the years I lived there as an adult, before I moved my daughter and myself to New Jersey again.  The horses would be back! and extra's walking around fanning themselves in the warmth.
In Philadelphia, you were reminded of the dead, and the plagues, like yellow fever.  Our church cemetery had the graves of so many small children, little marble lambs for markers and the extraordinary, to me, dates.  Kids my age had died!  Our church, itself, built in the late 1600's by Colonial Swedes, a model of their ship hanging in the middle aisle, and their names on the brass markers on the walls.  
A once popular Heinlein novel observed that the streets of a Martian City had become so overcrowded with memories and feelings that the streets were no longer habitable, and the people had to migrate to a new planet.  If you could see or hear them through the clues down at child's eye level in the city, you would regains that feeling, of the history haunted streets.

My school, looking like nothing so much as a great hulking Dicken's style brick factory, is still standing, Fel School, on Oregon Ave.  Certainly going to school there was better than the situations so many of the children in my books were experiencing, such as Jane Eyre, or any of Dicken's children, or even Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer.  My school was definitely more Bronte' but it might cripple you but not necessarily kill you.  I have a few happy memories from that place, one involving bringing in a toothbrush from home, and a tree leaf, if you were lucky enough to live on a block with a tree.  And we put the leaf on a sheet of folded construction paper, dipped our toothbrushes into white tempera paint, dragged them across a wooden framed screen and spatter painted a silhouette of the leaf.  It was a wondrous miracle to.

Time to leave the past and head to the porch.
Hoping you are staying safe and well and enjoying, as much as possible, your solitary house arrest!*
Jo Ann

*Don't even let me get started on the ghosts and stormy emotions flowing down the old prison corridors!

A chronology of Pandemics

Page 58, of April 6, 2020 THE NEW YORKER, had a very timely essay, book review entitled The Spread: How Pandemics Shape Human History by Elizabeth Kolbert.  
I am going to summarize and adjust the bigger, better essay from the New Yorker here.
When E. K. discusses the pandemics she numbers them by repeat performance, as with cholera, she numbers the first time it spread, and then three or four successive spreads each get a number.  I am going to reduce it to a number for each 'new' pandemic.
Number one began in Port Said, Egypt in 541, and according to Procopius, contemporary historian, it spread eastward to Palestine and kept going.  He calls it 'pestilence' but we know it as the bubonic plague (#1): fever, lumps under the arms and in the groin, delirium, vomiting blood and coma.  In Constantinople, Procopius estimates it killed 10,000 per day and the Emperor Justinian makes provision for the burial of the corpses.  It reached Rome in 543 and Britain in 544 and lasted off and on until 750.

Number 2 goes to Smallpox, an ancient disease thought to have emerged with the domestication of animals and credited with killing possibly a billion people.  Signs of smallpox have been found on Egyptian mummies from as far back as 1157 B.C.  Joshua S. Loomis describes the history of smallpox in his book EPIDEMICS; THE IMPACT OF GERMS AND THEIR POWER OVER HUMANITY.  He reports that by the fifteenth century, smallpox was endemic throughout Europe and had a kill rate of about 30%, but much higher with children. With each generation there was another outbreak as people whe never got it as children, had families and a new generation without antibodies arose.  Europeans took it to the New World where it became a "virgin soil epidemic" meaning none of the indigenous people had immunity and died in droves.  Smallpox wiped out the people of Hispianola, Puerto Rico, the Aztecs, and no one knows for certain how many other peoples.  The Europeans brought many other diseases with them as well, killing tens of millions of Native Americans in the North American continent.
Frank M. Snowden's book EPIDEMICS AND SOCIETY;  FROM THE BLACK DEATH TOT HE PRESENT, describes the origin of the concept of quarantine, those magical 40 days and 40 nights of biblical lore which were used to try to stop the resurgence of the Black Death via ships, which in the 1300's killed a third of the populaton of Europe.  No one knows why the final epidemic in Marseille in 1720 ended.
But in comes #3 Cholera.  Cholera is a bacterium and began its career in the delta of the Ganges in India, then traveled via colonialism and steamship in the 1800's  to Europe, Russia and finally, to the United States.  Cholera is spread via contaminated food and water and devastated mainly the poorer slums.  As bubonic plague was called the Black Death, cholera was known as the Blue Death because dehydration gave skin an ashen, slate color.  
When authorities attempted to enforce quarantines and 'disinfection' via armed squads, the people rebelled from Naples, Italy to Moscow in Russian and may have propelled the Russian Revolution.  Most recently cholera staged a return in Haiti after the earthquake, allegedly brought there by UN troops brought in from Nepal to keep order.  About ten thousand died.
The other 'Horsemen' of the Apocalypse have been #4 Influenza, #5 polio, #6 measles, #7 typhus.  Although AIDS wasn't mentioned in the article, it would get my #8, and now we have #9 novel coronavirus Covid 19!
A final book mentioned in the essay is RULES OF CONTAGION by Adam Kucharski who points out difference factors such as:  the mode of transmission, the length of time an individual is contagious, the social network that the disease exploits. 
I would stronly suggest that you try to find this issue of The New Yorker, this was a very informative essay!  Also I would like to mention a book I read about the Yellow Fever (a virus spread by mosquito) in Philadelphia BRING OUT YOUR DEAD, J. H. Powell.  There is another one I hadn't read AN AMERICAN PLAGUE, by Jim Murphy.
Movies:  Outbreak, Pandemic, Contagion
By the way, it is important to note the difference between bacteria and virus.  Cholera and Typhus were bacterial, polio and yellow fever and corona are viral.  Alcohol kills virus.  If you have an antibacterial cleaner, check to see if it has alcohol, because alcohol is the magic bullet.

Something to think about as we "shelter in place" during our newest pandemic.
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Pandemic 2020 Local Update

Today, I made four more fabric masks.  As the experts are now saying, although the masks cannot protect the wearer from virus, they may offer some protection to others from droplets given off by the wearer through sneezing, coughing, or even talking.  So I made 3 prototypes yesterday, one from a you tube instruction using a bandana (very bulky and way too big) and two from my own ideas, not very successful but I learned from them, and they could be worn.  I mailed my prototypes to my daughter who has some good masks from her local hardware store but I told her to save them or give them to anyone who has no mask.
Today I had two errands to run and I used my mask at both of them; the post office and the ShopRite.  The Post office was surprisingly busy with at least 4 people in there when I got there.  We all stayed 6 feet apart and we all wore masks.  
The ShopRite was my most dangerous exposure because I read today on my local e-mail update that a case of corona virus had been tested at my local ShopRite - a cashier.  Of course, last week or the week before would have been the most dangerous times since that is when she/he would have been most contagious and asymptomatic.  I was there last Monday, but, I may not have been in that cashier's line, and that cashier may not have been on duty when I was there.  Anyhow, you can't avoid what you can't predict.
Everyone at ShopRite today had on both masks and gloves.  
My mask was annoying because my hair kept working its way out of the tie and falling in my eyes while I was looking on the shelves.
I bought brown rice, coffee, dog food, dog biscuits, cheese,  crackers, almond butter, chocolates (for my Easter Basket), hot chocolate, and I can't remember what else, but I forgot the pickles.  An article I read said to eat fermented foods to strengthen your gut biome to fight the virus, and those foods were sauer kraut, pickles, and kim chee (an Asian food I think is like horse radish).  Anyhow I forgot the pickles and now I really want them.
The masks took about 20 minutes apiece and if I had elastic, I could have made better ones.  I may try some more tomorrow!  At least my cloth masks are superior in effect than the common home-made ones which are single ply but look much better than mine.  Mine are doubled cloth, two-ply hence safer.
Well, now it has been 6 weeks since all this began in earnest in my life.  
Of course, the first time I heard about it was in January at the nail salon where I go to get a pedicure once a month because I can no longer cut my own toe nails because my spine is too stiff, my knees don't bend enough, and I can't see (the cornea disease I have).  The man who did my toenails told me he was worried because all the workers in this salon were Chinese and many had gone and returned from China for Lunar New Year and many family members were here from China to visit for this very big holiday.  We both had heard about the virus there that began in a 'barbaric' wet market, a place where they keep animals and particularly wild animals in cages and slaughter them to order on the spot.  It was said to have crossed over from Civet Cats or Pangolins.  The idea of this cruelty towards these helpless animals filled me with rage, and I thought they deserved to get sick, then their evil spread throughout the world.  So many diseases have sprung from human cruelty to other animals, like Syphilus from men raping the sheep they were supposed to be shepherding.  Then of course, there was AIDS from the monkeys raiding garbage hills in Africa, swine flu, bird flu.  Maybe Mother nature is punishing her misguided children.
This week was supposed to be the worst week to date.  I can't remember the figures except one - a month ago, 12 people died of corona, and a month later, 12,000 were dead.  In my county, 600 are sick and it is now in every neighboring town, Bellmawr, Haddon Twp., Haddonfield, Camden City.  
I have watched a lot of tv, most recently, PBS World On Fire about WWII, The Hunters (a kind of comic book like show) based on Nazi hunters in America, Unorthodox (a girl escapes the SatMar Hassidic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and my favorite - High Maintenance, a pot selling bike guy brings us into the homes of his many interesting clients.
I read the Sunday paper, The Week magazine, and finished the non-fiction book STOLEN.  Tonight I begin a new book and look for a new tv series.
Today I spoke to my sister, Nancy Thomas, Jackie Brady, and my brother Joe.  This week I spoke to Cousin Patty, Chris Borjet, and my old gym buddy Joanne Spector.  I am tired, bored, dispirited and eating out of control.  I keep thinking about smoking but so far, I have been able to hold off on buying cigarettes!
April 7, Tuesday, 8:00 p.m.
Happy Trails, Stay Safe and Well my friends,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Acts of Beauty in a Pandemic Monday, April 6

Today when I took the dog for her walk, I noticed that some local art-at-heart neighbor had decorated the corner house drive with a lovely saying and pretty chalk art.

I am so crippled up with joint trouble that I cannot get down on the ground anymore, but I went into the house, got my cane, a foot stool, a pillow and my pastels and groaning and creaking, lowered myself to the ground long enough to do one sidewalk block in honor of the effort of the that anonymous artist!

I felt like Wyeth's 'Christina's World' trying to get my cane and my stool and hoist myself back up to standing. It was such effort, I broke into a sweat!  How could this have happened to me?  I was a bicyclist, a kayaker, a yoga practitioner, a hiker, and now I can't get off the ground without an effort that demands a rest afterward!  It is a mystery to me and I can only hope that it wasn't because I was so active that my joints went bad.  My guess would be that it was simply the effect of my genetic inheritance in regard to cartilage.

Anyway, a small thing thing was done in honor of the gesture of art and beauty and maybe someone else will be inspired to do some art on another sidewalk!

Pandemic Diary April 2020

Well, I haven't called any of the posts on this blog a pandemic diary but I suppose that is what they are.  My previous posts that addressed anything about what is going on here had to do with canned goods and recipes.

What has been affecting more of my friends, and lately, myself, however, is response to the isolation.  Most of my friends were teachers, about five of the seven women I see on a regular basis who are of the ten I have met up with sporadically.  I have the aforementioned seven regular friends whom I met with about once a week regularly over some years.  Then there were about ten friends (half of them teachers) that I met up with on a monthly basis.  And about 4 or 5 more individual friends whom I saw more seasonally, old childhood pals and friends from college.  My point here is that all of us were used to bing in relatively large social groups most of our adult lives every day.  We taught in schools.  My full time weekday job was in a school with 50 teachers, and 600 children, and my part-time Saturday job was in a lab school in a university with a dozen teachers and a couple hundred students. 

 Then, too for most of my life, I had brothers and sisters, parents, and a daughter, not to mention a decade and a half marriage and a few long term relationships after my daughter left home.  

So, this many weeks of ISOLATION is something new for me.  And for many of my friends in enforced isolation, so many of whom are single through divorce or widowhood, and have no children or grown children.  Since we all worked, few of us have had close neighborhood connections, and the ones I knew who did have that life style, like my cousin Patty, moved after the children left and their husbands died.  So we are really alone.

However, the two most isolated people I know are myself and my brother and he wins first place since he lives on a mountain in West Virginia, up a long dirt road, far from neighbors, and even further from any social groups like the VFW or the  local bar.  Like me, however, my brother lives with a dog and cats.  His two cats and his dog are rescued and they are his companions as are mine.  

You are never really alone if you have one animal companion or more, and what's more, they keep you on a schedule where if you ere totally alone, you might drift into some unknown state of mind where you lose track of days and who knows what else.

My dog has just gotten me to do our daily one mile walk, which I can assure you I wouldn't have done most days this winter without her nagging.  And the animals keep me on a routine.  Every morning the dog must go out, the cats must be fed, which gets me to get out of bed, eat my breakfast, and then the dog demands her walk, which gets me washed and dressed and into shoes and a jacket and out the door.  

Each day during the quarantine, when we have walked, I have been grateful, as I so often am, for the beauty of nature even in an ordinary neighborhood walk.  I feel greeted by the yellow smiling daffodils, and I admire the shy little purple wildflowers in the yards and along the fences.  I don't know what they are and they probably don't know what I am but we greet one another in our shared existence under the sun.  Today, a profusion of little shiny yellow flowers made a chorus of hello along the borders and in friendly accessory to the showier daffodils.  Always there are the dandelions, those bright, friendly buttery little faces, those umbrellas of sunshine polka dotting the green grass, which after all our spring rain in March is vigorous and shining and new.  

Today I took photographs of some of the wild flowers that share my neighborhood and I will post them to cheer us all up.  I also saw a lot more people out than usual too - bicycles (what a good way to get out and about without putting yourself or anyone else in danger.
Lots more dog walkers than usual, and the usual worker bees mowing and power washing, but more people sitting on the porch than usual as well.  After I finish this post I may take a cup of coffee and go sit on the porch too - the Sunday New York Times can wait, Spring beckons!

Happy Trails!  Stay Well and good luck!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Historic Figures Portrayals - WWI

Good Morning fellow shut-is!  
For the most part, I am attempting to follow the instructions for 'flattening the curve' of corona virus cases by staying in the house.  I have grocery shopped only once a week, on Monday mornings this week and last and have contact with my friends mainly through e-mail and telephone, no more lunches out.

Today, however, I got a letter from my cousin Patty with an article from the Inquirer, March 30, 2020.  It was about female yeomen in the US Navy in World War I.  These women were the first American women to serve in the US Navy and they performed clerical tasks.  

Laurie Adie became the first female member of the Living History Crew of the Cruiser, Olympia, docked in Philadelphia, which is appropriate because the first woman to serve as a yeoman with the US Navy was also from Philadelphia!  Her name was Loretta Perfectus Walsh and she was also the first female Chief Petty Officer.  There were 11,000 female yeomen serving.

My cousin and I both have early family history with the US Navy as her godmother served with the Naval Hospital in the 1940's and 50's and my mother worked at the Navy Yard during WWII while my father was in the Navy.  One of my brothers often works at the Navy Yard to date as an Ironworker.

Laurie Adie also portrays Frances Benjamin Johnston, a pioneering woman photographer whose photographs are on display on the Olympia including one of Admiral George Dewey aboard the Olympia.



Like Laurie Adie, I believe costumed interpreters can really give people a feel for the people and the times at historic sites.  Once when Laurie Adie was in costume at Fort Mott, a man came to visit the site and was stunned because he had a photo of a female ancestor in the same uniform and now he knew what it meant!  Adie and her husband are also World War II costumed interpreters.

I have often felt that I would like to portray a dressmaker of the turn of the century which is what my grandmother and great-grandmother were in Philadelphia, but it may be that the time has passed me by.  At 74, I am becoming too disabled to stand too long or to climb steps - my problems are mainly knees, spine, and vision.  But none of that can stop me from learning!

A note:  As we are sheltering in place, I have seen more netflix, amazon prime, and HBO programs than I ever imagined I would.  Recently I have watched the series CHERNOBYL.  Not that I would recommend more disaster viewing at such a time as we are living in with the Covid 19 Pandemic, but this is a powerful series, though truly hair-raising!  My daughter was born three years before Chernobyl, and I remember being terrified about the future for her. 
Last Sunday there was an interesting article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine about disaster tourism at Chernobyl in the Dead Zone.  Sometimes real life can be like science fiction!  Knowing what radiation does, it boggles my imagination that anyone would want to tour the 'dead zone' of a nuclear reactor disaster site.

On a happier note:  The sun is out!  Among our instructions for this time is one that advises us to get out and exercise, alone, at least once a day.  I have been taking my dog for a one mile walk every day since I adopted her and I have been delighted to see the daffodils, the ground cover pinks and purples (whatever they are called) and the flowering trees showering us with pink and white petals.  

My sincere hope for you to stay safe and well in these difficult times!
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

More protein complementary vegetarian main dish recipes for hard times

Hi everyone - hoping you are coping with the corona virus and all its INCONVENIENCES!  A few posts back I gave two recipes for canned tuna(from THE WEEK MAGAZINE) which, I may have said, I would've adjusted to my own ingredients and my vegetarian lifestyle.  This morning I was  texting with some teacher friends who were lamenting the food rationing on chicken at their supermarket, so I thought it might be timely to add two more recipes to the list.  One is from my former Mother-in-law, now deceased who was a talented and enthusiastic cook of traditional Polish dishes.  One that she made in both meat and meatless form was 'stuffed peppers.' Very simple!
Stuffed Green Peppers
Ingredients:
green peppers
brown rice
onion
bread crumbs
1 egg
tomato sauce

Wash and cut the tops off as many large green peppers as you wish to serve.  Probably 6 is a good number for today and tomorrow!

Cook up a pot of brown rice or wild rice.  ((meat eaters can cook ground beef)

sautee' a pan of very small diced onions

Mix the sauteed onions and the brown rice together in a bowl (I seem to remember Mrs. M. adding a beaten egg but I am not certain - I did it without the egg)  You can add some bread crumbs for filler if you wish, I didn't.  This dish gives you protein and your vegetables all in one!

Stand the peppers in a baking dish, stuff them with the brown rice mixture, ladle a dollop of tomato sauce on top of each one and bake until tender but not falling apart.  I forget exactly how long, half hour?

STUFFED POTATO SKINS (this dish I got from the Colonial Diner which has an excellent vegan menu.  Several of my vegan friends and I have made it a point to go there frequently to try each dish on their menu.  This one is my favorite of two favorites.  Some of my neighbors are vegans and they too have enjoyed the Colonial menu.

Ingredients:
As many baking potatoes as you plan to want (6?)  You can use the potatoes in so many ways, so bake as many as you wish and use a few for this recipe and save the others for slicing and sauté'
baking potatoes
1 can black beans
1 can white beans
1 can red beans
1 can diced spiced tomatoes
1 can of yellow corn
1 jar of chunky medium hot salsa (if you prefer you can skip the tomatoes and use a larger jar of salsa)
grated cheddar cheese
chili powder
sour cream

drain each can and put the beans, corn, tomatoes and salsa in a pot to heat.  

Bake the potatoes (you can bake them in a microwave for smaller quantities but the oven gives a better flavor and crispier skins)

slice each potato in half and scoop out the potato 

place a filling of chili in each potato skin 'boat' and top with a tablespoon of cheddar cheese (or vegan cheese if you have it)

put in the oven and bake for a short time, maybe 15 minutes

Remove and serve with sour cream or vegan sour cream if you have it.

I am a vegetarian so I do use some dairy products.  Any dairy I use can be substituted by vegan products that are just as good.

The Colonial also has chili tortillas on the vegan menu and you can use the tortillas with the chili recipe.

Sorry if my recipes are not very exact.  I am not a serious cook or recipe sharer but I am expecting any of my friends or acquaintances have enough experience in the kitchen to supply whatever corrections or details are needed as well as to adapt any recipe to suit their own lifestyles!  

Enjoy!  My Gran Mabel, the German ancestor, whose people came her in the early 1800's during the German unification civil war, was a true survivor and even more importantly, she knew how to remain cheerful and optimistic in the face of shortages, rationing, and hard times.  I loved her very much and she was an excellent role model for me.  Widowed in her 30's with four children to raise and no education, she survived by her sewing skills, her mother's help, and her energetic good will.  I keep a picture of her on my piano to remind me of her good example.  From my English heritage, I have adopted Winston Churchill's excellent advice, "Keep Calm and Carry On.!"  

As long as we share and cooperate with one another, look for good solutions to difficulties and ADAPT and EVOLVE, we will all get through this.

Churchill's other good advice was "When you are going through hell, just keep going."  We will get to the other side of this!

Be well, stay safe!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Appalachian saying that is good for hard times:  Use it up, wear it out, make it do and do without!

From Mr. Fred Rogers, "When in despair, look for the helpers!"

Two recipes for your disaster storaged canned goods - tuna

If you tuned in to my previous blog suggesting canned foods and other storage friendly foods to put aside for a disaster which we are now facing with the Novel Corona virus, you will perhaps notice that I missed adding canned tuna to the list!  So here I fix that omission with two recipes from The Week news magazine for this week, March 27, 2020.

But first an even more important stock-up group I missed:  trail mix!  You may wish to make your own and I would suggest it as I don't like what happens to nuts when they have been packaged with dried cranberries which still have some moisture and make dried nuts kind of soggy.  So stock up on walnuts, cranberries, dried bananas and other dried fruits, almonds, cashews and a variety of seeds such as sunflower seeds!

So two recipes for canned tuna.  These recipes used oil preserved tuna and if I made them, which I might, I would use water canned tuna instead as I hate oily tuna!  I am not a fan of fish flavor anyhow (as a vegetarian, I rarely to never eat fish anyhow).  One ingredient mystified me - 'farro' so I looked it up and it is a form of whole grain, often wheat and it is packed with protein!

Lemon dressed farro, tuna, and chick pea salad
grated zest of one large lemon
5 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup of farro (cooked per pkg instructions and cooled-makes 3 cups)
1 3/4 cups canned no-salt-added chick peas drained and rinsed
7 oz can oil packed light tuna, flaked
1 cup diced sweet onion
1/4 cup diced loosely packed parsley

In a small bowl whisk lemon zest, juice and oil to form an emulsified dressing, season with salt and black pepper to taste
In a large bowl combine farrow, chick peas, tuna, onion, parsley and lemon dressing.  Toss to incorporate and then refrigerate for a couple of hours.  Serves 6 to 8

Fettucini col sugo de tonno con aglio e panna

1 7 oz can of tuna packed in olive oil
1/2 tsp garlic chopped very fine
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tbsp butter softened to room temperature
1/2 cu heavy cream
1/2 cu freshly grated Parmigiano-reggiano
1/4 boxed dried fettuccine

Drain tuna and place in bowl
Add garlic, parsley, egg, butter, cream, salt, liberal grindings of black pepper and grated cheese: Mix well using a fork to break up and mash the tuna
Drop pasta into a pot of abundant boiling salted water and cook until done but firm
Drain and toss immediately with the tuna mixture
Bring to table at once with additional grated cheese on the side
Serves 4

Noted:  best canned tuna Tonnino Tuna Fillets in Oil (sold in jars)
Ortiz Bonito del Norte Albacore White Tuna in Olive Oil
Starkist Selects Solid Yellowfin Tuna in extra virgin olive oil
Starkist Solid White Albacore in Veg Oil

Bon Apetit - Stay well my friends!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

In my next post, I will share a cous cous vegetarian recipe given to me by a friend!

Thoughts, worries, origins, avalanches

This afternoon, in my usual reading period which is after lunch and before feeding the pets their dinner, I was reading a fascinating essay on "avalanche mediation" when the phone range.  A nervous friend called.  He has been preparing himself for radiation (beginning Monday) for state 2 prostate cancer and he was worried that something involving the coronavirus would cancel his treatment appointment.  I told him that when I am worrying and I can't seem to control it, I divert myself with reading.

In this time of self quarantine, many of my friends are going what they call "stir crazy" not being used to spending days alone at home.  Most of my friends are extremely active and out EVERY day without exception.  The most active are the ones I got to know 20 years go when I joined the Outdoor Club, and we stayed friends, but I have other friends with very active social lives and who work part time and do a lot of volunteer work.  Personally, I don't do well with too much socializing or too many days out and about.  I need interspersed days of solitude and quiet and I look forward to my unscheduled days withe delight and relief.

I told my friend that I read to divert my mind from pointless worrying and in fact when he called I was entirely engaged by an essay on "avalanche mediation" in a place in the US West called Alta.  I was reading how their daily monitoring of snow conditions determines whether or not to bring out the explosives and bring down the snow that is in danger of bringing itself down in huge crushing slabs without warning.  The author was just beginning to tell me about his trip to Switzerland to attend the Snow and Avalanche Research Institute in Davos, when the phone rang.  Just as well, though, because I had put some small cheese ravioli on to boil for my afternoon meal and the very reading that diverts me from worry diverts me from duty and I smelled the burning!  I got off the phone and was able to save about 75% of the ravioli.  

Aside from my decade or so in the Outdoor Club, kayaking, hiking, camping and exploring, I have not been an outdoor person, but I have had a lifelong fascination with stories, books, and documentaries about the outdoors.  I watch mountain climbing movies though I have, myself, only climbed 2  small peaks, one in Vancouver, Canada, one in Palm Springs, California, both of them day trips.  I also read voraciously about surfers though I don't even like to go in the ocean ever and have a suspicious fear of the dark water and what lurks beneath  I used to subscribe to Outside magazine and a few outdoor adventure journals like Lonely Planet and Granta.  

That makes me wonder why I, a city born and bred child, who matured in the suburbs can be so instantly hooked and transported by stories about the wild outdoors.  Speaking of wild outdoors, one of my favorite recent books was WILD, by Cheryl Strayed.  Also the essay by Jon Krakauer about the young man who died stranded and alone in an old school bus in Alaska, which became both a book and a riveting movie.  

When I try to go back to the beginning, I find myself in the company of Jack London.  Again, the early days in Philadelphia when my most ready access to books, aside from the classics my good and saintly mother bought me, was the lost, dusty, forgotten bookcase in my Grandmother Lyons'' basement where I found Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan.  Among the classics my mother bought me was White Fang, Dog of the North.  The Luck of Roaring Camp was in the basement.  These books and the trilogy of Men Against the Sea opened a portal in my imagination that helped me escape from my hometown both physically when I reached 18, and in my mind from the moment I opened the book covers. 

Now than I am no longer able to kayak or hike, I can still visit the mountains via great writers and I never fueled bored at home as long as there is a good magazine like the New Yorker (Cold War, pg. 19 James Somers - the avalanche essay) or a book. 

Happy Trails, both inside and outside
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Read All About it! - books and Plagues

I have only read one book that directly deals with a plague and it was both informative and spread a wide net of interest in other areas.  The book I read was BRING OUT YOUR DEAD: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793.  This book came to my attention during a lecture on a quarantine station that once stood in Tinicum, The Lazarus, outside the city of Philadelphia, and where immigrants, in particular German immigrants were once quarantined before being allowed to enter the city.  They mentioned the book and the after effects of the Yellow Fever. 

Recently I ran across an excellent essay on Slave Rebellions, especially in the Caribbean, and it mentioned how the fleeing plantation colonists brought the Yellow Fever with them from Santo Domingo to Philadelphia via mosquitos that came along with baggage.

Needless to say any history buff or reader will be familiar with the scourge of Small Pox that decimate both the soldiers and the civilians of the Revolutionary period.

And of course, we ALL are familiar with the Black Plague which wiped out a good portion of Europe in the Middle Ages.

Recently I saw a very good film called PANDEMIC, and when some of my friends felt that our current procedures of quarantine and shelter in place, closings of restaurants, malls, and gathering places, were extreme, I had to demur.  Once you see the potential played out, you can understand why extreme measures are necessary.  Another good film is CONTAGION.

I looked up a number of title for anyone interested in learning more:
SPILLOVER;  Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
OUTBREAK; 50 Tales of Epidemics that Terrorized the World
SUPERBUGS, Matt McCarthy
and in fiction:
ZONE ONE
CHERRY (about the opioid epidemic)

Personally, I have been getting most of my news during this "Shelter in Pace" period, from BBC World News.  Interesting quandary, whether to postpone the Olympics or go on as planned which seems to be the current plan.  Personally, I think it should be postponed one year.  We should sacrifice now to protect the future.  However, that said, sometimes too much information is a detriment as I learned from reading WIRED and Y@K during that millennial scare.  I bought a kerosene heater, oil lamps, kerosene and oil, water, and all sorts of suggested essentials, and nothing happened.  I ended up selling all of it in a yard sale for a dollar and item, even the expired kermess and oil (who knew these things could expire?!)

So, once again, I have laid in 2 weeks supply of essentials but no kerosene stove (obviously) just canned goods, almond butter and almond milk, water and food for my pets.  Needless to say, I have gotten low on various items as the days have gone by and a week passed on my 2 week supply, so I am looking at a toilet paper shortage, but I have paper napkins and paper towels if that becomes a problem.  And it is just one person in my home, aside from pets, so we should be fine.

I heard a group of ladies my age talking about the epidemics and pandemics they could remember, including Y2K, a week or two ago, before the 'shelter in place' took effect:  Spanish FLU epidemic of World War 1, the Yellow Fever, the Small Pox, the Polio epidemic of our own childhood (which infected Joni Mitchell and Neil Young - the singer/songwriters of our generation, as well as our President F.D.Roosevelt)SARS, EBOLA, and SWINE FLU, and let us not forget AIDS.  And of course the Opioid epidemic which I suppose, though eclipsed by coronavirus at present, is still killing people in possibly much larger numbers.

Stay Well!  Happy Trails -
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Preparing for Pandemic

Have I ever over-prepared? YES!  Having read a book on Y2K, I bought a kerosene heater, kerosene, two oil lamps and lamp oil and the usual gallons of water, etc.  Of course, as we all know Y2K amounted to nothing and a few years later I sold my $200 or more worth of disaster supplies for a few dollars to make space in my storage shed.  The kerosene was expired as was the lamp oil.  

Nonetheless, there are ordinary precautions we can all take and I just did.  I don't watch tv anymore due to vision problems, but I read voraciously and I watch amazon prime and netflix on my laptop, so when I read that the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus to be a pandemic, I decided to do the cautious, moderate thing, and prepare for 10 days with canned goods.  Now, I doubt the shops will close but if we are warned to quarantine ourselves, it makes sense to be prepared.  I am going to list a recipe I call 7 can disaster prep chili, and some other canned and sundry supplies it simply makes senset to have on hand.  At the end of a year, in autumn when the food drives begin, whatever canned goods I have left I empty the cupboard and send to the food bank.

7 can chili
1 can each of:
black beans
white beans
red beans, 
corn,
spiced/diced tomatoes
1 jar chunky salsa
That's it!  If you have chili powder, a tsp is good, and I like to have it over brown rice because rice and beans are a protein complementary.  Rice is also a good shaple to have in a jar in the cupboard.  I keep all drygoods in the fridge or in jars out of habit from my years in the city where roaches own the walls.

Keep on hand in general for power failures or other disasters:
a 6 pack of water OR even better, a Britta water pitcher and extra Britta filters
manual can opener (in case of power failures)
tomato soup
box of crackers or two
dried fruit and nuts
jar of marinara and some pasta

And today while at the store, I also stocked up on cat food and dog food.  I doubt we will see a quarantine in the US, but it doesn't hurt to have what you need on hand, BUT I don't promote severe stocking up which leaves other people without.  So if you think you should get toilet paper, just buy what you might need for a couple of weeks, don't clear the shelves, the way they did in Australia!

Stay safe, stay well!
Hope to see you on the other side of this new unexpected disaster!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com

Walking and Talking Events Upcoming

BIG NEWS - Perhaps I mentioned that I had made an art piece to enter into the juried show BRAVE 100, being held at my favorite local gallery, Eiland Arts, Merchantville.

My piece was inspired by a cloth pages book with a cloth shoulder strap that I had made for my daughter when she was a toddler.  I called it 'pocketbook' and it inspired me to do another version. 

I chose 20 women who had influenced my life and made both American and international improvements in the world.  I found photos I liked of them, online, and adapted from them to make small postcard sized portraits.  Then I found fabric that in some way, color or print, referred to their work or lives.  For example, for Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, and a renowned ocean biologist, I found seashell motif fabric.  For Joni Mitchell, brilliant American singer/songwriter/musician, I found peace sign material.  
I made quilt squares with the portraits in the center, and then sewed them together along the top to create a book, with a shoulder strap.

To make a long story short, I made 4 pocketbooks with 5 pages each and I won FIRST PRIZE!!!!  I had no idea until I went to the opening of the show that I had won, and I had never dared to imagine such a thing.  I was thrilled that I was accepted into the show!

1.So, you can go to Eiland Arts, at the old Merchantville Train Station, see the show (gallery upstairs) and you can walk on the daffodil bordered Rails to Trails path out in front!

2.Again, combining Women's History Month, 100th Anniversary of Suffrage Year 2020 - AND - Walking, here is an event in Haddonfield:

HADDONFIELD, NJ — On the 100th anniversary of the Women's Suffrage movement, residents will have the chance to learn about women who made a difference in the history of Haddonfield this spring.

The Historical Society of Haddonfield offers a walking tour on May 3. The "Historic Hadddonfield" walking tour begins at Greenfield Hall at 1:30 p.m., according to the Historical Society. Greenfield Hall is located at 343 Kings Highway East.

The tour will have a special focus on the women of Haddonfield. This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the women's suffrage movement, which concluded with the ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote on Aug. 18, 1920.

Haddonfield is named after Elizabeth Haddon, who claimed land in the new world in her father's name. As the story goes, John Haddon bought a 500-acre tract of land in New Jersey in 1698. 

He had to claim the land physically within six months, but since he couldn't make the trip due to his poor health, he sent his 21-year-old daughter to claim the land.

The tour is limited to 20 people, and tickets are $15 per person. All proceeds to benefit the Historical Society. Participants are also welcome to visit Greenfield Hall either before or after the walking tour. The building will be open for tours from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Tickets for the walking tour can be purchased online at www.haddonfieldhistory.org. They are also available through the Historical Society office at 856-429-7375 or info@haddonfieldhistory.org.

3.You can add two events this month:  March 22 at the Camden County Historical Society display and lecture and

4.Lucretia Mott (historical re-enactor) at Gloucester County Historical Society on March 29!  

Happy Trails!

Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com