The latest news is the removal of Christopher Columbus statues in Camden, NJ (my county) and across the country.
The facts are that Christopher Columbus invaded a foreign land, enslaved and massacred the local inhabitants, robbed them, and claimed THEIR land for the invading European monarch.
This happened all over the North American continent, and there is nothing to celebrate about this genocidal invasion by European countries.
Various experts have estimated that European diseases and genocidal violence have accounted for the eradication of about 90% of the indigenous people of this continent.
If a force from another planet with superior weaponry and diseases to which we have no immunity invaded our planet, tortured, enslaved and murdered Homo Sapiens, then claimed this planet for their federation, that would not be an inappropriate analogy, AND we would not want memorials to their invasion on our land.
Statues of formerly victorious conquerors have been removed from countries all over the world when their regimes have been defeated.
What should be of more value than ethnic identity is American identity. Our memorials should represent American values and the interests of all Americans. Slavers, invaders, racists and traitors do not deserve places of honor in our public spaces. We need memorials to the brave men and women who have moved us toward our national ideals. Let's see some statues to Abolitionists, Civil Rights leaders, and women who sacrificed to bring the vote to half our nation's people.
We have Union soldiers in our ancestry in my family, and they did not serve and sacrifice to see the traitors and those who committed crimes against humanity in the form of slavery celebrated with statuary and flags, no more than statues to the British defeated forces should be raised in places of honor. The British were defeated by the bravery and sacrifice of the people who had suffered under the unjust rule of a colonial power. Those heroes should be remembered as well as symbols for the common folk who fought and sacrificed and suffered to establish this new democratic system BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, ALL THE PEOPLE.
It is time to throw off the dead, villainous grip of colonial history and start celebrating our home grown heroism.
The statues can be moved to specific destinations that represent the small groups who want them, Columbus can go to parks and museums that are meaningful.
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Monday, June 15, 2020
Pandemic and Parenthood
When you look back at your life, which is an activity much supported by the isolation and social distancing, you count your many blessings and you strive to figure out your greatest achievements.
Although I have had many achievements of which I feel I have a right to be proud, owing to the obstacles in my path along each of those routes, there is one I think is above all others.
Motherhood fell upon me, much like many another woman, I suspect. I didn't choose that path until I was on it, and then I chose it over and over again, when I came to yet another gate. Part of my choice was my age; I knew it would probably be my last chance. Part of it was a surprising longing for a baby, which I had never felt in my life before; I watched babies that I had never noticed before, and I marveled at all they represented. I wanted to experience that.
So much fear accompanied that decision, years and years of fear. Here was a powerless little person who depended entirely on me for protection, and care. No one can be prepared for carrying around a baby most of your waking hours, being at the beck and call of a little person who needs water, milk, food, clean diapers, and the age related varieties of need, for years to come. Here is a little person whom you literally teach to speak, to walk, to color, put puzzle pieces together, to relate to other people, to read!
And when you have done all that for as long as you possible can, you can look back on that achievement and marvel. Among the fortunate, I am a mother who raised a decent, responsible, noble and wise human being. I brought her into the world, supported her development in every way I could, and I got lucky, so amazingly and 'roll of the dice' lucky that my child was born safe and healthy - something out of our hands for the most part.
I won an art contest, I won a poetry contest, I independently published three books, I did many kinds of good work for which I received achievement prizes. I have college degrees with honors and I was a young woman who barely had a clue that colleges existed. There was never any college education mentioned to me when I was growing up. There was no hint of that expectation ever given to me. Three things drove me there: a friend who was going to college, a burning desire to understand more of the hidden layers of literature, the doors to college forced open by the student revolution in the late 60's and early 70's. All these things make me proud of my life, but the greatest beauty and marvel I can claim to have had a hand in, has been my daughter.
My daughter surpasses anything I could have imagined. It is true that with my tools and my inclinations, I may have, under different socio-economic conditions, gone on to find greater accomplishments in the wider world. It took me a long time to find the wider world. Perhaps there are great artists, musicians, poets, doctors, teachers, saints, who have achievements they value higher than my greatest achievement, but I haven't felt that so I can never know.
What I do know is that a simply marvelous human being exists in the world today who gestated in my body and whom I raised for eighteen years. She is a superb human being.
Pandemic ponderings on the porch -
Happy Trails, outward or inward.
Jo Ann
Although I have had many achievements of which I feel I have a right to be proud, owing to the obstacles in my path along each of those routes, there is one I think is above all others.
Motherhood fell upon me, much like many another woman, I suspect. I didn't choose that path until I was on it, and then I chose it over and over again, when I came to yet another gate. Part of my choice was my age; I knew it would probably be my last chance. Part of it was a surprising longing for a baby, which I had never felt in my life before; I watched babies that I had never noticed before, and I marveled at all they represented. I wanted to experience that.
So much fear accompanied that decision, years and years of fear. Here was a powerless little person who depended entirely on me for protection, and care. No one can be prepared for carrying around a baby most of your waking hours, being at the beck and call of a little person who needs water, milk, food, clean diapers, and the age related varieties of need, for years to come. Here is a little person whom you literally teach to speak, to walk, to color, put puzzle pieces together, to relate to other people, to read!
And when you have done all that for as long as you possible can, you can look back on that achievement and marvel. Among the fortunate, I am a mother who raised a decent, responsible, noble and wise human being. I brought her into the world, supported her development in every way I could, and I got lucky, so amazingly and 'roll of the dice' lucky that my child was born safe and healthy - something out of our hands for the most part.
I won an art contest, I won a poetry contest, I independently published three books, I did many kinds of good work for which I received achievement prizes. I have college degrees with honors and I was a young woman who barely had a clue that colleges existed. There was never any college education mentioned to me when I was growing up. There was no hint of that expectation ever given to me. Three things drove me there: a friend who was going to college, a burning desire to understand more of the hidden layers of literature, the doors to college forced open by the student revolution in the late 60's and early 70's. All these things make me proud of my life, but the greatest beauty and marvel I can claim to have had a hand in, has been my daughter.
My daughter surpasses anything I could have imagined. It is true that with my tools and my inclinations, I may have, under different socio-economic conditions, gone on to find greater accomplishments in the wider world. It took me a long time to find the wider world. Perhaps there are great artists, musicians, poets, doctors, teachers, saints, who have achievements they value higher than my greatest achievement, but I haven't felt that so I can never know.
What I do know is that a simply marvelous human being exists in the world today who gestated in my body and whom I raised for eighteen years. She is a superb human being.
Pandemic ponderings on the porch -
Happy Trails, outward or inward.
Jo Ann
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Pandemia and the PORCH
Today, sitting, yep, on the porch, I began to remember other porches and the magic they provide of simply opening a door and entering an entirely new and different state of mind.
In the house, I had bounced from constantly running news programs covering the latest police murder of yet another African American man. Rayshard Brooks had fallen asleep in the drive thru lane of a Wendy's fast food joint.
When the police came, things appeared to be civil until the police attempted to arrest Brooks and it turned into a three man wrestling match. Brooks got a taser from one of the police and he ran for it. I am certain he suspected that taser was going to be used on him, so he grabbed it and ran for his life, but the policeman shot him dead.
While his life ebbed away, the policemen put on rubber gloves and collected their shell casings. If that isn't callous disregard for life, what is?
I have seen this before, in World War II movies, this callous disregard for whatever people have been designated as victims - Jews, women, homosexuals, immigrants, homeless people.
My heart sank. Then I got up, opened the door and sat on the porch. Suddenly it was quiet except for birds singing and the voices of children playing in some farther off yard. That quickly the world changed.
It reminded me of a balcony porch I once had back in 1974, on the back of a third floor apartment in an adapted old Victorian three story house. The balcony was part of the wooden fire escape but it was so high it was in the tree canopy, like an attached tree house. I can still feel the sensations of the cool fresh, perfumed air of the leafy bower.
And that reminded me of the veranda in the 1980's of my parents mountainside house in West Virginia. There you could escape the clamor of family life and simply become part of the pasture, the trees catching the sunlight and bouncing it around, the fragrance of the green world, the cool breath of tree cleaned air.
Porches, porticoes, verandas, balconies, all these little escapes into paradise from the interior world of the dwelling. The pandemic has forced me to spend previously unimagined amounts of free time on the porch. That has been a gift, that change of state of mind that is provided by a little escape into the trees and shrubs, the flowers and birds, the soft earth of the outdoors. Sometimes you get so busy, you forget that such a gift exists, right outside the living room door.
Happy trails, whatever kind they may be.
Jo Ann
In the house, I had bounced from constantly running news programs covering the latest police murder of yet another African American man. Rayshard Brooks had fallen asleep in the drive thru lane of a Wendy's fast food joint.
When the police came, things appeared to be civil until the police attempted to arrest Brooks and it turned into a three man wrestling match. Brooks got a taser from one of the police and he ran for it. I am certain he suspected that taser was going to be used on him, so he grabbed it and ran for his life, but the policeman shot him dead.
While his life ebbed away, the policemen put on rubber gloves and collected their shell casings. If that isn't callous disregard for life, what is?
I have seen this before, in World War II movies, this callous disregard for whatever people have been designated as victims - Jews, women, homosexuals, immigrants, homeless people.
My heart sank. Then I got up, opened the door and sat on the porch. Suddenly it was quiet except for birds singing and the voices of children playing in some farther off yard. That quickly the world changed.
It reminded me of a balcony porch I once had back in 1974, on the back of a third floor apartment in an adapted old Victorian three story house. The balcony was part of the wooden fire escape but it was so high it was in the tree canopy, like an attached tree house. I can still feel the sensations of the cool fresh, perfumed air of the leafy bower.
And that reminded me of the veranda in the 1980's of my parents mountainside house in West Virginia. There you could escape the clamor of family life and simply become part of the pasture, the trees catching the sunlight and bouncing it around, the fragrance of the green world, the cool breath of tree cleaned air.
Porches, porticoes, verandas, balconies, all these little escapes into paradise from the interior world of the dwelling. The pandemic has forced me to spend previously unimagined amounts of free time on the porch. That has been a gift, that change of state of mind that is provided by a little escape into the trees and shrubs, the flowers and birds, the soft earth of the outdoors. Sometimes you get so busy, you forget that such a gift exists, right outside the living room door.
Happy trails, whatever kind they may be.
Jo Ann
Saturday, June 6, 2020
Pandemia - isolation- old age
Sitting on my porch just now, and I have to diverge to describe the view: My porch is small, about ten feet wide and 6 feet deep. The floor is dark gray flagstone. I have a wooden, park bench style seat, a bistro table and two wrought iron chairs. Directly in front, and indeed reaching into the porch is a sturdy, youthful holly that I planted when it was 7 inches tall. It is now far above the roof and waves cheerily at me when I come out. Behind the holly is the 'oldsters.' They are five of a total of about 25 original trees from when the house was built 75 years ago, maples and an oak plus a few self planted berry trees in the back yard along the fence.
There is a pea pebble path to my porch that curves gently like a cheek. Alongside it are several plants whose names I don't remember with hand sized leaves that are rust colored on onesie and mustard colored on the other. There are a dozen small evergreens that I planted, always as small plants under a foot tall, which are now roof tall and above. We have grown up together.
A friend sent me a video of a hike she took yesterday in the woods, which were blooming with mountain laurel; I think she said it was the orange trail. Anyhow I was filled with melancholy for a lost love. I LOVED the woods, and I could feel intoxicated by the fragrances, my favorite being hot sun on pine needles. The big stillness filled with the riffling activity of the air in the leaves, the small and soothing sounds of birds or geese. These are gone from me now.
It isn't just the car being so old and untrustworthy, my knees are shot and so is my eyesight, and so I must reconcile myself to the change which has come about. Aside from being isolated by the pandemic, I am isolated by the onset of my personal aging experience. Turns out, as strong and active as I was, I am not the noteworthy oldy who competes in contests of fitness for the elderly.
My cartilage wore out. It is a fact I have to face every day in every way. So I can remember with love my years of hikes in the woods, the Maurice River Bluffs, the Cranberry Trail, Oswego, Atsion, Parvin, and my most beloved of all Pakim Pond. But I can't hike them anymore and with this car, I can't drive there either, and by the time I get a new car, my eyesight might be so bad I won't be able to drive there.
This is a new book. I feel as though, once again, I have walked out of a book in the series that is my life, and just opened the cover of yet another volume. There was the book of my childhood in the brick row home canyons of South Philadelphia, the book of my teens in Maple Shade and at Merchantville High School, my married life and the years in Germany, my motherhood years, my big freedom of late middle age retirement, and now the new and final volume in the series: Old Age.
My roots are coming in white. I am letting the style and color of my hair salon days grow out. All of this is fairly familiar to me as I was a watchful child and adult and I watched my parents age and die. I watched my mother's chestnut hair give way to commercial coloring, then wave the white flag of surrender. My mother went white in her 60's. My father kept something like a faded version of his golden platinum into his late 60's and finally subsided into a pale whitish color. I watched his knees go bad, her back. I saw their prodigious, unusual level of energy run out like a battery in a flashlight. All of these things that I witnessed, I now experience.
I may not have noticed so completely if I hadn't been in isolation for these past three months. It gives you plenty of time to think and to feel, things that the distractions of social life both protect and deprive you of.
Lately I have been feeling the tiniest flicker of inspiration to make a painting of the view from the porch.
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
There is a pea pebble path to my porch that curves gently like a cheek. Alongside it are several plants whose names I don't remember with hand sized leaves that are rust colored on onesie and mustard colored on the other. There are a dozen small evergreens that I planted, always as small plants under a foot tall, which are now roof tall and above. We have grown up together.
A friend sent me a video of a hike she took yesterday in the woods, which were blooming with mountain laurel; I think she said it was the orange trail. Anyhow I was filled with melancholy for a lost love. I LOVED the woods, and I could feel intoxicated by the fragrances, my favorite being hot sun on pine needles. The big stillness filled with the riffling activity of the air in the leaves, the small and soothing sounds of birds or geese. These are gone from me now.
It isn't just the car being so old and untrustworthy, my knees are shot and so is my eyesight, and so I must reconcile myself to the change which has come about. Aside from being isolated by the pandemic, I am isolated by the onset of my personal aging experience. Turns out, as strong and active as I was, I am not the noteworthy oldy who competes in contests of fitness for the elderly.
My cartilage wore out. It is a fact I have to face every day in every way. So I can remember with love my years of hikes in the woods, the Maurice River Bluffs, the Cranberry Trail, Oswego, Atsion, Parvin, and my most beloved of all Pakim Pond. But I can't hike them anymore and with this car, I can't drive there either, and by the time I get a new car, my eyesight might be so bad I won't be able to drive there.
This is a new book. I feel as though, once again, I have walked out of a book in the series that is my life, and just opened the cover of yet another volume. There was the book of my childhood in the brick row home canyons of South Philadelphia, the book of my teens in Maple Shade and at Merchantville High School, my married life and the years in Germany, my motherhood years, my big freedom of late middle age retirement, and now the new and final volume in the series: Old Age.
My roots are coming in white. I am letting the style and color of my hair salon days grow out. All of this is fairly familiar to me as I was a watchful child and adult and I watched my parents age and die. I watched my mother's chestnut hair give way to commercial coloring, then wave the white flag of surrender. My mother went white in her 60's. My father kept something like a faded version of his golden platinum into his late 60's and finally subsided into a pale whitish color. I watched his knees go bad, her back. I saw their prodigious, unusual level of energy run out like a battery in a flashlight. All of these things that I witnessed, I now experience.
I may not have noticed so completely if I hadn't been in isolation for these past three months. It gives you plenty of time to think and to feel, things that the distractions of social life both protect and deprive you of.
Lately I have been feeling the tiniest flicker of inspiration to make a painting of the view from the porch.
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Thursday, June 4, 2020
Pandemic & Protest
For this blog entry, I wanted to start with this quote from Harper Mag. June 2020, pg.35 THE COMPLICATING GERMS, by David Rutstein
"Influenza, a disease of the respiratory tract is spread from person to person through direct contact by direct contact through breathing, sneezing, coughing, and speaking. It is so highly infections that many thousands of persons in a city may be attacked at the same time and it spreads rapidly along lines of communication from one population center to another. This disease varies in severity from being almost asymptomatic to one that may cause death in a few days."
I think it is easy to forget these facts in the heat of passion. Having watched on television as Officer Chauvin knelt on the neck of a dying man who was crying out for help, "I can't breathe!" was enough to inflame anyone. Those who are paid by us and sworn to protect us become our murders? For what? For the suspicion of perhaps passing a bad check or a bad twenty? A life for that?
So believe me, because I am old and cannot stand or walk longer than half an hour anymore, if I had been young and hale, I may have been drawn by my conscience to join those who protested this ongoing crime against citizen of our country. Because someone MUST stand up at some time and say "No more," whether it is sexual abuse or racial assault, it must be challenged and the people have got to stand up in a large mass and protest.
I learned this as I saw my age mates taken, more or less against their will to fight in Vietnam. They didn't want to go. They didn't believe in the hocus locus of the war propaganda, and they didn't want to kill Vietnamese people or be maimed or killed themselves.
The rest of us had to stand up and say, "No, you can't take any more young men and destroy any more villages so that the fat cats in the war game can enrich themselves by selling armaments." And I did march and walk on the boulevards around the White House, always wondering if one of the infiltrators would choose me to assault to spark a confrontation. Also wondering if I would be one of the unfortunates singled out for arrest and imprisonment. There would be No One to bail me out if that happened.
However, this time is different. It is different because gathering in large crowds while the Coronavirus is among us is more dangerous than any time before. Even with masks, the ones they brought, and the ones that were handed out to marchers by concerned and generous supporters, no one in those crowds was safe from the virus which can easily penetrate two layers of cloth, or a bandanna.
And no one at home when the protesters returned to their homes, was safe from whatever they carried with them. None of us will know the damage from this for 2 or 3 weeks.
Maybe we will be lucky and the virus will have run its course. No one knows. Maybe the immune systems of the youth of the protesters will protect them. We won't know for three weeks, until we see the numbers of new cases in Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs. My 25 year old nephew/godson was one of the protesters. He used to do work for me every week or two but now I won't be able to see him till the end of June because I am old and my body is compromised by a number factors owing to natural aging and some bad habits.
I didn't text or talk to my daughter until the day or two after the massive protests because I was afraid she had gone too, in the Brooklyn, New York City marches. "Thank God, " I replied when I texted her yesterday and said that because of the pandemic, she and her partner had decided not to join the crowd.
Just as no African American mother wants to see her son murdered by police in an error driven act of aggression, I don't want to see my daughter felled by a burst of passion that results in sickness and death from a virus that has no cure. I could only hope that her common sense and serious and admirable respect for and understanding of the consequences of hurricanes, pandemics, would prevail in her decision making. My nephew is young and still in that age range that feels itself invulnerable and immortal. My daughter has passed into her mid thirties and has seen enough to know anyone can be struck down at any time by disaster or disease. She has had friends die.
Tumultuous times, like no one ever expected to see again. It is all familiar from the 1970's but I certainly never thought I would see these days again. I had gotten used to the peace and stability in which I had been lucky enough to raise my daughter. Though I must say that it was never far from my mind, after a childhood in the wake of World War II, and a young adulthood in the midst of war and riots in the 70's, that if it could happen there and to THEM, it could happen here, and to US, and to ME.
Watching the fall of Venezuela was prophetic.
I haven't watched the news yet today though I watched all day yesterday, as thousands swarmed the center of the city of my birth, and the city of my daughter's birth, Philadelphia, the center of the revolutionary war in the 1770's, the city that was occupied by foreign invading troops for nine months during the revolution, and the city that was crushed by the Spanish flu in 1918 - 16,000 deaths and half a million cases in the city. Troops returning from Europe brought the disease to the navy yard, and then the war bond parade spread it around. It was known as the Spanish flu because Spain suffered the highest casualty counts, 147,000 official county, 250,00 estimated actual count. The 75% died in the SECOND WAVE in 1919 that followed the initial epidemic in 1918.
We don't know what the next month will bring in terms of rising numbers after the protests across the country in every major metropolitan zone as well as in every large town. People in good will wish to show solidarity with those with a righteous grievance. It was like a trap.
Well, we will see what transpires over the upcoming uncharted weeks of summer and hope for the best!
"Happy trails to you, until we meet again"
By the way, I have been thinking a lot lately about attribution, so it is time to remind anyone reading this that the little quote I use to end my posts is from a song sung by Dale and Roy Evans, Happy Trails to You, until we meet again. Happy trails to you, keep smiling until then!"
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
"Influenza, a disease of the respiratory tract is spread from person to person through direct contact by direct contact through breathing, sneezing, coughing, and speaking. It is so highly infections that many thousands of persons in a city may be attacked at the same time and it spreads rapidly along lines of communication from one population center to another. This disease varies in severity from being almost asymptomatic to one that may cause death in a few days."
I think it is easy to forget these facts in the heat of passion. Having watched on television as Officer Chauvin knelt on the neck of a dying man who was crying out for help, "I can't breathe!" was enough to inflame anyone. Those who are paid by us and sworn to protect us become our murders? For what? For the suspicion of perhaps passing a bad check or a bad twenty? A life for that?
So believe me, because I am old and cannot stand or walk longer than half an hour anymore, if I had been young and hale, I may have been drawn by my conscience to join those who protested this ongoing crime against citizen of our country. Because someone MUST stand up at some time and say "No more," whether it is sexual abuse or racial assault, it must be challenged and the people have got to stand up in a large mass and protest.
I learned this as I saw my age mates taken, more or less against their will to fight in Vietnam. They didn't want to go. They didn't believe in the hocus locus of the war propaganda, and they didn't want to kill Vietnamese people or be maimed or killed themselves.
The rest of us had to stand up and say, "No, you can't take any more young men and destroy any more villages so that the fat cats in the war game can enrich themselves by selling armaments." And I did march and walk on the boulevards around the White House, always wondering if one of the infiltrators would choose me to assault to spark a confrontation. Also wondering if I would be one of the unfortunates singled out for arrest and imprisonment. There would be No One to bail me out if that happened.
However, this time is different. It is different because gathering in large crowds while the Coronavirus is among us is more dangerous than any time before. Even with masks, the ones they brought, and the ones that were handed out to marchers by concerned and generous supporters, no one in those crowds was safe from the virus which can easily penetrate two layers of cloth, or a bandanna.
And no one at home when the protesters returned to their homes, was safe from whatever they carried with them. None of us will know the damage from this for 2 or 3 weeks.
Maybe we will be lucky and the virus will have run its course. No one knows. Maybe the immune systems of the youth of the protesters will protect them. We won't know for three weeks, until we see the numbers of new cases in Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs. My 25 year old nephew/godson was one of the protesters. He used to do work for me every week or two but now I won't be able to see him till the end of June because I am old and my body is compromised by a number factors owing to natural aging and some bad habits.
I didn't text or talk to my daughter until the day or two after the massive protests because I was afraid she had gone too, in the Brooklyn, New York City marches. "Thank God, " I replied when I texted her yesterday and said that because of the pandemic, she and her partner had decided not to join the crowd.
Just as no African American mother wants to see her son murdered by police in an error driven act of aggression, I don't want to see my daughter felled by a burst of passion that results in sickness and death from a virus that has no cure. I could only hope that her common sense and serious and admirable respect for and understanding of the consequences of hurricanes, pandemics, would prevail in her decision making. My nephew is young and still in that age range that feels itself invulnerable and immortal. My daughter has passed into her mid thirties and has seen enough to know anyone can be struck down at any time by disaster or disease. She has had friends die.
Tumultuous times, like no one ever expected to see again. It is all familiar from the 1970's but I certainly never thought I would see these days again. I had gotten used to the peace and stability in which I had been lucky enough to raise my daughter. Though I must say that it was never far from my mind, after a childhood in the wake of World War II, and a young adulthood in the midst of war and riots in the 70's, that if it could happen there and to THEM, it could happen here, and to US, and to ME.
Watching the fall of Venezuela was prophetic.
I haven't watched the news yet today though I watched all day yesterday, as thousands swarmed the center of the city of my birth, and the city of my daughter's birth, Philadelphia, the center of the revolutionary war in the 1770's, the city that was occupied by foreign invading troops for nine months during the revolution, and the city that was crushed by the Spanish flu in 1918 - 16,000 deaths and half a million cases in the city. Troops returning from Europe brought the disease to the navy yard, and then the war bond parade spread it around. It was known as the Spanish flu because Spain suffered the highest casualty counts, 147,000 official county, 250,00 estimated actual count. The 75% died in the SECOND WAVE in 1919 that followed the initial epidemic in 1918.
We don't know what the next month will bring in terms of rising numbers after the protests across the country in every major metropolitan zone as well as in every large town. People in good will wish to show solidarity with those with a righteous grievance. It was like a trap.
Well, we will see what transpires over the upcoming uncharted weeks of summer and hope for the best!
"Happy trails to you, until we meet again"
By the way, I have been thinking a lot lately about attribution, so it is time to remind anyone reading this that the little quote I use to end my posts is from a song sung by Dale and Roy Evans, Happy Trails to You, until we meet again. Happy trails to you, keep smiling until then!"
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Pandemic - Living History - AGAIN!
To hold in my hand, the actual diary of Ann Whitall, written in the 1760's was an honor and made an indelible impression on me that has grown over the days since the day I held that book.
I had gotten to know Ann Whitall a little from transcribing her diary from a typed copy onto the computer so people could read it.
I think it is easily misunderstood.
Having studied diaries for decades, and having kept my own for over 50 years, I have thought a lot about their purposes. Diaries from long dead days bring it back to the personal experience.
Ann Whitall was a woman who sought a spiritual life, as she had always been taught that she should. But marriage, motherhood, and the strains of everyday life put a great strain on that goal. On top of it all, a spiritual, deeply religious woman practicing a religion devoted to PEACE, had a revolution drop, literally, into her backyard.
How hard must that have been for her? She, too, in many ways was isolated. Her deep need for a proper spiritual path put her into chafing conflicts on a daily basis. Once, on a field trip, I held her marriage page in my hand, from a Quaker log book of such events. How much joy and hope she must have felt at the outset of her long journey through life. She must have been shyly in love, totally innocent of any information regarding sexuality or reproduction, and she had eight children! Taking a year for each pregnancy and birth and a year suckling, thats sixteen long years of maternity.
Then, when things are prosperous, calm, and the children beyond all their deadly diseases such as measles and chicken pox, scarlet fever, cholera, diphtheria, typhus, small pox, a revolution is sparked.
Soon, the fields of South Jersey are burning, the farms looted, the cattle and horses commandeered, the chickens slaughtered, the bedding shredded and everything glass shattered. The women are alone on the farms, the husbands are off in the militia, only the elderly remain to shoulder the load.
Ann's diaries, the ones we have, were written in the decade before the revolution, before she had any idea that such a thing would happen to her. In one she mentions briefly how sad about "the Indians killing the people" and she has no idea that soon there will be killing in her apple orchard, a whole enormous battle with cannon, and foreign soldiers!
I feel for Ann Whitall, and I think of her. Her memory lives on because her diaries were saved, through all these years from 1762 to 2020, through all the fires and the looting and the blood and death, those little diaries were kept safe, and Ann Whitall speaks to us from before our time.
Meanwhile, on television, protestors march on the capitol, in all of the major cities, and soldiers fire tear gas and rubber bullets into them. It makes me think of so many old protest songs such as "Which side are you on?" and newer songs like "The Universal Soldier" and it makes me ask myself that question. I answer that I am on the side of peace, and I think of Ann Whitall, who was also on the side of peace in times of turmoil.
I had gotten to know Ann Whitall a little from transcribing her diary from a typed copy onto the computer so people could read it.
I think it is easily misunderstood.
Having studied diaries for decades, and having kept my own for over 50 years, I have thought a lot about their purposes. Diaries from long dead days bring it back to the personal experience.
Ann Whitall was a woman who sought a spiritual life, as she had always been taught that she should. But marriage, motherhood, and the strains of everyday life put a great strain on that goal. On top of it all, a spiritual, deeply religious woman practicing a religion devoted to PEACE, had a revolution drop, literally, into her backyard.
How hard must that have been for her? She, too, in many ways was isolated. Her deep need for a proper spiritual path put her into chafing conflicts on a daily basis. Once, on a field trip, I held her marriage page in my hand, from a Quaker log book of such events. How much joy and hope she must have felt at the outset of her long journey through life. She must have been shyly in love, totally innocent of any information regarding sexuality or reproduction, and she had eight children! Taking a year for each pregnancy and birth and a year suckling, thats sixteen long years of maternity.
Then, when things are prosperous, calm, and the children beyond all their deadly diseases such as measles and chicken pox, scarlet fever, cholera, diphtheria, typhus, small pox, a revolution is sparked.
Soon, the fields of South Jersey are burning, the farms looted, the cattle and horses commandeered, the chickens slaughtered, the bedding shredded and everything glass shattered. The women are alone on the farms, the husbands are off in the militia, only the elderly remain to shoulder the load.
Ann's diaries, the ones we have, were written in the decade before the revolution, before she had any idea that such a thing would happen to her. In one she mentions briefly how sad about "the Indians killing the people" and she has no idea that soon there will be killing in her apple orchard, a whole enormous battle with cannon, and foreign soldiers!
I feel for Ann Whitall, and I think of her. Her memory lives on because her diaries were saved, through all these years from 1762 to 2020, through all the fires and the looting and the blood and death, those little diaries were kept safe, and Ann Whitall speaks to us from before our time.
Meanwhile, on television, protestors march on the capitol, in all of the major cities, and soldiers fire tear gas and rubber bullets into them. It makes me think of so many old protest songs such as "Which side are you on?" and newer songs like "The Universal Soldier" and it makes me ask myself that question. I answer that I am on the side of peace, and I think of Ann Whitall, who was also on the side of peace in times of turmoil.
Saturday, May 30, 2020
Pandemic May 30, 2020 - keeping a distance
Today, when I took my almost daily dog walk of one mile, I passed one of the tidy ranch/bungalow houses characteristic of my neighborhood. Outside stood 15 people and several small children and babies in arms. There were colored balloons dancing in the brisk breeze that cooled the air right down. People were getting out of cars all up and down the street, young people in their late thirties or forties.
At first, my heart was lifted and I felt a small jolt of joy. But then, I realized, "No one has on a mask!" People were hugging like they used to do, and I was suddenly doused in anxiety. That was just the kind of crowd that would let a bloom of coronavirus take some of them away.
However, sad was the emotion that won the day. It was so sad to think of a time when people could hug, and gather to celebrate a first birthday, and breathe out and breathe in without fear or danger.
I would have been afraid. I think they should have been afraid, and indeed, a few that I walked near enough to see the expression on their faces, I didn't see happy anticipation, but more tense wariness.
Are we safe yet? I can't seem to find out. Those people were both brave and foolhardy. They took a big risk (was it?). How to calculate that risk - pretty complicated. Last I heard we didn't have any cases in my town, though I am in a county with over a thousand, so, who knows?
A friend called and asked me if I wanted to go to the store with her today. It was a necessary trip because her son and granddaughter were away at the seashore and she needed groceries. I have such fear now of the grocery store, I have to summon my plexiglas armor before I can venture out there.. I felt bad to say no, but I did.
It was unlike me to say no, but over this spring of the pandemic, I have realized how very far from nurturing I have grown. When one of my friends was telling me about her volunteer work at a local wildlife refuge feeding baby raccoons, I couldn't help but observe that I had recently realized that I don't feel nurturing or responsible for people in the way I used to. I suppose it is all part of the aging process, letting go of things, actions, drives, feelings and, I guess eventually, memory.
Well, I still have mine, at least this spring!
Happy trails to you!
Jo Ann
At first, my heart was lifted and I felt a small jolt of joy. But then, I realized, "No one has on a mask!" People were hugging like they used to do, and I was suddenly doused in anxiety. That was just the kind of crowd that would let a bloom of coronavirus take some of them away.
However, sad was the emotion that won the day. It was so sad to think of a time when people could hug, and gather to celebrate a first birthday, and breathe out and breathe in without fear or danger.
I would have been afraid. I think they should have been afraid, and indeed, a few that I walked near enough to see the expression on their faces, I didn't see happy anticipation, but more tense wariness.
Are we safe yet? I can't seem to find out. Those people were both brave and foolhardy. They took a big risk (was it?). How to calculate that risk - pretty complicated. Last I heard we didn't have any cases in my town, though I am in a county with over a thousand, so, who knows?
A friend called and asked me if I wanted to go to the store with her today. It was a necessary trip because her son and granddaughter were away at the seashore and she needed groceries. I have such fear now of the grocery store, I have to summon my plexiglas armor before I can venture out there.. I felt bad to say no, but I did.
It was unlike me to say no, but over this spring of the pandemic, I have realized how very far from nurturing I have grown. When one of my friends was telling me about her volunteer work at a local wildlife refuge feeding baby raccoons, I couldn't help but observe that I had recently realized that I don't feel nurturing or responsible for people in the way I used to. I suppose it is all part of the aging process, letting go of things, actions, drives, feelings and, I guess eventually, memory.
Well, I still have mine, at least this spring!
Happy trails to you!
Jo Ann
Pandemia and HelgaTestorf
Just now, I discovered that Betsy Wyeth died last month, April 21, 2020. Among my lifetime favorites of the Art World is Andrew Wyeth and my favorite of his works were the Helga series from:
"The Helga Pictures are a series of more than 240 paintingsand drawings of German model Helga Testorf (born c. 1933 or c. 1939) created by Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) between 1971 and 1985"
Obviously, there is more than the beauty of Helga that appeals to me. There is a stillness and solemnity, like watching a wild animal when it doesn't know you are watching.
It is such a deep, complex and subtle story, the Andrew Wyeth Helga paintings. Andrew Wyeth was fascinated (even obsessed) with his German neighbors, the Kuerners, and he became like a local cat who drops by for meals. He walked in and out of their house at will and even set up a studio in an empty room so he could paint there.
It was during that time that Karl Kuerner became ill and Helga, who had trained in Germany to be a nurse and masseuse, came to care for him, that she met Andrew Wyeth and he switched his obsession from Karl Kuerner to Helga. Helga was a e German born immigrant. Her husband met her in Mannheim, Germany, after she left a convent due to poor health. He was an American citizen, though born in Germany, so they married and she came to live in Chadd's Ford.
As far as I can tell, Helga, born in 1933 or 1939, is still alive. She has four adult children. I would love to know a little more about her.
Anyhow, if you don't know the Helga story, what happened was that after Andrew Wyeth became enamored, obsessed, fascinated he drew and painted 240 portraits of her, many of her nude, asleep, in bed. Apparently, from my many years of reading this story, he promised her at the time that no one would ever see the paintings. I can just about imagine the seduction scene that must have taken place to get a married woman to take off her clothes and pose nude.
There is no doubt in my mind that they fell in love. Love emanates from those paintings, Whyeths love and adoration of Helga's beauty, and her trust and vulnerability and serene pleasure in being adored, seen, acknowledged. Many if not most women, married and mothers, become invisible. We are like the servants of the 'big houses' of pre-war England, we quietly make the beds, bathe the children, prepare the food, serve the food, clean up the kitchen, the bath, vacuum, dust and sweep, always kind of behind the scenes, unacknowledged, unnoticed. So there she was, beautiful, intelligent, taken for granted, invisible, until this artist comes along and not only recognizes her beauty and her spirit, but captures it in his adoring portraits of her. What an honor. What a betrayal.
At the point where Wyeth became ill and thought he might die, he told his wife, Betsy, who was his business manager, about the 240 works of art depicting Helga. Betsy, a marketing genius, parlayed the mystery into a several million dollar buy-out by a collector in Pennsylvania. If I remember correctly, there was a part in the contract of sale that insisted the collection be kept together and not broken into pieces and parcels and sold. Hopefully the collector is also a Pennsylvanian patriot, who in time, will bequeath the treasure trove to his state for a museum.
The principal players are all dead now except Helga. Also, hopefully, Wyeth managed to slip a little trust into the estate process to help support Helga's whose inspiration and beauty engendered that handsome fortune for him and his legal wife.
At any rate, one day when I was book shopping in an old bookstore in one of the towns where they still existed - Rancocas "Second Time Around." or maybe the books store in Burlington, I ran across a coffee table book of the paintings of Helga at a very reasonable price, even surprising as it had cost quite a bit when it came out. I think they were telling it for $10. I couldn't believe my good luck. Inside the front cover, someone had torn out the magazine story about the big hoopla over the discovery and sale of the paintings.
If I had to say what it was that so appealed to me about Wyeth's work, I would have to say the spirituality, the loneliness, the awareness of nature, the superb artisan quality of the paintings. They speak to my heart including the Helga paintings which capture that same silent, solitary, still afternoon quality where we become totally aware of something, the trees, the meadow, the room, the state of our souls - which I cannot define but which I can feel.
I think Wyeth managed to convey so much of his love for Helga, not so much the individual woman herself, as something larger that she represents, the ephemeral nature of youth and beauty and love itself. He makes us all fall in love with that moment, that subject, that fiction.
I am going to look for that book now -
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
"The Helga Pictures are a series of more than 240 paintingsand drawings of German model Helga Testorf (born c. 1933 or c. 1939) created by Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) between 1971 and 1985"
Obviously, there is more than the beauty of Helga that appeals to me. There is a stillness and solemnity, like watching a wild animal when it doesn't know you are watching.
It is such a deep, complex and subtle story, the Andrew Wyeth Helga paintings. Andrew Wyeth was fascinated (even obsessed) with his German neighbors, the Kuerners, and he became like a local cat who drops by for meals. He walked in and out of their house at will and even set up a studio in an empty room so he could paint there.
It was during that time that Karl Kuerner became ill and Helga, who had trained in Germany to be a nurse and masseuse, came to care for him, that she met Andrew Wyeth and he switched his obsession from Karl Kuerner to Helga. Helga was a e German born immigrant. Her husband met her in Mannheim, Germany, after she left a convent due to poor health. He was an American citizen, though born in Germany, so they married and she came to live in Chadd's Ford.
As far as I can tell, Helga, born in 1933 or 1939, is still alive. She has four adult children. I would love to know a little more about her.
Anyhow, if you don't know the Helga story, what happened was that after Andrew Wyeth became enamored, obsessed, fascinated he drew and painted 240 portraits of her, many of her nude, asleep, in bed. Apparently, from my many years of reading this story, he promised her at the time that no one would ever see the paintings. I can just about imagine the seduction scene that must have taken place to get a married woman to take off her clothes and pose nude.
There is no doubt in my mind that they fell in love. Love emanates from those paintings, Whyeths love and adoration of Helga's beauty, and her trust and vulnerability and serene pleasure in being adored, seen, acknowledged. Many if not most women, married and mothers, become invisible. We are like the servants of the 'big houses' of pre-war England, we quietly make the beds, bathe the children, prepare the food, serve the food, clean up the kitchen, the bath, vacuum, dust and sweep, always kind of behind the scenes, unacknowledged, unnoticed. So there she was, beautiful, intelligent, taken for granted, invisible, until this artist comes along and not only recognizes her beauty and her spirit, but captures it in his adoring portraits of her. What an honor. What a betrayal.
At the point where Wyeth became ill and thought he might die, he told his wife, Betsy, who was his business manager, about the 240 works of art depicting Helga. Betsy, a marketing genius, parlayed the mystery into a several million dollar buy-out by a collector in Pennsylvania. If I remember correctly, there was a part in the contract of sale that insisted the collection be kept together and not broken into pieces and parcels and sold. Hopefully the collector is also a Pennsylvanian patriot, who in time, will bequeath the treasure trove to his state for a museum.
The principal players are all dead now except Helga. Also, hopefully, Wyeth managed to slip a little trust into the estate process to help support Helga's whose inspiration and beauty engendered that handsome fortune for him and his legal wife.
At any rate, one day when I was book shopping in an old bookstore in one of the towns where they still existed - Rancocas "Second Time Around." or maybe the books store in Burlington, I ran across a coffee table book of the paintings of Helga at a very reasonable price, even surprising as it had cost quite a bit when it came out. I think they were telling it for $10. I couldn't believe my good luck. Inside the front cover, someone had torn out the magazine story about the big hoopla over the discovery and sale of the paintings.
If I had to say what it was that so appealed to me about Wyeth's work, I would have to say the spirituality, the loneliness, the awareness of nature, the superb artisan quality of the paintings. They speak to my heart including the Helga paintings which capture that same silent, solitary, still afternoon quality where we become totally aware of something, the trees, the meadow, the room, the state of our souls - which I cannot define but which I can feel.
I think Wyeth managed to convey so much of his love for Helga, not so much the individual woman herself, as something larger that she represents, the ephemeral nature of youth and beauty and love itself. He makes us all fall in love with that moment, that subject, that fiction.
I am going to look for that book now -
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
Friday, May 29, 2020
Pandemic and TIME
Time has frequently been an obsession of mine. Sitting on the porch, taking a little vacation from the constant coverage around the latest tragic event in our ongoing destabilization, I thought about Historical Time - what I think of when I think of total immersion in a historical period whether through reading or television, a time that was so remarkable it came to represent a whole block of time: The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution, Humanism, The Black Plague, Napoleonic Wars, The Famine, and so on. Lately I have been spending some short periods revisiting the Spanish Flu epidemic of Philadelphia.
And even more recently, I am spending two month in solitude during the Pandemic of 2020.
The comfort of history is that no matter how bad it got, you know how it ended and you, personally, are still here, so your forebears must have made it through and so, maybe you will too.
Then, I think of time in another way, looking at the holly trees and the maples in my yard and listening to the birds, and enjoying this present moment.
When I went back into the house, the cats great restorers of the present, came to sit with me and on me and remind me of the NOW as it exists between my finger tips and the cats' fur as I pat them.
Time got so stretchy in the three months of my confinement, and I couldn't help but think of Marcel Proust a LOT, because of the way confinement makes you travel in your mind, and go back and forth through time, as a normal busy life does not because you are constantly interacting in the present, and can't leave it.
This is the second time I have personally lived through extreme times, the kind that make history. I became a young adult during Vietnam and it shaped my life. I married my high school sweetheart when he got drafted and we both went to Germany, he as a soldier and I as a wife. Then the anti-war protests, the Civil Rights Riots in the streets, the Women's movement and the pro-choice marches. The pot and the cigarettes.
Those times are back and with me, the 1970's all over again. But I made it through then, and luck willing, I will make it through this period, until I face my own end of time, hopefully a decade or two from now.
Happy trails to you (through space or time)
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
And even more recently, I am spending two month in solitude during the Pandemic of 2020.
The comfort of history is that no matter how bad it got, you know how it ended and you, personally, are still here, so your forebears must have made it through and so, maybe you will too.
Then, I think of time in another way, looking at the holly trees and the maples in my yard and listening to the birds, and enjoying this present moment.
When I went back into the house, the cats great restorers of the present, came to sit with me and on me and remind me of the NOW as it exists between my finger tips and the cats' fur as I pat them.
Time got so stretchy in the three months of my confinement, and I couldn't help but think of Marcel Proust a LOT, because of the way confinement makes you travel in your mind, and go back and forth through time, as a normal busy life does not because you are constantly interacting in the present, and can't leave it.
This is the second time I have personally lived through extreme times, the kind that make history. I became a young adult during Vietnam and it shaped my life. I married my high school sweetheart when he got drafted and we both went to Germany, he as a soldier and I as a wife. Then the anti-war protests, the Civil Rights Riots in the streets, the Women's movement and the pro-choice marches. The pot and the cigarettes.
Those times are back and with me, the 1970's all over again. But I made it through then, and luck willing, I will make it through this period, until I face my own end of time, hopefully a decade or two from now.
Happy trails to you (through space or time)
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Pandemic and Jazz and Abstract Art 5/26/20
For days, or maybe weeks, I have retreated into watching music documentaries every evening. First I watched "No Direction Home" the Bob Dylan documentary, then I watched "Woodstock" a new variation on the old documentary, then I watched "Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young," Then "Jazz" the Ken Burns 8 episode history of Jazz. Last of all, I watched "Madonna" and they all did exactly as I had hoped, they gave me music and insight into the music and took my mind off everything else.
An observation about the "Jazz" documentary that I felt very strongly, was that the peoples' music, the Blues, Gospel, Folk, got taken over by ego centered artists who really didn't care about communicating with their audience anymore. They were into their instruments and what they could get from them and they were into breaking all the structures that had come before but which to them felt like barriers, fences, to their individual creative expression. As they got more abstract, during the period of 'Bird' and Charlie Parker, and Thelonius Monk, they gathered some adoring adherents who studied them and wrote about their experiments and breakthroughs, but they left most people behind. The Blues appealed to everyone, spoke to us, asked us to join in. It struck me as sad when in the end of the Jazz documentary, dead serious musicians played as though they were alone, on a stage littered with signs admonishing people not to dance, or clap or tap their feet. Well, they could hardly tap their feet anyhow since the musicians had attempted to escape from all patterned beats. The people stopped buying their records, coming to their concerts and Rock and Roll hijacked the popular music world BECAUSE Rock and Roll was about all of us together, not just the solo artist exploring himself and his instrument.
It seems to me a very similar thing happened to the art world. I grew up in a Norman Rockwell world where his Saturday Evening Post covers were designed to tell a story to people, a story about themselves, their lives, their experiences. We could ALL read the story in the paintings. But when the world of Jackson Pollack exploded, the artists weren't talking to us anymore, they were only talking to themselves, each other, and their materials. We, the viewer, the audience, were wiped out of the equation. And again, although some critics worshipped at the high altar of exultant individuality, the rest of the public got left behind. We hadn't followed the careers or the thinking processes or the context of these new artists and their works, so we didn't get it. There was no 'tourist' map for the viewer, we were irrelevant. Only the wealthy collectors mattered and the critics who could sell the experiments to these collectors, and so art became more and more detached from our ordinary existences. Art left us and we left it.
Solitude - To my joy, reading the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times, which was devoted to the exploration of what the writers were thinking during the "Lock Down" - isolation - "Shelter In Place" of the past two or three months. Happily I found that I was not alone in my loneliness not alone in my falling back into addiction (smoking), or eating forbidden foods like cookies and ice cream. The writers too had abandoned their exercise regimens. All of us had fallen into a kind of mindful stupefaction, watching birds, watching the sky change color, watching grass grow.
One particularly touching essay spoke of British officers confined to a concentration camp in Germany during the last 4 years of the war. Apparently it wasn't anywhere near the usual torturous and brutal regimen of deprivation because they took to bird watching and kept copious, detailed notes on the birds they watched. One of them escaped with the notebooks of the bird watchers wrapped in a shirt turned into a rucksack. He became, later in his life, head of a conservation group devoted to birds. So apparently they had access to such luxury materials as pencils and notebooks in that camp.
But the way they transferred their attention from their own confinement and misery to the freedom and the ordinary beautiful daily habits of birds, was enlightening to me, as to the author of the essay.
Sadly, I haven't done any of the things I had hoped I would do, at least not yet, but it isn't over yet, and I may in time pull myself from this quick sand of lethargy and get back to work on my beloved projects. Meanwhile, still writing, reading and thinking!
And still blogging to you!
Happy Trails, inside or out!
Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com
An observation about the "Jazz" documentary that I felt very strongly, was that the peoples' music, the Blues, Gospel, Folk, got taken over by ego centered artists who really didn't care about communicating with their audience anymore. They were into their instruments and what they could get from them and they were into breaking all the structures that had come before but which to them felt like barriers, fences, to their individual creative expression. As they got more abstract, during the period of 'Bird' and Charlie Parker, and Thelonius Monk, they gathered some adoring adherents who studied them and wrote about their experiments and breakthroughs, but they left most people behind. The Blues appealed to everyone, spoke to us, asked us to join in. It struck me as sad when in the end of the Jazz documentary, dead serious musicians played as though they were alone, on a stage littered with signs admonishing people not to dance, or clap or tap their feet. Well, they could hardly tap their feet anyhow since the musicians had attempted to escape from all patterned beats. The people stopped buying their records, coming to their concerts and Rock and Roll hijacked the popular music world BECAUSE Rock and Roll was about all of us together, not just the solo artist exploring himself and his instrument.
It seems to me a very similar thing happened to the art world. I grew up in a Norman Rockwell world where his Saturday Evening Post covers were designed to tell a story to people, a story about themselves, their lives, their experiences. We could ALL read the story in the paintings. But when the world of Jackson Pollack exploded, the artists weren't talking to us anymore, they were only talking to themselves, each other, and their materials. We, the viewer, the audience, were wiped out of the equation. And again, although some critics worshipped at the high altar of exultant individuality, the rest of the public got left behind. We hadn't followed the careers or the thinking processes or the context of these new artists and their works, so we didn't get it. There was no 'tourist' map for the viewer, we were irrelevant. Only the wealthy collectors mattered and the critics who could sell the experiments to these collectors, and so art became more and more detached from our ordinary existences. Art left us and we left it.
Solitude - To my joy, reading the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times, which was devoted to the exploration of what the writers were thinking during the "Lock Down" - isolation - "Shelter In Place" of the past two or three months. Happily I found that I was not alone in my loneliness not alone in my falling back into addiction (smoking), or eating forbidden foods like cookies and ice cream. The writers too had abandoned their exercise regimens. All of us had fallen into a kind of mindful stupefaction, watching birds, watching the sky change color, watching grass grow.
One particularly touching essay spoke of British officers confined to a concentration camp in Germany during the last 4 years of the war. Apparently it wasn't anywhere near the usual torturous and brutal regimen of deprivation because they took to bird watching and kept copious, detailed notes on the birds they watched. One of them escaped with the notebooks of the bird watchers wrapped in a shirt turned into a rucksack. He became, later in his life, head of a conservation group devoted to birds. So apparently they had access to such luxury materials as pencils and notebooks in that camp.
But the way they transferred their attention from their own confinement and misery to the freedom and the ordinary beautiful daily habits of birds, was enlightening to me, as to the author of the essay.
Sadly, I haven't done any of the things I had hoped I would do, at least not yet, but it isn't over yet, and I may in time pull myself from this quick sand of lethargy and get back to work on my beloved projects. Meanwhile, still writing, reading and thinking!
And still blogging to you!
Happy Trails, inside or out!
Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com
Monday, May 25, 2020
Pandemic, Boredom and Addiction - Memorial Day 2020
I was invited to a party today, but I didn't want to go. Some major shifts have occurred in my life since the "Lock Down." I understand the people who are going bonkers, we just go bonkers in such different ways.
Recently, after the better part of 36 years being mostly smoke free, I began to smoke again. Cigarettes have been the most prominent addictive behavior in my life, that is, the kind that can be perceived and measured. I call it an addictive behavior because it crosses the border out of reason, and into self-destrucive behavior you don't even understand, but do fall prey to.
I think it was a month ago that I began to smoke again. My entire social life had been shut down like a small town. Not only me, but most of my friends associated freely amongst our friendship groups, having lunch, going to historic places, going on walks, drives, and research/discovery adventures. March 9, I had lunch with my friend Nancy for her birthday - last outside social activity.
Two friends have made an effort to come to see me, for which I am grateful as I am afraid to drive my car any distance or on the highway.
So I spend almost all of my time for the past two months a human with a dog and a few cats. I can only assume the constant isolation, which felt perfectly fine to me, must have nonetheless triggered my smoking addiction, which has always been triggered in the past by unusual social group events like family holidays, or emotional pain from some domestic situation. Otherwise, I spent decades, months, weeks on weeks NOT smoking, and suddenly a button got pushed somewhere and like a robot, I drove to the 7-11 and bought cigarettes. I went from 2 or 3 a day to 5 a day, to 2 every part of the day: morning, lunch time, dinner time, bedtime - out on the porch lighting up and watching the stars.
The various counties of my incorporated being are in dispute over my addictive smoking. My lungs, heart, throat, mouth, bronchial tubes, are all united in saying "stop smoking" and the United Nations which is my brain, having issued warnings, stays ignored as some blind emotion drives me to take out the cigarette and smoke it.
To a quick view it might appear that boredom incites my desire to smoke, and yet, I am not certain that I have ever entertained 'boredom' because wherever I am, there is something of interest. But maybe I am bored and I don't know it.
Memorial Day and I can't help but think of the young, beautiful, strong, laughing young men I always saw in my mother's photo box. They were sailors in World War II, in Florida waiting to get shipped out to what no one could imagine. I see the pictures of my father grinning, in his sailor suit, chin tilted up, like a sun illuminated Greek sculpture.
All the soldiers and sailors that you saw in the documentaries about World War II also smoked all the time and cigarettes were a coveted material good. Definitely those fellows weren't bored. They were probably quietly terrified. Maybe I am quietly terrified.
When I think of the most terrifying events in my life, I was pretty quiet about it: childbirth, divorce, all those invasive control wars.
Now my life has a peaceful routine without stress, and I am never bored because I read, and draw, and listen to music, and watch documentaries, films and paint. Still, I want to smoke and somehow it comforts me.
Yesterday, discussingt our individual fears, a friend and I concluded, you can't do anything about the future. If you worry and agonize over it, you feel anxious and depressed. But if you float out onto a general positive current of hope, you feel better. Since you can't control the future, why wouldn't you choose to feel good rather than bad? But, I suppose, a question comes up about whether you can control what you feel. Many of my friends believe you can do that through recognizing them, and using strategies to divert the energy into positive rather than negative. But, maybe some people can't and maybe we can't always either.
Sometimes I think smoking a cigarette is kind of a channel changer.
Well, eventually, I will have to quit again.
Happy trails & Hoping you stay well!
Jo Ann
Recently, after the better part of 36 years being mostly smoke free, I began to smoke again. Cigarettes have been the most prominent addictive behavior in my life, that is, the kind that can be perceived and measured. I call it an addictive behavior because it crosses the border out of reason, and into self-destrucive behavior you don't even understand, but do fall prey to.
I think it was a month ago that I began to smoke again. My entire social life had been shut down like a small town. Not only me, but most of my friends associated freely amongst our friendship groups, having lunch, going to historic places, going on walks, drives, and research/discovery adventures. March 9, I had lunch with my friend Nancy for her birthday - last outside social activity.
Two friends have made an effort to come to see me, for which I am grateful as I am afraid to drive my car any distance or on the highway.
So I spend almost all of my time for the past two months a human with a dog and a few cats. I can only assume the constant isolation, which felt perfectly fine to me, must have nonetheless triggered my smoking addiction, which has always been triggered in the past by unusual social group events like family holidays, or emotional pain from some domestic situation. Otherwise, I spent decades, months, weeks on weeks NOT smoking, and suddenly a button got pushed somewhere and like a robot, I drove to the 7-11 and bought cigarettes. I went from 2 or 3 a day to 5 a day, to 2 every part of the day: morning, lunch time, dinner time, bedtime - out on the porch lighting up and watching the stars.
The various counties of my incorporated being are in dispute over my addictive smoking. My lungs, heart, throat, mouth, bronchial tubes, are all united in saying "stop smoking" and the United Nations which is my brain, having issued warnings, stays ignored as some blind emotion drives me to take out the cigarette and smoke it.
To a quick view it might appear that boredom incites my desire to smoke, and yet, I am not certain that I have ever entertained 'boredom' because wherever I am, there is something of interest. But maybe I am bored and I don't know it.
Memorial Day and I can't help but think of the young, beautiful, strong, laughing young men I always saw in my mother's photo box. They were sailors in World War II, in Florida waiting to get shipped out to what no one could imagine. I see the pictures of my father grinning, in his sailor suit, chin tilted up, like a sun illuminated Greek sculpture.
All the soldiers and sailors that you saw in the documentaries about World War II also smoked all the time and cigarettes were a coveted material good. Definitely those fellows weren't bored. They were probably quietly terrified. Maybe I am quietly terrified.
When I think of the most terrifying events in my life, I was pretty quiet about it: childbirth, divorce, all those invasive control wars.
Now my life has a peaceful routine without stress, and I am never bored because I read, and draw, and listen to music, and watch documentaries, films and paint. Still, I want to smoke and somehow it comforts me.
Yesterday, discussingt our individual fears, a friend and I concluded, you can't do anything about the future. If you worry and agonize over it, you feel anxious and depressed. But if you float out onto a general positive current of hope, you feel better. Since you can't control the future, why wouldn't you choose to feel good rather than bad? But, I suppose, a question comes up about whether you can control what you feel. Many of my friends believe you can do that through recognizing them, and using strategies to divert the energy into positive rather than negative. But, maybe some people can't and maybe we can't always either.
Sometimes I think smoking a cigarette is kind of a channel changer.
Well, eventually, I will have to quit again.
Happy trails & Hoping you stay well!
Jo Ann
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Old Stuff - Panemic thoughts
An old photograph I have is so mysterious. It's my real, biological grandmother. In a big, noisy, multi-generational family, no one ever spoke of her. When I bugged Lavinia Lyons, my great-aunt who raised my mother, she would tell me very short, conflicted explanations. This mystery woman was born, lived, had three daughters, a sister, many cousins and was erased entirely. Why?
The reason she haunts me and always has is that I have the only two photographs of her that exist, and when I saw them and asked about them, no one would ever explain about her, but they entrusted her photographs to me.
Her name was Sarah Garwood. I am one of her descendants. I wouldn't like her to be entirely forgotten. The photo that I have, she once must have held in her hand, after she got it developed at the photo shop. She is so young and so pretty and fragile looking. And that photo is taken during the Spanish flu, in Philadelphia. She must be under 20, or just 20.
Two little girls, Sarah and her little sister Lavinia. Lavinia lived to be 89 and saw whole worlds change.
That photograph is such a precious gift that my grandmother gave me. They both entrusted me with these simple, transitory, fragile things that let those other people exist through me, the photographs, the sewing machine, the deck chair.
The real world is every bit as mysterious as The Leftovers, a tv series I have watched about mysterious departures. But as the singer said in the theme in season two "I'll just let the mystery be."
ps. speaking of old things that talk, Friday, I showed my nephew a clay ashtray my daughter made about 25 years ago, He had just made one too. I think the things people make with their hands leave some of them inside and when you touch those things it is like touching the hands of those people.
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Pandemia 2020 - Time out of Time
"For many of us it feels as though time has paused...."Christopher Beha, Harpers, Editor's Desk June 2020 issue
Basically how we have become habituated to measuring life is by a schedule set for a station on an assembly line. The bell rings, or the whistle blows and we march in, go to our stations and count off the boxes filled and sealed, the classes completed, until the bell rings or the whistle blows and you clock out again, the eight hour day, the five day work week, overtime, full-time, part-time, semesters completed, years completed. We think of our lives in chunks of work, brief glimpses of freedom on a weekend.
In the "shut down" one of the greatest mass sociology/psychology experiments ever conducted, if not THE greatest, those old ways of 'clocking' the day are gone. Farmers measured off time by seasons, crop life spans, plowing, sowing, reaping, floods and droughts.
Now we are forced to contemplate that which is right in front of our faces, closer to the NOW without the distractions that muscled the old work schedule measure of our lives.
Time for me, definitely has slowed down from an engine hum, to a river flow. The day slides by in shadows crossing the floor, green illumination outside the windows turning to black and back to particles beams through leaves again. The only mechanistic measure enforced on my days now is driven by - my body, the cats to be fed, the dog to be put out, brought it, walked, fed. Other than that, I am free - to float out on gossamer spider threads that go to the Marianna Trench, or Hallstatt, Germany, or back 50,000 years, or 50 years. My mind can get stuck in freedom on information lines, books magazines, movies, and the day drifts by, maybe episode by episode.
It isn't true that I resented the schedule imposed by all my school and work experiences. Only a mild resentment, and more a sense of resignation. This is how it goes, you are given life, but your use of it is carefully structured by others until you grow up and get free. But then you grow up and you don't get free - you get more and different contingencies and you give over more and more to work time and school time, and career time and domestic time, and parenting time. No free time.
But, if you are lucky and you grow old enough, you can get free time back, if you are, as I said LUCKY! By luck, I mean getting into the right trade at the right time, getting lucky in finding yourself in conditions that are positive for your growth and maximization of your potential, you enter a profession that has a retirement plan. If you are lucky and live long enough to put your 'time' in, you get a pension! If you were lucky enough to get born after the government under F D R, put in a social security system for the investment of workers towards their retirement, and the present before they get to dismantle it to persecute the weak again.
Now I have the most free time I have ever had. When I was a child, old enough to go out and play for long periods on my own, I had hours a day of free time. It was in the days before kids got entirely scheduled up while both parents worked. When I went home from school, my mother was there and I got changed and went outside to play - along the creek, in the little dark,shady, dell at one end of our street to the large golden meadow on the other end. Behind us were corn fields, but we didn't go into them. We hung out, the kids who lived there, and dammed up streams, built forts, ice skated, swam off Tarzan ropes from trees into the polluted creek, and except for going home for dinner and out again, we were free. We had no lessons, no organized sports. And in summer, we played all day and even until the stars came out sometimes.
Now I am free like that again, within the constraints of aging. There are no places to go, people to see, errands to run, for days and days on end.
Happy trails - physical, metaphysical, meditative or contemplative!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Basically how we have become habituated to measuring life is by a schedule set for a station on an assembly line. The bell rings, or the whistle blows and we march in, go to our stations and count off the boxes filled and sealed, the classes completed, until the bell rings or the whistle blows and you clock out again, the eight hour day, the five day work week, overtime, full-time, part-time, semesters completed, years completed. We think of our lives in chunks of work, brief glimpses of freedom on a weekend.
In the "shut down" one of the greatest mass sociology/psychology experiments ever conducted, if not THE greatest, those old ways of 'clocking' the day are gone. Farmers measured off time by seasons, crop life spans, plowing, sowing, reaping, floods and droughts.
Now we are forced to contemplate that which is right in front of our faces, closer to the NOW without the distractions that muscled the old work schedule measure of our lives.
Time for me, definitely has slowed down from an engine hum, to a river flow. The day slides by in shadows crossing the floor, green illumination outside the windows turning to black and back to particles beams through leaves again. The only mechanistic measure enforced on my days now is driven by - my body, the cats to be fed, the dog to be put out, brought it, walked, fed. Other than that, I am free - to float out on gossamer spider threads that go to the Marianna Trench, or Hallstatt, Germany, or back 50,000 years, or 50 years. My mind can get stuck in freedom on information lines, books magazines, movies, and the day drifts by, maybe episode by episode.
It isn't true that I resented the schedule imposed by all my school and work experiences. Only a mild resentment, and more a sense of resignation. This is how it goes, you are given life, but your use of it is carefully structured by others until you grow up and get free. But then you grow up and you don't get free - you get more and different contingencies and you give over more and more to work time and school time, and career time and domestic time, and parenting time. No free time.
But, if you are lucky and you grow old enough, you can get free time back, if you are, as I said LUCKY! By luck, I mean getting into the right trade at the right time, getting lucky in finding yourself in conditions that are positive for your growth and maximization of your potential, you enter a profession that has a retirement plan. If you are lucky and live long enough to put your 'time' in, you get a pension! If you were lucky enough to get born after the government under F D R, put in a social security system for the investment of workers towards their retirement, and the present before they get to dismantle it to persecute the weak again.
Now I have the most free time I have ever had. When I was a child, old enough to go out and play for long periods on my own, I had hours a day of free time. It was in the days before kids got entirely scheduled up while both parents worked. When I went home from school, my mother was there and I got changed and went outside to play - along the creek, in the little dark,shady, dell at one end of our street to the large golden meadow on the other end. Behind us were corn fields, but we didn't go into them. We hung out, the kids who lived there, and dammed up streams, built forts, ice skated, swam off Tarzan ropes from trees into the polluted creek, and except for going home for dinner and out again, we were free. We had no lessons, no organized sports. And in summer, we played all day and even until the stars came out sometimes.
Now I am free like that again, within the constraints of aging. There are no places to go, people to see, errands to run, for days and days on end.
Happy trails - physical, metaphysical, meditative or contemplative!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Pandemic and Marcel Proust and the Hadal Depths
Yesterday and today, I was reading an essay about an exploration by submersible of the deepest trenches of the earth's undersea geography. A multimillionaire, Victor Vescovo, devoted himself to building submersibles and then to visiting and mapping the deepest places in the undersea trenches. such as the Marianna Trench and the Java Trench off Australia and Indonesia and the Molloy in the Arctic. Just after I finished that essay, I read one about a mycophile who traveled the world hunting and gathering the most exotic and valuable mushrooms.
Sitting on the porch thinking about these adventurers, I was admiring my neighbor's rhododendron and thinking how little we actually ever explore our nearest worlds, the home, the neighborhood, the plants and soil in our own yards. I had taken to calling the neighbor's rhododendron The King of Shrubs and imagining myself bestowing a blue ribbon first prize for it. Then I realized that although I do a one mile daily 'border patrol' of our side of town with my dog, we had never ventured to the other side of our small town, the side south of Market Street. Even my own little town held infinite secrets of history and unexplored shrubbery.
That brought me back, as so often happens to Marcel Proust. Although I own a set of his volumes, I have rarely progressed very far into the text. For me, the propulsion is missing; the prose does not propel me forward further into it, and there is no outward push as in taking a literature course and having deadlines, so I wander in and out of Proust and tend not to remain, but the idea of what he has done stays with me all the time, the traveling via memory through time to recreate people and events and places, exploring that most deep and mysterious of worlds, our accumulated individual human experience. That, of course, is what made me into a diarist, a journal keeper, though not a very good one.
For more than 50 years I have kept diaries but especially of late, I have tended toward bulleted chore lists, accomplished, or still to be done, and my thoughts go mainly here, to the blog.
Never before the pandemic, have so many of us spent so much time in our own company. Unlike many, however, being elderly, I have no cacophony of family life to draw me away from the inner world and fix me, anchored to the world of family tending. My dog tries to hijack my life to her own purposes, or perhaps to be fair, she simply tries to get me to fulfill my part of the unspoken bargain we have, which is the if I give her the daily mile walk, she will avoid barking at me all day. Otherwise, she barks and barks until I fulfill my obligation, so some form of family life still exists in my otherwise cat quiet world. Most of the cats wait quietly until I provide their breakfast, dinner, or restock their dry food snacking bowls. Some, the younger ones, take to making little cat type demonstrations that they are running out of patience if I dawdle at their meal time. They walk around on the tables, pawing at rolling objects like pens, chapsticks, bic lighters, my glasses, and knocking them onto the floor to make me get up with the hope that once up, I will get back to business.
My point, or my theme is, that there are so many phenomena to study from cat behavior to dandelions, close at hand, that one need never go to the ends of the earth to find something interesting to map and to explore.
Happy Trails, in the woods, in the neighborhood, in your mind!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
ps. All these articles were in the May 18 issue of the New Yorker.
Sitting on the porch thinking about these adventurers, I was admiring my neighbor's rhododendron and thinking how little we actually ever explore our nearest worlds, the home, the neighborhood, the plants and soil in our own yards. I had taken to calling the neighbor's rhododendron The King of Shrubs and imagining myself bestowing a blue ribbon first prize for it. Then I realized that although I do a one mile daily 'border patrol' of our side of town with my dog, we had never ventured to the other side of our small town, the side south of Market Street. Even my own little town held infinite secrets of history and unexplored shrubbery.
That brought me back, as so often happens to Marcel Proust. Although I own a set of his volumes, I have rarely progressed very far into the text. For me, the propulsion is missing; the prose does not propel me forward further into it, and there is no outward push as in taking a literature course and having deadlines, so I wander in and out of Proust and tend not to remain, but the idea of what he has done stays with me all the time, the traveling via memory through time to recreate people and events and places, exploring that most deep and mysterious of worlds, our accumulated individual human experience. That, of course, is what made me into a diarist, a journal keeper, though not a very good one.
For more than 50 years I have kept diaries but especially of late, I have tended toward bulleted chore lists, accomplished, or still to be done, and my thoughts go mainly here, to the blog.
Never before the pandemic, have so many of us spent so much time in our own company. Unlike many, however, being elderly, I have no cacophony of family life to draw me away from the inner world and fix me, anchored to the world of family tending. My dog tries to hijack my life to her own purposes, or perhaps to be fair, she simply tries to get me to fulfill my part of the unspoken bargain we have, which is the if I give her the daily mile walk, she will avoid barking at me all day. Otherwise, she barks and barks until I fulfill my obligation, so some form of family life still exists in my otherwise cat quiet world. Most of the cats wait quietly until I provide their breakfast, dinner, or restock their dry food snacking bowls. Some, the younger ones, take to making little cat type demonstrations that they are running out of patience if I dawdle at their meal time. They walk around on the tables, pawing at rolling objects like pens, chapsticks, bic lighters, my glasses, and knocking them onto the floor to make me get up with the hope that once up, I will get back to business.
My point, or my theme is, that there are so many phenomena to study from cat behavior to dandelions, close at hand, that one need never go to the ends of the earth to find something interesting to map and to explore.
Happy Trails, in the woods, in the neighborhood, in your mind!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
ps. All these articles were in the May 18 issue of the New Yorker.
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Pandemic Book Obsessions-Mabel Pyne
I am haunted by a kind of book obsession. An example of how it manifests, occurred this morning; when I was reading a passage in an article about The Silk Road, followed by the Footsteps of the Buddha, I came across this -
"This is the world's fourth largest religion, with over half a billion
adherents - about 245 million of whom live in China - but of which only 1.8 still live in the land of the Buddha." (India) pg.58 Sunday New York Times, Style magazine, Travel, May 17, 2020.
Immediately I thought of Christianity and Islam as members of the aforementioned four largest religions, but what was the missing one? Was it Hinduism? So I went to my first thought source, a book written and illustrated by Mabel Pyne called The Story of Religion, published in 1954 by Houghton Mifflin.
My first encounter with this little gem came about in the late 1970's or early 1980's when I was teaching English at a local high school. Wandering the library stacks as I often did on free time, I came upon this book, which even then was a bit dog eared and worn but I had NEVER come across so clear concise, and enlightening book on any subject before. It is meant for the juvenile level but it took a lot of knowledge to pare all that information down into this lucid and elegant book. Ms. Pyne gives a brief history of the theory of the emergence of religion, then goes on to give a simple and useful description of the major religions including the main holy book, the main prophet/prophets, the main symbols and the main tenets.
In the center of the book is a two page spread showing the Tree of Religions (a family tree graphical organizer). Never before did I have so clear an appreciation for the basics and the relationship of these religions to one another.
The book WAS NOT where I usually keep it, so, flashlight in hand (my eyesight is failing) I searched until I found it in the bedroom floor to ceiling bookcase. I had been tidying up and instead of leaving this book where I was used to seeing it, I had moved it to its proper category - Religion - in my bookcase.
I wanted to look up Islam again. But before I even did that, I decided to look up Mabel Pyne. If she had any other books, I wanted to buy them. If she were still alive, I wanted to write her and tell her how much I admire her book.
Sadly, Mabel Pyne passed away in 2018 and I was shocked to see that no mention in her obituary was made about her life as an author. She had written and illustrated half a dozen books, including more histories such as the The Story of the History of the United States (not available) and the Geography of the United States (not available).
The way Mabel Pynes book came to me was that it had been borrowed half a dozen times in the 1950's and half a dozen times in the 1960's then only a couple of times in the 1970's until I cam along in the 1980's and borrowed it regularly. Just before a massive library renovation, when I was borrowing it, the librarian told me not to bring it back. She said its age and condition and the fact that I was the only to borrow it in a decade made it likely it was going into discard/recycle and if I wanted it, I would be able to save it. Mabel Pyne's work has been with me ever since.
In her obituary it was revealed that Mabel Pyne lived to be 100 years of age and had outlived everyone in her immediate family including her husband and son. Nothing was mentioned about her education or her life as an author illustrator, only that she and her husband ran a service station.
It reminded me of an author I met at the Homestead Motel in Petersburg, West Virginia. She owned the farm and the motel and had written 3 or 4 books for children, about life in 'Old Time" West Virginia. I bought all other books, for my daughter, but really for myself. My heart goes out to these quiet authors who put their ideas and art out into the world through the vehicles of books and who never make much money or get my fame, or even much acknowledgement and affirmation for their work, but do it because it pleases them to contribute to the world knowledge.
You never know how a book will influence your life. So many many years later, here we are in 2020 and I have been kind of studying graphic novels in a very peripheral way. I read the reviews, and I read the graphic novels; favorites so far, Roz Chast's "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant" and "Fun House" (I forgot the author's name). I just started reading Voyeurs. And here is the pioneer Mabel Pyne, giving an illustrated text on the history of religions - the same guiding principle of marrying text and images to mato a more complete path to visualization.
I am planning my own graphic novel, to the point of prose layout, very general, and a few images in mind. Mine will be called ROMANCE in Three Acts. I want to use a different format, however from the small boxes in traditional comics and graphic novels. I would like to go 5 by 7 with the images and make the images less a step by step part of the plot, and more of a meditative image to go along with the plot. We'll see how this goes, but it is fun to contemplate trying something new!
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
"This is the world's fourth largest religion, with over half a billion
adherents - about 245 million of whom live in China - but of which only 1.8 still live in the land of the Buddha." (India) pg.58 Sunday New York Times, Style magazine, Travel, May 17, 2020.
Immediately I thought of Christianity and Islam as members of the aforementioned four largest religions, but what was the missing one? Was it Hinduism? So I went to my first thought source, a book written and illustrated by Mabel Pyne called The Story of Religion, published in 1954 by Houghton Mifflin.
My first encounter with this little gem came about in the late 1970's or early 1980's when I was teaching English at a local high school. Wandering the library stacks as I often did on free time, I came upon this book, which even then was a bit dog eared and worn but I had NEVER come across so clear concise, and enlightening book on any subject before. It is meant for the juvenile level but it took a lot of knowledge to pare all that information down into this lucid and elegant book. Ms. Pyne gives a brief history of the theory of the emergence of religion, then goes on to give a simple and useful description of the major religions including the main holy book, the main prophet/prophets, the main symbols and the main tenets.
In the center of the book is a two page spread showing the Tree of Religions (a family tree graphical organizer). Never before did I have so clear an appreciation for the basics and the relationship of these religions to one another.
The book WAS NOT where I usually keep it, so, flashlight in hand (my eyesight is failing) I searched until I found it in the bedroom floor to ceiling bookcase. I had been tidying up and instead of leaving this book where I was used to seeing it, I had moved it to its proper category - Religion - in my bookcase.
I wanted to look up Islam again. But before I even did that, I decided to look up Mabel Pyne. If she had any other books, I wanted to buy them. If she were still alive, I wanted to write her and tell her how much I admire her book.
Sadly, Mabel Pyne passed away in 2018 and I was shocked to see that no mention in her obituary was made about her life as an author. She had written and illustrated half a dozen books, including more histories such as the The Story of the History of the United States (not available) and the Geography of the United States (not available).
The way Mabel Pynes book came to me was that it had been borrowed half a dozen times in the 1950's and half a dozen times in the 1960's then only a couple of times in the 1970's until I cam along in the 1980's and borrowed it regularly. Just before a massive library renovation, when I was borrowing it, the librarian told me not to bring it back. She said its age and condition and the fact that I was the only to borrow it in a decade made it likely it was going into discard/recycle and if I wanted it, I would be able to save it. Mabel Pyne's work has been with me ever since.
In her obituary it was revealed that Mabel Pyne lived to be 100 years of age and had outlived everyone in her immediate family including her husband and son. Nothing was mentioned about her education or her life as an author illustrator, only that she and her husband ran a service station.
It reminded me of an author I met at the Homestead Motel in Petersburg, West Virginia. She owned the farm and the motel and had written 3 or 4 books for children, about life in 'Old Time" West Virginia. I bought all other books, for my daughter, but really for myself. My heart goes out to these quiet authors who put their ideas and art out into the world through the vehicles of books and who never make much money or get my fame, or even much acknowledgement and affirmation for their work, but do it because it pleases them to contribute to the world knowledge.
You never know how a book will influence your life. So many many years later, here we are in 2020 and I have been kind of studying graphic novels in a very peripheral way. I read the reviews, and I read the graphic novels; favorites so far, Roz Chast's "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant" and "Fun House" (I forgot the author's name). I just started reading Voyeurs. And here is the pioneer Mabel Pyne, giving an illustrated text on the history of religions - the same guiding principle of marrying text and images to mato a more complete path to visualization.
I am planning my own graphic novel, to the point of prose layout, very general, and a few images in mind. Mine will be called ROMANCE in Three Acts. I want to use a different format, however from the small boxes in traditional comics and graphic novels. I would like to go 5 by 7 with the images and make the images less a step by step part of the plot, and more of a meditative image to go along with the plot. We'll see how this goes, but it is fun to contemplate trying something new!
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
Friday, May 15, 2020
Coming to Grips with Diversity
A conversation that I often have with my female friends who like to cook is that they have just the right recipe' for whatever ingredient comes up in our chat, usually because I accidentally lead in from another subject.
Today I was talking to a devoted cook about having too much stuff in the fridge and I am a monoculture eater like my cats. We don't go in for changing the menu too often. There are many reasons for that but I think one is simply born in. I have always been a fan of a very few kinds of food, not for the taste but for the ease of preparation, the convenience, so for instance, I have a tomato soup by brand, Annies, of which I am very fond. I also enjoy butternut squash soup, but many times I have bought squash, and or diced and prepared squash, and a variety of recipe's and mixes, and I end up throwing the squash out for the raccoons and squirrels. I don't even want to get a pot out and put stuff into it.
Two of my closes friends are talented and devoted to cooking and they cannot comprehend why I don't share their passion. I can try many avenues both experiential and psychological, but my mind is not suited to the time intervals of cooking and I cannot stand to wait for water to boil or onions to caramelize. My concentration span is more suited to reading several chapters of a difficult book, or painting a landscape, or drawing, or writing a story. I can concentrate on printed materials for many hours, but I have a real problem with 5 to 10 minutes. I have burned to cinders a good many pots and what were supposed to be hard boiled eggs. I drift off.
Always, to my mind, comes the analogy of birds liking to roost in trees and fish liking to swim in streams. We are all a kind of energy entity in some form at this time and we are all suited by inclination as well as by talent for some specific endeavor - specific to US individually.
When I was a college teacher, I used to ask my students to imagine we are going to have an IQ test. The art students groaned. I would say, "The engineers would be grinning and confident. They I pass out the paper and pencils and tell them the test to draw, anatomically accurately, and artisticly, the human hand. Some would do renderings of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel painting, so would illustrate a memory of a mother's hand performing a task. The engineers would be stuck tracing the outlines of their hands. But Artistic vision and creativity don't get much respect in our technological age. Avetising and graphic design are our new 'factories.'
Still, some would argue that artist's have no choice, we must create, and others that the joy and satisfaction of creating art whether music, computer, dance, theater, or visual art, is a reward in itself.
It is. But the dark side of that fact is that many of us are 'different' and we know it from an early age. We don't fit in, whether from our natural proclivities, to draw and paint, to read and write, to dance and sing, or from the different ways we see the world, which is part of being creative. We don't fit in and are often viewed with suspicion and also often, mocked, as in all the digs directed toward what detractor like to call 'egg heads.' After egg heads came nerds the often solitary people who get so engrossed in what they are doing that half days and even whole days can go by without them being aware of the passage of time.
Maybe if we could even come to grips with people of differing abilities, we could get better at warmth and acceptance for people of different genders and gender identities, not to mention races and religions.
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Today I was talking to a devoted cook about having too much stuff in the fridge and I am a monoculture eater like my cats. We don't go in for changing the menu too often. There are many reasons for that but I think one is simply born in. I have always been a fan of a very few kinds of food, not for the taste but for the ease of preparation, the convenience, so for instance, I have a tomato soup by brand, Annies, of which I am very fond. I also enjoy butternut squash soup, but many times I have bought squash, and or diced and prepared squash, and a variety of recipe's and mixes, and I end up throwing the squash out for the raccoons and squirrels. I don't even want to get a pot out and put stuff into it.
Two of my closes friends are talented and devoted to cooking and they cannot comprehend why I don't share their passion. I can try many avenues both experiential and psychological, but my mind is not suited to the time intervals of cooking and I cannot stand to wait for water to boil or onions to caramelize. My concentration span is more suited to reading several chapters of a difficult book, or painting a landscape, or drawing, or writing a story. I can concentrate on printed materials for many hours, but I have a real problem with 5 to 10 minutes. I have burned to cinders a good many pots and what were supposed to be hard boiled eggs. I drift off.
Always, to my mind, comes the analogy of birds liking to roost in trees and fish liking to swim in streams. We are all a kind of energy entity in some form at this time and we are all suited by inclination as well as by talent for some specific endeavor - specific to US individually.
When I was a college teacher, I used to ask my students to imagine we are going to have an IQ test. The art students groaned. I would say, "The engineers would be grinning and confident. They I pass out the paper and pencils and tell them the test to draw, anatomically accurately, and artisticly, the human hand. Some would do renderings of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel painting, so would illustrate a memory of a mother's hand performing a task. The engineers would be stuck tracing the outlines of their hands. But Artistic vision and creativity don't get much respect in our technological age. Avetising and graphic design are our new 'factories.'
Still, some would argue that artist's have no choice, we must create, and others that the joy and satisfaction of creating art whether music, computer, dance, theater, or visual art, is a reward in itself.
It is. But the dark side of that fact is that many of us are 'different' and we know it from an early age. We don't fit in, whether from our natural proclivities, to draw and paint, to read and write, to dance and sing, or from the different ways we see the world, which is part of being creative. We don't fit in and are often viewed with suspicion and also often, mocked, as in all the digs directed toward what detractor like to call 'egg heads.' After egg heads came nerds the often solitary people who get so engrossed in what they are doing that half days and even whole days can go by without them being aware of the passage of time.
Maybe if we could even come to grips with people of differing abilities, we could get better at warmth and acceptance for people of different genders and gender identities, not to mention races and religions.
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Pandemic, History and Survival Literature
Today, in one of my several times a day foray out onto the porch, listening to the endless breath of the twisted currents of traffic that surround my little town like moat, I thought about survivors. First I thought about the earliest years of my childhood, from 1945 to 1955, the decade after the end of the second World War.
Our parents imbued us with the knowledge that in a day, the world can change: a stock market can crash, endless wind can tear off the fertile top soil of your bread basket, bomb can fall from airplanes piloted by men who are not yet your bitterest enemies. You are fighting what you believe to be your bitterest enemies, the Germans in Europe, and from Asia come ships and planes you never imagined coming and they set fire to your fleet. You are at war in one day, the Day That Will Live in Infamy!
We grew up being protected from what our parents very intimately had experienced as the vicissitudes of life. But we always knew they were there, especially when we heard the sirens in our big brick schools and we all scuttled to the dark, damp basement with the big black roaches, to stay perfectly still until the sirens blasted the all clear.
Now more than ever, I have been daily confronted with my own mortality, and like any responsible older adult, I try to make plans, options, strategies for seeing to the welfare of my pets. Which makes me ever more aware of my own old lady vulnerability.
Like road runner, a cartoon creature of the past that I remember for two scenes only, we can run with the speed of a top fuel racer, but that is no guarantee that we can outrun disaster. Like roadrunner, we could be felled by a black hole that opens in the middle of the desert highway, or squashed by a safe falling, incongruously, out of the blue sky.
Our parents imbued us with the knowledge that in a day, the world can change: a stock market can crash, endless wind can tear off the fertile top soil of your bread basket, bomb can fall from airplanes piloted by men who are not yet your bitterest enemies. You are fighting what you believe to be your bitterest enemies, the Germans in Europe, and from Asia come ships and planes you never imagined coming and they set fire to your fleet. You are at war in one day, the Day That Will Live in Infamy!
We grew up being protected from what our parents very intimately had experienced as the vicissitudes of life. But we always knew they were there, especially when we heard the sirens in our big brick schools and we all scuttled to the dark, damp basement with the big black roaches, to stay perfectly still until the sirens blasted the all clear.
Now more than ever, I have been daily confronted with my own mortality, and like any responsible older adult, I try to make plans, options, strategies for seeing to the welfare of my pets. Which makes me ever more aware of my own old lady vulnerability.
Like road runner, a cartoon creature of the past that I remember for two scenes only, we can run with the speed of a top fuel racer, but that is no guarantee that we can outrun disaster. Like roadrunner, we could be felled by a black hole that opens in the middle of the desert highway, or squashed by a safe falling, incongruously, out of the blue sky.
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
Pandemic and Math
I just have to get this down somewhere. I think we need a 'calculation' formula to evaluate each county and then each state. I don't know how to write that kind of equation, but it could be composed of these factors. Sorry I don't speak "Math" and I only have a sketchy, literally scratching the surface of the deep subject of math. However, a formula using each county as a base factor
county
population
starting date of arrival of Covid 19
number of new cases
mortality rate
C=p, a factor for arrival date, number of new cases
and the basic equation could be adapted as a section of a ratio type evaluation matrix. Kind of like instruction sets in programming. How I wish I could have learned that language, but sadly, we don't all have our abilities in the same sector or sectors. I have my skill set in the Language Arts/Art world, reading, prose writing, painting, poetry. But I have an expanding umbrella type mental experience not a tie the knots and follow the patterns experience and I found math could not hold my attention so well or so pleasantly as Art and Literature, so I couldn't follow through with it, I drifted off in equations, out the window into the blue sky, the small gray airplane like a little vacuum cleaner cleaning between the clouds. And BOOM, the link in the equation was G O N E. But the place it went to was so much better that i chose not to collar and leash and train it.
If there are some things I wish I could have done but found quickly I could not succeed in accomplishing, it would include computer programming, a musical instrument, chess, and numbers which circles around again to computer programming.
But when you learn a little, sometimes you can apply it to a lot and what I learned has been immensely useful to me in life and this pandemic period is especially rich in math being used to make decisions such as the R ratio. It is is the number used to caculate how quickly and widely the virus is spreading. So you want a low rate of origin person, and the replication rate to others. It looked like this 1.9(for one person is infecting .9 of others) The infection rate has to get lower for the danger to be lower. That could be adapted, or even just put on a list of risk factor calculation conditions. But to do any of it we need to widespread testing to find out who has it.
A fellow on the BBC World News was saying that what we should be paying attention to no is how much data collection is becoming the new normal and how surveillance is spreading and becoming both familiar and accepted. We all accept cctv and willingly give our dan to companies like ancestry.com. But it seems to me of the multitude of ways to you can view of what's happening, that is most concerning is the virus, although I don't know what I could do about the data collection. I wouldn't want to be an off the grid hunting cabin paranoid.
So threes math, politics, sociology, law, science (all the people talking about the effects of the pandemic on climate change science as well as top dog MEDICINE. And top of my list, an old favorite - MORTALITY
I have NEVER spent as much time thinking about death, other people's death, my death, large scale death, personal death, historic death, family death, death of the planet, death of a way of life. Can't go down that road either, or you would drift off in your corner easy chair
county
population
starting date of arrival of Covid 19
number of new cases
mortality rate
C=p, a factor for arrival date, number of new cases
and the basic equation could be adapted as a section of a ratio type evaluation matrix. Kind of like instruction sets in programming. How I wish I could have learned that language, but sadly, we don't all have our abilities in the same sector or sectors. I have my skill set in the Language Arts/Art world, reading, prose writing, painting, poetry. But I have an expanding umbrella type mental experience not a tie the knots and follow the patterns experience and I found math could not hold my attention so well or so pleasantly as Art and Literature, so I couldn't follow through with it, I drifted off in equations, out the window into the blue sky, the small gray airplane like a little vacuum cleaner cleaning between the clouds. And BOOM, the link in the equation was G O N E. But the place it went to was so much better that i chose not to collar and leash and train it.
If there are some things I wish I could have done but found quickly I could not succeed in accomplishing, it would include computer programming, a musical instrument, chess, and numbers which circles around again to computer programming.
But when you learn a little, sometimes you can apply it to a lot and what I learned has been immensely useful to me in life and this pandemic period is especially rich in math being used to make decisions such as the R ratio. It is is the number used to caculate how quickly and widely the virus is spreading. So you want a low rate of origin person, and the replication rate to others. It looked like this 1.9(for one person is infecting .9 of others) The infection rate has to get lower for the danger to be lower. That could be adapted, or even just put on a list of risk factor calculation conditions. But to do any of it we need to widespread testing to find out who has it.
A fellow on the BBC World News was saying that what we should be paying attention to no is how much data collection is becoming the new normal and how surveillance is spreading and becoming both familiar and accepted. We all accept cctv and willingly give our dan to companies like ancestry.com. But it seems to me of the multitude of ways to you can view of what's happening, that is most concerning is the virus, although I don't know what I could do about the data collection. I wouldn't want to be an off the grid hunting cabin paranoid.
So threes math, politics, sociology, law, science (all the people talking about the effects of the pandemic on climate change science as well as top dog MEDICINE. And top of my list, an old favorite - MORTALITY
I have NEVER spent as much time thinking about death, other people's death, my death, large scale death, personal death, historic death, family death, death of the planet, death of a way of life. Can't go down that road either, or you would drift off in your corner easy chair
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
Cinco deMaya,2020
Today is the commemoration of the Battle of Puebla de Los Angeles, where a ragtag army of 2,000 mostly indigenous and peasant soldiers rallied to the defense of their Nation against a far superior force of 6,000 French backed by artillery.
When Mexico, which was collapsing, defaulted on its loans from European nations, England and Spain negotiated a settlement but that greedy monster Napoleon decided to attack and establish France in Mexico by seizing territory.
Preident Juarez gathered his forces and made his stand at Puebla and amazingly, the Mexicans won with 100 losses over the French losses of 500. The French retreated and Mexico remained a free and independent nation.
This was all going on while we were engaged in our Civil War, lucky for Mexico, because if we hadn't been otherwise occupied some greedy official in our government may have seen what Napoleon saw, an opportunity for another land grab.
With my Mexican fellow human beings, I celebrate this victory of the brave and the few against the greedy and the mighty!
Feliz Cinco de Mayo mi amigas y amigos!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
When Mexico, which was collapsing, defaulted on its loans from European nations, England and Spain negotiated a settlement but that greedy monster Napoleon decided to attack and establish France in Mexico by seizing territory.
Preident Juarez gathered his forces and made his stand at Puebla and amazingly, the Mexicans won with 100 losses over the French losses of 500. The French retreated and Mexico remained a free and independent nation.
This was all going on while we were engaged in our Civil War, lucky for Mexico, because if we hadn't been otherwise occupied some greedy official in our government may have seen what Napoleon saw, an opportunity for another land grab.
With my Mexican fellow human beings, I celebrate this victory of the brave and the few against the greedy and the mighty!
Feliz Cinco de Mayo mi amigas y amigos!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
Monday, May 4, 2020
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
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
Sunday, May 3, 2020
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
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
Saturday, May 2, 2020
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
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
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