Prehistory Museum at Greenwich and a 2021 Discovery 1/8/21

Some years back in the vigorous days of my early retirement, I made many many visits to the Prehistory Museum in Greenwich, New Jersey. I strongly urge anyone who has the time to go there and visit! I went there so many times over a long period that a couple of the men I spoke with have already died, but, the day I remember most was the day a local fisherman brought in the molar of a wooly mammoth. What a day! To get to hold so ancient and fantastic an object in my hands! Somewhere back in my photos on this site is a picture of it. The fisherman wanted to sell it to the men at the museum but the exhibits of the museum were entirely donated and they had no budget for purchasing things. The small amounts they raised from donations and so on barely covered the electric bills and I don't know how they covered the taxes but probably tax exempt status and maybe grants. Anyhow I loved that museum so much that I actually went fossil hunting with a man I met there who knew a place along the Delaware and bay where many fossils had been found. We didn't find any that day and now I can't even remember his name. He was a volunteer at the museum also.

The way the rich sediment of experience layers itself with acquired knowledge from reading - Today I was reading a favorite magazine DISCOVER, and there were three articles of interest to me on DNA. One was about wooly mammoth dna found in Siberia. Another was dna found in the dirt sidement layers in feces in caves inhabited by Neanderthals, Denisovans and Sapiens. This new level of technological ability, to extract dna from fossil feces opens a whole new field of studies because ancient cave dirt is far more easy to find than bones!

It occurred to me when I was reading these articles that my youth is from the days BEFORE dna was discovered!!! My youth was before so many things we take for granted today - cell phones, internet, computers, cable tv, dna and genetic testing, satelites! And I am sure if I thought about it long enough I would think of even more - in my youth most cars were still stick shift!

Although we officially designaate 2003 as the eyar the human genome was sequenced after more than a decade of painstaking work, about 8% was still not able to be sequenced by the technology of that time. TLast year, 2021, the job was finally completed thanks to the work of a consortium of scienties Telomere to Telomere or T2T.

The other article I read was about the use of dna and fmily history sites such as GED and ancestry.com and 23 and Me in solving crimes by using dna from murder scenes and dna in thee family hisotry web sites. There is a controversa raging over whether this constitutes an invasion of privacy. I am for open source. The only ones that I can see who have had anything to lose from this blend of efforts are killers and rapists. Do they have a lobby?

Happy Trails! and Happy New Year! Jo Ann

Sorry - it was a mastodon molar not at mammoth!

Alcoholism and family history January 2022

Alcoholism runs in my family. It is probably safe to say that suicide also runs in my family that is, if a suicide in each of three previous generations counts. Mostly, my family alcoholics were functional alcoholics; that means, they worked, married, had children, bought homes (some of them) and didn't die early from liver disease.

My father was a high functioning 'binge drinker' which means he kept his drinking to lunch during the week and drank a case of beer over the weekend. It was, in a way, part of his job. He was a cost estimator for a big company and one of his strategies was to befriend and go to lunch with other cost estimators (they were in on the strategy too) and they would all drink and try to trick information out of each other on what jobs were being bid on and what the bids were. If estimator A could get estimator B to divulge the bid, he could, of course, underbid within the profit margin and win the job!

The smell of alcohol and industry is fixed forever in my memory of my father coming in from the cold after work. He worked outdoors for the early years of his career, as an ironworker. He came home ruddy faced and wreathed with cold winter air exhaling whiskey, and his clothes permeated by various motor oil and metal odors. I loved my father, but he wasn't ever, and easy man. He had spent his entire adult life in the traditionally male sphere, the Conservation Corps, the Merchant Marines (like his father) and the navy, followed by Ironwork and Structural Steel. He built damms, skyscrapers, bridges, and moved impossibly heavy and large items from place to place - the kind of things that require roads to be built to accommodate them, and bridges over wet terrain. He had an interesting job and he loved it! Even when it almost killed him. In my memory, two ironworkers suffered the same industrial accident, my father and my brother's best friend. An unsecured crame (a crane not bolted to a stable base) carrying a heavy load of lumber, tipped over and hit my father on the side on the way down, shattering most of his bones and causing him to be laid up for nearly a year. He had, among the broken pones, pierced lung from a rib being shoved into it. He was a brave, stoic and resilient man, because he recovered and never complained about aches and pains. He was like a new man. And the company showed its appreciation by promoting him and promoting him. It goes without saying, he wouldn't have been promoted had he not also been highly intelligent, immensely knowledgeable in his field, and a man's man capable of holding his own with other men in his field.

my father grew up poor in the city. His father, the merchant marine, had been killed under mysterious circumstances in a hit and run incident after arriving in port. My grandmother was left to face the depression with no education and four children, her three sons, and a niece she had taken in and was raising. Shrtly after her mother suffered a catastrophic stroke, my grandmother moved to Ocean City to take care of her and my father, at 16, was left to fend for himself. I don't know all the details about that, why he didn't go with her for example. No one in my family EVER talked about anything related to family history and in contrast I would say they were all remarkably tight lipped and secretive about most things.

For example, it tookk me decades to get even a clue about what happened to my own mother's biological mther, after I found out that the woman I always thought was her mother was actually her aunt. No one ever talked about that. And I was told, when I asked, one lie after another. Like a detective, I had to piece it together through ancestry.com research and the few breadcrumb clues I could pick up here and there, vague memories, hints, possible names and so on.

Among the aforementioned ancestral alcoholics, however, to get back to topic, was my father's maternal grandfather. He had been a well educated man with gambling and alcohol addictions who left the family penniless. I believe he may also have been one of the suicides as was my mother's maternal grandfather, also an alcoholic and suicide. He shot himself. My mother remembered him coming to visit her when she was in the "Friendless Childrens' Home" in Camden, NJ, after her mother died leaving three little girls and their father put them into the orphanage. I don't know much about him except that he was from a Quaker farm family, and he was a ne'er-do-well. My mother's aunt, the one who raised her, hated him, presumably one of the reasons she refused to tell me anything about him, including his name, when I plied her with questions so many times over the years. Before she died, my mother's estranged sister told me about knowing him before he died and that he was not a good man; he was a 'drinker.'

From growing up with my father's functional alcohoism, I became familiar with what I called the three phases: sociability, followed by contrary argumentativeness, capped off by aggression and belligerance. I believe this pattern can be observed pretty readily in any bar and often concludes with the infamous bar fights.

How did I elude the family curse? For one thing, I was a born reader, and I read the classics filled with terrifying adversaries such as pirates and kidnappers, and diseases like the Black Plague. For another thing, I didn't inherit alcoholism, but I did inherit intelligence and the cost estimator's tendency to size people up and observe. My father was an ever present danger due to his drinking. He was an ofte violent man, not so much to my mother who early on established that she would brook no such assaults, but to us children. When he got incensed, he beat us, with his hand as in what is too generously described as spankings, which is more open hand beatings on legs and buttocks, and at times with the belt. When we moved from our city home, finding that the big china cabinet in the dining room wasn't coming with us, my brother and I scraped a hole through the plaster and dropped 'the belt' into the wall.

To me alcohold was never something you looked at as a reward or a treat, as my father did. To me it was a brown bottle with a large poison label across it. It still is! Two of my siblings are functioning alcoholics, both of them graduated to three DUI status. My brother eluded jail time only because his lawner convinced the judge he needed to have home arrest so he could take care of his elderly father who lived in a remote and rural place. My father actually took care of my brother in real life. My brother had been a homeless drug addict and my father and mother gave him shelter until he became clean and sober. My mother died and my brother stayed on and looked after my father until he died. My brother who had been in Vietnam, had a lot of trauma in his life so it isn't surprising that he drinks, and also that he smokes pot to help him sleep, since he has had recurring nightmares since Vietnam. After his 3rd DUI, however, he stopped drinking at the VFW or the American Legion or the local bars and only drinks at home and doesn't EVER drive after drinking. My sister is now learning that lesson. Because of her, I am reading "NO MORE LETTING GO; The spirituality of taking action against Alcoholism and Drug Addiction by Debra Jay. I read through a LOT of book reviews before I bought the three books I have purchased to help me navigate thie latest stormy sea, and this is the one I am starting with because I am not able to go the old route of shunning the miscreant, cutting them off, distancing myself and letting them "hit bottom."

There is a saying I like "Revise your Priors!" And it means don't get stuck in old ideas that don't work any more. Newer approaches to coping with family members with addictions is to find ways to intervene and possible spare them and yourself the decades of despair and destruction before they reach "the bottom." So that is what I am going to try. I will keep you informed about my progress in the book and in the strategies in case you have someone you love who has a problem.

I have never believed that secrecy is particularly helpful to anyone. I was a teacher, and I am a scholar, an intellectual, and a communicator, a writer and an artist. I am committed to sharing our stories and from them, deriving wisdom or at least comfort!

Happy Trails!

Jo Ann

Sunday New York Times Book Review Dec.26, 2021

This left over book review from 2021 is my goodbye to the year gone by. I am always a week or so behind in reading the Book Review because there is always so much of interest in it, and because it has such competition with glossier and more colorful reading material - the magazines that are always coming to my mailbox: Discover, Harpers, The Atlantic, The Week, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair. Anyhow, as is so often the dangerous consequence of reading the Bk Rev. I ended up buying two more books from amazon. I bought PERIL by Bob Woodward about the last chaotic and unsatable days of the Trump Regime, and The HEROINE OF 1001 FACES by Maria Tatar. Tatar's book review begins with her asking Joseph Campbell about the missing women in his long career in the archetypes of folklore and fairytales - the Hero's Journey. He responds that women are the mothers, the protectoresses, and the prizes in the men's stories. So Maria Tator writes her own book. The critic was hard on her and said she was unfocused and seemed to be in search of a narrative although she is credited wither "erudite" research. My feeling is that in excavating our own female history and mythology, some female scholar must always begin somewhere and like a female Johnny Appleseed, she provides the seed stock for following scholars, artists and writers. We are collaborative. No woman is an island.

In my life, because I have been that increasingly rare creature, an avid reader from earliest childhood, there has always been a dialogue between the past and the pressent. So when I read in the book review on the Tatar book that so uch is to be found in fairy tales of women's different kind of heroic escapes and journeys, I instantly have an image in my memory of the Orange Fairy Book and the Blue Fairy Book and I am reminded of some of the illustrations such as they one of the woman who opened her mouth and out sprang toads and snakes and other slimy creatures. Stories like this were mentioned in the review when it was observed that in many ancient tales women were silenced, forced to keep the secrets of men. The Greek tale where the woman had her tongue cut out (which still happens in the world when women TELL). Women telling their own stories or the stories of others gets denigrated as 'gossip.' The movements in modern feminism that relate to telling your own story such as the women who signed up for Ms. Magazine to publish their experiences having abortions, or the recent #MeToo movement where women relate the sexual harrassment they have endured are prime examples,so is the recent trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, pimp for Jeffrey Eppstein. She has be tried and found guilty of procurement but has not yet been sentenced. The girls came forward and told their stories in particular one named Giuffre, about a dozen came forward although the true number of victims must be near a hundred over the many years this transpired.

Because I was a teacher, I get a special discount rate on my weekly Sunday New York Times and the Book Review, my most enjoyed section. Yers ago, I used to plead with an old friend of mine to save the BK Review for me, but his friendship, for unknown reasons, always had a thread of spite and malice woven into it and so often he let them accumulate into a musty pile and then put them in recycle instead. Perhaps that thread of malice was simply in his personality and not particular to me.

I often think back on and have often written about the book case in my Grandmother Lyon's basement, my first introduction to a private library when I was far too young to get to a library on my own. There I found THE OUTDOOR GIRLS ON A HIKE, my first true literary LOVE, but also Dickens and Twain, and the Great European Classics. Why this treasure was relegated to the basement is beyond me, but I suppose my grandmother came to see it as clutter and she was a meticulous and compulsive cleanrer. She brooked no clutter and had so few ornaments that I can remember them, a china lidded candy dish with shaped three dimensional porcelain flowers on the lid. There was a slim china cabinet with her blue chocolate pot, which is now mine. She had few pieces of furniture, only what was needed, and I think this simplicity and uncluttered aspect to her home helped her to maintain a calm of mind in the storm of her natural anxiety. I don't remember a book case in my other grandmother's house at all but her son, my father, was an avid reader and constantly self taught. History was his interest and particularly World War II. My mother always bought me books, the children's classics like Treasure Island and The Silver Skates and Little Women (the modern one - I had the original from my grandmother Lyon's bookcase along with Anne of Green Gables). She traded green stamps at the supermarket for the Childrens' Encyclopedia Illustrated! (Oh those wonderful illustrations. I loved those pictures.

Well, the sun has come out and I must reward my patient dog who gave up on lobbying me for her walk and is quietly snoozing on the sofa. We must make hay while the sunshines, but I hope these book recommendations and book thoughts have insprired yours! And I hope you can get to the Sunday New York Times Book Review at your local library.

By the way, my first serious familiarity with a library was in Maple Shade in the late 1950's when my family moved from Philadelphia to New Jersey. It was located behind the police station on Main Street, and the first book I borrowed there was the Trilogy that contained MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, MEN AGAINST THE SEA, and PITCAIRN'S ISLAND. It had a cobalt blue cloth hardbinding with gold lettering. I remember my thrill at being able to borrow it and the anticipation of such a grand benefit for the future.

Jo Ann

If you wish to, you can reach me at wrightj45yahoo.com

(don't bother with the comments function on this blog as it is entirely corrupted by robot junk and I rarely visit it as it is so dispiriting to see all the scams and pronography robo programs have cluttered it up with.)

Happy New Year 2022

Last night I watched the PBS Newshour online, You can get a re-run of their shows, athough you have to buy a membership to get many, many others are free. You just go to www.pbs.org, then click on 'shows' and there it is. I really like the look back at the year that has just ended. I like that every year.

Needless to say, the headline news was the pandemic returning via Delta and Omicron variants. And of course there were the huge destructive and deadly fires from the drought across the west and southwest. The latest news was the death of beloved actress Betty White, just short of her 100th birthday.

Two things they omitted, in my opinion were the rash of school shootings and the Black Lives Matter Movement. Also, as American news becomes increasingly single minded and local, they neglected the vast flooding that consumed villages and towns in Germany due to the rising of the rivers.

In the line of my most recent repeat thought, you never know when it is the last of something. We never knew there would come a time when a deadly virus would run our lives. Not that such things haven't been part of our human history. We have had deadly viral and bacterial infections on the epidemic scale throughout human history, just to mention one - the Black Plague. It struck me that when I went to high school, and I graduated in 1963 at age 17, high schools were safe. That isn't to say that there wasn't social cruely on a minor scale, but no one got shot. We didn't have gun proliferation either. Nobody had guns and nobody wanted or needed them.

I was just speaking on the phone to my brother and I mentioned how we had free and easy television when we were young - no cable, no subcriptions no passwords. You just plugged the tv into the wall and voila! Even a child could do it. We got up off the sofa and turned a dial to change the channels (it was before remote controls) and as my brother reminded me, we had only half a dozen channels: 3, 6, 10, 12, eventually 17, 23, 48. Now, increasingly you pay a fee for each individual channel after you are lured into a provider such as HBO or if you stream, as I do, HULU or amazon. But with each complication and expense, of course there comes a benefit or we wouldn't shift over. As I am suffering from an age related eye disease which causes gradually increasingly inability to see, blurryness and foggyness and double vision, like bad 3d glasses, I can turn to the new devices to help me. I can see and hear watching my laptop which I cannot do on even the larger screen tvs. That particular distance from sofa to tv, is the distance where I have immediate trouble. Adding to that, shows are increasingly made with murky light, and the actors mumble and turn their heads away from the viewers. My father used to complain about that and if you want to see how true it is, watch White Christmas, which I can see and hear on tv perfectly because the colors are crisp and the camera work is clear and defined and the people, like stage actors, face us when they speak with clear diction and perfect volume.

The segments that I most enjoyed on PBS Newshour were the year in Photographs when they interviewed photojournalists and featured some of their most interesting or icon photographs: The wildfires in California and Colorado The Insurrection, one year ago, when crazed and deluded Trumpsters tried to forcibly invade and take over the Capitol and stage a coup The removal of troups from Afghanistan, the take-over by the Taliban, a group of evil men if ever there was one - like the gestapo or the Nazis. As I said, they missed the Black Lives Matter movement in their photographs, but they did a segment on a big and beautiful Quilt Exhibition and one of the quilters, a former football player turned artist had done a quilt to commemorate George Floyd with large ochre letters stiched across it BLACK MAN. The Quilt segment was my top favorite since I have loved quilts my whole life thanks to my Grandother Mabel being a traditional quilter and giving all her grandchildren quilts. I made quilts for my daughter, not traditional style. I made mine on the sewing machine and I made landscapes and cityscapes. One cityscape quilt I made for her had pockets around the border and a small toy in each pocket. I had it hung above her cabinet bunk bed so that when she awakened, she could reach up and take toys out of the pockets. I love so much about quilts, the patters, the history, the portability, the texture, the simplicity of tools, the meditative nature of traditional hand sewn quilting, the old tradition of recycling old fabrics into something new, the utility of them.

Well my theme was that you never know when it is the last of something, and increasingly the experts are warning us that we will never be 'over' the Corona virus and that it will simply continue to mutate and we will continue to struggle to vaccinate and adapt to the mutations. Kids may never be free of gun violence in schools and that era of stability that we knew in the years after World War II is a distant dream.

Nonetheless, I have tried to make a mind habit of the Zen Buddhist advice to "Be Here Now." And in my personal here and now, things are good at present, I am well, and all my loved ones are well and we all phoned to wish each other a Happy New Year which is what I wish you if you have dropped by for this conversation! Happy New Year - and heaven only knows what 2022 will bring!

Jo Ann

A Historic Place and a lifetime memory - Orchard House, Concord, Massachusetts and Shakers

When I was a child, my Grandmother Lyons allowed me to borrow books from her bookcase in the basement. One she allowed me to keep - Little Women. It had a cold cloth binding with an embossed and colored portrait in the front cover. I loved that book for so many reasons. It had everything - a character who was so like myself, the real feelings of real girls, a big family, a setting that was emotionally evocative. It was a beautiful and very old book. All the books from that shelfing unit were very old, maybe my grandmother had inherited them. No one but me ever seemed to read them.

Sadly, I made the mistake of thinking others were like me for many years in my life which led to many losses, disappointments and mislaid expectations. I gave that book to one of my sisters who never read it, never cared for it, and eventually it was lost. I should have kept it in honor of my grandmother.

Many many years later, in the 1980's, I took a friend and my daughter on a road trip to visit all the extant SHAKER villages in New England. If you are not familiar with the shakers, they were a utopian religious sect that flourished in New England in the first half of the 1800's. They established about 18 villages, communities, which were celibate, egalitarian, and devoted to all works and actions as devotion. They are mainly famous today for the elegance and beauty of their furnishings and their furniture sells, if original in the many thousands of dollars. They were a farming community and aside from furniture, they sold seeds and absolutely gorgeous storage boxes that stacked within each other. Everything they made was beautiful to a remarkable degree because every single thing they made from brooms to fabric was made with religious devotion. They are also famous for a song "Tis a Gift to be simple tis a gift to be free, tis a gift to come down where you ought to be, and when you find yourself in the place just right it will be in the valley of love and delight." There was a show of their works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York which I went to see.

The Shakers were named the Shaking Quakers because they were Quaker like in simplicity, humility and equality, and they sang with a religious ferver that often had them shaking.

We three traveled to every Shaker community in New England from Sabbath Day Lake in Maine, near where Poland Springs water comes from, down to Concord Massachusettes where the Transcendentalists had their commune. They are famous for Henry David Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. When we went to see the Shaker house which had been moved to Fruitlands, we didn't know that the Alcott family had lived in it briefly. The house is now a museum in Concord. It isn't the family seat of the Alcott's which is Orchard House, it is another dwelling them inhabited for a time when trying to establish the Transcendentalist commune, but it turned out everyone was starving and cold and it wasn't so easy to start a commune as they had hoped.

Over the many yers since my childhood, I hve seen numerous film versions of Little Women starring, from the beginning for me, Katharine Hepburn, and with my daughter, Winona Rider, and tonight for Christmas Eve, I rented the newest version by filmmaker Greta Gerwig. And despite a bit of confusion that I think would throw viewers not familiar with the story (it jumps around in time in a peculiar and confusing way) it is my favorite of all the ersions for the reason tha the characters seem to have more life and color than in the other versions. It is also a gorgeous film. The acting, espedilly in the secondary characters is remarkable - they are actors at the top of the craft and bring their characters to life.

In an era of tawdry, criminal, and violent film fare, it was rewarding and enriching to watch a film about ideas, about growing up, about people trying to live good lives and live out their noble values. I highly recommend this film. Also it is an interesting view of the homefront during the Civil War, and a glimpse into the suffering of German immigrants. Sometimes we forget that Germans were once immigrants. In fact, on my father's side, our ancestors were German immigrants at nearly that period of time, the early 1800's. They had to flee Germany because of the Civil War raging at that time when Prussia was attempting to conquer and unify the various feudal principalities that existed at that time. For Revolutionary War fans, I might add that my Catholic German ancestors came from Hesse Cassel, the place where the dreaded Hessians came from during the Reolution when they were in the employ of the British.

Merry Christmas

Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com Merry Christmas!

If I could go anywhere for a Christmas special event it would be this one!

Holiday Train Display at Battleship NJ

Now through December 26th | 3pm-6pm

Battleship NJ

Experience a Holiday Train Display Aboard the Battleship!

A new Holiday model train display will be available for guests to experience in the Wardroom from Saturday, Dec. 11 through Sunday Dec. 26.

This display, courtesy of the South Jersey Garden Railroad Society (SJGRS), will be free to experience with a tour of the Battleship.

The Battleship will be open for tours everyday in December, except for Christmas, Dec. 25.

Happy Trails, my friends! Unfortunaetely my eyesight is so poor I would be afraid to drive there by myself and I am not sure my knees would permit the climbing I seem to remember is involved with touring the Battleship. But if you can go, you definitely should! MERRY CHRISTMAS! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

A Remarkable Person Born on Christmas 200 Years Ago

Most of us are aware of Clara Barton as the pioneering Red Cross originator in America. Not as many know about her remarkable educational crusade here in our own state of New Jersey. In Bordentown there is a charming one-room school where Clara Barton taught as a young woman still in her teens. In those days education was often by tuition subscription. Families that could afford it would hire a tutor, and in some communities, families with means would pool their money and hire a tutor for children whose parents had subscribed to be taught in a one-room school. The poor children were left illiterate to continue on the path of their poor parents as hired out field hands, servants and people condmmned to eak out lives of poverty.

When Clara Barton was hired to teach in the one-room school in Bordentown, she strove to convince the townspeople that it was in everyone's interest to see to it that ALL the children were educated and literate. The enrollment rose over a few years from a handful of well-to-do children to 500 local children. Clara Barton had been so successful that the town hired a man to become her supervisor! Needless to say this was both shocking and insulting and Clara Barton was hurt. She left to become a clerk in Washington D.C., a battlefield nurse in the Civil War, and to originate not only the Red Cross, but a beaurocratic department to collect the names of the fallen soldiers so their families could be notified of the deaths of their sons. Before that office was developed by Clara Barton, families sewed the names of their sons into their clothing and depended on the kindness of survivors and strangers to notify them of the fat of their loved ones. Clara not only cleaned up and organized the field hospitals, she made sure the families knew what happened to their boys both in the hospital and in the battlefield.

Clara Barton had see the Red Cross at work in Europe and she struggled mightily to get our own government to develop a version of it to aid the victims of disasters in our own country but the president at the time, R. Hayes, turned down her requests over and over. So, undaunted, Clara Barton developed her own Red Cross and called for donations to aid those who had suffered in the great fire of 1881 in Michigan. She was wildly successful and her effort was so popular, the Red Cross was established formally. Clara Barton was born on Christmas Day in 1821. Her formidable drive despite the ceaseless obstacles, her boundless compassion, and her civic devotion are truly astonishing and worthy of both respect and gratitude.

This year, I will be wishing Merry Christmas to Clara Barton in my heart and here on this blog! Thank heavens for citizens such as Clara Barton, a true hero!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and if you are looking for a place to visit, stop in at Bordentown and visit the little school where it all began for Clara Barton, here in our own state of New Jersey! Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com

If I were going anywhere this weekend, this is where I would go!

By the way, if you are reading this and you ever wanted to observe or comment on a post, please don't bother with COMMENTS as it is entirely co opted by spam and robot messages. You can reach me via my e-mail wrightj45@yahoo.com

I love holiday markets and if I were looking for things to get for Christmas this year, I would go to these markets: "Handmade Holiday Market & Family Day December 11th | 11am-4pm Whitesbog Preservation Trust Bundle up for some fun indoor and outdoor shopping in the Historic Village! Shop local, support local artists and makers while supporting the farm. Make a dent in your Christmas shopping at the Handmade Holiday Craft Fair at Whitesbog Historic Village: This is a festive family favorite, get your holiday wreaths and check out all of the cool wares our local makers have made. We’ll have a range of art, crafts and gifts. We will be outside and inside for this event so dress for the weather!"

The 1619 Project and my Thoughts!

I really shouldn't be writing this blog entry right now becaused I am meeting a friend for lunch and I have to walk the dog first which takes an hour, but my mind is very active, like my dog and this blog is a way for me to take that active dog for a walk. For my friend's birthday, I am taking her a copy of the 11619 Project because like me, she has been a lifelong feminist and believer in social justice and equality. She worked far harder at it than I did though. Nonetheless, I am hoping we can read our copies over the long winter and talk about our reactions and responses.

To help with that, I am also giving her the latest Vanity Fair magazine issue which has an interview with Nikole Hannah-Jones and also a short half page review of the book fro The Week Magazine. Having read numerous reviews including the first publication of the 1619 Project when it was the cover story of the Sunday New York Times, I have built up quite a lot of anticipation for the reading which is why I am bloghging about it before I actually read it. The 1619 Project kicked up a political firestorm which eventuated in Repulbican legistlation AGAINST teaching what is known as Critical Race Theory in the schools! Free Speech? I saw a cartoon where there was a mask and a protest against mandates next to a cartoon of a woman's reproductive system. The point being hypocricy - Don't tell me I have to wear a mask - it is my body and I am free to make those decisions regarding my health - while at the same time Republican efforts have been building an succeeding in legislation against abortion all over the south beginning with Texas. Same thing with 2nd amendment 'right to bear arms' but forget Free speech.

Anyhow I don't have time and never intended to go off on a political tangent here. I wanted to address one criticism from The Week book review: "Chrtis Surewalt, in The Displatch.com observes that N.Hannah-Jones never addresses criticism of her claim that slavery is at the foudation on which our country was built. I think if that idea was taken too narrowly and too specificallt, the idea is ruined. Our country was built on an aggregate compound like Roman concrete on with many ingredients. Each founding colony had its own purpose whether escape from religious persecescape, or the search for precious metals like silver and gold, or the fountain of youth. Every ship that came here was filled with a variety of purposes that became the foundation and the bigger ingredients, the colonization of the new world by Britain and France and Spain were even larger shares of the aggregate. Certainly the economy of this nation was increasingly built not only on the labor of enslaved people but on the backs of hordes of starving and displaced immigrants as described by Emma Lazarus in her famous poem.

A friend of mine wrote a wonderful book about the ruins one stumbles upon in the pine barrens when hiking. She did a lot of research into the attemps to establish various industries, iron, and glass, and to build housing developments. When she published her book, many old time archaeology and botony and pine barrens buffs were irritated and criticised her effort. At the heart of the matter was jealousy. Lots of people want to write a book and do not. It is a lot of hard work driven by a current of passion to tell a story. I have written three books, independently published. The effort to write them was enough for me, I couldn't then fight the battle to get them published. My friend who wrote the Pine Barrens book went on to write three books on Pine Barrens history - all of them immensely popular.

Every story is part of a bigger story. The story that hasn't been told about African Americans is now becoming more widely dissseminated and the shame and guilt that breeds resentment is rising in the eotions of bigots who do not want that story told. There are many who harbor tribal notions of the superiority of their particular race or nation of origin. They have their notions built on the stereotypes of popular culture that have also always existed in regard to gender. I remember growing up with the scorn and mockery that was everywhere in regard to women drivers UNTIL it came out that women drivers got better rates because we were LESS likely to have accidents than men. Then those same sexists raised a howl to get "equality" in insurance rates with women. Unenlightened self interest is at the heart of a lot of criticism of The 1619 Project. My suggestion is read it and learn, take what is valuable and what you never knew and build on it. What you don't agree with, you can leave behind.

Gotta get going so I can give the book to my old dear friend. We have been friends for almost 65 years, since we were both in junior high school. We have turned 76, me in November and her ih December.

Happy Trails - Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com (don't bother with the comments section of the blog - it just gets filled with robot crap. If you want to talk - e-mail me!)

How to make your own holiday

In years gone by, it was my habit to enjoy my holidays by driving to various places to see things I love like model train exhibits and Chritmas tree lightings, decorated historic houses, and candlight tours. Now, however, my eyesidht doesn't permit these excursions. Still, I will not go into the dark. I know a lot of people, like my brother who is 2 years younger than I am, who do not bother to put up decorations or lights or anything because they are alone at Christmas. He lives in West Virginia and he comes here to New Jersey at Christmas, so he doesn't see any point to decorating.

My feeling is that living by yourself is the best reason to decorate. Although I have simplified my decorating, for example, I have dropped down from 12 tubs of decorations to about 2, I still have a tree, and I decorate the stair bannister from the attic to the living room, the room divider between the kitchen and the living room. My tree this year is very siple, just snowflake lights and Swedish straw ornaments. The doorway and the bannister are artifical pine garland with red berries and snowflake lights and I have stockings in red plaid hanging from the bannister with treats in them - chocolate covered cranberries!

In addition to the interior decorations, my nephew came over and put up my yard lights which these days is assorted colored lights strung around the large juniper and evergreens that fence in my yard.

Along with the decorations in the house, I will burn a holiday scented candle and waatch old favorite holiday movies such as A Christmas Carol (the old one with Alistair Sims) and It's a Wonderful Life with James Stewart, and my most recent annual favorite, A Christmas Story the Gene Shepherd classic. I used to enjoy Gene Shepherd's short stories on the radio, and on audio tapes and the few fine short films he made.

So that takes in sight, smell, and I usually play my collection of holidays cd's which are the classics - R&B Christmas favorites and that sort of thing. Next, is tqste, and I will buy fruit cake for myself and one for my brother since we are the only ones who like it, but to me, it isn't Christmas without it!

In this way, with my pets and my Christmas cards arriving from friends, I greet and warm the winter season, simply, humbly, and happily! If you are stuck at home due to eyesight or age or whatever, I hope tis recipe for holiday happiness inspires you to light it up! Happy Trails - Jo Ann

Taxes and the Common Welfare

Fortunately, I don't know many tax cheats and at my income level, most of my friends are solidly in the lower middle or middle class. None of them are wealthy. But the two tax cheats I know of make me think often about the purpose of taxes. There was a time in human historyk our city history especiallyt, when the poor died of starvation and cold in the streats and orphans ran wild and also died of starvation and cold - think of the old classic story The Little Match Girl. The gutters ran with raw sewage and people died of cholera, typhus, and a variety of other terrible diseases born of ignorance and neglect. There was a time when we all agreed to share the burdens of public utilities like water, sewer and road maintenance. In the old days, each farmer or landowner would be responsible for his own stretch of the highway. If he were civic minded, he kept his part of the road maintained, if not - the por traveler jolted through the ruts and flooded out portions. Greedy land owners put up toll booths and made the traveler pay for the road repaairs and made a tidy profit on it. But we agreed as a community and as a nation to take care of these problems together.

To contribute to the common good is to see orphans housed and fed, and the old and the disabled cared for adequately and not to have to face that horror on the public streets, or the squalor of sewage thrown onto the public footpath or the gutters. We established public utilities such as sewer, electric lighting, water distribution, and public education! We provided for the literacy of our population!

As always, however, there are those self centered and greedy individuals who want to share in the public utilities and the common good but not pay their fair share in it. They are taxe evaders, those who hide their profits offshore, or in cash hidden in various places.

Tax cheats cheat us all. They excuse their behavior by saying they shouldn't have to pay for education because htey have no children, or they shouldn't have to pay for Welfare Queens - people they suppose who have one child after another and sit around on the public dole. Same for workers, they don't want to have to pay for the elderly or the out of work, as though these things could never happen to them.

It reminds me of a group with whom I went out to dinner once. When we all paid in our share for the dinner, we came up short and one suggested that we short the waiter his tip. The group refused and we began to try to figure out what had happened. It turned out one man hadn't put in for his wife. She had actually given him the money, but he put it in for his own share and didn't pay for her share. I was shocked, and so was his wife. That's the kind of man who is a tax cheat. He would have rationalized cheating the waiter rather than kick in his own share of the meal. Although I don't make much money, less than half of what I made before I retired (because I don't have my university pay anymore) I am glad to pay my share of the taxes to support this wonderful civilization within which I live. Every day when I walk the dog, I marvel at the tidy, friendly, safe and well cared for little community where I live and I am grateful!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Fabric Show Dec. 2021

As I have mentioned before, VISIT NEW JERSEY has a fine e-mail listing of wonderful events in South Jersey. The one that caught m eye today was this:

Mayan Traje: A Tradition in Transition Now through December 31st | 11AM-4PM WheatonArts, Millville This exhibition features masterpieces of fiber arts created by Guatemalan Maya artists over a hundred years till modern days. These displays of weaving and embroidery encourage a deeper conversation about the preservation of traditions and adaptation of folk arts to the contemporary way of life.

I have always beeen interested in Fiber Arts as well as the arts and culture of our southern continental neighbors. If I can get there I will certainly try.

For all the rest of the fine offerings, please try to sign up for the e-mail of VISIT SJ it is well worth it! Happy Holidays, Jo Ann

ps. My copies of 1619Project and the Jill Lepore book mentioned in the previous blog both arrived today - so excited to start reading!

Slaves of the Founders

Reading a feature article recently in Dec. issue of Vanity Fair on Nikole Hannah-Jones who wrote the 1619 Project feature in the Sunday New York Times a couple of years ago. That issue sold out on the newstands, and was sold even over the internet! It was so popular, she enlarged it into a book.

To me, the main point was a familiar one to a woman, that is the erasure of our presence in history in general and American history. She begins by stating the fact that the first enslaved Africans came to America in 1619, before the Mayflower, and needless to say their labor made thiss country what it became. Their unpaid labor powered the agricultural wealth of the South. It must be mentioned ago, that the unopaid labor of enslaved people BUILT the United States Capitol!It goes without saying that I cannot summarize the entire magazine in this blog - you should get a copy or as soon as the book is avvailable you should get that - I certainly plan to!

What I wanted to mention here were the slaves of two particular presidents: George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. Two of the enslaved people of George Washington escaped slavery and were never recovered. One was Hercules, Washington's famously talented chef. When Washington brought his enslaved workers up north, he circulated them back to his plantation to make sure that they didn't meet any legal circumstances to achieve their freedom. The second one to escape from George Washington was Ona Judge, Martha's talented seamstress. Neither escaped person was ever recovered though George Washington spent a fortune on slave hunter/Investigators to get them back. There is a book about Ona Judge which I bought and read on the recommendation of a fellow volunteer from Red Bank Battlefield.

Thomas Jefferson took as a concubine a young enslaved woman named Sally Hemmings, very near the age of his own daughters and a companion to them. Jefferson was the father of several children with Sally Hemmings, some of whom were freed at adluthood, others not until Jefferson died. His descendants claimed for decades that the rumors that the Hemmings were Jefferson descendants was a scurrilous lie and that Thomas Jefferson would NEVER have sexual intercourse with a Black slave. Well DNA tells a different story an the best book I have seen on that final reckoning is written by Annette Gordon-Reed.

the STORY of History is written by the people with education, college degrees, professorships and access to print media. Until the days of my own college education, women were often locked out of the access to either of these routes to see that our own part in history was acknowledge. Now, of course, thanks to the Women's Movement, we are a force in higher education, we have the degrees, the access to print media, and the access to publication and for women in general there has been a great effort to even out the narrative since the 1970's. Being locked out of literacy, first, and later through poverty, access to higher education also kept African Americans from being able to participate in the creation of the narrative of history, so they were left out as well, and now we experience the bits of pieces here and there that remediate this lsos. think of the emergence of the stories such as the Tuskegee Airmen, or the Code Talkers - bits of hero history that were buried until revealed by the new pioneers of history.

I joyfully bought the books that introduced me to my own progenitor female heroes many of whom I have mentioned in previous blogs, women like Margaret Sanger, and Clara Barton, Harriet tubman and Sojourner Truth, the names could go on and on to the bottom of the blog but that isn't my point in this entry. My point in this entry is my own appreciation of reclaiming my lost and erased female history has made me appreciate the effort to reclaim African American history and so I have made it a point to read it when I come across it. For example CASTE, by Isabel Wilkerson, was one of my most recent readings in the study of the lost history of African Americans in the United States.

The Vanity Fair article mentioned several books that Nicole Hannah-Jones read and that we could also read, that introduce us to the story of African Americans in the time of the Revolution. i plan to get a few of these and here are some I can list for you if you want to make the effort to balance the story of our history!

The Negro in the American Revolution by Benjamin Quarels, Forced Founders, by Woody Holton, The Internal Enemy by Alan Taylor, the Counter Revolution of 1776 by Gerald Horn, Propaganda and the American Revolution by Patriia Bradley, Slave Nation by by Alfred Blumrosen, These Truths, by Jill Lepore.

I want to know the whole story, or as much of it as I can find. I have always made an effort to balance the story with readings in the FArm Workers Movement, and Indigenous Culture and Politics and will continue to do so. I hope you love history that way too - the way that it is always enhanced, expanded, made more inclusive!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

For things to do and places to go try VISIT NEW JERSEY

Visit South Jersey

Since I have not been very up to date on places to go and things to do, mostly since I haven't been getting out and about much lately, I thought the least I could do would be to recommend that you sign up to get Visit New Jersey in your e-mail. They often have very interesting ideas: In this latest e-mail the ones that were interesting to me were the Rancocas Craft Market on the 27th all day. Many of the Visit New Jersey posts have to do with things at Winery locations and perhaps they support this web resource, since I don't drink at all, and have no interest in wine or winery events, I generally find about 3 or more events in their list of a dozen that are interesting to me, so it is well worth giving it a try.

Also, although I won't be volunteering there for this even, the Candlelight Tours of the James and Ann Whitall House will take place on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of December as happens each year. I haven't attended in some years and things have changed a great deal there since I left, so I can't give any more information but you can look it up. I would have volunteered but I can't drive in the dark any more due to vision impairment.

Happy Trails into Winter!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Composting/Cremation/Burials

Okaym at some point I may have to re-name my blog "Things to Think About" as well as places to go, but today I was reading the Harpers October issue (see To Be a Field of Poppies, pg. 36) and there was an interesting article on RECOMPOSE, a company created to compost human remains, rapidly and safely. Since I am 76 years old, I have given some thought to what I would like done with my remains. Needless to say, the first time many of us give any thought to this is when our parents die. Both of my parents were cremated in West Virginia and their ashes scattered in a memorial garden beneath a tree on the front hill. I always thought that was what I would do also, but in this article, several important points are made about the environmental impact of different forms of dealing with human remains after death. We all know New Jersey is a crowded place and as bad as it is to see farmland continually converted into housing developments, it seems even more wasteful to convert it to cemeteries. You must have seen the huge, almost endless vistas of cemeteries on the road to New York from New Jersey. It is shocking to those of us down here in the south of Jersey who are more used to the small, quaint burial places behind the local churches. Recently, I blogged about the disappearing cemeteries, those abandoned as the churches close and the people move on. The stones fall over, the mowers stop mowing and the saplings and weeds take over, joined by dumping of trash.

What I didn't know was that cremation puts a lot of pollution into the air and now that nearly half of hte people who die these days are cremated that is something to consider. In the article, which details the process and issues, they mention that it takes only 30 days to compost efficiently. Natural burials take about two years for a body to decompose, and as we who watch archaeology programs are well aware, bones ccan go on for a long long long time! I checked to see if composting was available in New Jersey yet and it is not but there were posts from funeral homes that said they would do it when it becomes legal. Apparently it is not that economical financially however. They said the average ordinary funeral burial arrangement costs about $7,000 to 10,000 and a Recompose costs at rpresent about $5,000 in Washington State where it is now legal. Cremation costs about $1000, so at this point, I will stick with cremation but if it becomes legal in New Jersey to compost human remains and the price goes down, when my time comes, that would be my choice! Hopefully it is a long way off!

Speaking of cemeteries, however, I must add that my favorites are Harleigh, resting place of Walt Whitman and a lovely place to visit for a walk or a drive, and Eglington in Mickleton. I haven't visited very many and it isn't a bad idea. I have seen numerous small churchyard cemeteries such as those behind the Friends' Meeting Houses in Haddonfield and Salem and Greeenwich.

Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

My Thanksgiving cookery - The Three Sisters 11/25/21

Two of the three recipe's I am going to type here were given to me by friends. It goes without saying that if you can make these dishes with fresh foods, like fresh potatoes or carrots, you SHOULD! But I am giving you these because they can be made from canned goods. And while I am on that subject let me say a THANK YOU for canned goods! So many things about our modern world are worh hoting and being grateful for and canned goods is certaily one. A diversion - a family memory: When I was in my teens, my family had moved from the red brick canyons of South Philadelphia. In our New Jersey development, we had a big backyard beside a farm field where the farmer still grew corn. My parents had just been through World War II and their families had survived thanks to the Victory Gardens grown in the patches of field still remaining where the sports arenas and airport was finally built. So, my parents got rieght to work making a big garden. My father grew cucumbers, corn, carrots, potatoes, beans, squash, and of course, New Jersey's most famous fruit the TOMATO! They were so successful that they took up preserving. They bought cases of BALL jars and rubber washers and studied the safe procedures for pickling and preeerving. My father built a food pantry beneath the staircase to the second floor and after steaming days of late summer harvest, the shelves were filled with jewel colored jars of spiced tomatoes, pickled cucumbers, and preserved everything else.

I can still remember my poor mother, in the evening in the summer heat, in her apron, standing over the boiling pots of jars being sterilized. She spent a lot of time standing over boiling pots, my mother. I remember her boiling the glass baby bottles she used for my brothers and sisters, born in the new development of New Jersey. Those were the days of diapers which had to be rinsed, washhed, hung out to dry, and no air conditioning in the houses yet. She stood over those steaming racks of boiled jars, and over the huge pots of boiled vegetables night after night. I am not sure when they stopped, but I can understand why - it was just too much work and you could buy it all and we had plenty of money and the stores had plenty of products. The days of scarcity were over.

Some yeqrs back, Dr. Mehmet Oz was featured in a cover story about the safety of canned goods on the cover of a popular news magazine, Maybe Time, maybe Newsweek. Anyhow, he maintained that although canned goods were not as nutritious as fresh or frozen, they were certainly safe. That was good news becaue I think there had been a scare about the storage of food in metal cans. Apparently the metal in modern canned goods is safe. Anyhow the following recepice's are all from canned goods which mean you can buy these cans aghead of time, store them in a cupboaard and in snow, or bad weather, or anytime you don't want to go shopping, you can make these soups with canned goods!

From Pam Enticknap, a a former college and art friend who was from New England and made this oup with fresh ingredients but it can be made with canned: 1 can of potatoes whole or sliced 1 can of creamed corn 1 can of whole sweet golden corn That's it! Put them in a pot with a few tablespoons of Earth's Promise olive oil based butter substitute, then do a little mashing with a masher or an immersion blender and you have a sweet creamy soup on a cold day! At present, we have a salmonella scare on onions from Mexico so this is a safe alternative to the fresh onions version.

From Ann Horton, a former poetry friend 1 can red beans 1 can black beans 1 can white beans 1 can of corn 1 can of spiced diced tomatoes 1 jar of Slasa Again, just open them, put them in a po and cook! I put a tablespoon of chili in too and I serve it over brown rice (which you can buy frozen and microwave) and with lime flavored tortilla chips. Needless to say, you can make all that fresh with a pressure cooker and I have done it, but the canned goods make it a half hour prep experience!

Finally, my own discovery. In the 'foreign foods aisle of my ShopRite (where they have Chinese foods and Goya products) you can find canned lentils. 2 cans of lentils 1 can of cut carrots Again, I repeat, you can cook your own lentils and peel and cook your own carrots and I am certain it would be more delicious, but this is from storage on a day you are out of fresh produce and don't want to go to the store. When I make these things I like to think of the places in the world they come from and how old thee grains adn beans are in our history. The Three Sisters are the foods the Indigenous people used as their basic diet and which they offered to the first pilgrims to save them through the winter when they arrived: Beans, Corn, and Squash.

So pick up the canned goods on some can can sale day and put them in the cupboard and when winter and snow trap you indoors - you are all set to cook and enjoy and be warm! Happy Thanksgiving. Again, please do't bother with the comments on this web site p it is entirely polluted by robot scam stuff, if you want to reach me, use my e-mail wrightj45@yahoo.com Happy Trails! Jo Ann, by the way I enjoyed New Jersey cider with my meal!

The War of the World Views - Mankind, Civilization, Sapiens and the Dawn of Everything

Teleological - the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than ofy the cause by which they arise

Throughout my long life, I have been a big fan of the epic - the epic historical narrative, the epic explanation of the way things are, the epic on the small scale and the large scale. One of the first experiences I had with the epic description of human history was probably Will and Ariel Durant's Civilization. Along with reading such books, most fondly The People's History of the United States by one of my life heroes, Howard Zinn, there werre the popular epic historical drama of the cinemascope era, Lawrence of Arabia and Gone With the Wind. Theee were all fabulous introductions to the ideea of different viewpoints. Needless to say, I had my collection of Women's History of the United States, and Women's History (of a number of things - most of the ones we had been traditional left out of).

I am still a big fan of the tv weries old and new and just began to watch again Civilization, narrated by Sir Kenneth Clark and first appearing in 1969. Some of the big views were through the lense of architecture and art, which was my later road into the big history. My second degree is a B.A. in Fine Arts and one of the most difficult, or challenging courses I ever took was History of Art, a full year, two semester course that relied heavily on memorizing, which is something I am not good at! Nevertheless, I loved it and took legal size pads of notes redeced them to index cards, studied and studied and got good grades. We viewed the history of humankind via statues like the Venus of Willendorf and temples like Stonehenge then, of course up through the tried and true Crete, Minoan and Greek, Roman and Midieval periods, through the modern and post modern via paintings and finally film and photography. Sir Kenneth Clark took a similar journey via temples and churches and Roman roads and Aquaducts. The television series I jsut finished watched was a quick and action movie style look at the rie of humanity via mainly wars of conquest and defense. I read some commentary on the International Movie Database and it was mostly critical. My opinion is that all of these journeys are like road trips. If you take the bus, you see one landscape, if you take the train another, and by plane or boat something else entirely, then there is by foot! However that said, my main criticism is as always that Mankind was about MENKind. You'd have to wonder where all the people came from since women weere rarely pictured let alone mentioned, although, as usual, a warrior queen or two were thrown in as a sop to the complainers. ,p/> What is interesting to me in the extreme is when historians take on the whole package of how something is organized and presented which is, of course, what Howrd Zinn did and what an eye opener that was! Instead of focus on Kings and Conquerors like the perrennial favorites Ghengis Khan and Alexander the Great, Zinn took a look at history from the ground up, through the lives of the little people and forever changed my interests in history. While I am on that subject, I have to interject that the view of history from the peope who lived it has always been my most passionate interest and I love the study of first-person sources such as journals and memoir. That said, however, so much of our HUMAN history occurred before any individuals could write about it, the story must be told via the ghostly bones of early cities and the few notable objects of material culture that must then be interpreted. So, take for example the Venus of Willendorf, the small stone idol, found in the thousands over stone age Europe can be a remnant of a Goddess worshipping period, cult, or the symbol of some other kind of worship like fertility. We don't know, we can only buess using our own bias and experience. Here I must bring in Maria Gimbutas. The book of hers that I read was The Civilization of the Goddess. She was a noted archaeologist and anthropolist.

Recently I read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari but I was not as impressed as many of the reviewers whose essays I read. I liked him better in interviews, most recently in a Sunday New York Times Magazine interview I think I mentioned in another blog entry. He is challenged by Graeber and Wengrow in a very well written and gripping essay in the November 6, 2021 issue of the New Yorker, by Gedeon Lewis-Kraus, pg. 62. Their new book takes a far more free-form appreach and apparently, takes a view of the power of happenstance rather than design. I recommend you read the esay, it is far more than I could summarize in this blog entry. It is well worth the read. And even though it is so fueled by testosterone fantasy, I recommend Mankind, the Story of Us which I saw on amazon prime, if for no other reason than it gives another side dish to go with the Thanksgiving meal - the history of human beings!

By the way and totally off topic, I will be having Thanksgiving with my sister and brother a couple of days after the traditional Thursday, because my sister is the cook and she has to work. For my own personal at-home Thanksviing, I have a nice pot of sweetpotato/carrot soup, and for the day after, a nice pot of corn chowder. Obviously I am a vegetarian, but at my sister's dinner, I will enjoy the sides as they eat the turkey. Hope you have a lot to be thankful about and that you have the awareness of all the things you have to be thankful for! Happy Trails! Jo Ann

An Amazing Bit of WWII History

From the Smithsonian November 2021 issue, this story:

Surely if you have known any children in the last 30 or 50 years, you have probably read the Children's Literary Classic - CURIOUS GEORGE. The authors and illustrators, H. A. and Margaret Rey were once trapped in southern France as the Nazi army marched and bombed its way over France. They were helped by a miraculously brave and generous hearted Portuguese diplomat named Aristides Sousa Mendez. He had been forbidden by his superiors to issue visas to the thousands of refugees piling up along the border to Spain, hoping to ecape the onslaught of the Nazi occupation. He defied his orders and set up a veritable assemply line to stamp passports and issue visas to thousands of people from all walks of life. They were making their way through Spain to Portugal and from their to any place they could get to, South America, the U.S. It was a life and death situation.

If you never read Curious George, perhaps you might have seen the classic Humphrey Bogart nd Ingrid Bergman movie, Casablanca. That movie as about those same refugees after they have escaped as far as Morocco and are trying to get away to any place safe. The young woman who begs for help from the Vichy consul and then gets help from Rick (Humphrey Bogart) wa an actress who actually got her visa from Sousa Mendez and escaped via that route to the U.S.

A descendent of one of the thousands saved by Mendez, Olivia Mattis, set up a foundation to honor his memory and preserve his legacy. Among the many professors, physician, scientists, teachers, musicians and writers along with the thousands of ordinary people trying to flee with their families, were such luminaries as Salvador Dali, the famous Surealist painter, and his wife, Gala. Sousa Mendez continued to make visas and stamp passports even after the town where he had been stationed had been bombed. Eventually, his superior in Portugal ordered that none of his signed passports should be honored at the Portuguese border. Sousa Mendex was stiffly reprimanded, punished with financial disaster, and denied his pension. One of Sousa Mendez son's actually joined the U.S. army and was part of the force that landed at Normandy. Sousa Mendes died in poverty from stroke but his memory and his nobility will be remembered by the descendants of the thousands he saved.

Happy Trails, Jo Ann

HISTORY: America - Our Defining Hours

If you have HULU, a streaming service, or if you have a subscription to the History Channel, I urge you to watch AMERICA: Our Definihg Hours. What a great series. It is in three parts and begins with the Revolution. I never watch tv during the day - never have. But today, I was so excited by this series which I began to watch lat night, that in place of my afternoon reading time, I decided to tune it again for part 3 which covers the first half of the twentieth Century.

As a devoted follower and reader and learner in HISTORY, I am well aware of the mythical plot pattern where all is almost lost and the hero emerges from the people to lead them to safety and they survive. One of my favorite all time foreign films was PATHFINDER and Icelandic saga. It follows the same theme. I couldn't help but produce a tear for the heroes of our own most dangerous times: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. To think of the nobility of purpose the daring, the selfless devotion, the wide ranging intellectual accompishment and the huility of being able to get the necessary help from others which made it possible for these heroes to bring us back from the depths.

They aren't the only heroes, needless to say, all the brave and selfless heroes on other strata of accomplishemnt who led the people from despair to victory ar the sacrifice of their own lives are also always present in my heart and mind, Clara Barton, Margaret Sanger, Alice Paul, Harriet Tubbman, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavesz, Dolores Huerta, Joe Hill and so many many others up and down the social scale.

But my point is, if you haven't seen this, please watch it and if you have seen it, it may be worthwhile to watch it again! I have revisited many programs and leanrned a great deal the second time around, for example, with TURN!, the Revlutionary spy series. The first time I watched it, on my tv, I could barely make it out in the murky color of it, and I had a lot of trouble with my hearing, but when I watched it again, through a treaming service (I think it was amazon) I could really see it and hear it and enjoy it.

It appears I spoke too soon, or perhaps I spoke before I could make an informed critique because I have just gotten to the near end of the series and they sckip right from Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement to the 911 bombing and once again the Women's Movement is entirely ignored. It happned and it affected half the entire population of the United States!!! Half the people in this coutry couldn't vote until 1919. Half of us paid taxes without representation until 1919, and half the population of this country suffered discrimination in every walk of life until the Women's Movement and yet both the Suffrage movement and the Women's Civil Rights Movement of the 1970's are ignored by this series. Our Civil Rights matter too, and our gatherings of 200,000 are as important as the gathering of any other civil rights groups, or labor groups. I am so disappointed at this omission. It ruined this series for me.

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Freeman Dyson, Carl Woese, Yuval Noah Harari

Some years ago, in a New York Review of Books article on Freeman Dyson, I ran across a quote from Carl Woese, great and renowned biologist that had such an impact on my that I have copied it into every diary I have written since then. The Review was of OUR BIOTECH FUTURE, 2007. Freeman Dyson quotes Woese:

"Imagine a child playing in ae woodland strem, po9oking a stick into an eddy in a flowing current, thereby disrupting it, But the eddy quickly reforms. The child disrupts it again, and again it reforms.....There you have it, organisms are resilent patterns in a turbulent flow, patterns in an energy flow. It is becoming increasingly clear that to understand living systems we must come to see them not as machines but as stable, complex, dynamic organization."

Harari, in an interview in Sunday New York Times, 11/14/21 says, "I explored the way in which the information revolution disintegrates the human individual which is the foundation of humanism, and liberalism......it is no longer that a human being is this magical self which is autonomous and has free will and makes decisions about the world. No, a human being like all other organisms, is an information processing system that is in continuous flow. It has no fixed assets."

What brought both of these essays to mind was an essay I was reading about the journals of Claude Fredericks, a professor of classics at Bennington College. He wasn't faouus in his on his own, but was a friend of many famous authors such as May Sarton, and Anais Nin, and poet James Merrill. He kept journals from the age of 8 until his death and the Getty has purchased and archived his journals. This was interesting to me as I have kept journals for 50 years and have been a fan of the new literary art form known as "Autofiction" which was made famous by the author Karl oOve Knaussgaard through his 4 to 6 volume work called My Struggle (of which I have read 3 or 4 volumes).

All of this coincided with an essay on not getting rid of our stuff which I wrote about yesterday. My home is, in a way, an encapsulated history of one organism, kind of like the fossil remains of a T-Rex in the desert of the West, or of a saber tooth cat in a tar pit in California. There are my journals, and my paintings, and my accumulated bits of flotsam and jetsom, rocks, fossils, photographs, postcards, books by the thousands.

All these bits of material Culture, describe the life of an organism, a free floating bit of humanity in the continuous dynamic stream of history that is time made manifest. I wanted to share these thoughts with you because they have been so compelling to me over the years. I hope you are insired to look up the original sources and read them for yourself!

Happy Trails - like leaves floating on the ripples in a pod

The Last Word: Why I'm not throwing out my stuff, Sandy Hingston in The Week

Ages ago, before the Pandemic, there was a fad for what was called "Swedish Death Cleaning" by which we were (we old people that is) supposed to clear out our crap before we died and spare the inheritors having to do it. Right from the start I hated that idea for many reasons. First of all, I was insulted at the idea that I should erase all evidence of my life beore I even died! Secondly, didn't clearing out our parents' things after they were gone give us a chance to grieve and remember and cry and hold onto a memory of happy times! It is true that I didn't take much, mostly photographs, which is also what I inherited from my Grandmother, photos of her parents from the late 1800's.

Also, as a volunteer for half a dozen historic sites and organizations, Historical Societyies, since my retiremtne, I am very conscious of what the objects of the past tell us about times that are gone, and people who were here before we were. I used to be a suitcase history volunteer for a Historical Society and I took a chest of objects to grade schools to talk to children about Colonial history. The wonder on their faces when they handled the tools and tried to figure out what they were used for, or when they tried on the spectacles, or dressed up in reproduction cclothes. We lament that our children don't know about or care about histoty and then talk about discarding it as though those very objects are not the things that make history come alive!

There is a difference between hoarding and clutter and conserving family heirlooms. Old cardboard boxes, plastic milk jugs, clothes many sizes too small, these things should be put into the recycling stream, not packed away in corners and sheds, back rooms and attics - oh, but while we are on the subject of attics - When I was a college student working on a degree in Art, a sculpture teacher once caused us students to ponder the upcoming new world of houses without atticd. It immediately called up to me a memory turned over in my mind many times in my lifetime, of a place in my early childhood called Scott Storage. In Ocean City, on Asbury Avenue, near 6th Street, there was a huge (to my under ten year old eyes) warehouse with a dark, murky cavernous interior chock filled with giant and ornate pieces of mahogany Victorian furniture, plus pianos and most interesting of all, figureheads from ships, steering wheels from the helms, and small wooden boats once used with bigger sailing vessels were also stored there. Standing guard at the entrance with the old man on the chair, smoking his pipe, was a cigar store Indian. My family didn't have an attic, because we lived in a brick row home in South Philadelphia, but Scott Storage was enough of an example to get me pondering the question of what if there was no place to save the material culture of the past?

Mark my words, as soon as the young minimalist millenials reach the later stages of middle age, they are going to long to see those America Girl Doll trunks, those Polly Pockets, those Teddy Ruxpins and they will wish they could visit just one more time with the beloved books of their childhood such as Caps for Sale, or John Burningham's The Cupboard. My hoouse is my own little Old Curiosity Shop, and it will remain somewhat dusty and cluttered with the accumulated treasures of my 76 years until I die and no longer care about these things. My daughter can earn back all I did for her by going through these things and remembering me, and she can cry and grieve, and as she lets go of each item, she can send some of her sorrow awaay with it, the way you can tell your worry to a Guatemalan Wworry doll and toss it into a field.

Happy Trails, through the woods or through the dust - Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com s

The Doll Houses of Ocean City

My cousin sent a few articles to me about the Doll HOuses of Wovern Place in Ocean City and I am about to returnn them to her so I thought I would post about them. I think I may have done a post about them before, but I can't remember. My cousin Patty, by the way, lives in the Villas, near Cape May, another interesting seashore location! Once when we were visiting a seashore historical society, we came across an old advertisement for the houses where she now lives. It was a charming holiday advertisement with the holly corner decorations and the houses were so ridiculously inexpensive that we had to gasp! Patty's mother bought the house in the Villas decades ago and when she died, she left the house to her only child, Patty. When Patty's husband died, Patty used some of her inheritance to renovate the Villas house, modernized the electrical and plumbing, the roof and so on, then she packed up and moved from her family home in Norristown, Pa. where she and her husband had raised three sons, to the Villas to start a new life.

Patty and I were both very closely connected to our Grandmother Mabel who had, herself, moved to the seashore after her husband, my grandfather, died. Grandmom moved into a house owned by her sister and took care of their mother, my great=grandmother after a catastrophic stroke left her paralyzed. She took care of her for 15 years! During all the years of my childhood, my father, mother, and the brother closest to my age, went to Ocean City visit with my Grandmother almost every weekend. We played on the beach and walked on the 'boards' which is what locals always called the boarwalk. My grandmother worked in summer on the boardwalk at an amusement arcade, in a ticket booth. In winter, she worked in Stainton's Department Store. She worked all the way into her 80's, until she had a heart attack. My grandmother lived with her brother, my Uncle Yock, most of their adult lives after her mother passed away. So, we spent a lot of time in Ocen City and had a lot of favorite and intimately familiar places. My all time favorite was the big Warehouse two doors down from my grandmother's place - Scott' Storage. They had a lot of maritime salvage including ship's prow heads sculpture, a cigar store Indian, and a great deal of enormous Victorian furniture, most likely the orphaned furnishings of previoos seashore residents who were replaced by modern people who wanted lighter, summery furniture rather than the heavy dark wood furniture of the past.

Though I explored vigorously growing up, wherever I was, in the city of my birth, Philadelphia, or in Ocean City, I never came upon the Doll Houses of Wovern Place, even though they were aparently not far from the last house my grandmother had before she died, which was at 11th and Bay Avenue. According to the article sent by my cousin, the deeds on the houses go back to 1871. The houses are located in an area around 13th and 15th Streets and Bay Avenue. My grandmother's house was just a house up from the fishing pier over the Bay, another favorite spot of mine. Just thinking about it now, I can smell the briny bay. My cousin's directions are to take Bay going north from 34th Street, turn left on 15th to Wovern Place then turn right on Wovern She said the houses are only on opne side.

If, like me, you enjoy the seashore off season and in winter, you may like to make the Doll Houses a 'go to- goal or your next drive to the shore. Now that I have a new car, I just might give it a 'go' myself!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

This just received via e-mail. Camden City Park at Cooper River!

Modern waterfront park to open in Camden at former city dump site

By Noah Zucker

phillyvoice.com

Fifty years after Camden decommissioned its city dump on the Cooper River, officials and residents of the Cramer Hill neighborhood have reclaimed the space with a modern waterfront park. Work on the $48 million, 62-acre park, which features a fishing pond, kayak launch and 8 miles of multi-use paths...

GSSC - Tracking History Along the Delaware Bay in Photos" by Steve Barry

The Genealogical Society of Salem County will host a program entitled "Tracking History Along the Delaware Bay in Photos" by Steve Barry, editor of Railfan & Railroad magazine on Tuesday, November 9, 2021 at 7:00 pm. This meeting will be held in the Woodstown Friends Meeting House at 104 North Main Street in Woodstown. Photographer Steve Barry has family roots in far southwestern New Jersey in the marshlands that border the Delaware Bay. Over the past few years, he has taken his camera down to the region to explore some of the sights. Along the way he has photographed the historic, the mundane, and the offbeat — all a part of the fabric of life along the bay. He will share some of his favorite photographs of his explorations of this unique corner of New Jersey. This program is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit www.gsscnj.org, email genealogicalsocietysalemcounty@gmail.com, or call 609-670-0407.

--Bonny Beth Elwell VP of GSSC

Blogging, the Brain, The Sopranos, Hobbes, The Revolution

Yesterday, November 6th, I was reading Archaeology Magazine aboutht the mysterious Picts of Scotland. Like the Anglo Saxons and the Celts, they were a preliterate society and left no records of themselves for us so all we have to go on is the mentions of them by Romans in regard to battles on the frontier of Briton in the few hundred years around 300 ad. Recent excavations on a hilltop have revealed traces which point to a Pictish settlement of about 4000 residents with an enclosed fort at the top of the hill which the magazine aarticle authors describe as 'high status' because of the presence of Samian pottery, Roman amphora, possibly for wine, and metal worked objects. What stuck in my mind after reading the article was how often I have both read and heard on tv archaeology programs these descriptions of 'high status' dwellings, based on the pottery and other artifacts found there. The Picts were noted by the Romans for their ferocity in defending their lands from invasion and for the blue tatooing over their bodies which is the origin of the description name 'Picts' which stands for pictured or image covered people. The article went on to say that the people called 'Picts' were actually probably a loose network of Celtic and Gaul tribal people draawn together mainly to defend themselves from the Romans.

When you read and listen to books and programs about the times of the Anglo Saxons, the Celts, the Northern Barbariansm the vikings, what is striking is the clash of the lawless savagery of the cultures of conquest and pillage. These peoples as well as the Romans, were in the process of organizing themseles into lawful civilizations, by which I mean civilizations that do not exist by means of the invasion and pillage of their neighbors. As we know, the Vikings business was theft, enslavement, extortion and destruction. These basically evil and destructive ways of making a living are with us still in the form of the 'mob' the Cosa Nostra, the drug cartels, and all the other forms of organized crime including politial organized crime such as ISIS.

The philosopher, Hobbes, who "implied that natyure is red in tooth and claw unless we set up social institutions to curb and control it, in so far as human nature interferes with the smooth running of human society."

Re-watching the Sopranos, described by many tv critics as the greatest tv series of the golden age of tv series, brings to mind many thoughts and conjectures about Hobbes and that part of human nature which pumps itself up with the false idea that "might makes right." Many times in human history we have seen this play out, most recently in World War II where the Nazi Party initially was thriving via the notion of brute force as the greatest weapon for the conquest of neighboring lands and seizing the products of others' labor as well as their lives. They were defeated, so was Napoleon. It seems to me that civilzation is always moving towards greater organization based on cooperation and non-viloent resolution of conflict and the distribution of resources, but you cannot help but see this constact contest played out in the show the Sopranos.

The criminals in this show live entirely off the labor of others, through extortion, robbery and murder. They are a cancer on society. I think the character of Dr. Melfi, the psychologist that Tony Soprano sees from the beginning of the series, represents US, the viewers, who are mesmerized by this human contradiction, a human who looks like us in so many ways but appears to act devoid of the characteristics the rest of us take for granted, empathy, a sense of fair play. Like Dr. Melfi, we want to know what makes him tick, how this creature 'works' and as so often has happened in psychiatry and in culture, it gets blamed on his mother, who Dr. Melfi labels as 'anti-social' and 'borderine personality disordered.' However, that takes away all responsibility for all the decisions made by Tony Soprano the rest of his life. We all rise from and evolve from our family originas

The Sopranos have all the 'high status' objects of our modern culture, expensive car, expensive lavish house, swimming pool, jewelry and cash, and yet none of them are happy. In a previous post, I said that it was like watching the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire all over again because the Roman Empire, like the Nazi Empire rose on its brute strength and conquest, and declined and fell. Historians have picked over the corpse of the Roman Empire for the more than thousand years describing the causes of the decline. One of the indisputable causes as well as contributing factors, was the rise of Christianity. The value system that Christianity, at least in its early stages exemplified was the opposite of the "Might makes Right" value system. It made a moral right, a right based on love and cooperation, empathy and compassion, sharing and understanding and it superceded the irrational fluctuating emotional systems of pagan religions of greedy and temperamental gods.

These forces are again playing out in our own culture. Men scratch and claw blood money to buy the symbols of status current to the American Empire, expensive cars, huge expensive mansions, exotic label clothing and products (think designer bags and label suits and clothes such as Armani or Prada) while their greed becomes a cancer that eats at the fabric of their society.

Sadly, the side of human nature that is greedy and lazy and craves excess has arisen in our society and instead of hunerstnding the subtle message of history implied in shows about the Vikings or the Sopranos, people revel in the brute violence of it, just taking and using and discarding in immediacy without thinking of consquences and without empathy. That is the destructive force which will kill our society and our planet unless the better side of our natures finds some expression that can, like an immune system, find, envelope and unarm this dangerous disease.

As I have said in previous posts, robot hackers have destroyed the comments function on this blog site so if you wish to discuss any posts, it is best to e-mail me and I can reply. wrightj45@yahoo.com

Such beautiful augumn weather, I hope you are able to get out and about in it! Happy Trails - Jo Ann

The book History Club is going to read for our January meeting is FOUNDING BROTHERS, by Joseph Ellis who won a Pulitzer Prize. I imagine we will find a mirror in the arguments and ideas they faced in creating this nation, to the one we face today in trying to maintain it.

Camden Shipyard and Maritime Museum - Not Open

It is really annoying to me when cultural sites post that they are OPEN when they are NOT. Today, I looked up the Camden Shipyard and Maritume Museum on the web and it said it was open on Thursdays from noon to 4:00 p.m. I called the listed number a half dozen times but it went straight to the mailbox which was not functioning. Since I live less than a half hour away, I decided to make the drive though I was warned off by my sister who passes through that area frequently on her way to and from her jobs working for catering companies. She said the address was near what they call "Five Points" and it is an infamous drug selling corner. She told me took around carefully before I got out of the car.

I drove there at about 1:30 and, indeed, there was someone loitering about who looked like he was waiting for a car to summon him for a transaction, so I drove around the corner, passing several despairing (possibly strung out) people on the sidewalk and the steps of adjacent buildings. The web site said you could park in a lot at the back, but I drove down a trash strewn alley and did not see a lot, so I went back out front and parked. I tried all three doors, two of them with ramps and one with high steps (hard on my knees). It seemed to me none of the buzzers were working. No one came to any door even when I tried knocking when the buzzers didn't seem to work. Finally, after tripping on some vines across one of the paved paths from a door, I gave up. Fortunately a police car was parked at the corner which was reassuring to me. I drove around the block past rows of abandoned houses, some boarded up, others with blck and gaping holes where windows and door had been.

Years ago, I went to college at Rutgers in Camden, and had many explorations there, so I wasn't surprised by the degradation the city has endured. But each time I go, there is a new tragedy. The last time I went, the library had been abandoned and destroyed. The library on Broadway had been so beautiful I had taken children from the summer programs I worked in at the time, to visit it. I remembered the block glass upper balconies and the marble busts of great writers in the niches between alcoves where people could read in peace and quiet. It was a graceful and beautiful old building allowed to rot and ruin.

Camden is like a sick and dying creture, set upon by scavengers. It is so sad, and sad for the people who still try to live there. The Camden Shipyard and Maritime Museum is in what was once an old and beautiful Episcopalian Church. I imagine inside you can still see the beauty of the stained glass windows. I am glad the church was at least put to a good and cultural purpose and not allowed to fall to ruin like the library, BUT that said, ALL ventures whether cultural or profitable, shops or museums, should post if they are open only by appointment. It is always wrong to post that you are open if you are probably not going to be open.

too tired to go into the whole volunteer situation now, but a lot of places that run on volunteer labor cannot be certain of their staff, so they should post by appointment only and at least make sure the telephone works!!

Jo Ann

Veering off from History to Current Culture - the Sopranos - a ReWatching

The DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE - AGAIN!!

Because I read so many magazines and newspapers, I couldn't help but be drawn into the current crze for re-watching the Sopranos which many media critics have crowned as "the best Tv series in the golden age of tv series." I started watching last night, my second time as I watched it when it was new in the 90's. Once again many themes emerged for me:

1. The immoral and destructive culture of GREED and Each Man for Himself that is at the heart of all crime. ,p/> 2. The capitalist delusion that happiness can be bought and that it comes from money and social prestige.

3. The disdain for others, whether different races or different sexes - the Tribal mentality that all others, outside the tribe of of no worth and also are enemies.

4. The psychopathic lack of consciousness of the value of life. This goes against almost all civilization.

5. The rise of brute force as a measure of success and hence the concept that brute force is at the center of masculinity. ,P/> An often isquoted phlospher whosse mane I will have to look up again said that "Nature is red in tooth and claw without the social contract." The social contract is law, civilization, a set of governing values that all agree to abide by for the good of all and which we see eroded over all the world at present where individual selfish desire and greed have pushed to power at the cost of the common good.

There is a lot to think about in this program and also I wanted to mention the common references to the Roman Empire as in, perhaps the second or third episode where Tony Soprano's says "We are the Romans." It is worth noting that the Roman Empire like the Viking culture was baed on slavery and b rute power to steal from others their land, the lives, and the product of their labor. At various times in our own history we have faced and rejected these negative values as in the second World War when we faced, fought and defeated the Nazi criminal expansion and theft of entire neighboring countries.

Gender is a whole other topic for another time as I am getting ready to go to visit the Camden Shipyard and Maritime Museum for the first time this afternoon and before I go, I have a dog to walk!

Happy Trails whether on land, on water, or on thought waves!

Jo Ann

Being a Generalist and AGING

Just a couple of days ago, I picked up my latest painting from the Eiland Arts Gallery which is located in the old historic train station in Merchantville, New Jersey. I LOVE this place - it is a coffee shop and Art and Music venue run by a warm, friendly and talented woman named Nicole Eiland with the help of her partner Matt Eiland. The way I found out about this place was that I am a lifelong fan of trains and train stations and one summer I was driving along Atlantic Avenue seeking out the train Stations that I knew and taking photographs of them. They are a disappearing lot. Some of the lucky ones have been saved by local historical societies, like the one at Laurel Springs, others have been repurposed like the one in Audubon which is a dental office, but my favorite re-urposed one is Eiland Arts Center. I visited one in Berlin which still functions as a historic depot, and I believe the one in Haddon Heights is under the protection of a model railroad group because I visited it once, long before the pandemic and spoke to the men from the model railroad group.

I can trace my love of trains back to my father and our Christmas platform, and his love of trains. When we were children, my father took us on many historic railroad lines, steam trains, mine branches, and my father, an ironworker actually put a train into the Smithsonian! We visited the train that his company was hired to transport and place in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. They had to take out a wall to do it and put the wall back in place. My father had a heroic life. But it was the model train platform, that minitature world, that captured my heart and I can still remember the smell of the engine oil he used on the locamotive. Somehow the trains never captured my brothers the way they did me and sadly, gender politics being what they were, he gave them the trains and they sold them. I would have kept them all my life.

Anyhow, even bus stations are magical and evocative to me and my favorite was the old wooden bus station in Ocean City which I visited several times in the years when I didn't have a car. IIt is now endangered and surrounded by chain link fence) My grandmother lived in Ocean City and it was a town deeply rooted in my life, so even after she was gone, I visited it regularly. The air of the bus depot and the train depot was always filled with the essence of adventure, winter coats drying from snow, tobacco, newspapers, ladies cologne, and train and bus fumes. People were going and coming from far off places, all the excitement of it, the anticipation!

Well, anyhow my topic was generalists and aging. A few times I was criticized by a former friend for having too many interests, being too broad and generalist. I write and have independently published three novels, and I paint and show regularly in places like the Eiland Arts Center and the Atsion Summer Art Festival, and I read and I have been a historic site volunteer at half a dozen places over the years. I maintain, especially from the height of my advanced years, that being a generalist can save you as time goes by and the unexpected disabilities of age begin to mount and lay obstacles across your road. Most recently my old car (16 years old when I traded it in a couuple of weeks ago) and my failing eyesight hampered me in my travel adventures, but I placed my focus closer to home and Camden County is filled with interesting places to visit and places to spark your interest. Sadly, I missed the October History Month flyer in time to visit many of hte places and events that were listed, but there are still a few events coming up in November - the Gabreil Daveis Tavern in Glendora, and the James and Ann Whitall House in National Park where I have once again applied and been accepted to volunteer as a docent. I think I did a post on the Daveis Tavern events. You can look it up on the web too, I am sure.

wIf you "Put all your eggs into one basket" you may become a deep expert, but, if something happens to you and you can't perform that specialty any longer, you are up the creek. If you branch out and try your hand at many things, you can adapt to misfortune and generate new leaves! Zen Mind Beginner's Mind is a good book and possibly the passport I used to support my natural inclination to try lots of things. As for that reductive old expression "Jack of all trades - mast of none"! All I have to say is that you can be a satisfactory master at many things if you live long enough and variety is the spice of life.

Now that the Charles Dougherty senior center is going to be open again in my town, I have planned a new year meeting for January 3, 2022. Any intereeted people from neighboring towns are welcome. Our first topic will be Creative Jouraling and Scrapbooking and I will bring samples. We will also talk about Books we have been reading and do a book swap, so come join us and branch out! We will have guest speakers as we did before the pandemic. The Charles Doughterty Senior Center is at 507 Lambert, on the Railroad line that crosses Kings Highway in Mount Ephraim. I can hear that train whistle at night when I go to bed and early in the morning. Doesn't everyone love a train whistle?

We are all facing change and ADAPTABILITY is the key to successful navigation! Join us on Jan, 3 at 1:00. You can bring a bag lunch if you like. We mostly eat at home before we come, but we are seated at tables so you can bring a lunch and eat there, we are very casual! Bring some ideas as well. We want to hear about your interests!

By the Way, my most recent (and long time) reading passion has been Mystery Novels. Currently I am reading Jacquelin Winspeare's Maisie Dobb's novels, set in the inter-war years in England. Before that, I was reading the Three Pines stories set in Quebec. I began, as so many did, with Agatha Christie in my youth, and Arthur Conan Doyle, of course. So we will talk a little about mystery novels too! Join us for conersation and ideas and share your interests with us!

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com