Hitchhiking

Hitchhiking
Long Beach Island, NJ
Summer 1974


While we were at the beach for the summer, my mother was running back and forth to Philadelphia to tend to her dying father.  This left us without a car much of the time.  Once, there was a concern about how I would get to work and I told my mother that I would hitchhike.  I was sort of kidding but she thought I was serious and she was desperate so she told me, “OK, that’s a good idea.  And it’s safe here to hitchhike, isn’t it?”  

I told her “Yes.” But I was afraid. 

The first person to pick me up was a man, about my father’s age.  I was hesitant but I got in.  It turns out this guy was an old Navy friend of my dad’s.  They hadn't seen each other in 30 years. He came to the house a few days later to reconnect with my dad. 

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Expired

Expired
Expired- 11/94
Found- 6/2017

I just moved again and I found this bottle amongst my things.  It was hidden away with my ache bandages that I never use. Half of the pills are still in there. I was 39 in 94.  These pills are now at least 23 years old. I wonder if pills are like whiskey.  Do they get better with age?  I'm going to find out.

1965

1965

Woodbine Avenue

Overbrook

Philadelphia, PA

My age: 9-10

School- Our Lady of Lourdes- My 5^th grade teacher was the creepy Miss Coughlin. She was a terrible human being and in hindsight may have been mentally ill.  She should not have been around children as she was demented.

Music- My grandparents gave me the Beatles’ Rubber Soul Album.  I still have the album.

 There were lots of great songs this year:

• "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs
• "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" by Four Tops
• "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"  by The Rolling Stones
• "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"by The Righteous Brothers
• "Downtown" by Petula Clark- it seemed as if every generation liked this song.
• "Help!" by The Beatles- I couldn’t kepp up with all of the hits of the Beatles.  It seemed as if they released a song a week.
• "Can't You Hear My Heart Beat"  by Herman's Hermits
• "My Girl" by The Temptations
• "Help Me, Rhonda"  by The Beach Boys- I was never a Beach Boys fan.
• "King of the Road"  by Roger Miller
• "The Birds and the Bees"  by Jewel Akens
• "I Got You Babe"by Sonny & Cher-
• "This Diamond Ring" by Gary Lewis & the Playboys - I thought this was the saddest song.
• "The 'In' Crowd" by Ramsey Lewis Trio
• "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" by Herman's Hermits- I thought this was a beautiful song.
• "Stop! In the Name of Love"by The Supremes
• "Unchained Melody"by The Righteous Brothers
• "Mr. Tambourine Man"by The Byrds
• "What's New Pussycat?"by Tom Jones- I thought he was too old for my mucials taste.
• "Eve of Destruction"by Barry McGuire-  I don’t think I understood all of the darkness of this song.
• "Hang On Sloopy" by The McCoys-  even as a kid, I thought this was a stupid song
• "Ticket to Ride" by The Beatles
• "Game of Love" by Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders
• "The Name Game"by Shirley Ellis- the 8^th grade boys always wanted to rhyme with the name “chuck”.
• "I Know a Place" by Petula Clark
• "Yesterday" by The Beatles
• "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan- at this time, he was too strange for my liking. I didn’t become a Dylan fan until he release Blood on the Tracks in the mid-70”s.
• "I'm Telling You Now" by Freddie and the Dreamers- this was a goofy, happy-go-lucky group.  They weren’t around for very long.
• "Ferry Cross the Mersey" by Gerry and the Pacemakers- Iloved this song.
• "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am" by Herman's Hermits-  I remember my brother used to sing this song in the shower.
• "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)" by The Byrds – I thought this song had a lot of deep, deep meaning.
• "For Your Love" by The Yardbirds
• "California Girls" by The Beach Boys
• "Go Now" by The Moody Blues
• "Down in the Boondocks"  by Billy Joe Royal
• "Catch Us If You Can" by The Dave Clark Five
• "Eight Days a Week" by The Beatles
• "I'll Be Doggone" by Marvin Gaye
• "Count Me In" by Gary Lewis & the Playboys- They didn’t have many hits but I liked this band.
• "All Day and All of the Night" by The Kinks
• "What the World Needs Now Is Love"  by Jackie DeShannon- I like to sing this song, even today.  When I listen to this song on the radio, I like to crank up the volume.
• "It's Not Unusual"  by Tom Jones
• "Get Off of My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones
• "Wonderful World" by Herman's Hermits- When I think back to this time, there were lots of hopeful songs.
• "Nowhere to Run"  by Martha and the Vandellas
• "Love Potion No. 9" by The Searchers- yet another strange song.
• "Baby Don't Go" by Sonny & Cher
• "It Ain't Me Babe" by The Turtles
• "Tell Her No" by The Zombies- I loved this song.
• "It's the Same Old Song" by Four Tops
• "I Got You (I Feel Good)" by James Brown
• "Do You Believe in Magic" by The Lovin' Spoonful- this was a sweet song.
• "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)"by Marvin Gaye

Movies

• The Great Race
• The Sound of Music- I am not sure I fully understood the political message in the movie.
• Cat Ballou-he hell out of me. Lee Marvin's character scared t
• Major Dundee
• That Darn Cat
• A Patch of Blue- This was probably th efforts serious movie I ever saw.
• Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines

Books- the book mobile would come to our school yard once a week.  We had to line up and march in and keep the line moving.  That meant we often just grabbed any book that caught our eye.  Mostly at this time, I was reading Beverly Cleaver’s Ramonda series.  I was also reading some Nancy drew books.

Travels- we went to a ranch in West Virginia. We went horse back riding and hiking and sat around the camp fire at night.  It was a fun-filled vacation.

News events- The Viet Nam war took up most of the news stories this year. I also remember lots of riots in the cities. It was scary.

Family and Friends

• My uncle was shipped off to Viet Nam for a year.  He was in the Marines. My aunt and cousins moved to NJ for the year to be closer to her family. We all spend Thanksgiving together and I remember the tension as someone said grace.  We all cried.
• 
  
• I was a girl scout.  I earned my hospitality, tree and sewing badges.  I was the top cookie seller of my trop.

Country Roads

Country Roads

Lovely to drive on them.  Boring to live on them.

My New Neighbors

My New Neighbors

Chestnut Square Apartments

West Chester, PA

I've been in my new apartment for a month now and I am discovering that there are three distinct groups of tenants: the old retirees like me who feel so lucky to be in such a nice place, the millenniums who think they deserve a place this nice as their first apartment and middle aged men who are newly separated and have nowhere else to go.

Aunt Margaret- 1939

Aunt Margaret
1939
About 26 years old

She was my grandmother's sister. She was a beauty up until the day she died.  She practiced yoga all her life and her skin maintained a porcelain glow so she had few wrinkles as well. She never lost her figure and always dressed nicely.

My Beloved Dictionary

My Beloved Dictionary
1964- 2017

This dictionary may have been older than this but it has been in my family position since 1964.  My sister first owned it.  It was a hard back copy of a Webster's dictionary.  It was about 3 inches thick and it always looks like it was 100 years old.

Some days, I would just look through this book and see how many words I knew and didn't know. Mostly, I didn't know words. I kept my dictionary by my reading chair so I could look up words I read but didn't know.

I carried it with me to Brandywine College and then to Drexel University and then to Penn State.  It came back with me to Philadelphia while I lived in my parent's house and tried to figure out what to do with my life.  It came with me when I went back to Penn State to earn a Master's degree.  Then it moved to Williamsport with me.  It sat on my shelf in Jenkintown and back to Penn State again and then in Stroudsburg and Springfield. It made it to my move to Carpenter's Point even though I was downsizing and no longer using it.  The digital age made this book obsolete.

Now, I am downsizing yet again and the emotional hold of this book clings to me. What should I do with it?  I'M NOT TAKING IT WITH ME!!!! I only have 800 sq. feet of space.  But no one wants a dictionary anymore. I can't even donate it with a clear conscience.  It would just be thrown out behind my back.

So I burn it.  I through it in my wood burning stove.  But first, I rip out a page as just a small token of a time when roamed through a jungle of words.

flapdoodle: nonsense
flapdragon: an old game in which the players snatch raisins and plums out of a burning brandy and eat them.
Flagellata- a class of protozoa distinguished by having one or more long mobile filaments as locomotory organs.
flaggy- drooping
flagitious- shameful wicked

Civil Rights Museums

Civil Rights Museums
USA

Certain moments in history really intrigue me: JFK's murder, the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights Movement.  Maybe they are all related.  But I am drawn to movies, writings, museums and discussions about these topics.  My interest in endless and I don't know why.

I was 12 when Martin Luther King was murdered.  I didn't really understand what was going on and I didn't see him as a man of honor.  I saw the media's portrayal of a man who was inciting black people to rise up and riot.  I thought he was dangerous.

Today, I am sorry he didn't live longer.  I think our world could probably have been a kinder, gentler world if he had been given the opportunity to succeed.

Here's where I've visited in the last few years"

Civil Rights Museum- Memphis, TN
I loved this museum.  I had just spent the morning at Elvis Presley's house and needed to see something with a bit more substance, a bit more importance.  Someone suggested the Civil Rights Museum. We went looking for it and couldn't find it.  Our directions kept taking us to an abandoned hotel.  It turns out this is the museum.  This is the hotel where he was murdered. The exhibits were fantastic. All of the human figures are made of cement so from a distance, you cant distinguish the different races.

Central High School- Little Rock, AR
This is a must see museum.  How did those kids have the courage to face those angry, dangerous crowds.  One  student talked about seeing a woman about her mother's age.  So she sought this woman's comfort and the woman spit on her face.  Who would spit on a child?

African American Museum- DC
This is an exhausting museum.  It is large, dense and filled with horror and shame. After 3 hours, I was finished.  I couldn't take any more.

Bricks

Bricks

Kathmandu, Nepal

They buy a lot of bricks in Nepal.  A delivery truck comes down the street and people buy bricks in volume.  These bricks sit on the side of the road until something is done with them.  They are used to build a house, extend a house, for walls and pavements or to fill in holes on the road in front of people's houses. They buy bricks just in case they need them.

His Eyes Popped Out

His Eyes Literally Popped Out Of His Head

My friends came down to breakfast one day and noticed that their fish lost an eyeball.  It was floating at the bottom of the tank. The next day, the other eyeball feel out.  "His eyes literally popped out of his head",  Jim told me.

Eating Lunch

Eating LunchEating Lunch

High School Students

Central China

Spring 2012

Many students in high school go to boarding schools since there are no neighborhood high schools.  These students buy every meal from vendors who sell food on campus. There is no cafeteria for them so they eat outside, rain or shine. 

Goodbye Rathskellar

Goodbye Rathskellar

1933-2018

My Favorite Bar in State College, PA

It's my favorite basement car.

The first bar I snuck in to in State College.

I went there when I was 19 and my sister was 18.

I drank hundreds of Rolling Rock cases of beer here.

Someone bought it and is going to put a high end bar in there.  I hate that guy.

Bush Wants A New Name

Bush Wants A New Name
Sias University
Henan Provence
China
Fall 2012

I taught in China during the spring semester of 2012.  All of my students had "American" names. Bush was a 22 year old college student who picked the name "Bush" as his American name.  He heard there was a famous American man with this name.  When I first heard this name, I just laughed and felt sorry for this kid for picking this name that had so many negative connotations in our country.  But then I got to know Bush and the name didn't seem so silly to me.  He grew in to that name.  But someone must have explained some things to him becasue he wants a new name. He sent me an email:



"Dear my friend
Can you help me have a new English name .I want be a new man . You are knowledgeable So give me a new name .Then encourge me flighting for my life .
Friend Bush"

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Wilted

This is how I felt today in all of this damn, humid heat!!!!!!!!

July 15, 2015

Carpenter's Point, MD

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2001

2001
Springfield, PA

My age: 45-46

School- I took adult education classes at the Main Line Night School. I took Ti Chi classes and i sucked at this skill.

Work Principal- Springfield High School Springfield High School, Springfield, PA.  There are 1200 students and 100 staff members.  

Movies- I love to go to the movies.  I even like kids' movies and since I have so many nieces and nephews, I always had an excuse for watching a family-friendly movie.

• Harry Potter- I loved these movies.
• I am Sam- Sean Pen should have won teh Academy Award for this performance.
• A Beautiful Mind- This movie very clearly showed me what mental illness looks like.
• The Royal Tenenbaums- I didn't watch this movie until after it left the theatre and was available in the discount movie bin at Walmart.  But I loved this movie as I do every other movie Wes Anderson makes.
• Shriek- I liked this movie even though it had too many fart jokes.
• Princess Diaries- I love Julie Andrews.
• Amelia- This movie was fun and quirky.

Music

• I looked at the top 100 songs of the year and did not recognize one song or most of the artists.
• I listened mostly to world music at this time.
• I would go to Border's Book store on a regular basis and just walk around the store and listen to music.
• I gutted a closet in my bedroom and made that area my music center.  I would sit in there and just listen to multiple CDs throughout the evening.  I liked to examine the album cover, read the lyrics and discover the contributing musicians.

Books- I used to read every week night from 10 PM to 11 PM.

• A Walk Through China- Peter Jennings
• The Orchid Thief- Orleans
• Silk- Alessandro Baricca
• The Blacker the Berry- Wallace Thurman
• Soar with Your Strength- Clifton
• Yo- Julia Alvarez- "In front of him stands his old friend, Doug, whom he has known and not known in the way it is in most friendships, full of their disclosures and abeyance."
• When My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon- Frances Park
• Love and Garbage- Ivan Klima- "The amount of freedom is not increasing in our age, even though it may sometimes seem to be. all that increases is the needless movement of tings, words, garbage, and violence. And because nothing can vanish form the face fo the planet, the f ruins of our activity do not liberate us but bury us."
• Peppers- Amal Nay
• We Band of Angels- Elizabeth Norman
• Neither Here Nor There- Bill Bryson
• Ex Libris- Anne Fadiman
• The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing- Melissa Banks
• Breakfast on Pluto- Parick McCabe
• The Pleasure of Their Company- Doris Grumback
• Becoming A Woman- Esmerledo Santiago
• The Accidental Asian- Eric Lu
• The Bones of the Master- George Crane
• The Camino- Shirley Maclain- "When a society begins to think separately one from the other, it is the beginning of the end of civilization."
• Waiting- Ha Jin
• Beyond The Sky and the Earth- Jamie Zeppa
• Second Hand- Michael Zadooriam- "I've noticed that when people hit their thirties they start seriously acquiring things. Once they have the big things- cars, homes, spouse, children, they keep at it, acquire, acquire, acquire, fancy 2nd cars, pool tables, boats, really big things. But they're not making their lives fuller, just heavier.{
• Asleep- Banana Yoshimoto
• Ben In The World- Doris Lessig
• A Small Place- Jamaica Kincaid
• Honky- Dalton Conley
• The Bridegroom- Ha Jin
• The Liar's Club- Mary Was
• The Snow Leopard- Pater Mattiesen- "Between clinging and letting go, I feel a terrific struggle."
• To Timbuktu- Mark Jenkins
• Land of a Thousand Hills- Rosemond Carr
• Siberian Dream- Irina Partaena
• Lying Awake- Marc Salzman
• Mutant Messages From Forever- Menlo Morgan- "You will have to decide for yourself what to discard, what to replace and what to accept."
• Butterfly Burning- Yvonne Vera
• Wild America- Peterson & Fisher
• Lost Daughters of China- Karin Evans- "Although he was 79, it of course seemed too soon for my father to die and it felt as if our life together had gone so quickly."

Travels-

• I went on an African Safari to South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. I saw 50,000 seals which haunted me two months later when newscasters reported that 50,000 work in the World Trade Centers.  I had a visual of this massive number.
• I spent summer weekends on Long Beach Island, NJ.

News events:

• George W. Bush is sworn in as President of the United States after a very controversial election.
•  9/11- the Twin Towers and other buildings are bombed.  Just as the whole world panicked, so did everyone in my school.  This day was the most difficult of my career.
• The United States invades Afghanistan in an attempt to find Bin Laden.

Family
My great aunt Margaret died.  She was 87 and lived in Albany, NY. She was the last of my grandparents' generation.

My First Year In West Chester

My First Year In West Chester
Chestnut Square
West Chester, PA
June 15, 2017 - June 14, 2018

I love my apartment and am so glad I made the move last year.

• I usher for Uptown Theatre and it's a fun gig.  I've seen some great acts and met lots of people.
• I've attempted to volunteer for the Democratic Club but the organization is so much larger than my Cecil County group that I can't find my way with this organization.
• I started out walking 5000 steps a day but the winter months deterred me and my efforts are shameless.
• I don't buy or make coffee anymore because it is free here and that has saved me a fortune.
• I am not keeping this smaller place any neater than I did with my larger places.
• There are days that I do not use my car and I love it.
• I've done some work with a nearby homeless shelter.
• People are more interested in meeting up with me here than they were in Carpenter's Pint, MD
• I still have my house and I have just been too lazy to put it on the market.
• I went to the pool just a few times last summer. I hope I go more often this summer.
• I miss my garden in MD.
• I miss my hot tub.
• I miss the stars.  There are no stars to see in WC.
• My car spent the winter in an underground parking garage.  I didn't have to clean my car off at all.
• I didn't shove the sidewalk this year and I got rid of my shovel as a matter of fact.
• I see more movies now that I live here.
• I've met a lot of people in the apartment.
• I now have to work a bit to avoid people.  I'm around them all of the time now.
• I went to Nepal in November and December and I missed my apartment.  That was a first fro me.  I never miss my home when I travel.
• I miss all the wildlife in my MD back yard.  I miss the butterflies, the birds, the bugs, the ground hog, the raccoons, the possums, the feral cats and all the other creatures that roamed through my yard.  I don't see any wildlife on my apartment balcony.
• I watched the Super Bowl and some Penn State games here with large crowds.
• There is a beer tasting group that meets on the 3rd Thursday of the month in the lounge. These guys know a lot about beer.

Monkey Shit on a Bicycle

Hello Monkey Shit On A Bicycle

Somewhere in France

World War I

Around 1917

"Bonjour la merde de singe sur un vélo."

My grandfather loved to tell this story.  He was in France during the war and lo and behold, he runs in to his older brother who is also fighting in the war.  They hadn't seen each other since they both departed to serve.  

The older brother tells my grandfather, "The women here love me. They greet me everyday. They love Americans. Everyday they see me on my bike, they call to meet;"

My grandfather asks, "What do they say?"

"Bonjour la merde de singe sur un vélo," he proudly tells his younger brother.

                                                         **********

I don't know when my grandfather learned the translation of this greeting.  And I don't know if my great uncle ever learned of the translation.  But this story was one that my grandfather loved to tell us again and again. And I always found it to be funny.

My Top 100 Favorite Places in the World

My Top 100 Favorite Places in the World

I have been fortunate enough to travel to all 7 continents and I have seen some spectacular sites.  There are my favorites:

1. Florence, Italy
2. Serengeti- Tanzania
3. Great Barrier Reef- Australia
4. San Juan, Belize
5. San Juan Islands- WA, USA
6. San Juan- Puerto Rico
7. Antarctic
8. Bath, England
9. Castle Combe, England
10. Hill Tribes, Thailand
11. British Virgin Islands
12. Panama Canal passage
13. Chang Mi, Thailand
14. Ganges River- India
15. Oktoberfest, Germany
16. Amazon River, Peru
17. Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
18. Long Beach Island, NJ, USA
19. Philadelphia, PA, USA
20. Time Square, NYC, USA
21. Washington, DC, USA
22. Fiji
23. Sri Lanka
24. Lake Ontario, Canada
25. Seattle, Washington, WA, USA
26. London Theatre District, England
27. Venice, Italy
28. Alice Springs, Australia
29. Moab National Park- Utah
30. Uluru Rock- Australia
31. Irish Pubs, Ireland
32. Italian Cuisine, Italy
33. Mongolia National Museum
34. Maldives Islands
35. Taj Mahal
36. Thamel, Nepal
37. Terra Cotta Warriors, China
38. Long Man's Caves, China
39. Bath Houses, South Korea
40. Dublin, Ireland
41. Tate Gallery, London, England
42. Antelope Canyon, AZ
43. Chicago, Illinois, USA
44. Belize National Zoo
45. Key West, Florida, USA
46. Henley Regatta, London, England
47. Buddhist Temples, Japan
48. American Visual Arts Museum, Maryland, USA
49. Pyramids, Egypt
50. Rain Forest, Costa Rico
51. Paradise Bay, Antarctic
52. Angkor Wat, Cambodia
53. Great Bear , Canada
54. Nile River, Egypt
55. African Safaris-  Kenya, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania
56. Northern Lights, Iceland
57. Blue Lagoon, Iceland
58. Night Markets, Beijing, China
59. Snack Street, Henan Province, China
60. snorkeling in Honduras
61. Mekong River- Viet Nam
62. Valley of the Kings, Egypt
63. Speakers' Corner- London, England
64. Bhutan
65. Naadan Festival- Mongolia
66. Florence- Italy
67. Cinque Terre- Italy
68. Great Wall- China
69. Sam Adams Brewery- MA, USA
70. Left Bank- Paris, France
71. Chitwan National Park- Nepal
72. Panama Canal passage- Panama
73. Daintree Rain Forest- Australia
74. Galapagos Island- Ecuador
75. Rath Skellar Bar- State College, PA, USA
76. Adirondack  National Park- Canada
77. Esthasa Park- Botswana
78. Left Hand Brewery- Colorado, USA
79. The last road in North America, along the Hudson Bay- Canada
80. Wapoos, Canada
81. Pacific Coastal Drive
82. Seoul Tea Houses- South Korea
83. Marrakesh Market Square- Morocco
84. Rotoria, New Zealand
85. Sailing the British Virgin Islands
86. Etosha National Park- Zimbabwe
87. Nara, Japan
88. Okavango Delta- Botswana
89. Stonehenge- England
90. Cliffs of Muir- Ireland
91. British Museum- London, England
92. Costa Rico
93. Victoria Falls- Zimbabwe
94. High Tea at Raffles Hotel- Singapore
95. Phuket- Thailand
96. Ponte Vecchio- Florence, Italy
97. Chobe National Park- Botswana 
98. 10,000 Waves Spa- New Mexico
99. Phuket- Thailand
100. China Towns in Philadelphia, NYC and San Francisco

1.