Visiting with Arlene Wright-CorrellArlene Wright-Correll (4,953)     Arlene Wright-Correll    http://www.learn-america.com True Americana is the 4th of July©Posted Wednesday, July 02, 2008 (3 days 7 hours ago.) Viewed 204 times. It seems that even though June 20 th is the first day of summer it is really the 4 th of July that sky rockets it off. We have just about every small town in America and many large cities pay homage to that wonderful day of Independence for our great country. We have parades, picnics, baseball games, carnivals, fairs, barbeques and much more to commemorate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and our freedom from the domination of Great Britain .
Permalink Comments (2) It’s Easy to Go Green©Posted Sunday, June 15, 2008 (20 days 8 hours ago.) Viewed 960 times. I suppose today's Americans or basically any citizen of most countries that have lived "the good life" for the past 30 years or so will have a hard time "going green". However, for me, a kid who came out of the "Great Depression" of the 30's and who grew up poor until I was an adult it will not seem as hard as most people think. We were survivors in those days and we are still survivors and frugality was part of that survival. When I was a kid growing up during WWII we recycled everything for the war effort and then as life became better for us and we swallowed all the Madison Ave. talk about having more, doing more we forgot about recycling until today we discovered that the average American family throws out 2,460 pounds of paper each year. They also throw away 480 pounds of glass, 540 pounds of metals and 480 pounds of food scraps! So what can we do to reduce this waste? First of all one could recycle all of it. There are places that pay for paper, glass and metal in the event your local trash collectors do not provide recycling bins. We kids used to take all the papers we could find to the salvage place to get enough money to go to the Saturday afternoon movies. In those days bottles had deposits and we took them back for the deposits. Now some states have put deposits back onto bottles and cans which helps greatly, but if your state has not, then help to lobby for that. With the price of gas so high today, we find ourselves taking all our paper and metals to our local recycler place and we get good money for these things and sometimes our checks are as high as $45.00! As to the food scraps, well one can cut down on waste by not cooking more than you need for each meal. One can learn what to do with leftovers to make them more attractive to being reserved in a different way to one's family and if one is a gardener, one can put all the food scraps, except meat, into a compost pile. Feed those pieces of meat to the birds; believe it or not they will eat it. Speaking of the birds, keep a bird watering dish out for them since they will eat insects also and that cuts down on your need for bug aerosols. To save on gas and energy one can cut down on running to town or the store whenever one has to go except for emergencies. Plan a trip to town or the stores for once a week or like us now we go once a month. Then we have a list so we can efficiently go in a route that avoids unnecessary back tracking. We sort of "car pool" with our relative who lives next door to us by calling them when we have to go to town and ask if they need anything and they do the same for us. Then one either picks up what the other needs or catches a ride with them. I understand this may not be a viable solution for many families, but it is for us retirees and it is something we are starting to make part of our lives now. In order to help cut down on packaging we have virtually eliminated fast foods because of the way they are packaged and because of their high cost and few nutritional values. If it is advertised on TV you can bet that marketing cost has increased what you have to pay, so you may want to consider buying a generic brand of a similar item, not buying it at all or buying it at a salvage or discounted marketplace. In order to go green one has to start thinking green. When one starts thinking green one can realize that part of the green also means dollars. Thinking green not only saves energy it will save you money.
Permalink Comments (0) A Day in the Life of a Mother©Posted Thursday, May 08, 2008 (58 days 8 hours ago.) Viewed 630 times. Mother's Day is coming up on us fast and at 73 & 75 years old we still have one mother who will be 95 this year. Reflecting upon my personal 73 years of which 51 of them included motherhood I started to think about a day in my life today. These days I still get up about 5 or 6 a.m. opening up the computer to take care of any important emails, I feed Chocolate the dog we inherited from our late son, Jeff and take a myriad of medication that apparently helps to keep me on my feet and above ground. Then, weather permitting and it's the correct season for it, I put in 1 or 2 hours in the garden coming in to then have my breakfast and look through my "to do" list for the day. This list includes writing letters, articles, research, working on a painting, dusting, answering phones, washing clothes, putting them in the dryer, emptying and loading the dishwasher, cooking meals, running errands, picking up groceries, doing some civic functions, finding time to read a few pages in the current book of the week, remembering friends and family birthdays, anniversaries, getting out the necessary get-well cards or sorry about your loss cards, getting the mail, finding money to pay the bills, fixing broken things around the house, finding space for a power nap and a myriad of other things that seem to fill this day and this is all at the age of 73! How the heck did I get through the days when there was 5 kids, a husband to make feel special, 3 businesses to run, civic duties to perform, social obligations to tend to, chauffeuring at least until one of the kids was old enough to get a driver's license and the chore was turned over the them, clean, cook and sew and lord knows what else filled my day which probably included a lot of the above. Being a mother does not end when the kids grow up and move away. We still worry about them and telephone and emails allow us for faster and hopefully, more often, communication as opposed to the old days when one said, "Wonder why they don't write". Today's mom has more pressures than ever as far as I am concerned. Sure she is not crossing the country in a covered wagon or living in a sod-buster's house, but chances are she has a full time job, often is a single mom and is still trying to do most of the things mentioned above. Today's mom more than likely does not have all the home making skills that gals of our age were taught and more than likely her mom was not a "stay at home" mom which really added a lot to a kids up bringing. Being a mother is a full time chore, beloved most of the time, but a full time chore! We need to pat ourselves on the back, girls because men could never do it! So my advice to you moms is to make sure your find a space every day for yourself. One hour where no one or nothing can get to you. One time a week where you can take a workshop or a course that allows you to pursue a dream, a hobby or whatever. Believe me the rest will still be there when you walk back into motherhood, but at least you will have had a breather!
Permalink Comments (8) Gardening Today©Posted Tuesday, April 01, 2008 (95 days 17 hours ago.) Viewed 140 times. The first week in April of 2007 brought us terrible freezes each evening for 6 consecutive evening and that ruined our gardens and our orchards. There were no cherries, plums, pears, apples or peaches that year. Then we had a summer of drought that finished whatever was left of everything. This happened not only to us but to many people through out the United States and other countries. Some time during the winter as the galaxy re-aligned itself things changed with our global warming problem. Those changes were for the better. As the stars and planets changed positions and as Pluto passed behind Jupiter it caused a major change in seasons around the world while the citizens of our planet went about their daily business unbeknownst to them. The weather conditions around the world accelerated with tremendous ice and snow through October and November of 2007. At Christmas time the crocus, daffodils and tulips were peeking up through the ground and by January of 2008 there were massive profusions of blossoms on trees all over the world. Here in Kentucky we were able to put our vegetable and flower gardens in by mid-January and we were working furiously keeping up with the growth of our plants and keeping weeds under control though out February and March. By April 1, 2008 every tree in the orchards hung heavy with juicy, ripe fruit. That day we had to hire about 30 people to come in and harvest the fruit and the vegetables in the gardens.
Permalink Comments (1) Easter Celebrations Remembered in Brooklyn, New YorkPosted Wednesday, March 12, 2008 (115 days 6 hours ago.) Viewed 97 times. A couple of years ago I wrote a pretty concise article about Easter and when this assignment came and I accepted it I thought, for several days, what in the world could I write about that was more, different or explained Easter better than my last article. I was stumped, at least until I thought about my Easter childhood days. 73 years ago I came into the world as a child coming out of the "great depression". We were poor along with most of the rest of the Americans in this country. That year was 1935 and I was about 3 or 4 years old when my memory stated to kick in. Though the adults in our family went to church spasmodically all the kids went to Sunday school regularly at whatever church was nearby. I remember Easter celebrations at Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, eventually Episcopalian and often the Salvation Army Sunday school classes whenever we stayed at my maternal grandmother's home in Brooklyn . However, on Easter and Christmas it seemed that every adult in our family went to one of these services. Coming from a poor family meant that were was not an abundance of every thing and especially clothing. Many of it was hand-me-down from older siblings and cousins and almost all was seasonal. I remember having a school dress, a Sunday dress and a play dress and one never mixed them up. Even these graduated down the levels as they wore out. The one thing I do remember was we always seemed to be able to get a new Easter outfit each year and that would be that year's Sunday dress, gradually moving through the scale to a play dress unless it was outgrown and then it was passed on to a sibling or a cousin. For the girls that Easter outfit often included a new coat, a new pair of patent leather "Mary Jane" shoes and always included an Easter bonnet or hat and a pair of white cotton gloves. If we were really flush then that Easter outfit included a little patent leather hand bag or purse to match the shoes. The hat was rarely worn any other time except on Sundays and occasionally the shoes and hat were added if we were going to something special like a wedding, funeral or whatever. The boys were given a similar assortment of new clothes sans the gloves and included a small fedora or cap of some kind. Growing up in New York and especially Brooklyn in those days was really exciting for me as a kid because there was not a lot of exciting things to do and this was one of the three big holidays in my life which also included Thanksgiving and Christmas. As we got older we were also included in New Year's Eve, but that was not considered a serious holiday in our world. Besides the clothes we received for Easter, which basically often was the only new clothes we received each year there was the Easter feast which usually consisted of ham, yams, mashed potatoes, and spring asparagus. Plus a day or two before Easter us kids got to color a whole bunch of Easter eggs which were hard boiled eggs and they were usually the centerpiece for the family table or were added to the kid's Easter baskets. However, the best part for us kids was the Easter baskets filled with paper grass, hard boiled eggs, jelly beans, marshmallow peeps and of course a large hollow chocolate egg or bunny and some smaller solid chocolate ones as we started to leave the lean years. By the time I was eleven or twelve I could really get around Brooklyn and parts of New York by myself or with my younger brother and sister or cousins and we explored every place safely in those days. We did a lot of walking plus we rode the elevator or subway trains and we always seemed to be able to get to where we wanted to go. Many times we ventured pretty far a field and one of our great adventures that Easter was when all us kids, dressed up in our Easter finery, decided to join the 5 th Ave. Easter Parade! We saw some great outfits as people took their Easter Stroll hoping to be photographed by one of the newspapers or magazines for their Easter Section Special. Women wore wonderful hats and many men sported top hats. However, the best thing we saw that day was a woman in her Easter finery strolling down the avenue complete with a Leopard on a lease! Wow! We kids were in awe of this sight and we kids could not wait to get back to Brooklyn to tell all our relatives, at Easter dinner, about that lady and her leopard.
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Painting by Arlene Wright-Correll titled, " Bonnieville, KY Parade, 2007" 
