31
Oct 24

Catober, Day 31


30
Oct 24

We all feel that poem

Spent the day on campus, where I had a delightful meeting with a student. Also I met with a colleague. And then I graded stuff. After that I sat in the back of a classroom and listened to a presentation on digital marketing. And then we went to the big kids’ pool and I swam 2,000 yards, which was ragged and slow and will surely leave me sore tomorrow for reasons I won’t understand.

Now, I’m back to grading things.

Or I was.

Because now there’s this.

I’ve decided to release an album. The inspiration came on suddenly. Monday, tonight. Now I just have to write the music.

The good news is the art is already done. This may look like someone using a camera to try to look behind a heavy piece of furniture, but it’s really the cover.

And this, to the untrained eye, may look like a pocket photograph, but it is, in fact, the liner notes concept.

The art looks like a hasty independent release, meaning I need to come up with some sufficiently song titles. If only I knew anything about music, I could be on to something. But, alas and alack, I have no musical talent.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, where the historical markers search continues. This is the 52nd installment, and the 84th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series.

And today we’re learning about Hetty Saunders.

The last four years have been rough on that marker, done in a style which doesn’t hold up very well to the weather. It reads …

Esther “Hetty” Saunders was a remarkable woman of color who began her life in the early 1790s as a slave in Delaware. In 1800, her father saw an opportunity to escape to freedom with his children, crossing the Delaware River into Elsinboro, Salem County. Hetty was left in the care of Joseph and Ann Brick Hall, who were members of the Religious Society of Friends.

Saunders lived virtually her entire life in Elsinboro and Mannington, and would have remained anonymous if not for a collection of her poetry that survived after her death in 1862. Through this collection of poems, Saunders contributed to American literature and provided insights into 19th century African-American life in southern New Jersey. Hers is a voice rarely heard – that of a free woman of color in pre-Civil War America – and her poems provide glimpses of what her life was like and how she perceived and addressed inequities that surrounded her. Her works reveal an independent spirit, largely shielded by the outside, yet quietly prevailing over forces otherwise overwhelming.

The collection of poems written by Esther “Hetty” Saunders and related items are housed within the Salem County Historical Society archives. These materials and the publication I Love to Live Alone: The Poems of Esther “Hetty” Saunders (Donald L. Pierce, editor) are available to researchers at the Society’s library located at 83 Market Street in Salem. Esther “Hetty” Saunders was buried here in the Friends Burial Ground beside her friend Judy Wrying, who she wrote about in her best-known poem, “The Hill of Age.”

Come tell me ancient traveler
Whence thou did engage
How long its been since thou began
To climb the “hill of Age.”

Thou more than fourscore years hast seen
Yet thou art traveling still
I looked up when a little child,
And saw thee on the hill.

I gazed upon thee carelessly
For little then thought I
That I should ever be as old
Or have to climb as high.

Hetty Saunders’ gravesite at Salem Friends Burial Ground is on the New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail because of the lasting contributions of poet Esther “Hetty” Saunders to the arts and culture in New Jersey.

Her dad brought Hetty and her brothers across the river and to freedom when she was just 7 years old. The modern telling has it that the Hall family convinced Saunders’ father to let her stay with them when he returned, and so she spent the rest of her 70 years with them or near them. She saved enough money to buy a bit of property from the Halls and she built herself a home.

Even as a free woman, it seems she had something of a life of isolation as a black woman in a community largely filled with white Quakers. So she turned to poetry. None were published in her lifetime, but the Hall family preserved the works. And, in 2001, a handful were published by the local historical society. She died in 1862, having apparently never married or having children. Her poetry, the web tells me, is now praised as a rare and remarkable literary legacy.

The next time we return to the marker series we’ll learn a bit about the cemetery where she was buried. If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.


30
Oct 24

Catober, Day 30


29
Oct 24

It’s a grading day, so here’s a brief story

Yesterday, before the week’s grading began in earnest, I surprisingly went for a bike ride. I spent a few minutes noodling around town, waiting to meet the owner of the local bike shop. On my way, I passed this cornfield, which looked like something that van Gogh might have noticed.

The bike shop guy, Mike, rode with me over to a road planning meeting. He took me on a few roads I’ve not been on before, waving and nodding at everyone between here and there. He might be one of those guys who knows everyone. He also taught me a thing or two about riding bikes along the way.

The meeting was for a county-wide project. They had four posters and a few slides. The idea is that this group is going out looking for grants. They’ve identified, over a five-year period, a series of priorities for intersections and roads around the county.

A few of the county commissioners were there, and they want to know more, and would have preferred to be a part of this planning earlier. They’ll apparently hear about it next month. The plan seems sensible, at least to a lay person like me, but it was concerned more with motorists than cyclists. But that makes sense, too, considering the data in their basic five-year study. This was the last poster.

I hope I didn’t volunteer myself for work on this, but I might have volunteered myself for this. If you talk about awareness and perspectives and all of those things to planners and commissioners, they might think you’re interested.

Using the late hour as an excuse, we ducked out of there, Mike the bike shop owner and I, and pedaled away, talking about what we’d heard, and what we’re doing and how we have to work to make moments like this one more widely available.

This moment in particular. I took this shot right after he said that, because it was beautiful, and he was right. And this was where I realized something else.

You should find someone who knows more about a thing you love, a person who has done it for longer than you have, and do that thing with them. No matter how much you enjoy it, or for how long you’ve been passionate about it. You’ll be energized by an enthusiasm that equals or bests your own.

And then, when you part ways in the semi-darkness, you’ll have something to think about as you make your way home.

There might be something more than a metaphor to that.


29
Oct 24

Catober, Day 29