I love my writing frenzy, a product of my new writing class - Coffeeshop Writers meet today

I was a collector of movie magazines when I was a kid. Recognize Jack Webb in the distance? He played Sgt Friday on Dragnet. Some of these shows are on Channel 69.

Did I tell you I'm taking a Creative Nonfiction Class at Temple University in Fort Washington? Richard Bank is the truly excellent teacher. That man is not afraid to ask great questions. He gave us a handout of good examples of nonfiction which we critiqued in class.

I was in my element! My favorite handouts were the preface of Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand, Once More to the Lake by E.B. White, an account of a fire-fighting incident where 9 people lost their lives by Norman McLean, a chapter from Darkness Visible by the late Wm Styron, who describes his horrific depression, incompetent psychiatrist, and his final salvation by checking into the hospital.

We also read the essay Okinawa: The Bloodiest Battle of All by Wm Manchester, author of The Death of a President, an authorized bio of JFK. Jackie and LBJ began separate lawsuits before the book was published demanding that Manchester remove certain parts as being too private.

Yessum! Yessir!

I began my writing frenzy after I got home from class. Our assignment was to write a nonfiction piece. I knew that I wanted to write something called "The Lure of the Gentile" so I began it at 10 pm on Thursday nite.

Today I presented it to our Writer's Group. Fortunately there were only four people there so I could read them the whole thing. It focused on childhood memories when I was growing up in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

My memory was amazing! Once I got into the writing, I remembered many things I thought I'd forgotten. The main character was Mary Truby, my best friend in third and fourth grade, until her family moved away.

Of course, when I publish it in the Atlantic Monthly, you wish, I'll need permish from people or else change the names: Marilyn Mervar, who cut out photos from my movie magazines, and Faith Anwyl, who was a cool older friend, and Richard Meers, who I had a major crush on.

How do they look in their mid to late 60s? None of these people are on Facebook.

Slide show please:

Beatriz Moisset read a fascinating piece about her late husband, Jim Peters, who fought in WW2 and was awarded medals. I believe her family made her this plaque.

Since Mary Brucker didn't bring copies of her poem "To Writing," she had us view it on her talking Acer laptop, made especially for the visually impaired. Garland, her guide dog, was seated demurely beneath the table. Was she surreptitiously licking up my chocolate-frosted doughnut crumbs dunked in Decaf?

Linda Barrett shared one of her religious poems "Prayer Book from 1892." Well done as always, it would not have been religious except at the end she praised Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanks for taking my picture, B. I think I've had one too many doughnuts lately. What a way to go! Oh, that's Jeff Eisenberg in the background.

Jeff and I began talking and discovered we had a couple things in common: we're both writers and live in Willow Grove. Jeff is a medical writer.

When our Writer's Group met at Le Coffee Salon in Hatboro, I was friends with another online writer, Stephen Swoyer, who jumped out of his chair when I told him Ethan Iverson was my son/law. Swoyer loaded my first Bipolar video on YouTube for me. The most recent one I can't find.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this new placard on a shelf at Weinrich's. Alan and Elaine Klawans are artists who live a couple streets over from me. I wrote about them several times on Patch.com, Upper Moreland edition.

I was anxious to get home so Scott and I could go on a nature walk. He brot his new camera to Pennypack Trust and got a good shot of a young deer with a collar around his neck. Apparently, he's being tracked. Scott always sees the animals first. I was looking all around but looking for movement. Scott found the camouflaged deer whose coat was dark brown. He let us come very close to him w/o being afraid, even turning his back to us. When we came too close he jumped up and scampered away. He had tiny antlers.

In the NY Times, I watch all the videos by Bill Cunningham who rides his bike around Manhattan while a photographer takes pix of all the stunning fashions your common person wears in the city.

I think it would be a great fashion statement to wear tiny little antlers.
We walked about 40 minutes in all and came upon this grove of young trees, protected from the rutting deer by these recycled feed bags.

At Weinrich's, Beatriz said her friends and herself wanted to dedicate a bench to a deceased friend who loved nature and recycling. But Pennypack no longer accepts bench donations b/c vandals destroy the benches. So sit yourself down here on this little wooden bench and breathe in thru your nose and out thru your mouth. BTW, preserve your voice if you're a singer by singing from the diaphragm and not from the throat. Saw that on a PBS documentary about the mezzo-soprano Barbara Smith Conrad, banned from singing the role of Dido at the University of TX at Austin b/c she was black.

She later became a world-class diva who sang lead roles at the Met and other opera houses and returned in triumph to UT where she sang a Negro spiritual that gave you goose bumps.

My ex-husband got his City Planner's degree there while I went to Library School for a semester but never finished cuz Sarah was born. I did earn a PhD in motherhood, tho.