Good turnout at Coffeeshop Writers Group - Mom will break the fast at 7 pm with Scrambled Eggs

Last night I did not feel like dining alone.

Invited myself to my sister Donna's. Princess Kamellia had dinner ready for Prince Tyler when he came home from work.

Sirloin tips were soft as butter, as Donna said. K cooks em in the oven and prepares an au jus sauce. She doesn't use mushrooms cuz she had a bad experience with them.

My contribution was a salad.

Appetizers I avoided but not the dessert.

      Bananas and other fruit attractively arranged on toothpix.  Bananas are one of my fave fruits, but have a hi carb count, but I ate em anyway, the perfect ripeness.

  I relaxed in the living room with a rich roast of coffee. Our Giant sells the Keurig for $70, which I will not buy.

The coffee kept me awake until after 3 am. I was on my upstairs computer submitting a lot of my work.

Was hoping I could think up a short story to present at the Writers' Group today.

The idea came to me when I was meditating this morning in The Quiet Room upstairs.

"It's hard being old," I wrote. The short story is based on a conversation I had with my friend Marcy Belsh from CA thother day. It's from her mom's point of view.

The group liked it, all but one person, who said there was no plot. 

See the bumble bee polinating the flower?

According to Beatriz, these are not yellow jackets, who are draining the hummers' sugar water.

She writes: Ah, those invasive honey bees! There seems to be an intruder of a different sort, but I only see the rear end. It may be a baldfaced hornet. Impossible to tell. So, you are feeding the local honey bees. Ha!

Beatriz, who will take chemo for the rest of her life, was quite peppy, and shared two spectacular jaw-dropping stories about bumble bees and wasps.

Bumble bees have a longer season than other bees. They pollinate tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, all of which we had in our garden.


Bumbles get so wrapped up in the job they get coated in pollen. Makes a nice Halloween costume. Wonder who else is invited to the Masked Ball.

Possibly Allan Heller's Ant, a famous etymologist. 



HELP!  Giant Ant Waging War against Earthlings.

Beatriz's second piece, "Wasps, Motherhood and Ultrasound" was truly astounding. Seems like this variety of wasp invented the ultrasound machine millions of years ago. Science imitates Nature.




Mom sticks her long ovipositer inside the stem on this plant. She picks up vibrations of caterpillar larvae and then deposits her own little baby darlings right into the larvae, the perfect food for her growing kids until they're old enough to eat Count Chockula.



Wait a minute! I have a note left over from my Book Group. Several, including Elaine, liked the movie Calvary, which I'd never heard of. If it has anything to do with Jesus Christ, I ain't watching it.


2014 Irish film about abuse by a priest. Unavailable as yet to rent at the libe.

Martha read a hilarious slice of life from her childhood:  Sin and the Runaway Snake.

Her preacher/father was a guest preacher at a church in south Jersey. He brought a representation of Satan to make his point of the omnipotence of evil, a snake who rode in an aquarium in the back seat next to little Martha Jeanne.

Somehow, during the sermon, the snake slithered away, never to be seen again.

And Martha Jeanne, sitting in her folding chair, somehow folded herself inside the chair.

The six of us howled with laughter, as we did when she got bored with 'old people's food' at lunch afterward, and let herself into the kitchen.

She found a bottle of

Ate every single one of em.... and drank the juice.

Martha Jeanne! Whatever were you thinking!

After a while, she barfed em all up, onto her parents' laps.

Martha had also wrin a poem after someone at work made her angry. She didn't bring it. Maybe she'll email it.

Donna Krause got a gel manicure - deep red - that was exquisite. I was so full from my sweet potato soup I ate at home, I wasn't even tempted by her Mozzarella cheese balls.

Her son's wife is now pregnant, so she'll have her third grandchild. 

Damn good sweet potato soup made with unsweetened almond milk. In fact, before I left Giant today, I bought anudder sweet tater.

When you check out in the self-serve, you hit YAM.

Glad we got that cleared up.


Made a delish scallops dinner. Scott had just eaten, but he had a small bowl-full.

Floyd commented he liked my comments about food in my story Gloria In Excelsis Deo. 

Listen to Bach's Gloria here, from his Mass in B-Moll.


Jeez, it's so hard to spell I may have to change the name.... or else learn to spell it.

Here's Floyd and Jack. After the group, went over to Mom's, who was still fasting on Yom Kippur. She felt fine.

I mentioned Floyd's name. She said in her 1940 class of Cleveland Heights High there were twins:  Floyd and Lloyd (?)



We lived at 2128 Marlindale Road, right behind Heights High. In the morning I would look out the window to tell the time.... on the clock tower.

I wonder, I said to Mom, how many of your classmates are still alive.

  Here's Mom, 92, and cousin Lloyd, who is 84.

Speaking of The Afterlife, wish I had the entire poem by Donna Krause.

Originally her poem "Vernon's Flight" was wrin about herself. She likes to imagine the impossible - what The Afterlife is like.

"Vernon's memories are locked in his heart
like snapshots"

Vernon is her beloved father, another family member she will see IF there is an Afterlife. We took a vote and the Ayes had it.... yes, there is one.

Well, I'd better get ready. DAD! Here I come! And brother David.

Dad is buried in Cleveland, as is my brother


Cleveland, our ancestral home.

Allan Heller read The Dearly Departed, which may be described as a Halloween ghost story which took place in the dessert.

Those darn people just wouldn't die, by gum!

Well-done, Allan.

Jack didn't present anything, but did give feedback.

Many of us had read Floyd's short story Mutt, based on a character he knew in West Virginia. "Thanks for stopping by my grave," said Mutt's tombstone.

You know what I think?

The death of summer and coming of Fall is making us think about the demise of the leaves and the flowers, which, taken even further, can be our demise.

Asked Mom to take a photo of me. It's good to make her arthritic fingers work. My shirt is one of two I bought in Paris.

Mom felt fine, no headache. Her friend Judy Adler said, If you're 65 or older you don't need to fast.

How did Judy know?

God is her good buddy. You know what? Last nite I tried to talk to God around 2 am when I was struggling to fall asleep.

Man, I couldn't get to first base with that dude.