First art class with Jane at Abington Adult Evening School

We did not paint in the first class but we learned a lot.

I brought in all my supplies and told Jane I'd like to work on abstract art.

She'll help us with anything we want. She makes us all feel comfortable. She lives in Willow Grove, as does half of the class.

Here's her website. As you can see, Jane Berends is very talented. She has four kids and one is getting married in the spring.

She's designed backdrops for school plays and for her church and other places.

I just asked my New Directions people to send me photos to use as the front and back cover of the Compass.

Good response including one of

We may use this.

A wise guy said he has 20,000 pix, how should he choose? I'd already said, I want something striking that you can see across the room and say Wow. Something worth framing like our Carl Yeager photos and the late Frank Wolfe paintings.

We had about a dozen people in the Art Class including my friend

Here's Bill when he stopped in at our Writer's Group.

He knows half the people in the class, outgoing guy that he is. He introduced himself as a retired engineer. Civil? Can't remember. But "civil," I'd say, is his middle name.

His next-door neighbor Carol stopped in. She was late as she'd been on the Turnpike for quite a while, a tractor-trailer had jackknifed.

Hmmm, maybe someone wrote about it on FB.

Not yet. I put in a query to two people who might be able to find out.

How bout that Metro crash in Long Island that killed 6 men?

Writes the Times: The driver of the vehicle was identified as Ellen Brody, a 49-year-old mother of three children who lived in Greenburgh.

On Tuesday, she left the store she worked at in Chappaqua, ICD Contemporary Jewelry, around 6 p.m. She was on her way to Scarsdale to meet a friend, according to co-workers.

Car failure? Jump out.

Suicide attempt? Don't involve others.

Dementia? 

Here's what I wore to class. These black pants had paint marks on em. So I pulls out my paints from my

Kremp bag and dabbed the spots with black paint.

I put it in the wash.

The pants look terrible so they're now my Painting Pants.

The top, another hand-me-down from Ellen Rosenberg is all splotched, so paint won't show on it.

She's leaving on Friday for Peru. She'll teach English in an orphanage.

Hold on, while I wish her the best on FB.

Jane, our art teacher, said she'd like to see some of my art creations. I mentioned I made some out of PVC pipes I bought at Home Despot.

Asked me to bring em in.

"No one ever asked me that," I said.

On this painted stepladder I use as a kitchen shelf are two items I'll use in my next mobile.

You can't really see them.

One is the b'ful design on a carton of Yuengling Beer.

The other is a plastic egg carton.

I work in 'the middle room,' Sarah's old BR.

I'm very happy w my living room window sill. It thrills me to look at it.

With a deadline of Friday, I submitted two stories to Bella Online. They like my work. They published one of my many Garbage Day poems.

In fact - sound the trumpets - tonite is Garbage Nite. I just tossed a carton of


in the green trash can.

They published "Fronts Sheered Off" and

LEAF PICKUP, which I thought was not one of my better poems.

Monday morning
leaf pickup
put your biodegradable
bags on the curb
stuff them with once
wondrous
green leaves
raked from the
littered lawn
think not of your own
mortality coming soon

On a nature walk
I crushed
some dangling dead
leaves with my hand
May death be as easy
and, yes, enjoyable
as sprinkling these
to the dry hungry
ground below.

The leaf pickup driver
looks out the window of his
shiny green truck –
“Who has something for me”
he thinks, as his men –
two young African-Americans
riding on the back like
tall charioteers
drift off in ecstasy
they feel the autumn
chill and remember when
their dad came home
from work
and pulled them down the
street in
the little red wagon.