Writers' Group - Great turnout, great work - Welcome Anne!!!

This is me in my blogging suit. PJs from Dinkney, as I call them. DKNY.

Just spoke to mom and told her I ate delicious Chinese food at the Giant. Cost was $6. I used my Cost for Causes Card from Pennypack Trust.

  Harris, these are the first pics I've seen of coyote at the Pennypack. OMG are you good! Will sign your guestbook later. I like to be part of the conversation as Tavis Smiley would say.

Don't tell anyone but Scott had coyote scat in his backyard that I almost stepped in and only today in my front yard.

I consider it an honor.

Speaking of which, our new member Anne really liked Rem's novel chapters and used the word "strange" or "odd" or "unique" to describe it.

We certainly agree. The narrator described himself as a Nerd among Nerds.

After reading, he said he thot his work was boring. We all disagreed. His first page was filled with all the radio stations - clear channels - you can hear around the world. Authentic and fantastic.

Radio Moscow, Teheran, and his favorite, Australia.

His old nemesis, his school counselor Mr. Flecks - Rem's alter ego - challenges him, as usual, and tells him how to get to Australia. All he needs to do is leave his classroom, take a few turns, and he'll be there.

He wants to see flocks of parakeets in the wild.



And there they are, like our own geese on wing.

Problem is, after he gets to The Land Down Under and wants to go back home, the door is locked.

Listen to the song here, Allan. Missed ya!

You know it pays to sit here with the phone on the red couch. Greg just called. He checked the ND phones and said no callers. We got a new Saturday caller. Wonder if she remembered to check the phones.

That's why Greg is our backup.

 Here's Anne from Minnesota who is visiting her brother in hospice. Brain tumors. Last week in group we were talking about folks we knew who died from brain tumors, including my dad, dead at 59.

I've outlived him by 11 years and counting.

Beatriz is doing okay with her cancer, weak days and more energetic days. We made the Maxwell House coffee.

Thanks, B, for hosting us!!!

Anne has been in a writing group for 5 yrs. Oftentimes they use a "prompt" such as "shoe" which gets the group off to a good start. I think they've got about 8 people who meet at one another's homes.

She writes short segments which is the way she proceeds with her memoir. You could tell as soon as she began reading she knows how to write. She wrote about how, as a kid sleeping over other people's houses, how nervous she felt, you didn't know the rules.

We all could relate, said Marf. The picture that comes to mind for me is sleeping at Betty and Leonard Wolf's in Cleveland. I think my parents conned me into it. I did like my cousin Rozzy but not her snooty sister, Iris, who ended up marrying a lawyer. Rozzy married several losers. And ballooned up like her mother.

Linda Barrett read a stunner of a poem. She called it an epic and it was.

She's been working on it for months but finished it last nite at 11:30.

THE BRIDE OF TRAYHLEE was based on a short story she'd written. How many people would think of that? To transfer from one form to another.

In short, The Bride was a monster in disguise. The bride of Eammon, an Irish name I'd never heard of.  She wrote it in small segments, which built upon itself. Heartbroken was Eammon's original love who wanted to die she was so unhappy.

After the monster was outed and the original girl, whose name I can't remember, was engaged to Eammon, she begged him not to take revenge on her, as she'd already been punished enough. She checked into a nunnery.

Oh! See the box of doughnuts? Bob brought those. When Anne opened em up, I saw my former favorite - an all-chocolate with a slight glaze of sugar.

I had my Will-Power flowing thru my veins, plus I had brot me own Triscuits.

Donna Krause had breast cancer 10 years ago. She gets regular checkups and just had one. Everything was fine.

Fine lines in TO BREATHE AGAIN  included "black veil of breast cancer" and "like moths flying around."

She also wrote a terrific poem A SECOND CHANCE AT LOVE about her late husband John and the dissolution of their marriage, his sudden death of a heart attack, and meeting Denny, the kindest most loving man she's ever met.

We all know Denny and heartily agree.

I turned toward Anne and asked if she were married.

She laffed and said, "I had to think a moment."

She married a wonderful man much her senior. He died a couple of years ago, in his 90s.

Donna's brother Bob seconded everything she said about John and Denny.

He read a tale of fiction that was so real I thought it was about someone he knew. DEVON'S DILEMMA was about two high school friends, Devon and Brett. Devon got a football scholarship and Brett would be left behind. He would terribly miss his friend.

What will happen next?

Martha read the next chapter in her novel about Jaz, a journalist, and her reporting at a rodeo. Everyone is in love with this b'ful sexy woman - Scott! You better stay away from her - and various macho men try to have sex with her.

She's very independent and delivers a swift quick in the groin. Ouch! However, she and Mace are terribly attracted to one another and yep, for sure, it's gonna happen in the next chapter.

The novel is a romance novel and probly as good as a Harlequin, tho I've never read one. My Aunt Selma in Cleveland, 96, listens on audio books.

Wanted to get a close-up of Floyd's glorious mop of white hair. He had me read another chapter of his memoir, this one called Counteroffensive.

Floyd kept a daily diary while at the water plant, as did many of the employees. It was a way of sorting things out.  Or, as Anne said, "of managing his managers."

28 years of diaries.

This segment was about a performance review he took issue with.

Dyou know the great Dr H Edwards Deming advised against performance reviews? I am a Deming in name only. I married and divorced a Deming.



PhD from Yale.

Found this very warm sweater in my drawer. Was looking for something I got at Chico's - a blue long-sleeved shirt - but can't find it anywhere.

When I spoke to Mom and was sitting upstairs in my bedroom changing into my PJs, I told her about the story I call Rendezvous at the Lake. Got the idea last night. An 87-yo woman would make a trip, something she would always remember, as her mind was leaving her, bit by bit. Mom said she could identify with that.

Am gonna look at the comments I got and then fix up the story and email it to my friend CC who liked my story Tucker and The Holocaust Survivor.