Purple camera: I think I see it everywhere

Misplaced my purple camera. If I can't find it within a week, I'll buy a new one.



Facebook poem of the day

THE ELEPHANT OF BETTY WILLIAMS

Come over, she said, and plied me
with gifts before she moved into
Rydal Farms and abandoned us
here on planet earth.

Four round clay tiles are mine
One, an elephant, his trunk
held high rests on the wall
of my downstairs bathroom.

They do like water, you know.
Have you seen them spray muddy water
through their schnozz onto their
tiny Babars?

After we've gone to dust
we're remembered by our
favorite things. She could have
thrown out her clay tiles. My God,
what she did throw into the trash.

My old books, crawling with moving dots
called bugs, was just whisked away by
the melodious trash trucks. Were I a rock band
with a gig tonight at the Keswick, you'd hear
us introduced as The Melodious Trash Trucks.

***

First appt with Margaret Fitzpatrick at 8 am. She does an eval and then immediately gets you exercising.

Brought home the exercise sheet. As I drove home, I looked at the clock. 10 a.m.

Mon dieu, thinks I.  I can still make the 11 am film at the Hunt. Valley Library.

  Back of the library. I parked in front as I thot I was late, but Jane was just setting up the film GOING IN STYLE.

Am guessing that Roger Ebert would give it a 3 out of 5.

He did. He loved the energy. It's a remake.

On the other hand, here's a review that I do agree with DO NO GO IN STYLE - OR OTHERWISE - TO ZACH BRAFF'S GOING IN STYLE.


Slept thru much of the film. I recognized Alan Arkin, Morgan Freeman but could not place Michael Caine, who has fallen off the bench.

Was sitting next to a woman named Lesia, a lovely woman. Her name is pronounced Lesha and is Ukrainian.

She's there every week as am I but we never saw each other until today. We sat and talked while everyone put away their chairs when I popped the question: would you like to go out for coffee.

I know all the restaurants around there so I chose Riccardo's. When Scott and I were first going - we've been together 11 years - I thanked him for fixing something for me by taking him there.

Scott HATES going out to eat.

It's just the way he is.

Lesia, who lives in the Northeast, lost a son who fought in Afghanistan and was in the military for perhaps 22 years. He did fine in Afghan but comes home and is killed instantly in a motorcycle accident.

Dyou believe that?

We gabbed for a long time while enjoying the pizza we ordered. I also had a cuppa coffee. Suddenly I remembered: Oh no, I'm supposed to see a married couple today at two pm.

Relax, I thought. Enjoy yourself. They will either be there or have left for their retirement community.

Couldn't believe my luck. Their Nissan was in front of my house. We went inside and talked for more than an hour. Both are in their late 70s.

They have a severe problem. They do not talk to each other.

What's to talk about, said the guy.

I got an idea, mentioned it to them and they agreed to do it.

Called my mom and asked if she'd like to be in our Coffee Clatch. We'll have to think of a name for it. Mom doesn't like people coming to her house, so I said, Well, can you get into my house.

So I've got the married couple, mom, and Nancy, across the street, and I'd like to invite Eileen who lives next door.

Mom suggested her friend Hildegund, so perhaps she'd come to, a very frisky encouraging woman.

I'm really excited about this. We don't want our old people to feel their life has lost purpose.

My friend Helene lives in Rydal Park

    Dig this swimming pool! Betty Williams and I used to swim in there.

Anything else?  Have I covered the waterfront, Marce?  

Hello beautiful Kaia Rose, a blonde-haired blue-eyed beauty!

I watched Kaia Rose this morning for a couple of minutes while mama Jade was in the other room.

This bewhiskered mouse was left at Mom's house. Kaia liked it, esp. the attached tag. Jade said she likes things that are unusual and don't belong where they are.

Kaia is 8 months old. I had a blast playing with her, using different voices for the mouse.

Mom had a chance to hold her. 

Had to leave to get to my conference at the Willow Grove Giant Supermarket. See next post.

When I first posted this photo, it would not publish.

Will it publish now?

No, can't publish the photo for some reason.

Who can I ask why?

Today's Excellent Conference - Poem: The Conference

Shucks! I lost my entire post about

AN ALL DAY CONFERENCE WITH THE IMPROBABLE NAME OF "ACCESS AND FUNCTIONAL NEEDS SYMPOSIUM"

I bought a carton of eggs at the conference
held at my very own Giant Supermarket
where I slogged up the stairs in my clogs
Was up in the middle of the night in my
cool-enough basement fearing non-existent spiders
as I read Willa Cather and a book about
kidney transplants. You mean, this is what I
went through when I was out for the count?

Me and Barry Bush, but who's counting as
diabetes and hypertension catch more
end-stage kidneys in its net. For godssakes
stop drinking Pepsi and eating Tastycakes.

This was some conference! I don't believe
I snored but I only missed about 10 minutes
in the first session about being deaf or
hard of hearing. The speaker or shall I say
"signer" was from Rochester, NY, and spoke
with so much expression on her face, her
arms and hands, she could have been
a female Baryshnikov.

The vision impaired seminar was next. Aunt Selma
with her macular degeneration at 99. Mom, who
just bought new eyeglasses at Costco, but hasn't
put them on yet.

My favorite? Mr Red Cross, I said
to him when his hour-long talk was over. 
I wanted to see your name, which swung
from a long necklace atop his well-stocked
belly.

He goes out to disasters, like a recent plane crash.
The plane lies dead like a fallen eagle in the
middle of a grassy field, splashed with blood.
Neighbors are recruited to pick up body parts,
a leg here, an arm there. But it's their
belongings that get to you, said Wayne.

A red leather pocketbook, a school picture
of a long-haired child, a silver bracelet.

Wayne goes home to North Wales, sits in his
recliner, with a cup of hot tea his wife
brings him, and begins to sob, a cleansing,
he calls it. I hear him crying now!  His
sobs ring out in the night.
We are forever grateful for our
Red Cross man.

***

Were it the photos?

Ready?

Stay awake, Ruthie! Stay awake!

 This girl's hair deserves a poem.

 Sharon talked about the challenges about being deaf - she was 2 when she lost her hearing - or being hard of hearing.  Several people translated in spoken language what she was signing.

Hello, Neil McDermott. I had one question I needed to ask him.

He's deaf and is one of the translators.

Neil, I asked. When you are signing, dyou make sure that your verbal translator can SEE YOU?

Yes was the answer.

 I enjoyed hanging around this group of signers. They had never met before. Possibly Neil McDermitt organized the conference.

How could I NOT know?

I did not know.

 Sheryl talked about the visually impaired. She had various types of glasses you looked into which demonstrated the various types of vision loss.

The Red Cross Man.

Altho I called him Wayne, I don't know his name. I have a paper with his name on it but I'm too tired to get it out.

I took my roast beef on soft roll, potato salad, tossed salad with added fruit, and a choc chip cookie to the eating area downstairs.

Went home as I had to get ready tonight for a meeting of the Upper Moreland Historical Association which was about shipbuilding at Hog Island in South Philly.



Fascinating! Scott knew all about it.

Time to work on my short story, due early tomorrow.

Look what came today! Bill Hess has wrin two books. This is his second.

Party Highlights - Trip to Glencairn - Poem: A Tour of Glencairn Museum - Poem: Dancing with Luis Aparicio

Honestly?

Well, my favorite food was hoagies that Martha brought from Walmart's.

Linda Barrett brought cut-up green apples which I'm gobbling up today, Adam, but by golly my ribs are hurting me.

Ken brought veggies and dip.

Judy, potato salad.

Truthfully, tho, I was just on bike and doing that red stretchy thing as I watched Florence and the Machine, who is all the rage.

We agreed to do anudder poetry anthology with Martha as editor. Am gonna get my three poems to her tonite.

Was it the iced coffee that's kept me awake?

Heck, no.

The morning began w the film noir Scandal Sheet - so suspenseful! - What? I said to Scott. THAT'S John Derek? Very young once.

Donna Reed looked good as did Broderick Crawford playing a hard-driving editor of The Express who's also a killer.

     We love hearing Edwin Muller discuss the background details of the film.

The guy on the extreme right is a once Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who ended up 'in the gutter.' The editor has no compunctions about killing him in cold blood.

Scott and I watched 90 minutes of  Ken Burns' Vietnam. Since he's on vaca this was the first time he's ever watched it.

It takes a lot out of me to watch, I said. There was a doctor who was captured by the Viet Cong. His boots were removed so his feet were rubbed raw as he walked for a month in the jungle with his captors.



Earlier today, Scott and I went to the Glencairn Museum. W/o my camera I felt lost. Read an earlier post about the museum.

A TOUR OF GLENCAIRN MUSEUM
RIGHT HERE IN OUR OWN BACKYARD

In the sweltering heat, Victoria
in a floor length green gown
soft as a luna moth wing,
opened the door for us.

Welcome, she said, as we walked
up to the desk. We've got free
tickets, I said, from the library
which entitled us to wear long
ribbons that read 2:30 tour.

We stood in the Great Hall of the
former home of the Pitcairns, everything
once theirs, the ceiling high as the
Sistine, the carpets below us, fresh
and new, after thousands, yes, thousands,
stood upon it.

Doreen in fancy dress was our leader.
Not a Pitcairn, this woman knew
everything, as we do when a place
incites our passions.

Teak, a wood that breathes and wants your
touch, makes up the banisters. If you
felt like rubbing your cheek along it,
you must stop yourself.

Roomfuls of artifacts. How we gazed
amazed that an impression of the Sphinx
was here. Who? The Sphinx.

A tiny set-up like a puppet stage showed
how The Importants were embalmed. I nudged
a fellow and said, Looky here, how the
legs of the embalming table are made to
look like gazelles.

An embalming cloth hung on the wall. If I dared
I would have rubbed my oily hands that only this
morning ate my egg and cheese omelet out on the
lawn chair and would have swiped it from the wall.

Every step we took was followed by a camera.

Claustrophobic? The tiny elevator, made by Otis,
fit four people inside. Doreen referred to Scott, my
princely companion, as my security guard.

We shot up the elevator to the top of the roof.
We sat down on movie-director canvas chairs
while her encyclopedic knowledge set off
thoughts of our own.

Off in the distance was Philadelphia
looking sweet as a picture-postcard. And there
on the screen door was a stink bug.

You had to laugh as you stood outside on the deck
wondering what it would be like if you thought of
yourself as Icarus with his wax wings, plunging
head first into the parking lot straight onto
Scott's Wonder Bread white car. 

***

DANCING IN THE MENS' LOCKER ROOM    

With fresh eyes I saw once again the hallway
Ed Quinn painted for me. Bright turquoise,
it leaves me breathless, and makes me
wanna dance.

I summon my dance partner of long ago.
Luis Aparicio, short stop for the White Sox,
a little guy, wiry, with soft hands
he lotioned up after each game.

How we danced after the Locker Room emptied out.
He'd lift me high in the air, with my pink toenails
and ruby red nails, twirl me about like a high pop ball
in the infield, then gently lower me to the floor.

Exhausted, we'd celebrate with Diet Coke.
In unison, we'd let out enormous burps
Should I look him up? Still alive at 83.

***

 

Photo of our party at Beatriz's House on Sat, 9-23-17