Writing in the third person

So much of the work we've done in writers workshop has been written in the first person.  We talked about the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald and how Nick was the witness character who told the stories of others.  I asked the group to try writing in the third person a story originally written in the first.

Bay Village and Mary Wright’s summers there…

By Ken J Wright

 

When Mary Wright was 31, a friend of hers, John Maschal, built a village of shops on a boardwalk on Long Beach Island, NJ and he asked Mary to rent the stores for him. She did a great job and got the 8 or 9 stores rented in 2 weeks and so he asked her to come help him run some of the stores and especially the restaurant. 

 

It was just John, 29, and Mary with 168 college kids running a restaurant, a bakery, an Ice Cream Parlor and a Fudge Shop, the shop that made all the money. Several of the shops she rented to friends - a T-shirt Shop and a Book Store, so she had friends around. 

 

And, oh, she had 4 kids ages 3, 5, 7, 9, so she hired two babysitters that she knew from home, Swarthmore, and brought them with her to the shore. Husband Ken was then working for Scott Paper in Philly, so he could get down during the week and on weekends. 

 

The problem was that the job was really too big for just John and Mary, so they worked night and day. Her pay for all of this was that John would rent her family a house at the shore. It worked out. But when Mary asked John for her birthday off and he said, “Just half a day!” she later found out that he and Ken had planned a Birthday Party for her in the restaurant! When the family all came through the door with a big cake and one small candle, she couldn’t stop from crying. 

 

Mary worked at Bay Village for five years, running the restaurant, her own Creative Playthings shop “The Red Balloon,” a stuffed animal shop (Snoopy and Raggedy Ann & Andy) with books to match. Later, John and Ken built a kiosk where Mary sold engraved jewelry with a friend for a few years. Then she and her family moved to Belgium.

When she came back from Belgium she again took over the kiosk and sold different items every year for the next few years. Her family has had reunions at LBI - most recently in 2001 in the house in the picture. She loved my summers there and all the friends she met. How lucky she was…...

 

My Grandmother Had Two Dresses

By Olive Padden

My grandmother had two dresses for summer.  They hung in a ver small closer area off her bedroom when she was not wearing them ( in the daytime at home she wore print cotton house dresses which don't count.). The two I refer to were real dresses. One was light blue and white print, a soft cotton voile with a white ruffle around the neck and I loved it and thought she looked so pretty in it with her white hair and very blue eyes.  The other was a heavy black silk, almost stiff in its feeling.  Grandma had two different lace collars that could be sewn or pinned on to change the look. Those collars were always sparkling white and perfectly ironed. But the dress was always the same, just heavy black, and I didn't like it.  Grandma wore it for funerals and over serious occasions so she never. Had a particularly happy face when wearing it.  She would pin on the collar, put her small black hat on her white hair, and off she would go. The blue dress she wore at home to greet people who were coming to visit.  Grandmas hair was always lovely.  I remember her digging in a small jar to get 25 cents.  She would then walk across the street to where Carries beautiful shop was.  She would come home an hours later with her hair sparkling, it's curl controlled in beautiful waves, and the back in a bun.  She was then set for another week.  She always used face powder.  It came out of a round cardboard container which sat on the dresser in her bathroom.  There was a big, soft puff in it and I would watch as she generously patted powder over her fine white skin.  The only times I saw her with perspiration dripping off her pointy nose or chin was when she had been baking or ironing, and that was quickly rectified.  She was a lady through and through.

Haiku

Most of us grew up learning about and writing haiku in around the third grade.  However,  I discovered the seniors in our community, although they memorized poems in grade school, we're not familiar with haiku.  So we discussed that a traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count  focusing on images from nature.  Haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression. Then we wrote a haiku together in the pub, which has become our meeting place of choice.  

Here are some of the haikus from the writers.

BRIGHT STARS 

Early spring morning 

Oldest and youngest sons shine

Service above self. 

Bob Moore

Early winter morn

New England buried in snow 

Red Sox in sunshine. 

Bob Moore

Forsythia bloom

Bright yellow in their color

Mustard in a jar.

Joan Clelan

The brown speckled trout

Rushing water over rocks,

Now it is dinner.

Joan Clelan

Practice playing scales

Fingers getting stronger

Clean the house it's time.

Joan Clelan

Hearing aids whistle

It is distracting to me 

So are my dentures

Joan Clelan

My tree is golden

Then winter comes, branches wave

"Good bye, until spring."

Ken Wright

     Paris13 Nov15

They came and killed,

And again, again, again,

But joie de vivre lives.

Ken Wright

             ISLAND IN THE SUN

Majestic, peaceful,

Volcanic ashes spewing,

Mermaid beckoning.

Eleanor Bongiorno

          

We Shall Overcome

Writers were asked to choose from various topics related to racism in America from their own experiences or those depicted in the media.  Some wrote essays about how things were in the 50s and 60s and the changes that have taken place since then.  In our discussion the writers agreed that as a nation there is still work to be done and discrimination still exists in many forms.  As senior citizens they lived through a time when there were signs forbidding blacks from eating, drinking, and sleeping in the same place as whites.  They also saw the the marches and sit ins on the nightly news and witnessed history first hand.  They did not shy away or sugar coat the discussions or examples they gave.  I have been involved in a number of diversity dialogues with mixed race groups, and found the candor and honesty of these seniors to be most enlightening  as they were not oppressed by "political correctness" my generation was taught.  The following is a poem written by Joann Cleland.

There was a time when discriminatin was part of our everyday lives.  We began to learn. That black or white, we are all the same - no matter what color.

We Are All the Same

"Get outta here nigger

This is for the whites only

You may be thirsty 

But you have your own drinking place."

"There is a special place in the city

Where them black people live

Don't go down there when you're in town

You don't know what might happen

If a black man stares you down."

"Went to the restroom where the whites had a place,

The blacks were not allowed there,

They had their own space."

"Bus came down the street to pick up people

Black and white were going the same direction

But blacks sat in the back

Up front was the whites

As was their right."

"Man came walking down the street

Looking kinda happy and whistling too.

Woman turns around with much disgust

Tells him to get going to his own part of town."

"Flip those pancakes, mama

Till they're just light brown

Turn them over easy

Cause those whites are coming down."

"One day this may change

And black and white will work together,

Live in the same place with no bother,

Come to church like any other

What could be better than all living together."

Sunday afternoon

Here it is, a beautiful Sunday afternoon in January.  The sun has come out after the snowstorm from yesterday.  The sun is shining over the hillside beside my apartment at 308. Plush Millls.  The sky is a pretty light shade of blue with white clouds. The remaining sunlight shows off the pretty scenery itself at 3:30 in the afternoon.

The hillside is all white with snow which shows off a few evergreen trees and there are tall hardwoods in the background.  Their bare branches reach upward towards the sky. It is truly a beautiful picture to behold, the lord certainly made us a beautiful world to enjoy.

I have a small patio right outside the window next to where I am sitting.  Now and then a small bird or two flies down the patio.  They are little brown sparrows, or maybe a couple of fat little snow birds with white bellies or gray and brown feathers.  They come in the morning or afternoon these days.

In front of me on the table is the little tree with ornaments red and gold.  It is truly a reminder of the good times we had at my brother's house in Wallingford.  My Guideposts book is also on the table and says, "Rejoice! The King is born!"  There is a picture of the manger scene where the Christ child is born.

I hope you have enjoyed the little story I have written you, the people of Plush Mills.

Happy New Years 2017

With Love,

JoAnn Petrovitch

Poet as a muse

On the last Wednesday of the month at 3pm a dedicated group of Plush Mills residents meet to discuss and read poetry out loud.  Last month they chose Emily Dickinson as the featured poet.  Jerry Murphy was so inspired he wrote a poem about her.

Emily

Why haven't I found you before today?

I've avoided contact with the poetic way

Instead, my literary path led me to interstellar frays.

Today your words on masculine remarks 

Rang true as I recalled the women's March

In Washington - when I described in harsh terms

"A protest on women's foot ware"

Where did that come from?  An insensitive burst

At my masculine worst

Like "Powder exists in charcoal 

Before it exists in fire."

Emily, you may have had something there when you wrote,

"...A remark...a quiet thing that may furnish the fuse unto a spark

In dormant nature lay."

Regrets, I've had a few, but then again too few to mention.

This was one for which I had no intention.

Emily, I'll look for you again,

When next I pick up my pen.

Jerry Murphy

A life in Photos

Eleanor Bongiorno choose the assignment that asked writers to look at an old photograph and  describe it and any memories or associations it brought up.  Below are photos from her wedding and 50 year anniversary, such a treasure.

At critical times in their lives, people often utter the statement, "My life flashed before me."  I can produce this phenomenon instantly with just a click of my computer​.

     My oldest grandchild, Sarah, produced for me a slide show set to "Amazing Grace."  It's a travelogue of photos of my husband's and my lives from our childhood

until several years ago.  It's six years old and I have never, nor will I ever, delete it from my emails.     

     When the desire enters my brain, I simply bring it up and "take a stroll down memory lane" through our early years, our wedding, three children, college graduations, their weddings and most of my grandchildren.

     I can truly rank this slide show at the top of any gift I have received.