THE CRAZY CLUB & RETRO ALBUM COVERS

I think 2015 was the best year ever!!

Maybe because I bought a new screen door

 and the flowering crabapple I planted years ago

made a perfect photo

 to remember the Spring of 2015

~~~
The OLLI Memoir Readers 

gave an outstanding live presentation

 at our Library in April

~ ~ ~

That led to my making over forty album covers

and having them exhibited in the UUFA Foyer

in October

~ ~ ~

When I'm Out of Ideas, What do I do ?

I draw a cartoon Fortune Teller in my journal,

 then I take a nap until

 a new idea comes to me.

Voila!

 I've almost finished a new book I began in 

November and designed a cover.

T H E  C R A Z Y  C L U B

The photo on the cover is Mother and her girl friend Grace

on a double date to ride horses  in the North Georgia mountains.

(c.1933. Mother has the short hair

 and arms draped over her friends)

The book is about Mother and Me and Music.

 covering the time period 1936 - 2016.

~ ~ ~

My mother loved the movies.

We went to a movie

almost every weekend.

She had an eye for staging. 

She posed me in my pajamas

on the front porch holding her old straw-filled

teddy bear and added the silhouette of Popeye.

~ ~ ~
PREFACE to The Crazy Club

After Mother died in 1991, at eighty-two, I began to write my story of growing up in Atlanta as an only child. I discovered that these intimate mother-daughter stories should be called Shug. I got tears in my eyes, because that’s what Mother always called me. 

The story was so much about us, and I hadn’t wanted it to be, fiercely rejecting the My Mother, Myself theory in my thirties. I hadn’t known how entwined we were for those first eighteen years, like two colorful double helixes. I hadn’t realized how much I was living out Mother’s dreams, and mine, too, that one day I’d be so famous my father might come and visit me.

  During her stay in a Rest Home, she concocted The Crazy Club and therefore the new title. By the time I came into her life in 1936 when she was twenty-seven, she was nothing like the picture on the cover. Still, the woman I knew as Mother for fifty-five years was the most unforgettable character I ever knew.

This is our story. It begins with the father I never met. 

~ ~ ~

I had another another new idea

 while soaking in a bubble bath!

WHAT ABOUT AN E-BOOK

"STORIES BEHIND THE RETRO ALBUM COVERS?"

Then I can insert the photo

with the story behind the cover.

For instance, Finding My Way is the opening song

from Silent Dreams: The Musical.

I've been finding my own way, 

so I chose photos from several decades

to illustrate the Album Cover.

~ ~ ~

Happy Holidays! 

Here's a photo of the music area

I've decked  out

with one string of lights.

Time enough to upload a 2012 Blue Tomato

music video

Hold On To Your Dreams

a two-minute narrated memoir.

Mother posed me for this photo, too.

I had such hopes when I made it!

See what you think!

~~~~
I Hope You have a Fabulous 2016!!

~ ~ ~ ~

Thanks for reading!

scroll down for more Blog posts:

BOOKS, 33 1/3 ALBUMS, DEATH & PIZZA

It helped to write my last blog

“What Was My Purpose?”

I started writing some haiku-like poetry

In the dark room

a long time

something beautiful develops

~ ~ ~

The last two books I read:

The Tao of Jung by David Rosen

 and My Quest for Beauty by Rollo May.

~ ~ ~

I’m happy that soon some OLLI friends

and I will be reading at the library. I made a poster.

~ ~ ~

Now, I’ve got some crazy idea

to design 33 1/3 album covers

as part of the “nostalgia” kick I’m on.

I paste them over old album covers.

Here’s a poster I designed.

Each one represents a song I’ve composed.

~ ~ ~

My new DIET PLAN:

EAT LESS OF WHAT YOU LOVE

I'm sure I am addicted to wheat.

I break down with pizza.

I tried the $8 Your Pie pizza when

they were selling it on 3-14-2015

 for $3.14. (∏ = 3.14). 

I loved it!

I ate two slices while it was hot,

just out of their brick oven.

I brought the rest home and warmed up

one slice each day in the skillet.

Pizza is oh, so comforting,

like a drug of choice.

 I’ve bought one pizza each week since 3-14-15

~ ~ ~

REMEMBERING MARGOT

A really good friend, Margot Endsley, died March 30.

Our birthdays were a month apart.

Her death weighs heavy on my heart.

She had a massive heart attack.

I knew her by the authors she loved:

Faulkner, Sartre, Dostoyevsky, 

Ruth Rendel, & John Irving.  

I knew her from the secrets we shared

back in the 60s, when we first met at

The University Women’s Club Discussion Group.

I knew her likes and dislikes.

I helped her plan Dick’s memorial service.

Wed. Mar. 25, (five days earlier)

I had visited with her in her car

in the Kroger parking lot.

We talked about old times, books, diets

dogs, and children.

 She was reading East of Eden.

We talked about death and dying that day,

how we wanted to go quickly.

Last year I emailed her my entire memoir

 and she’d printed it out and read every word.

It’ll probably never be published

but she was the one person I most wanted to read it.

 And I’m consoled a little that I have that memory

 because now she’s gone.

It was the kind of death she wanted.

Fast.

~ ~ ~

I still don’t know what my purpose was or is,

 but it has something to do with love & music.

Maybe I'll get my piano solos made

into a CD, finally,

now that I have designed a cover.

~ ~ ~

HERE'S THE LYRICS & PIANO SOLO FOR

"BECAUSE OF LOVE"

(I would have loved to have
heard Frank Sinatra record it!)

~ ~ ~

This was going to be my blog:

WANTED: Fairy Godmother/Housekeeper/Agent!

~ ~ ~

scroll down for earlier blogs:

WHAT WAS MY PURPOSE?

WHAT WAS MY PURPOSE?

I still don’t know why I was born,

or what my purpose was.

 ~
Was it to be a gardener
 and take photos?

~ ~ ~

Was it to write poems?

At seventy-eight

I breathe in the pure clean air

above the tree line.

Whispers from the Universe are nearer.

Now I may unlock the doors

tap the red shoes

and go home.

~ ~ ~
Maybe, to keep an illustrated journal?

 ~ ~ ~
Or, write an unpublished memoir?

~ ~ ~
 Was I born to write music?

~ ~ ~
Or, to be a mother?

 ~ ~ ~
Was it just to be a friend?

 ~ ~ ~
Not a dilettante artist!

 ~ ~ ~
Maybe to be a lazy bum?

Yes! Most likely a lazy bum!

A dib, dab dilettante!

I've just been making it up

as I go along.

And now sending it to
cyber-space.
Maybe the dead are tuned in.

~ ~ ~

These days I have less energy,

or reason to do much of anything.

But when the Brown High Newsletter

came around again

to those of us who are left,

 I was reminded of

Mrs. Lyle’s kindergarten class in 1942

at J. C. Harris Grammar School

and I know some of them
 are still listening.

and my new OLLI friends

 might read this too.

~ ~ ~

I don’t think I was born
 to write music.
It's just that

  music has consoled me.

So, I bought myself

 a ukelele for Christmas.

(old album covers in the background)

I wrote my first song

on a little plastic ukelele

back in 1951.

It made me happy.

~ ~ ~

thanks if you read this!

stay tuned . . .

or scroll down and read

The Plum Tree is Blooming Again