I met David when he worked with my dear friend Tony at Goodwill in Montgomeryville, PA. His partner, Carla, and my wife, Bethann, work there, as well. David was a character, and would often wear American kilts to work. He had a collection of interesting hats, too. He called this one his “polyester roadkill hat,” as it was flamboyantly constructed of fake fur.
David’s obituary can be found here. I painted this portrait in tribute to David and Carla’s love, as a gift to Carla. It hangs at a 20 degree slant. It is painted with acrylic on 20″ x 20″ stretched canvas. He was a fellow artist.
We have known Leticia since she was a little girl. Her family and our family went to Finland Mennonite Church when our girls were little, too, in the 1980s. Her parents, Jim & Judy, had two sons by birth, then took in numerous foster children, several of which they adopted. Some of them were born addicted. Others had mental or physical disabilities. Judy struggled with bipolar disorder. I am sure it was not an easy household to grow up in.
Leticia is married and they have fully grown children of their own. She has asked me on two occasions if I would paint her portrait. She is so pleased with it that it will be joining her personal collection this week.
This painting is acrylic on 14″ x 14″ stretched canvas. The edges are painted blue, so framing is optional.
Price: $100 plus postage. Proceeds will service our sewing machines which need it after making thousands of face masks to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Mike is a good friend. He has helped our family countless times. He has taken me to the Emergency Room more than once. We have many times regretted our decision to buy the house on Front St., Sonderton, from a financial standpoint. But, on balance, we feel the move enriched our lives for having met Mike.
I will write more later.
This painting is acrylic on 24″ x 24″ gallery stretched canvas.
Price: $150 plus postage
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Marie is a former co-worker of Bethann. She and her husband, Pete, retired to Lewes, Delaware, a part of the state affectionately referred to as LSD, Lower Slower Delaware. It has a small, historically preserved, shopping district with an independent, used book and novelty store, a toy store, ice cream shop, several restaurants, antique and art dealers, etc. There is a super quilting fabric shop, close to the beach. The beach is on an inlet, so no rough surf or undertow. It is calm and perfect for little children and old folk, whose knees don’t like to get knocked about. There are vineyards and wildlife sanctuaries to tour. There are a pool and a pond in Pete and Marie’s community. Lewes just happens to be the same town where Fr. Boniface and Khouriye Joyce Black started St. Andrew’s, and where our friends, Fr. Herman & Khouriye Vera Acker now serve. I helped build and design the Holy Table for St. Andrew’s as well as the side tables. I made the icons for the mission before they had a building. So this falls into the “small world” category.
But, back to our story. If it were not for Pete & Marie, we would not be able to have any sort of vacation for the last several years. They invite us down. We have a great time with them. They are a great, loving couple. We have gotten to know their daughter, Jen, as well. She lives not far from us, in PA. Pete & Marie have been married for over 40 years. One day, Pete left the house with our son-in-law, Vince, me, and our two granddaughters to walk over to the pool on the other side of the pond. We hear the garage door open and Marie holler, “I love you, Pete!” He hollers back, “I love you, Marie!” I look at him. He said, “We always kiss each other whenever one of us leaves the house. I forgot to. So …” Now that’s sweet.
This painting in acrylic on 14″ x 11″ stretched canvas. It is not for sale. Jen is taking it down to her parents for us as a “thank you” gift.
Anthony McNeal is a dear friend. I don’t know how long ago we met. He was homeless. I was leading The King’s Jubilee, serving meals in center City Philadelphia. Tony managed to go to Philadelphia Community College to receive several certifications in computer use and maintenance. He is also a skilled, bicycle repairman and a cook. He got a job cooking at Tindley Temple UMC‘s kitchen which provided meals a couple of days a week to homeless people. He moved into an apartment with another man who had been homeless, when he got a Section 8 apartment, to share expenses. Tony started to help us serve on the street, when he was still on the street himself, and continued when he moved into the apartment. He was always a cool head to help maintain order and help keep everyone safe. When the city required food safety training, he took the course with me, so he could take charge when I could not make it.
When my health took a turn for the worse, he would come up to our home in Souderton and do the heavy chores that needed doing. Many times, he helped me cook the soup for the street or took over the task entirely, at our house. Sometimes, he brought his uncle, Steven Johnson, to help, as well. Tony has accompanied me to WXPN’s Exponential Music Festival for a few years. He also came with me to Philly Socialists’ retreat in West Virginia a couple of years ago. He is always happier when he is serving, so he pitched in and cooked the whole Labor Day weekend.
Tony is a joy to know. Everyone of our friends and family who has met him, became his friend, too.
A few years ago, Tony invited me to his birthday party at his dad’s house. When we arrived, they were surprised by the fact that I am white. They asked Tony why he failed to mention this. He said, “I forgot. I don’t think of Cranford as white.”
The painting is acrylic on 14″ x 11″ stretched canvas.
Tony is still not happy with me about how I cut off the top of his head in this painting. It communicates his height. I was standing that close when I took his photo in the hallway at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. I also gave him more white hair than he had yet. He is getting there.
SOLD. I gave it to Tony’s daughter and granddaughter.
I never met Jamie. I met her husband, Mike, who is our son-in-law Vincent’s good friend and work mate. Mike is a bright, young man with a quick wit and a curious mind with diverse interests. He is energetic and hard-working. He loves Jamie. We have had some rough, Nor’easter blizzards that hit our corner of Bucks County, Pennsylvania hard the end of February into March.
Jamie had sleep apnea and used a machine to assist her breathing at night. The storm knocked the power out in Mike and Jamie’s apartment during the night. Jamie’s machine lost power. She stopped breathing and died at just 34 years old. Her husband lost his wife. Her parents lost their daughter. Her brother lost his sister. Her niece lost her aunt. I remember when my sister died, my dad sobbing and saying, “Parents are not supposed to bury their children.”
Corporations have battery back-ups for phone systems and hard drives. Many of us have battery back-ups for Fios phones. Why are battery back-ups not standard issue for life-sustaining equipment? It seems like a small, additional cost. We have the technology. It’s too late for Jamie Standish, but perhaps in her memory, we could get the ball rolling to improve the standard of care. Call me a curmudgeon, but I think we can care for our citizens at least as well as we care for their billing data.
Rest in peace, Jamie, only with us for a short time: August 11, 1983 to March 2, 2018.
This is acrylic on 10″ x 10″ stretched canvas. It is not for sale. It was painted in memory of Jamie as a gift to Mike, using my “heroes palette”.
I met Ethel Haanpaa in 1971 when I started dating her granddaughter, Becky Shostrom. I was 16. Becky was 17. Becky lived in her own apartment upstairs from her grandma Ethel and her step-grandpa Emil in their chocolate brown duplex on 25-1/2 Ave. No. in Minneapolis. Becky and I were both members at Fourth Baptist Church, which was then located at 21st and Fremont, just 4-1/2 blocks away. We were extremely involved in the youth group and in the church, which was extremely fundamentalist. Ethel was a member of First Baptist Church, downtown, which was more “liberal”. Emil didn’t go to church. He was a retired, union taxi and bus driver. He was a character. We disagreed on just about everything, but we had great, friendly discussions. I learned so much about honesty, character, tolerance and love from this old couple and their friends.
On the morning of the day of my sister’s funeral, I went into Minneapolis to visit Grama Ethel Haanpaa at the Lutheran Home, the high-rise retirement community where she had lived for several years. Ethel was not our grandma by blood, but by adoption. She was Becky Shostrom’s grandma. I had been engaged to Becky when I was a senior in high school until finals week of my freshman year of college. That’s when she told me she had fallen in love with the bus driver on the spring break choir tour. Grama Ethel and her husband, Emil, kept inviting me to all of the special occasions at their chocolate brown house on 25-1/2 Avenue North. We had become good friends, along with Ethel’s first husband, Al Shostrom, and his girlfriend, Mamie. We were a strange lot. When Bethann and I got engaged, I introduced her to Ethel and Emil. Ethel welcomed Bethann to the family with open arms. Emil passed away shortly after we moved to PA in 1977. Ethel became another grandma to our four girls. We exchanged Christmas gifts and birthday cards, letters and phone calls and always visited her when we got back to Minnesota.
When I got to the Lutheran Home, I did not find Ethel in her apartment. I inquired at the desk and discovered that she was in the hospice care unit. I visited her and can remember our conversation like it was yesterday. She told me that she didn’t want to take the pain meds, because they made her befuddled. She was dying and didn’t see any point wasting what little time she had left being befuddled. She said she needed to settle her accounts and needed a clear head to do that. She then recounted to me what she considered to be her failings and sins. Now she had been a Baptist all her life. Baptists don’t do confession. But I heard hers. We cried together. I assured her that God loved her and she was forgiven for all her failings and regrets. At the time, I was an Orthodox Christian layperson. When I got home, I told our priest, Father Boniface, about how I had heard her confession and assured her of God’s forgiveness. He said, “You did good.” As I left to go to my sister’s funeral, I knew that this was the last time I would see dear, sweet Ethel. She would never bless my “pointed little head” again. In fact, that was the last conversation she had. She slipped into coma and passed away a few days later, on December 7, 2000, at age 92.
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $80 plus postage.
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My playmates for the first six years of my life were my sister Sue Ann and our neighbor across the street, David Ericson. They were two years older than I was. I was the youngest of four in my family. David was the youngest of four in his family. There were other children in the neighborhood, but these were my closest friends and constant companions. Our family built a bigger house and moved two miles away in Golden Valley, MN, the summer between kindergarten and first grade, but we stayed in touch. We spent 4th of Julys together and got together around Christmas and did some other outings, as well. We ended up going to the same high school: Robbinsdale Senior High.
When we were little and playing cowboys and Indians, David always managed to get killed right outside his back door. He would lay there for a moment then he would get up and run into the kitchen and pour some ketchup on his face and lie back down; you know, to add bloody realism. The next time we would come by, he would still be lying there, but he would be scraping the ketchup off with potato chips and eating them. You just can’t waste food like that! There were children starving in Africa.
David’s parents, Lester and Lois prayed for our family daily and brought us kids to church when my folks didn’t go, and to vacation Bible school, to their little Bible church in North Minneapolis. Lois particularly prayed for me daily from the time she heard my mom was pregnant with me until the day she died in December, 2008. I played with David’s toys while he was in school and my mom was working for the 1960 Census. The Ericsons’ house was the safest place I knew as a child. Playing with David’s Lincoln Logs in the middle of the living room floor with Mrs. Ericson in the kitchen was as good as life could get.
David grew up to be a serious, well-mannered, Christian, young man. He graduated RHS, Class of 1971. He decided to take a year off to do a short-term missionary assignment with Wickliffe Bible Translators, helping his sister and brother-in-law, Jim and Carol Daggett, in Peru, instead of starting college. While there, he was accompanying a girl on a flight to Quito, to go to a hospital for an emergency surgery. It was Christmas Eve. The flight went down and we did not know for three weeks what had happened. Finally, we learned that only one German girl survived. The plane had broken up in mid-air in a bad storm. Pieces of the fuselage had fallen from the sky. Her mother died in the seat next to her. She was carrying her wedding cake on her lap. That helped save her. A tribe of natives who were known to be cannibals took her in and treated her wounds. She was finally found and rescued. So we lost David. He died on a mission of mercy. He was Les and Lois Ericson’s only son.
In 2000, my sister Sue Ann committed suicide. I just remember being so much happier and four and saying, “Alison, can you help Sue Ann and me cross the street so we can play with David?”
As I painted this portrait, I reminisced of a time before my birth. I recalled Grama Dodier’s life from when she was born as a “half-breed” on the prairie of Minnesota in 1880, to when I interviewed her when I was a 12-year-old in the Spring of 1968. I still have a clear vision of her log cabin and her excitement at her French, trapper dad arriving home after a weeks’ long hunting and trading expedition. I can visualize the scene as freshly now as then of her first vision of a motorized vehicle. It was steam-powered. I asked her if her daughters were flappers during the “Roaring 20s”. She laughed. She told me she helped make Irene’s dress. The times had changed and she and her husband had moved to the city (Minneapolis).
I have no photos of Grama Dodier. She is not a relative, but I carry her memories. She was a neighbor’s (two blocks away) mother. I painted her portrait from 49-year-old memories. It is truly amazing how quickly things have changed. She witnessed the first automobiles and now we were heading to the moon. She was an outcast for being a “half-breed’ as a child and young mother. By the 1950s, no one noticed her race because of her French last name. Her daughters married well. She could pass, but the Blacks and the Native Americans were still struggling in Minnesota.
I learned much from Grama Dodier and was careful to preserve these memories as a living link to the past. It is now 2017, so I have a link going back 137 years.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $80 plus postage
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Sister Mary Elizabeth Hanssens was the only woman to ever take me out for a meal other than my wife. It was at a time when we were both working as volunteers in the Philadelphia prisons and jails, and we were both facing major problems that demanded resolution. She helped me over the hurdles to start the only tutoring program for the Women’s Detention Facility. I encouraged her to pursue leaving the convent in order to serve homeless and battered women.
She took a year of discernment away from the convent before being excused from her vows by the Pope. During that year, she resumed her education to become an attorney. She then bought a cheap row house in an at risk neighborhood, took in battered women, and joined the Habeas Corpus Task Force in the Philadelphia public defenders’ office. She helped countless poor and homeless people, especially women. Mary died at age 58, on November 4, 2010. She left behind her parents, siblings and two cats.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage
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Stephen was from Nutley, NJ. He moved with his family into the house across the street from our family in Golden Valley, MN, when we were 11. He had no sense of style. He wore brown “dungarees” and slicked down hair, and fully buttoned-up shirts. Whoever heard of dungarees?! I had to whip him into shape before school started, so he didn’t get laughed out of there before he started. We got the grease out of his hair; got him into blue jeans and flared pants; taught him to unbutton his top button, and listen to better music. We spent a lot of time together. We explored ESP and telepathy and tales of the Windigo. We meditated together in the dark. We were convinced we had achieved telepathy. We played around with the OUIJA board, except we were serious.
In seventh and eighth grades, almost every teacher in our junior high who had a paddle, broke it over Stephen’s bony butt. He had attitude. Sometime in our eighth grade year, Stephen’s dad got transferred back to Nutley, so the family moved back. One Saturday, Stephen was playing soccer at a school. Being a hot dog, he kicked the ball on top of the school roof. He promptly climbed up onto the flat roof after it. He chased it until he fell through a skylight onto the floor of the school below. No one could find the key to the school or break in to get him before he bled to death from his injuries. His mother called our neighbor to let us all know. It was still winter in Minnesota.
I cried my eyes out. I went up to my room . I looked out the back window into the blackness of the night and I tried to have telepathy with Stephen. I thought we had been communicating over the previous weeks. This time, I got a message, but it was different. I immediately broke it off and never attempted telepathy again. I was convinced that it was a demon, and that it was probably demons who had been carrying the messages all along. Then, I started to sing the song I had learned as a 4-year-old when the Ericsons had taken me to their little Bible Church in North Minneapolis: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”. I soon started to weep, since I realized that Jesus was not my friend, since I was not his friend. That’s when I started to read my New Testament.
The story goes on to further spiritual quest and further confusion. My Lutheran pastor / confirmation instructor kicked me out of confirmation class for asking too many questions about heaven and hell, just one month shy of being confirmed. I eventually was ordained 3 more times in 4 more denominations. (I was ordained to the priesthood with my infant baptism.)
This painting is not of Stephen. I have no photos of Stephen. I do have his image firmly etched in my brain. I have started to sketch him to paint him several times. This time I decided to continue to paint who came to me instead. I don’t know who this beautiful boy is. I just went ahead and painted him, so I could tell you the story of Stephen, whose death I always considered a type of suicide. You see, Stephen was a misfit. He was not the smart one in his family. That was his little brother, Doug. He wasn’t the pretty one, or his mother’s helper. His dad kept getting transferred, so he was perpetually the new kid. His dad didn’t have time for him. So Stephen did outlandish, dangerous, risky things, to get attention and praise from strangers. It cost him his life at age 14.
Whoever this beautiful boy is or was, I hope he has or had a happier life.
The painting is acrylic on 11″ x 14″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage
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Michael was a classmate in high school. He was a year older than the rest of us, as he had been held back at some point. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed academically, but he was good at mechanics. His younger brother was a better scholar and was in the same graduating class as him. I’m afraid we did Mike a great disservice. There were a half-dozen guys who went to the same huge, fundamentalist, Baptist church in the city, who were intent on evangelizing our classmates. We met for prayer every morning before school in the library. Our church had youth recreational activities every Saturday and training activities most other evenings of the week. We invited Michael to these outings and talked to him about becoming “born again”. At some point, he made a profession of faith, got re-baptized and joined the church. I’m sure this caused a rift in his Irish Catholic family.
The pastors of this church (there were eight of them) would never bother to contact the parents of teenagers who were getting baptized and joining their church. I now find this reprehensible and totally irresponsible. My dad threw me out of the house for converting (literally), two months after I was re-baptized. If it were not for my mom insisting on leaving with me, forcing my dad’s hand, I would have been stranded, homeless, in rural Wisconsin. He decided to keep my mom even with me. So I don’t know what all Michael went through. Whatever it was, he went through it with no adult help.
We graduated together in 1973. We had good times that summer, with camp and lots of activities, bicycling together, etc. Then all of us went off to Bible college, that is, all of us except Michael. He lost his gang of comrades, his support group. It was sometime during that school year we got word that Michael had died. Then we learned it had been a suicide. We never got details, never knew about a funeral or burial. His family wanted nothing to do with us or the Baptist church. Since it was a suicide, he couldn’t be buried in the Catholic Church. We had been in college more than an hour away, taking 22 credit hours a semester, being self-absorbed 18-year-olds, too busy to notice that our friend was suffering.
I painted Michael in monochromatic, burnt umber with shiny golden hair. He had naturally wavy, blond hair. I chose to do this to signify the hope and promise of youth, “the golden-haired boy”, snuffed out.
This painting is monochromatic burnt umber on 11″ x 14″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage
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This painting is based on a 50+ year old black & white snapshot of my friend Dean and his new, German Shepherd puppy, Prince. We were about ten years old. Dean and his dad treated Prince in such a way that he became nervous and mean. Dean became more wild as he grew up. The only time I went egging houses, it was because Dean brought the eggs, when I was just planning on toilet-papering. I found out the day after, that eggs peeled off paint. We were thirteen. That was the last time I got together with Dean. We went to Carl Sandburg Junior High and were in the same graduating class of 1973 at Robbinsdale Senior High, but both schools were huge and our paths never crossed.
In January, 1974, Dean went to see The Exorcist, shortly after it was released, at a theater in downtown Minneapolis. He was high on LSD. He came out of the theater and blew his brains out with one of his dad’s handguns. His dad was a local sheriff. At least, this is the story as it was relayed to me by my mother.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage
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I knew Fred since 1998, when he was 20 and I was 43. This was when he started working at Keeney Printing in Lansdale. I printed all of my icons and notecards there for my icon business for several years. I got on Fred’s nerves as I was a customer run amok. Marg Keeney had given me a key to the shop. I would come in after hours and use the copiers and the computers to make my prints. At times, I had to come in during the day to print as well. Fred was friendly enough, but he had an even darker sense of humor than I do. He loved heavy metal music and extreme graphics that to me appeared fantastical and gruesome. He was excellent at what he did, with attention to every detail. He was serious about what he did and was not afraid to put in long hours to get jobs done on time and done right.
Fred worked at Keeney for 13 years, until he was 33. He finally found a woman whom he loved. On 4th of July weekend in 2011 he intended for her to join him at his cabin in northern PA, where he was planning on asking her to marry him. However, she broke up with him. He took his own life at that cabin on July 4, 2011.
Fred’s death was devastating to his dear friend, boss and co-worker, Michael Keeney, as they were close comrades at and after work. Michael loved Fred like a brother.
I have lost 18 close friends and relations to suicide and a total of 43 acquaintances. My therapist asked me how I deal with all that grief. I replied, “Apparently not that well. That’s why I’m here.”
We have all heard people say that suicide is such a selfish act, because it hurts everyone who loves or even knows the victim. We have all heard that suicide is “the coward’s way out”; that it is braver to stay and fight to solve one’s problems. These sound like logical arguments against suicide to those who are left to grieve. But to the one suffering extreme depression and despair, they are bullshit. Through the depression and bipolar support group I attend I have met several people who have tried to commit suicide several times. It is not easy to carry out. It is not for the ‘coward’ or the feint of heart. If one does it wrong, one can end up living with permanent brain damage or some other lasting disability, along with the shame and regret that one did this to oneself. When a person is contemplating suicide, it is not to hurt other people; quite the opposite. It can come from a strong, false belief that the world, including one’s nearest and dearest would be better off without them.
So what is the best suicide prevention? This may sound trite or simplistic to you, but I believe it is love. But that love needs to be expressed by a willingness to just be with a person who suffers with a mood disorder. Logic, persuasion, expert advice don’t go near as far as just a willingness to take the risk to be a friend, knowing that may not be enough.
“Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.” – Paul of Tarsus
The painting is acrylic on 11″ x 14″ stretched canvas.
Price: $80 plus postage
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Pete was a friend of mine in Bible college. We went to a strict, fundamentalist school. Everyone majored in Bible. A strict moralistic rule book was enforced with anyone able to give anyone else demerits for so much as shaking hands with the opposite sex. He graduated in 1975. Later that year he ended his own young life, because he could not reconcile his fundamentalist, Baptist dogma and convictions with his homosexual desires.
This painting is monochromatic Black and White on 11″ x 14″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage
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Bobby was a good friend in grade school and junior high. His family lived two blocks away from mine in Golden Valley, Minnesota. We would bicycle together, sled and skate together in the winter, and sometimes camp out in our backyards together in the summer. He was a beautiful boy! He was handsome, with thick, dark hair, athletic and smart. All the girls loved him. Most of the boys wanted to be him. He did not appreciate all the attention. He was shy and became more withdrawn in his junior and senior year in high school; to the point of not allowing any pictures of himself to appear in the yearbook. This painting is based on his two pictures in the 1971 Robin. The pose is from the soccer team’s group shot, but his eyes were closed, so I looked at his yearly picture for details of his face.
The last time I saw Bobby was in the spring of 1974. I was visiting a few of my friends at the University of Minnesota’s main campus. At that time Pioneer Hall was for both men and women; every other room for each gender. I greeted Bobby as he darted stark naked from the showers to his room. I was shocked at this, not because of modesty, but his apparent lack of it. He had changed, and changed radically. Early December, 1974, we heard the news that Bobby had shot and killed his father, his mother and his sister, Ann, then himself, with a 12 gauge shotgun in the middle of the night in their Golden Valley home. A neighbor discovered their bodies four days after when North Memorial Hospital called her to check on his father, because he had not showed up for his on call assignment. He was a doctor.
Bobby’s case was written up in a feature article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He had suffered some sort of mental breakdown prior to this and had been in treatment. He left the treatment and had been alienated from his family. They reached out to him. He was home for dinner that night to discuss re-entering treatment as an inpatient. After they had all gone to bed, Bobby got his hunting gun and shot his parents and his younger sister while they lay in their beds. Then he shot himself.
The four of them had a joint memorial service at Valley of Peace Lutheran Church. Their were four, beautiful Christmas wreaths on stands in the front of the packed church. Pastor Stine gave this horrible message. He said, “Heaven is God’s gift to us at Christmastime. Bobby gave his family their Christmas gift early.”
I got up, then and there, and walked out of that church! What an ass! This was the same ignorant pastor who had kicked me out of confirmation class one month shy of completion for asking too many questions about heaven and hell, and how one gets to heaven, after my best friend, Steve Rainoff had died by falling through a skylight, chasing a soccer ball, in a locked school in New Jersey.
In the spring of 1975, the Mpls. paper had a feature article on Angel Dust. The authorities had just seen a rise in its use. The symptoms of its use and long-term effects sounded just like Bobby. I have always wondered if he could have been exposed to that, and that is what changed his personality so never know.
I painted his portrait in monochromatic phthalocyanine blue, from a happier time in his life. Bobby was a beautiful boy. He had all the advantages. This could have been me.
Painting is acrylic on 11″ x 14″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage
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We knew Lynn nearly our whole time growing up, at least the part in school. She was in my sister, Sue Ann’s, class, so she was two years older than me. We were in Girl Scouts together, the musical, swim team, Student Service Organization in junior high, Annual Staff in senior high. She was one of the gang.
Lynn kept you on your toes. She always had a snappy answer. I have yet to meet another person as quick-witted or funny as she. She was smart. She developed early, so she was bigger and taller than all the girls and most of the boys all through junior high and most of senior high. This gave her body image issues. She so desperately wanted to be liked. Nothing worked out. She had academic success, but couldn’t find a man who could embrace her amazing intellect, her quick wit, while at the same time simply love her “like a boy loves a girl” as the song says.
We got word that Lynn had killed herself when we were in Minnesota visiting family in 1989. Lynn would have been about 36.
Painting is 11″x 14″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $120 plus postage
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Scott was a good friend of mine in junior high. He was on the ski jump team. At Theodore Wirth Park, there was a huge, wooden ski jump. Next to it, was a smaller jump built into the hill. Scott would be there, training with his jumping skis. I would be skiing on the downhill slopes on the park board slopes on the Saturdays I couldn’t get away to Wisconsin, or after school. One Saturday, Scott found me and let me use his jumping skis on the smaller jump. What a thrill! He tried to coax me to go off the big, wooden jump. I knew I didn’t dare. The likelihood would be I would jump off the wrong side of it. Another Saturday morning, Scott finished with his jumping practice. He had forgotten to bring his downhill skis and didn’t have a ride home until later. He found me and persuaded me to share my skis. He let me use both my poles. He just used a single downhill ski. He taught me how to ski downhill on one ski! That was a useful skill. The rope tows were a little tricky. I would end up slowly wilting to one side and pull all of the other passengers on the line with me, down into the snow.
Scott was a beautiful boy, and charming. He had a fort he had built behind his house. In the summer after 8th grade, guys and girls would hang out at his house. Couples would use his fort to make love. I was not aware of this until my girlfriend told me it was “our turn”. I declined. I was caught completely off guard. That ended my relationship with that redhead. That was OK. I am so glad I waited until marriage.
During junior high and into high school, Scott was one of those who called me on a few occasions contemplating suicide. My sister, Sue Ann, and I, it seems, were known as the suicide counselors for our junior high. How that came to be is anybody’s guess. All I know is that Scott and I spent time talking, listening, crying, laughing, renewing a reason to live.
We went to different high schools. The night in 1972 in our junior year when Scott took his life, he did not call me. It still hurts.
Painting is 12″x12″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus Postage
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Fred’s presence was always a little more than one could contain. One never knew quite what to expect, except that he would be high energy, assertive, and want to be involved.
Fred Benjamin lived on the streets for over twenty years. He landed there after his dad died and the pre-paid rent on the loft he had shared with him ran out. That was the story as I heard it from Fred. I learned at his funeral, it wasn’t as simple as that. There was a brief marriage and a son left behind along the way. Fred was proud of his son, when he finally did mention him. He is a career military man, stationed overseas. I met him at Fred’s funeral. Man, was he pissed! He let his dad have it in the most honest eulogy of the day, speaking from a broken heart, like only true love can.
Fred volunteered with The King’s Jubilee regularly. He liked to take charge, a little bit too much at times. He had a different perspective. After 20 years living in a box, a social worker approached him to help him move off the street. Part of the process was a psych eval. Fred asked her, “What? Do you think I’m crazy?” She replied, “You have been living in a box for 20 years. Do you think that’s normal?” Fred conceded, “OK. Point made.”
He was able to move off the street into an apartment. Fred had a temper and could be ornery, but he was loyal and with his charm and smile, one could not stay angry at him for very long if he got out of hand. He kept fights away from volunteers more than once or twice.
Fred and I led three tours of how the homeless live in center city Philadelphia, in 2010. This painting is based on a vidcap of Fred explaining how he lived in his box under the bridge by the police station. It takes a special set of skills and knowledge to live homeless. These people are not just bums. They are survivors!
After four years in his first apartment, they moved him to a different apartment. He had adopted a cat. His blood sugar had gotten very erratic and he had some episodes where it went dangerously high. The Wednesday before Fred died, I spoke with him on the phone to get together with him to go over nutrition and supplements to more naturally, better control his blood sugar. We were to get together the following Monday. His mother could not reach him on Saturday morning. She went to his apartment and had police and fire break in, when Fred did not respond. They determined time of death to be 7:08 am, July 18, 2015.
There was a meal after Fred’s funeral. Fred’s mom did not invite any of his homeless friends to attend. I asked her why not. She said she didn’t want her lady friends to be worrying about their purses. I said, “Do you realize Fred lived in a box for 20 years?”
I did not attend. I waited outside for my ride.
The painting is acrylic on 14″ x 11″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage.
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Dorothy Williams was one of our adopted grandmas. She had no family left when we met her. She lived two blocks from us in East Greenville, PA. She lived in a small, second floor Section 8 apartment that was part of the Baumans’ half-twin on Main Street. Her only income was from Social Security. She grew up in Philly. Every grocery store was an Acme to her, pronounced in three syllables. We got to know her when neither of us had cars and Pastor Dave Benner would come, in his big Suburban, and pick up the six of us and Dot to bring us to Finland Mennonite Church. After we got a car, we continued to pick up Dot. We would have her over for dinner. She doted on our girls and taught them important life lessons that we quote to this day, such as: “Tables are for glasses not for asses!” Just the kind of lesson you want your four-year-old repeating at Sunday School! She especially loved the littlest ones. “Ba-aby!” was also a three syllable word, as she reached out her arms to receive any little one near her.
We also ran other errands with Dot. Whenever Dot got a bit of money in her purse, she couldn’t resist treating us to dinner at her favorite Chinese restaurant, over in Quakertown, or the “Pound o’ Roses”. (Ponderosa Steak House) We would try to pay or, at least, handle the tip. She would have none of it. We were all poor. We learned not to argue. She made it clear that this was one of the few things in her life that gave her joy and we were not to take it from her! She was in her glory in the New Far East Restaurant! It was such a shame when it burned and closed. We didn’t tell her. By that time, she was too ill to handle the food. She would still press cash, that she couldn’t afford, into my hand for me to take the family out for dinner on her.
She came with us to Bethann’s folks house for Christmas and Easter and all the birthdays. She was part of the family. I mean, that’s what one does. People are not made to be alone. I grew up with so many Aunts and Uncles. I didn’t find out until I was in high school that we weren’t related to but a quarter of them! Their families had either rejected them or died, so they became part of our ragtag clan. Our lives have been so much the richer for this!
This painting is Dot snoozing after Christmas dinner in 1985.
It was not long after this that she got so ill that she could no longer take care of herself. She minimized her illness to us. She moved into the Montgomery County Geriatric & Rehabilitation Center formerly known as the Poorhouse. We visited her with our four little girls. She was obviously very ill. We had to wait for a bit to see her once, so we visited other patients. Some of them had not had any visits in weeks! They had been warehoused and forgotten. Our youngest, Hilary, would climb up into laps. Immediately, there were smiles and tears. No words. These patients couldn’t speak. The next time we came to visit we planned extra time to visit “Dot’s new neighbors”. The nurses thanked us so much. That was the last time we saw Dot. She died of some form of cancer.
She was a little rough around the edges, with a heart of gold!
If it weren’t for Dave & Priscilla Benner going the second mile, Dot would have been one of those forgotten, warehoused cast-off souls, and we would have missed out on being blessed by another Grandma. I have learned, one can never have too many Grandmas!
Painting is acrylic on 14″x11″ canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage
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We only knew Nancy for the last two years of her life. and she passed away almost 23 years ago now, on September 4, 1993, but she was a force of nature. I will be the first to admit that this painting is a poor likeness to photographs of Nancy. She looks healthier here than ever I saw her, with brighter eyes. This is more the way I remember her in my mind’s eye rather than what the camera saved. She had been so beat up by circumstances, by poverty, by drugs, and quite literally by people in her life, that the camera wasn’t always kind. But in real life, that is not who we knew or what we saw.
She had been married and had two sons. They divorced. She got involved in a lesbian relationship. Her lover ended up abusing her to the point of fracturing her skull, which gave her problems the rest of her life. I don’t know what else they got involved in. Her lover abused the children, as well. I do know, she knew the seamier side of Pottstown very well. Nancy joined us serving the homeless in center city Philadelphia. After several weeks, she implored me to start a similar ministry in Pottstown, where she had lived most of her life. I said I would be happy to, if there was a need and we could raise the resources and manpower to do so. I told her it might not look exactly like what we did in Phila. She and I spent two weeks, day and night, interviewing all the social service agencies and churches; talking to hookers, addicts, homeless, business owners, teenagers hanging out, cops, to find out what was and what was not happening to serve the poor in the city; and what else should be happening.
We found that the only day of the week when no food was served was Wednesday. There were three populations in two neighborhoods that needed food help: children, homeless adults, and homeless teens in central Pottstown and Stowe. I was actually doing more of the interviewing of the church people. Nancy was busy raising up a team and a van, etc., because it was the same night we served in Philadelphia, we had to double our team to make it happen. We determined to go forward as long as Nancy was willing to lead the Pottstown team. She humbly accepted. She was the best person for the job. She could not drive. She lived on SSI and Food Stamps in public housing. She knew the lay of the land and she had a heart for the people.
Within a month of her asking, we were able to start serving on two sites. She added a drop off spot for boxed meals for homeless teens who wanted to stay faceless, later that year. Nancy would call me on Thursday morning all nervous that she was out of peanut butter. I would ask her what day it was. She would tell me it was Thursday. I would remind her that she didn’t need to make PB&Js for another 6 days, so not to worry. She gradually learned to wait longer before she would call me, if she was out of something, until she learned to trust that things would be supplied when they were needed by the community of faith. Then one Thursday morning, I received a call from Nancy. She told me how she had used the last of her peanut butter for the sandwiches for the children the night before. She was worried about it, so she asked the team to pray for more peanut butter, before they went out to serve. When she got home to her apartment, she could not enter until she cleared the 3′ x 4′ front step of all the containers of peanut butter that had been left there for her! She said, “Oh me of little faith!” We have no idea where it all came from. We just refer to that as “The Minor Peanut Butter Miracle.”
About a week after Nancy and the team celebrated completing a year of service, Nancy Karpinski died of an apparent heart attack on Sept. 4, 1993. She was just 50 years old. Her legacy lives on. Her right hand man for that year, Kork Moyer, now leads an outreach and shelter ministry in Pottstown. I don’t think that would have happened were it not for the importunity of this unlikely organizer.
It is good to see her smiling face and kind eyes again.
Painting is 11″x14″ acrylic on stretched canvas, with painted sides so no expensive framing is required.
The other day a friend dropped by and saw my paintings and heard their stories for the first time. He asked me when I was going to paint a portrait of Myron Starinshak. He said Myron was one of the most annoying people he knew, but on Holy Saturday, to not hear his voice singing the litany in front of the tomb, brought tears to his eyes. This is the 4th Great (Holy) Week since Myron’s passing.
I used to stand next to Myron in the choir. He used to ride shotgun with me, faithfully, to serve the homeless in Philadelphia. He also accompanied me on three trips to Pittsburgh to icon festivals to help man the table when I had “Come and See” Icons, Books & Art. I know more about Myron than I should possibly write.
He lived in a rooming house in Lansdale, PA, and managed it for the owner for several years. When the owner wanted to sell it, it took four large dumpster loads to clear out most of the stuff Myron had squirreled away in every possible nook and cranny of that place to make it presentable to buyers. Myron wanted me to find homes for two, large, plaster, baroque gilded framed prints that had been in the narthex of of his Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church as a child. The prints were not icons. They were sentimental, western guardian angel paintings. The frames were huge and gaudy. I had no place to store them. He just could not bear to see them go into the landfill. I agreed to find a home for them. I knew just the people who would like them. I gave them to a couple of good Haitian friends who dearly love each other and they have their pictures framed in these and hanging in their living room.
A couple of years later, Myron asked where those pictures were. I told him I gave them away. He was livid. He said, “Those pictures were in my family for over forty years!” I asked him, “Where were they displayed?” He said, “They were never displayed. They were too big. They were in my mother’s attic until she passed. then I took them.” I said, “They have not been in your family for 40 years! Your family has been hiding them for 40 years! Finally someone is getting some use out of them and enjoying them.” He simmered down.
Myron had a knack for saying the most inappropriate things. He didn’t have a filter. He had strong convictions, but they weren’t always educated with sound teaching. At the same time, he had compassion and humility and service that just would not quit! He did 100 little jobs around the church that no one but he and Fr. Boniface knew all of, to make the place cleaner and run a little more smoothly.
Myron and I had some great road trips. We had some great times serving on the street. Alex the Albanian asked when Myron stopped coming, “Where is that little man? Why is he not here?” When he died, he said, “I will pray for Myron.”
Painting is acrylic on 11″x14″ canvas.
Price: $100 plus Postage
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Kenneth Cobbs challenged me and instructed me like few other persons in my life in such a brief time. I can count on one hand the people who have had this kind of impact in this short a time, and they all seem to totally, irretrievably disappear. At least Kenny left me with a couple of books of his poetry, including one poem about me. It is not particularly complimentary toward me. I was alarmed when I read it. Kenny and I discussed it. He stuck to his guns and defended it. This was how he felt. It cut me to the quick. I was grateful for the critique and thanked him for his honesty. I asked his forgiveness, for that was not how I wanted to come off or how I intended our ministry to be perceived. At the time, I published it in The King’s Jubilee newsletter as a confessional, with an appeal to help, please, let’s all do better.
Kenny had given me two booklets of his poetry that he had typed up. He managed to photocopy several copies and staple and fold them. He would sell them for $5 each to raise a little cash. I made some copies for him. I told him I would retype and reset the booklets in nicer fonts, with full color covers. I did this. He never showed up to retrieve them or the money for the copies that I sold for him. I never saw him again. I contacted the nuns who he said he was visiting that week. they had not heard from him. I left my phone number. I have searched for him every couple of years, since, to no avail. That was in 1998. I keep hoping that he chose to disappear and become a Buddhist monk somewhere. He was an intense person, wise beyond his years, yet I fear the world was too rough for him. He had been part of the MOVE family and had not recovered from the terrorism inflicted by the city, and the lies and machinations to frame Mumia Abu Jamal for killing a cop; after Mumia dared to report sympathetically about MOVE.
Kenny took me down a peg. I was glad for it. He did it with honesty, in the spirit of true brotherhood and love. I have gone back again and again to our conversations and his critiques to see how I measure up “according to the Kenny scale.” If he knew, he would laugh so loud!
I painted this from emotional memory. My counselor and I talked about this painting. This is the first time I have obscured a part of a face. I think this is because both of us were blocked in some major ways. He was dealing with PTSD from Mayor Goode’s bombing of West Phila. I was a recovering fundamentalist; had been abused by clergy, yet still playing the clergy game. Kenny’s right eyebrow is raised. This was done subconsciously on my part, but it makes perfect sense. Whenever I think of Kenny, I think of our conversations and his piercing, unflinching criticism. It is rare that I can find someone who can give as good as he gets. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” (Prov. 27:6) I measure my progress on stepping down from my “god complex” and getting over being a “white knight” on the “Kenny Scale”. This is the raised eyebrow and slightly more open right eye. The background color of orange and shirt as bright red were chosen because of the MOVE fire on Mother’s Day, 1985. My missing front tooth is from that night, as well. But that’s another story.
Acrylic painting on 11″x14″ stretched canvas.
Price: $130 plus Postage
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This is a portrait of Alex Bejleri or “Alex the Albanian”, my dear friend. We have known him since I started to serve on the streets of Philadelphia in 1988. He appeared to be crazy. With what I later learned of what he had been through, he had every reason to be. Most of the other street people would have nothing to do with him. They tagged him with the moniker “Russian” by which he is still known to this day. He seemed to have a hollow leg, as they say. He would sometimes eat 8 cups of soup, then ask for leftovers. He always loved our food. He would keep track of our volunteers; who kept coming; who dropped out; and asked why.
We helped him learn English so he could get his citizenship. He walked over 5 miles in the snow to visit me in the hospital when I was ill. He would call me when I couldn’t make it to the street; even after he no longer needed our service, but he loved my soup. He prays for me and for my family daily. He still believes what they told him on Radio Free Europe, even though he has spent most of the last 28 years in Philadelphia, living on the street. I guess, if you go to jail for something, then escape, give up your homeland, your family ties, move half a world away; it’s hard to come to terms with the idea that the reality that it was based on was an illusion. You see. He was a ‘political prisoner’ in Albania for listening to American propaganda radio broadcasts. I had to find him a shortwave radio so he could try to tune them in here. I kept trying to explain that America lied to him and they were not allowed to do that here. It was too much for him. Of course, now, they have changed the law. The CIA is now allowed to lie to us “legally” by broadcasting propaganda within the US. I guess Alex should try firing up the shortwave again. Of course, now he doesn’t need to. He can just turn on NBC or CNN, etc.
My health has taken a turn for the worse and I am sidelined until I can get an aortic valve replacement in June. Alex took the train and bus up to ‘get his mail’ the other day. (They failed to forward several pieces of his mail. He used our address so he could open a checking account, etc.) I showed him this painting and my self-portrait. He did not seem too impressed. He looks better now than in this painting; sophisticated, business-like. I look more like he did. He confirmed that my health is bad and he committed to praying for my heart every day in the Basilica of SS. Peter & Paul in center city Phila. I thanked him. He went to dart out the door. I stopped him to give him a hug. He said what he always says when he calls me on the phone, even when he leaves a message, “I love you my brother!” And I love Alex.
My life is so much richer for knowing him.
Painting is acrylic on 11″x14″ canvas.
Price: $120 plus postage
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“Other People’s Children” is a totally different approach to pro-life. It looks at adults whom the world has thrown away and sees the absolute beauty and value the world missed. The term “pro-life” has been hijacked by the anti-abortion mob, who are anything but. I celebrate my friends, true loved ones, whom the so-called “pro-life” crowd cast aside as ‘takers’ because of their disabilities, gender, color or economic standing. I am painting their portraits to go along with their stories. Some are from my weak memory. I have very few photos.
I tried to capture the essence of Rosalie, a woman I met in the Women’s Detention Facility in 1985. We became lifelong friends. She was irrepressible. She attached herself to me immediately. We were both about 30, just a month apart in age, worlds apart in backgrounds. She died of leukemia on the street in 2008, when we were about 53. This is just a poor cartoon representing her. It really looks nothing like her aside from the freckles, frizzy red hair and big smile, but does capture some of the emotional impact of her coming toward me for the first time in the House of Corrections, more than 30 years ago now.
I miss her.
The painting is 16″x12″ acrylic on canvas. It stands quite well on its own: a provocative conversation starter.
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