a poetry reading at the wyomissing public library in december, featuring esther rolland & dick villforth.

the wyomissing public library hosted a poetry reading for the second year of this project in mid-december. two residents of country meadows, esther rolland and dick villforth, visited as special guests, as they live about 3 miles away from this particular library.

and like a poetry reading at their place of residence in november, we honored jim dalrymple who died in september at the age of 100 and was one of their neighbors in the same building.

esther liked that the afternoon meant visiting another library in her life, especially since it is hard for her to walk nowadays, so she sees less out in the world.

after dick no longer worked in berkshire knitting mills, he ended up going back to school for engineering and later worked in south korea in nuclear power plant settings. he lived and worked in a few other foreign countries, too, and even took his family to japan for a short time.

colleen stamm and jonathan moore who work at the library generously offered assistance with photography during the reading.

poetry reading at the wyomissing public library-- monday, december 12 @ 1 p.m.

the next poetry reading for this project is scheduled for monday, december 12 @ 1 p.m. @ the wyomissing public library.

featured special guests dick villforth, kathryn beck, and esther rolland while honoring the late jim dalrymple.

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RSVP to thelaborsofourfingertips@yahoo.com if you can attend.

or pass the proverbial word on to anyone else who may be interested in attending.

a poetry reading at the berks encore senior center in wernersville in late november.

at the end of november, the berks encore senior center in wernersville hosted a poetry reading for this project. willie kramer from the first volume of poetry in 2015 visited as a featured guest, which he kindly did a number of times last year as well.

and like he's done before, he brought a lot of samples of different kinds of leather for different purposes, in addition to tools and upkeep supplies for them, from when he worked at garden state tanning in fleetwood for many decades in his life.

willie and his wife gerry are also members of berks community strollers, the wanderers of berks county, and the berks community hiking club. this is how i met them a few years ago, and while out on a trail, willie first told me about his tannery career.

during this particular reading, we ended up getting into conversations about other kinds of jobs which seniors in attendance had. one man used to drive tractor trailers up and down the east coast, sometimes to miami, and carried produce. he had a lot of stories about how people don't realize the difficulty in accurately and safely driving big rigs. he also had a horror movie-like recollection of a woman chasing a man behind a restaurant in the south with a butcher knife, when he stepped out of his truck and was looking for a place to get a meal. it unfortunately had to do with racism and segregation, at the time.

another man mentioned that he worked in the kitchen at the wernersville state hospital, which is the campus of where this senior center is located. and a man who lived in maryland for a long time worked behind the scenes in the newspaper industry in running the actual presses.

nancy speicher courteously offered assistance with most of the photography for the morning.

a poetry reading at country meadows in wyomissing in mid-november.

in mid-november, a poetry reading with three featured residents happened at country meadows in wyomissing. it would have been four featured residents, but jim dalrymple died just as the second volume of poetry from this project came out. so we went over his poem first, which is the first in the latest volume of this poetry, to honor and remember him.

then we went through vocalizing the poems about residents dick villforth, kathryn beck, and esther roland.

jessica janiszewski assisted with some of the photography above.

dick villforth's daughter also attended the reading and sat beside him. here is a photograph of him and a long excerpt of his poem. he was born in 1920.

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in 1938, i mopped up the oil on the floor under the knitting

machines for silk stockings at berkshire knitting mills. they

needed continuous oiling, those machines. to wipe up that oil,

you bent or scooped yourself down low to the ground. on your

hands and knees, you contorted to get up under them, using

rags to soak up signs of excess. at that time, jobs not being

easy to find, i took this one. i don’t remember how, but it 

happened. i attended the wyomissing polytechnic institute

for a year and then quit to work at that mill, a dumb thing

to do, i can admit now. they taught me cleanup work, at first. 

assigned to two machines which sat across from each other, i 

assisted another knitter. he illustrated the steps of the actual 

knitting work with hosiery where the single mapped line

of a seam ran from the foot to the unseen territory beneath

a skirt or dress. i didn’t stay at 20 cents an hour for long

while working there, i know that. one main problem came

from how the thread could easily tear. silk in thread-form

is difficult. you had to keep everything around the machines

clean. if a splotch of oil met a single leg of hosiery or two

in a pair, you had to throw it all away. we experimented

with some synthetic fibers, like nylon, which wallace hume 

carothers invented in 1935. two years later, he sipped

one last beverage—lemon juice and potassium cyanide—

in a hotel room in philadelphia, never learning just how 

successful that material would be. in 1941, i left those knitting 

machines instead for the draft, the u.s. army air corps...

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a glimpse: rose kelly, born 1932.

rose kelly of south heidelberg township, born in 1932, will be a featured guest for the upcoming poetry reading for this project at the berks encore senior center in wernersville on tuesday, november 29 @ 11 a.m. alongside her will be willie kramer, a special guest from the first volume of poetry in this project.

rose worked at western electric which later became at&t and had a few other names as well, while it lasted in muhlenberg township. a photograph of her and some of her employee thank you gifts for her many years there are below, followed by her full poem because it's so science-rich that you really need the whole set of words to grasp it well, compared to a usual long excerpt.

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we didn’t wear gloves way back when. they handed me 
the smallest mask they had sitting 
around, since most were 

larger, for men. i had a few different jobs while at western 
electric, where i’d started in 1959, 
first at the laureldale

plant, before they moved us all to the edge of muhlenberg 
township. a specialist of the knife 
at one point, i sliced 

and grew raw crystals. some folks twist their heads slightly 
to the side, when i explain this old 
job of mine—bought

out by at&t—that visual indicator of their confusion fashioned 
into how they lean and furl their 
eyebrows just a pinch.

it shows that many people haven’t heard of a career like this. 
yes, i cut and parented crystals, using 
grey, metallic masses 

of germanium, or some gallium arsenide, and i synthesized 
them with a crimson, almost raspberry 
jam-hued red phosphorus—

that powder catches fire if it drops, and sometimes it did.
i wore a monkey suit, like an astronaut,
situating a glass crucible

of the elements in an old cannon with a water jacket around 
it. i sealed the top with a lid while the heat
feathered something new, a boule.

about eight hours later, you had thousands of electronic chips
to segment out of that boule, new ingredients
for transistors, things like that. 

a poetry reading at manatawny manor in east coventry township, chester county, featuring lena rothermel & her son jerry.

wednesday afternoon, manatawny manor in east coventry township, chester county, hosted a special mother-and-son poetry reading featuring resident lena rothermel. jerry rothermel, one of her sons, sat beside her during the reading, and for several decades in their lives, they both worked at tung-sol in boyertown making or helping in one way or another with production of headlights.

thank you to susan gettler for some of the photography during the reading.

born in 1925, lena is originally from woodchoppertown in earl township, berks county. here is a long excerpt of her poem.

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in the 1940s, before my belly grew, swelling with the cells

of my children, and then again in 1950, i worked alongside

many neighboring women at tung-sol in boyertown. i took 

the job because my husband only had one day of foundry

work each week. a newspaper 

               clipping from september 9, 1963, 

                             notes a plant tour for the reading 

                                           chapter of the american society

of tool and manufacturing engineers. one line in it reads, 

production at the plant is now in excess of 14,000,000 lamps 

per year. well before that ink met its paper, i started in what

they called re-wash. they had a machine which aluminized

the reflectors of the headlights which we constructed. we used 

electricity to expand the silvery aluminum inside. then 

they moved me onto the fog light line. with new inventory, 

the lenses and reflectors came in separately. you put them 

together. when i worked in glass and inspections, if anybody 

had problems, they called me over. i determined if glass ought

to be rejected, if imperfections, small chips or weak sections, 

meant we’d toss them out. i learned so much equipment—

brazer, mount, peg, and lens preheat machines. that brazer 

machine let you mount wires to put in the filaments. i became

a backup operator. i knew all of the jobs. my son jerry walked 

by me now and then during his shift. mothers could keep an

eye on their sons and vice versa, if they both worked there. 

at one point, about 600 people were employed in the building 

across six days, three shifts. if you saw a bulb burned out 

while driving, you thought, that wasn’t one of our lights...

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visiting the lost chapters in hamburg for the second time, featuring betty kunkel, this round.

this week, i visited the lost chapters at the hamburg public library for the second time as a guest author. the group focuses on writing, learning from regional authors, and encouraging each other across creative literary endeavors.

betty kunkel who lives not far from the library and is from my second book of poetry from this project acted as a special guest for the evening, and her niece, sherry fuhrmann who owns pure wild tea in bernville, a mint tea business, also attended. fuhrmann is the one who introduced me to her aunt.

those who joined our meeting for the evening had an opportunity to ask me questions about my process, but they also asked betty about her experiences and memories, too. as a very enthusiastic person, betty was delighted to be a part of this group and to be honored by strangers who appreciated hearing about her life and past jobs.

dan larue, the library's director, offered to contribute some of the photography below.

and one new visitor with the lost chapters brought along a poem which she wrote about her best friend who passed away. mary jane wijtyk, who runs the group, offered to read the poem out loud so everyone could hear it, and below is a photograph of it with its original author.

and here is an excerpt of betty's poem. she was born in 1939.

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my parents took me out of school once i turned 16—helping

to bring in money for our family. at our farm in jalappa, 

we raised corn, potatoes, apples, turkeys, chickens, horses.

berries upon berries grew in juicy clusters, and i milked cows. 

we did our own butchering. i went back to school to finish 

my high school degree in 1983. but in 1955, i grew my talents

as a belt sewer. i made sure men’s and boys’ underwear would 

fit their waists snugly once they, their wives, moms, or aunts 

bought the pairs and ripped open the packaging. the hardest 

part involved the curve of scissors. see, i am left-handed. they 

gave you scissors meant for the majority, at hamburg knitting 

mills, all its brick at 239 pine street. the label, the tag, sewed 

right into the underwear. you had quite a mess if you dropped 

the box of tags. women brought bundles of the materials we 

needed, so we didn’t hop out of our seats to grab any fabric 

or elastic. they played music from speakers above, maybe 

“walkin’ after midnight” by patsy cline once in a while. i ate 

summer bologna or cold chicken by lunchtime. i carried

coffee in a stainless steel thermos. we drank mugs of it back

when we were kids, but i don’t drink it now—i drink tea 

instead. i worked at dutch knitting mills for four hours,

into night, so i had 12-hour days. those in charge at this 

other mill were fairly strict, and they had older machines

which gave you trouble more often. two sisters and the son

of one of them ran it—they did the repairs themselves. i 

stopped to eat chili at rip trexler’s at fourth and state streets

between these two jobs. by 1968, i worked at the burkey 

underwear company. elsie fox told the bosses she knew me...

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