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.