First is "Crazy Old Aunt Helen." Janet's Aunt Helen lived to be 102 years old and was my neighbor in Brooklyn Heights. If you lived on Joralemon Street near Henry, you must have run into this sweet, quiet, crazy old lady. Janet and her husband John, with whom I worked at Eastern Athletic Clubs for many years, cared for Crazy Old Aunt Helen right up until the finish. We all adored her. It always went something like this:
"Hi Aunt Helen" (Helen stares blankly)
"How are you today?" (Helen glances away)
At cocktail parties she could be slightly more lively.
And always dressed to the nines. May we all be so lucky.
Here are some excerpts from the book,
a true story about Aunt Helen when she was somewhat younger.
In keeping with the theme of old ladies, Janet has also written a book entitled
"I Help Old Ladies." Here are some excerpts with art from the book.
The book starts:
I help old ladies. It's what I do.
They can be unbelievably cool.
Or just flat out weird.
They might wear groovy braids.
. . . and the illustrious cast of old ladies just keeps coming in this story told from the point of view of a child who still happens to believe in something as old-fashioned as helping out a stranger, however un-old-fashioned that stranger may be.
Also in the works is a book that I'm writing and illustrating - or I should say is sort of writing and illustrating ITSELF as it goes along. What's it about? Right now it's about dinosaurs and the alphabet, but it's still unclear to me where it's going. It might be about creatures in general, mostly dinosaurs, but it most definitely seems to be about the alphabet. From the way it's writing itself, it seems to be for sophisticated young readers, as seen in the following LETTER S-related text. We'll see where it goes in the next few weeks.
