ART OVER OIL

I wasn’t going to post anything this week, as I am reading tomorrow night at the writers’ workshop I am taking, and have been busy writing a chapter for the book. Then my friend Mara sent a newspaper photo of an abandoned gas station completely wrapped in quilts and crochet. I wanted to get this posted while you could still see all the photographs of the wrapped station.

The chapter I am writing is on my mother’s death and the memorial service which I talked about in my post on Steve Goodman, who sang there and is now gone himself, after a long struggle with leukemia. Death is on my mind these last few weeks. The year anniversary of Claudia’s sister Susan’s death was April 18. She would have loved the crochet-covered gas pumps. She probably would have been one of the artists contributing to the project, most from New York state but also from all over the world.

Crocheted place setting by Susan Morrow

Someone else who would have loved the crochet-covered pumps is my friend Aspasia, whom I met in the pool at the Y. I’ve blogged about the memoir group that formed around the death of another Y swimmer, Barb, of ALS. Now Aspasia, a member of that group, is gone too, of pancreatic cancer. She was an art teacher and then a teacher of teachers, an artist, an activist, a student of life. We will miss her.

Aspasia with Molly, photo by Claudia Morrow