She Promised Us Each a Quilt by Gabby Gilliam (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

She Promised Us Each a Quilt
by Gabby Gilliam

The pain in my mother’s wrists
doesn’t discriminate––throbbing
within taut tissue as she pulls
another stretch of quilt across
the sewing machine’s arm.

Since my father’s funeral
she has attacked her fabric stash
a torrent of stitches to distract her
from his absence. She lets his loss
pool in the shadows at her feet
nudges it aside to press the pedal
as she feeds pinned squares
to the needle. When the sun dips
below the treeline, she leans
over to turn on the light.

PAINTING: Patchwork quilt, watercolor by Undrey.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My parents would have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in November 2023, but we lost my dad in 2021. Since then, my mother has spent every day distracting herself from the emptiness in their house. She’s turned their living room into a sewing room––fabric and batting all over the place. She’s given herself a mission to make a quilt for each of us (daughters and grandchildren). She’s nearly half-way finished.

PHOTO: The author (right) with her mother at her wedding in 2010.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My mother made this quilt for my son. It’s been in use ever since she made it for him. My mom chose the center panel because my son loves to read, and was making his own books for a short time. She then went through her stash of scrap fabrics to find coordinating colors and patterns to use for the rest of the quilt. She does her best to make all of the quilts with fabric she already has on hand, as she wants to work her way through her impressive inventory instead of buying anything new. If she gave herself over to quilting completely, she could likely finish one in a week or so, but she often works on them in between other projects, so it’s sometimes a couple of months before she finishes one. There are usually a few quilts in progress at a time, one being cut, one being pinned, and one being sewn. She will likely take a break from quilting soon as she finds it harder to sew in the warm weather and is most productive in the winter months, the cold and darkness much better sewing companions than the light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gabby Gilliam is a writer, an aspiring teacher, and a mom. She lives in the Washington DC metro area with her husband and son. Her poetry has appeared in One Art, Anti-Heroin Chic, Plant-Human Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Vermillion, Deep Overstock, Spank the Carp, and others. Her fiction has appeared in Grim & Gilded and multiple anthologies. You can find her online at gabbygilliam.com or on Facebook.

My Mother Called Me “The Faucet” by Joan Leotta (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

My Mother Called Me “The Faucet”
by Joan Leotta

Salty water spilled down my cheeks
and my nose reddened often by
tangled emotions, a heart quite
easily shattered by hard words,
imagined slights, sadnesses I saw
in others but could not cure.

My mother called me “the faucet”
Or simply pretended to ignore my outpouring
of watery emotion though her
words or ignoring me,
made me cry all the more.

Finally, after realizing
her “tough love” strategy was
not having the desired effect,
she explained her “naming, teasing”
was not meant to cause more pain.

“You see,” she explained, “you cannot
cry aloud so easily.
You simply cannot let ‘them’ know
they’ve cut the strings of your inner
music—no matter who
‘they’ is. They will see your tears
as weakness, not the wonderful
tenderness it truly is.
Hold back my little love.
Do not let your sorrow flow freely
out on the world’s stage, in front of strangers.
Save the tears for those you trust,
those who will value your sorrow
as an opening to your inner self.
Use the sorrow, the tears kept
Inside as a magic elixir to fight
Those who prey on you and others.
Turn your sorrow into action in front of them.”

I learned to control the “faucet.”
Tears became a hidden river,
powering a flood of action
for justice, for myself and others,
to action to defend myself with logic
to release the flow only in the presence
of those who love me.
Even now when I feel my old eyes
holding back a tidal wave of tears,
I remember and act on my mother’s admonition.

However, though I wonder now
what she was holding deep inside,
she who never cried in front of anyone,
that I saw, and how she had learned,
likely by experience, the hard lesson she
sought to teach me through words,
but I never asked her.
I wish I had asked her, and then said,
“Mama, you can cry in front of me.
I will always love you.”

PAINTING: Soul and Tears by Laurel Burch.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: This photo is of my mother and me early in 1990s. I chose it because I’m wearing the dress my daughter says she “sees” me in when she thinks of me and my dear mother loved that checked suit she is wearing. I think the photo may have been snapped on Mother’s Day in 1990 or 1991.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joan Leotta is a writer and story performer who has always loved her mother very deeply. Joan’s poems, essays, books, and articles have appeared in many journals, including Silver Birch Press, The Ekphrastic Review, One Art, McQueen’s Quinterly, and others. She has been nominated twice for Best of the Net and for the Pushcart Prize. While her website is in the process of being redone, you can find her latest escapades, including news about her peformances as Louisa May Alcott, on her Facebook page. On X, she is @joanleottawrite. Her latest collection of poems, Feathers on Stone is available from Main Street Rag.

The Circle of Life, Or How I Became My Mother’s Moth-er by Jackie Oldham (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

The Circle of Life, Or How I Became My Mother’s Moth-er
by Jackie Oldham

The Joy of Parents
is preparing their children
for Life.

The Pain of Children
is preparing their parents
for Death.

These words I wrote
three months ago,
after helping my mother navigate
an uncharacteristic
moment of fear

When, on a steamy August night,
I accidentally let three moths
into her house,
while she was talking to her sister
on the phone.

So unnerved was she
that she abruptly ended the call,
and enlisted me—
the child who used to run away
from butterflies—
to get rid of these moths!

Mom turned off the lights
In the kitchen and dining room,
while I turned down the living room light.

Then, she turned on the front porch light
to lure the moths to the screen door.

One moth took the bait,
landing on the screen.
I carefully opened the screen door
while closing the main door
behind me.

The moth flew away.

Back inside,
I stared
as Mom,
reaching for something
on the darkened dining room table,
suddenly flinched away from the second moth,
which had landed
in her outstretched hand.

The moth flew into the living room,
landing on the wall
near the dim lamp.

I rolled up a newspaper page,
smashed the moth,
then wiped the detritus
from the wall
with a handy paper towel.

The third moth was
a ghost, unseen
and never found.

I took my leave
from caregiving
for the night,
returning to my own home,

still worried about that third,
unseen moth.

Seven months later,
my Mother flew away.

IMAGE: Moth, watercolor by Ekaterina Kim.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was originally written and published on my blog in 2017, as part of a longer poem titled “The Circle of Life,” a missive about the stages of life as positions on a clock. But I was never fully satisfied with that poem. I wanted the incident with my mother to stand on its own. When I read about the Silver Birch Press ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Poetry Series, I saw an opportunity to reframe and express the deeper meaning of the incident by introducing the metaphor of “mother” and “moth-er.”

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: Mother’s & Daughter’s Graduation Photos. Above: Dorothy Barber Oldham, Graduate of Frederick Douglass High School, Baltimore, Maryland (February 1950, age 17 years, 4 months); Right: Jackie Oldham, Graduate of Western High School, Baltimore, Maryland (May 1970, age 16 years, 7 months). Douglass High School (founded in 1883 as the Colored High and Training School), second oldest U.S. high school specifically for African-Americans, has produced many prominent African-American leaders. Western High School (founded in 1844) is the oldest public all-female high school in the U.S. Both schools are still in existence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jackie Oldham (she/her) is an essayist, poet, blogger, format editor, musician, and photographer from Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems have appeared in the journals WOC This Way for Poetry, Minyan Magazine, Spillwords Press, Rigorous Magazine, Oddball Magazine, and Global Poemic, and in A Lovely Place, A Fighting Place, A Charmer: The Baltimore Anthology (Gary M. Almeter and Raphael Alvarez, editors, Belt Publishing, 2022). Her personal blog can be found at baltimoreblackwoman.com, with companion Facebook and Instagram accounts. With Rafael Alvarez, she cofounded the blog braciolejournal.com (History of Poetry in Baltimore/1945 to the Present). As a format editor, she worked with Baltimore author Rosearl Julian West to format West’s memoir, Reflections: My Journey on Arunah, for publication on Amazon.com.

My Mother by Lakshman Bulusu (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

My Mother
by Lakshman Bulusu

One word
One world
Host
to a host of worlds

Your name, priceless
Your hands still cradle me
Your smile bears the light
of a thousand lamps
Your soft words—
My son, I am proud of you.
You scored the highest GPA—
echo love and resound in my heart
like dancing anklets
Your timeless prayer—
Let God be with you in mild and wild times
Your sacrifices, too deep for tears—
help with my homework,
preparing my favorite carrot halwa.
You, a poem personified.

PHOTO: Carrot halwa by Elizaveta Sokolovskaya.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My poem is about my mother and how compassionate she was, be it praising me on graduating with highest or making my favorite carrot halwa. It also highlights her prayer to God to protect me in “mild and wild times.” It describes my view of her—be it her soothing smile, her protective hands, or her love everlasting in its height. All these remind me, “What a priceless name a mother’s is.”

PHOTO: The author’s mother on her sixtieth birthday (Hyderabad, India).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lakshman Bulusu is a poet, educator, and author based in Princeton, New Jersey. He has been published in over 40 literary journals in the US, UK, Ireland, China, Taiwan, and India. He invented the “Star” poem genre and “Miracle Star” poem genre in 2016 and 2021 respectively. His poem “The Best Memorial” was chosen for the Origin Stories (April 2022) in The Gyroscope Review for National Poetry Month. His “Star” poem, “For Another New Day, Another New Light,” was chosen for theatrical performance of Healing Voices: Caregivers’ Stories on Stage, a joint 2023 production of New Jersey Theatre Alliance and McCarter Theatre, Princeton New Jersey.

Swimming Lesson by Arlene Geller (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Swimming Lesson
by Arlene Geller

I jump into the pool, hoping to show off
my dog-paddling skills to my mom
lounging at the side of the pool

I surface, slick my hair back
and suddenly, I’m submerged again,
by a red and white polka-dotted derriere

I sink and struggle
the white tile base so close
I can touch it. Time stops.
I wonder if I’m drowning.
Would anyone miss me?

Where is Mom?
reading Good Housekeeping?
chatting with other vacationers?
she was not looking at me

          She was not going to save me

Finally, the girl lifts off and I rise
sputtering, I skim the surface
in slow motion,
I grip the pool’s edge
hoist myself up and out

I hurry
to Mom’s chaise lounge
I shake myself off and drip on her,
she squints up at me and,
with a hint of recognition, says,

          Well, it looked like you were having fun!

PHOTO: Swimming pool ring by Public Domain Photos.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I had a difficult relationship with my mother, so I decided to combine this with my family’s wonderful annual two-week vacation when we escaped the city to Lake George, New York. But even that turned out to be fraught with danger on this particular occasion. It has always been amazing to me that someone could be absent in your presence. I am currently working on poems of forgiveness.

PHOTO: The author as a baby with her mother (Jersey City, New Jersey, 1953).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Poet/lyricist Arlene Geller has been fascinated with words from a young age. Two poetry collections, The Earth Claims Her and Hear Her Voice, were published in 2023 by Plan B Press and Kelsay Books, respectively. Her poetry has also appeared in Tiny Seed Journal, Tiferet Journal, The Jewish Writing Project, White Enso, and other literary journals and anthologies. Collaborations with composers include commissioned lyrics, such as River Song, featured in the world premiere of I Rise: Women in Song at Lehigh University and since performed in numerous national and international locations. Visit her at arlenegeller.com.

Toss and Serve by Ruthie Marlenée (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Toss and Serve
      Dedicated to Delfina
by Ruthie Marlenée

I play tennis in a gated community (now pickleball in La Quinta)
because you picked grapes and lettuce
throughout California’s fertile valleys
living in shantytowns, campos, and train cars

missing school buses to work in strawberry fields
tomato plants, packing houses and assembly lines
to set a cornucopia of food on the table
because you scrubbed golden toilets in Villa Park

ironed Mrs. Blumenthal’s soft silk and fine linen
shined her crystal, polished her silver
because you cleaned glass castles in Anaheim Hills
that I might shatter the ceiling in Yorba Linda (The Land of Gracious     Living)

and smash overhead—my head
crammed full of words—my words
lemon dropped across the page
like oranges or grapefruits or

chocolate-lettered-bonbons
plopped on a conveyer belt
words I now volley, toss and serve
like tennis balls, salads or tortillas

I sip Cristal out of a crystal goblet
gobble chocolate-covered strawberries
and caramel chews served on a silver tray
because I can pick and choose
a better life thanks to you

First appeared as the Santa Ana Poem of the Week in the Santa Ana Literary Association, May 2021. After a couple modifications, here it is once more.

PHOTO: Grapes by Bruno.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My mother Delfina Cordova was born in Santa Ana, California, in 1928, in an area known as El Modina. She, her siblings, and her parents were migrant workers from Mexico who also lived at times in La Habra, on train cars and in places called “el campo,” where she and her family were “pickers.” Because work got in the way, and because she was a caregiver for her mother, father, and younger sister, she didn’t finish high school, but later studied for her G.E.D. certificate at night school. Later, she would work as a nanny and a housekeeper. My mother taught me the importance of good grammar, about hard work and perseverance. She strove for my family to live in good neighborhoods and paved the way for me to succeed at whatever I could dream—but not too big.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: In this 1956 photo, my mother is visiting her ill mother in the Tuberculosis ward of the county hospital (her smile is so big because after the visit, she’s going out dancing and will meet my father!).

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My mom and me, 1976, my senior year of high school.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ruthie Marlenée is a native Californian novelist, screenwriter, and poet whose work is rooted in her half-Mexican ancestral background. She resides in the desert of the Coachella Valley with her husband. Marlenée earned a Writers’ Certificate in Fiction from UCLA, and is the author of Isabela’s Island, Curse of the Ninth, nominated for a James Kirkwood Literary Prize and Agave Blues, which received an Honorable Mention by the International Latino Book Awards for the Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Fiction Book Award. Her writing has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. She is a member of Macondo Writers Workshop, Inlandia Institute, Palm Springs Writers Guild, and a WriteGirl Mentor. Her poetry and short stories can be found in various publications, including Shark Reef, The Coiled Serpent Anthology, So To Speak, Detour Ahead, What They Leave Behind: A Latinx Anthology, Silver Birch Press, Slow Lightning: Impractical Poetry, and Writing From Inlandia. She’s received awards for her screenplays from the Women’s International Film Festival, the Oaxaca Film Festival, Carmesi International Fest, Santa Barbara International Screenplay Awards, the Mexico International Film Festival, The Portland Comedy Fest, the Houston Comedy Film Festival, and the Military Script Showcase.

Baking Board by Patricia McGoldrick (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Baking Board
by Patricia McGoldrick

We knew it was time
when our mother took out
the honey-colored baking board
and set it on the kitchen table.

With our chins tucked neatly at the edge of the table
my younger sister and I watched as our mother wiped the board fresh
then sprinkled it with flour.

We wondered what our apron-clad mother would bake today.

Soon, the velvety flour from the yellow green bag and
smooth creamy shortening in the blue box appeared.
Mother measured cupsful of each ingredient
into my Grandmother’s sandy ceramic bowl from Ireland.

Then she mixed in water with the tines of a silvery fork—
First, add the water, just a bit, not too much,
She would say,
Then stir till it was all mixed together.
Afterwards,
she scooped up the dough with her wrinkled hands and
began kneading it gently
sprinkling some flour.
Then, it was all set to roll out
with the wooden rolling pin,
Just right for making pie shells.
The circles are shaped from balls of dough
and placed in pyrex plates
then filled with apple, cherries or berries
They are ready to bake for an hour.

Sometimes, the circles are smaller
It’s time to make butter tarts
My sister and I
lift the wafers of pastry off the board
Centre them over the tins so evenly divided into six
Then mother, without looking in a recipe book,
makes a stewy mixture of brown sugar, butter, egg, and corn syrup
Deftly, she stirs them together — not too much not too little
(If we are lucky she forgets to add raisins)
Then she pours a small amount into each shell
We help to put away the supplies
While mother wipes clean
the baking board
Then she hangs it on the wall
Till next time.

©2022 Patricia McGoldrick

PHOTO: Baking board by Eyewave.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This poem was inspired by childhood memories of a wooden rectangle that rested on the wall of our rural home. For my sister and me, the two youngest of eight children, this smooth baking board held the promise of future desserts that would add a delicious finish to the basic country cuisine of many meals. Mother did eventually pass on some of the baking secrets and techniques from her repertoire but her knack of making nine pies at one time has not been inherited by the next generation. The baking board now resides in the pantry of one of her granddaughters, Laura McKeown, who has kindly shared this photo.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Patricia McGoldrick is a Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, poet/writer inspired by the everyday. A member of The Ontario Poetry Society and the League of Canadian Poets, her recent publications include the poems  “TUESDAY: Poetic Leaves of Autumn”; haiku (Silver Birch Press, MY PRIZED POSSESSION Poetry & Prose Series);  “Prelude to Innisfree” at Poetry Breakfast (December 16, 2016); “Simple is Best” (Red Wolf Journal), Haiku in Verse Afire (Canadian Poetry Magazine, volume one issue one page 26 & 29). Her published essays include “Secrets and Clues and Mysteries, Oh My!” (Nancy Drew Anthology, Silver Birch Press, 2016) and “Snow, Snow and More Snow!” (Silver Birch Press, WHEN I MOVED Series).

When Wounds Don’t Heal by Shelly Blankman (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

When Wounds Don’t Heal
by Shelly Blankman

I remember spending muggy summer afternoons on her porch, slurping fresh, fuzzy peaches, their sweet juices dripping down our chins. We’d giggle as we picked shredded napkins off our sticky fingers. Those were the times Mom laughed—when she could treasure the gentle breath of summer breezes wafting through the lilacs she so loved. We didn’t have many moments like that together—just she and I. The joys of life had been siphoned out of her long before I came along. She mostly lived in a cell of silent anger, and when her words spilled out, they were often like paper cuts—painful and deep.

Mom’s chilling childhood memories had cracked her own mirror of life. She had witnessed her mama day after day scrub the porch while neighbors sneered dirty Jew. Her mama could clean the porch but not wash off the stain of their laughter. She dared not shed tears or show fear. As a child, her mama had been the lone Holocaust survivor in a family of eight. She’d escaped to America knowing no one, learning early that without the armor of family, only silence could keep her safe. Hitler’s roaches had burrowed in every corner of the country. When my mom was told to stand in front of her class to show what a Jew nose looked like, she obeyed. Girls would tease her for having only two dresses, and she said nothing. Once she tried to collect money from a neighbor for the Red Cross. The neighbor snapped Just like a Jew and slammed the door in her face. Wound after wound after wound. And the deepest wound of all—the death of her baby brother because her mama couldn’t afford medical care to save him.

How do you fix a broken mirror? How do you pick up shards of glass without bleeding? In America, Mom and her brothers were raised in abject poverty and still considered rich Jews. Years and years of invisible tears. Shards still slicing open every wound of Mom’s childhood, suctioning the strength she needed to care for her family. How could she survive?

She found comfort in cats. She found love in cats. Toward the end of her life, her brain was scavenged by the scarab beetles of Alzheimer’s. She didn’t even know what a cat was. Her eyes were open, but empty until the day she died.

I never mourned her death. I mourn how she lived.

IMAGE: Lilac branch, digital art by Nadezhda Galimova.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This was probably the most difficult poem I’ve ever written. My mother had a difficult life, and I didn’t realize until my adult years about the impact the Holocaust had on survivors and following generations. I wanted to show her struggles and strengths, and her history was very much a part of that. I wanted to share all that was missing in her life, because she deserved more than that. She didn’t have the voice to tell her story. But I do.

PHOTO: The author (second from left) with her mother and siblings in Baltimore, Maryland (1956).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland, with her husband of 43 years. They have two sons, Richard and Joshua, who live in New York and Texas, respectively. They have filled their empty nest with four rescue cats and a dog. Richard and Joshua surprised Shelly with the publication of her first book of poetry, Pumpkinhead. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Open Door Magazine, among other publications

As Sweet As That by Joan Jobe Smith (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

As Sweet As That
by Joan Jobe Smith

When she was in a good mood because my dad had
come home early for supper and told her
her biscuits and honey tasted as good
as his mother’s or because he’d said
he’d take us to see Forever Amber
the movie she’d been wanting to see
my mother would sing while we did dishes
her washing me drying
and she would whistle too and
I’d get embarrassed.
“Why don’t you ever sing?” she’d ask me.
and I’d answer “I don’t know,” and
she’d tell me about being young like me, but
a little older and how after she’d done the dishes
she used to meet my father
at the town square in Paris, Texas
and all of the young folks would sing and dance
while my father and some of the others
played the guitar and they’d do the Texas 2-step
and the jig and the shuffle and my father
would lay down his guitar and do a tap dance just
like Fred Astaire careful
not to get his white shoes and white trousers dirty
and when the sun went down they’d all sit
in the park and watch the fireflies
flitting in the cottonwood trees. And
I’d think to myself putting away
the dinner plates
how I’d never be able to sing as
sweet as that.

PHOTO: Glowing fireflies in field of grass by Fernando Gregory.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This is one of at least 100 poems I’ve written about my mother.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My mother and father in their young happy days in San Francisco, California (Christmas, 1944).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joan Jobe Smith, founding publisher/editor for 40 years of PEARL literary journal and Bukowski Review, Pushcart honoree, UK 1998 Forward Prize finalist, has had her cartoon art, poetry, reviews, essays, fiction, food articles, and recipes published/featured internationally since 1950, when at age 10 her first poem, a rhyming aphorism, winner of a Red Cross safety poster competition, appeared on billboards. Her most recent chapbook, Made in the Shade was published by UK’s Tangerine Press, 2021. Her signature Bukowski profile CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Epic Glottis: His Art & His Women (& me) was published in 2012 by Silver Birch Press. She lives in Long Beach, California, with her machinist-poet husband, a Joe Hill Award recipient, Fred Voss.

PHOTO: Joan Jobe Smith and Fred Voss, her machinist-poet husband since 1990, in Morro Bay, California.

MA by Russell Dupont (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

MA
by Russell Dupont

I see her,
hunched over
her lists of names,
raising her eyes
every so often,
pausing to remember
those she feels
have slighted her.

I am on the list
for not calling
during the week—
her sisters and brothers
for perceived slights.

There are her accounts—

what she paid
for a birthday card
and what ___ paid
for the card she received.
And for someone
who failed to send a card,
a sharp underline
or a name crossed out.

This is what I found—
notebooks, journals,
all recording
the terrible life
she lived—
and nothing
of all the love
that went to her.

ILLUSTRATION: Greeting card, Marcus Ward & Co. (late 1800s).

PHOTO: The author’s mother during her honeymoon in New York City
(La Maison Française, Rockefeller Center).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Russell Dupont, poet, artist, novelist, has published work in the albatross, Spectrum, The I, For Poets Only, The Anthology of South Shore Poets, Re-Side, Oddball, JerryJazzMusician, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Rye Whiskey Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, the new post-literate, DADAKU, One Sentence, the Northern New England Review, Verse-Virtual, as well as The Lothlorien Review and Pick-Me-Up Poetry. He is the author of three novels: King & Train, Waiting for the Turk, and Movin’ On. He is also the author of a variety of other works, including the nonfiction books Up in Wisconsin: Travels with Kinsley and There is No Dam Now at Richford, and two poetry collections, Winter, 1948 and Establishing Home Plate. Examples of his work have been collected in the Archives of the University of Massachusetts Boston. Visit his website at russdupontphotos.com.