DESCRIPTION:
She Picks the Violets was written at the piano on an afternoon break as a house painter. An Aunt of mine who had lost her mind on account of aluminum poisoning and needed to sell her house asap so she could be taken away had engaged myself to clean things up. My good friend the violinist Michael Russell spent the days with me painting and cooking up far out camping and fishing schemes. After a day of scraping on ladders we would reconvene at his house on the West Bank and sing songs and have bottles thrown at us by his girlfriend if it got too late. All in all it was a pleasant and wonderful few weeks and my Aunt would appear from the kitchen and ask us where in Holland we came from? We would answer Delft because some of her dishes came from there and she seemed glad about that and Michael always had a gift with people whose spirit was in transition. At the end of our painting session somewhere up near the chimney I spilled a small can of paint on the rooftop and we tried to wipe it up but it was getting late and our evening music session was calling so we left some paint up there. That bit of paint on the roof top did not hold up the sale or price of the house. The house was sold. My Aunt was taken away. We went back to our folk blues apprenticeship and every now and then oh every so often a family member of mine would mention the paint I had left spilled on the upper reaches of that house, something might be said as if this choice to play music and all of its accompanying strapless luggage could be explained with that bit of old spillage. I am glad when it is brought up, it makes me remember goodness and its a membership card to the personhood society of my families particular time and place memory bank.

The paint I spill now on the house where the violets were picked will not be brought up by my friends or family years later. Something so terrible and horrible happened and was brought about an obtuse bully that is now as I speak still on the loose..Run!! and so we are running and Writing for Freedom!!! Words of Freedom!!!!! Words of Freedom!!!!!!
Mark Olson