By REBECCA SHALOMOFF
Creative ideas and rhyme schemes come fast and easy for Angela, as did getting her children's book, "Imagine," published by the Child Welfare League a few months ago. In the book, a little boy imagines a world where everyone looks exactly like him, then realizes how bland such a place would be.
"No different colors, shapes, or sizes. A world so dull, with no surprises. A world with not one new idea. A world with no new voices to hear. I think it would be a sad place indeed, if everyone looked just like me," Angela wrote.
"Imagine" teaches tolerance. It teaches that different isn't bad, and in the end, when you "look inside our skins and think what's in it," we're all made of the same stuff. She presents the lessons of human equality embedded in the Declaration of Independence and espoused by leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in a refreshing and still powerful way.
"It's a charming book, right on target," said Martin Sasso, a Cedarhurst resident and Sherwood Diner regular. "It's what ordinary people should do with other ordinary people: Everyone should get along. It's one of the basic tenets of the Judeo-Christian religion: 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.'"
Angela, 55, has also been combining creativity and educative principles in the dolls she's been making for the past few years. The dolls, stuffed with beans and dressed in hand-sewn fabrics, have one hand covering their mouths as if they've made a blunder. The lessons on being polite imparted on the doll is engraved in a small piece of paper attached to the doll in poetic form. A child or adult gets to own it by word of mouth for about $25 or as a gift from Angela. The dolls, each one different-looking from the other but made of the same stuff, were the inspiration for her first published book.
Angela has written a couple other children's books and has another awaiting publication titled, "The Question Why," as well as tons of poetry. She's extremely talented, and when not at the diner, is always occupied with a creative activity. Whether it's her poetry, painting, portraits, quilting, drying flowers or carving wood, she's always working on something, or a few things at once. Her informal artist's workspace is her East Rockaway home, where she lives with her husband, Charles.
"I never wanted to have a career," she said. She worked part-time while her three children, now grown, were at school. As for her artistic endeavors, Angela does them as a natural impulse to express herself. To move freely in the creative process without worrying about turning it into a moneymaking gimmick. The profit, for Angela, is just doing it.
"I never even thought of writing books," she said. "It was something that just came to me. The poetry just came to me. I just get this feeling."
"She's amazing. She's always involved in something," said Dominic Lamonna about his mother. "She's a special person. We love her very much. "
