Thanks, all.  As was expected, the weekend was that bitter-sweet mixture of tears and laughter. Nearly 300 people showed up for the memorial service. Alan spent 30 years as an engineer with his employer, a major defense and NASA contractor, based near Cape Canaveral. He was well known, and well liked, and just a delightful brother. We shared many phone calls, and much humor over the years. He'll be greatly missed.

I delivered the limerick to the more immediate family only...about 35 of us gathered...and invited them to lift their imaginary forks, at the end, along with their imaginary pie plates, filled with the imaginary goodness of one of Alan's pies, and to cheer his life, and to cheer the happy memories of having him in our respective lives.  The cheers were loud, the laughter strong, and the tears flowed. It was a great send-off.

I have pictures of the last pie that he and I made together, here at my house in Arkansas, during a visit. Shortly, I'll combine those, the limerick, and a few bits and pieces of other things, and begin the pictorial memorialization of this terrific brother.

My younger brother passed away yesterday morning at the age of 70....a massive heart attack, with barely a hint of problematic medical history. All of us are in shock, and I've been asked to deliver a eulogy.  However, in order to minimize tears, that will already be flowing plentifully, (along with my own), I wanted to do something more along the lines of a celebration party to the memory of a good man.  Alan was well known for his apple pies. For the closing of my little speech, I asked Bard to help with a limerick in honor of Alan's culinary expertise.  I've modified this somewhat, but I used Bard to get to the...er...core of the idea. I only tweaked, modified, deleted, or added my own words to give it more personal....er....appeal. I used Bard, you might say, as the...mmmm...er...seed of my little rhyme.

I know it takes some...er....crust to do this, and you may think me a bit....er...flakey. Here, however, with thanks to Bard, and apologies to the late, great Charles Osgood, is the AI-Human rendition of an ode to the passing of a wonderful brother and a legendary pie baker.

There once was a baker named Alan,
Whose pies were a mouth's education.
From Granny Smith tart,
To Honeycrisp art,
He'd leave us weeping in pie-based elation.

Now angels at elevated station,
Raise forks in celestial ovation!
Though heaven's pies might be grand,
None will e’er hold a hand
To the marvel of dear Alan's creation.

Alfred,

Go to products    https://www.chaossoftware.com/products.aspx
It's about the 5th one down. Some features are missing, but for light use, it may be perfect. What I love the very most is the NOTES page, that allows me to time-stamp a note....perhaps a conversation with a particular vendor (in my housefire, follow-up world), so that I have a record of conversations had, or emails sent. It was priceless in my career as a financial planner, and it has already proved indispensable as I discuss certain aspects of the rebuild, or insurance, or construction loan funding, or mortgage company control of escrow account for the rebuild. Great piece of software.

I'm still not sure what the issue was, although I was able to create a frame in CA from shapes. But, over in DP, I was able to use images snagged from the interwebs, use the crop tool, get the pattern or texture to show up, save it as a PNG file, and then add it to CA. Multi-step, but I think this was the same issue I ran into a few years back. It's probably do-able in CA, but I was having a heck of a time, and finally went over to DP to complete the process. And, even there, it didn't seem to work with every image used.

note to self: Make better...er...notes!

Hey, Alfred....

Thanks so much for establishing this forum.  I had such fun yesterday, not only walking with Yvonne at the Bella Vista Blue Bird Trail Sculpture Walk https://www.bellavistaar.gov/news_detail_T2_R107.php, but then playing with Cutout Studio after the fact, to get the logo from the walk-side coffee shop, ready for the layout. That led me to remembering how to add in backgrounds and lettering. There's more experimentation to come there.

I really had forgotten what a marvelous piece of software CraftArtist is, and I'm thankful that we have this BB to continue to play with CA and display the things we are up to with it.

Very thankful this morning, Alfred. You're the best.

Back on track.  That worked a treat, Karen. Thanks

EDIT:  Not quire sure what I was doing prior. If I click on "Select cropped items" now, it does indeed allow me to manipulate the image.

The Plus series are like old shoes....so comfortable. I had not worked with CA in over a year....perhaps two. And, hadn't used PP in over a year.  No particular reason. Just no projects. However, with the house fire, and with the need for some extensive record keeping of the rebuild progress, I needed some forms that were simply not available to me. And, I also got very much hooked on Bullet Journaling.  Then, with some need to document and memorialize personal events, I found a sudden need for CA.  I found PP on the hard drive of the discarded Dell tower, but CA was nowhere to be found.  Now, in the space of just a couple of days, I'm back with old familiar software.  It's just the best, and I slammed together a CA sample layout today, just to prove that it could still be done.