TheBanyanTree: Something new has been added

[Pam James]

How fabulous to hear from you!!!!!

The world is a crazy place, and yeah, it starts in our own homes...

And now I would really love to know how to pronounce your cat's name!

Pam, going to check out a blog...

On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 4:26 PM tobie--- via TheBanyanTree <
thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> wrote:

> Hello Tree Dwellers all,
>
>         So much has happened to me in the past few years that it would be
> impossible to catch everyone up. So I won’t try. Well, maybe I will over
> time, but I can’t count on anything. That seems to be a constant. Kind of
> Zen, isn’t it. No permanence.
>
>         Since I was ten, or was I nine, I’ve kept a journal. The bookcases
> are heavy with 200 page five subject spiral binders of my writing…….I
> doin’t write much about the seventeen gentleman callers, but thoughts,
> mostly my hair brained ideas. But plenty enough news I suppose. A few years
> ago I signed on to a quasi literary agency, more like a service: Writer’s
> Relief. What they do is what I know I’m not going to do….ever….it’s just
> not in me. They do the research finding the likely publications that would
> want to publish my pieces. They put together cover letters. They send out
> the piece to twenty five likely publications. They field the rejections and
> acceptances. So I’ve got numerous pieces published in a variety of literary
> journals. Mostly with a readership consisting of the people in the
> journalism and English departments that publish the literary journal. It’s
> probably a requirement for graduation: Take Journalism/English 105 B: How
> to publish a literary journal online. The students posing as editors
> probably read it. And whoever has a piece being published in it reads it.
> But they’ll read their own piece and skip the others. Parents of the
> writers—they’ll read it. So my work is read by maybe 25 people who got lost
> trying to find another piece that their friend, Nigel, got accepted.
> Anyway, Writers Relief keeps track of it all. Would I do any of that? Never
> have——and that was when I wasn’t as busy as I am now. I’m working harder
> now than I ever have in my life. Part of that is because I’m alone without
> support. No family. No partner. Friends distanced because of the pandemic.
> So I’m it. IT. It can drive you nuts, or it would if I weren’t there
> already. I’m making it sound funny, but it isn’t. Life is a constant
> surprise. Would I ever have thought I’d be here, as circumstances are, at
> 75? (yup. 75).
>
>         Meyshe and I live together. Feyna stopped taking her meds, to
> paranoid and discarded her friends, got a divorce, moved to Oregon and is
> only in contact with Meyshe. God knows what’s going on with her. The rest
> of my family disappeared in ugly ways after my mother died. We got kicked
> out of the house where we’d taken care of her for fourteen years and this
> was in the midst of the pandemic. My brother, the successor trustee (don’t
> ever do this. do not assign one of your children to be the executor. Toxic
> stuff) ordered us out of the house because he wanted it sold for the money.
> He didn’t care that we hadn’t even been vaccinated yet. But I held him off.
> It wouldn’t look very good for him to kick an old woman with her autistic
> son out on the street in the middle of a pandemic. Maybe even he wouldn’t
> have been able to live with that……..nah. He’d live with it. He’s smart. He
> knows how to rationalize.
>
>         In this swamp of changes I thought I needed to do something more
> direct than having someone submit my writing and then waiting to see if
> anything was accepted for publication. So I decided to start a blog. I’m
> not on any social media. Won’t go on Facebook. I can’t forgive Zuckerberg
> for helping Trump get elected and hiding behind freedom of the press.
> (remember shouting FIRE in a crowded theater). I found people to design the
> blog and then it sat there without a post for months and months while the
> world popped and bubbled around me. I just posted my first entry to the
> blog today. The Writers Relief people also had posted an article that was
> written about Meyshe and me in the Northern California Jewish Weekly in
> January. He looks so handsome in the photograph. Serious. Sad. Aware.
>
>         Here’s the blog address: tobieheleneshapiro.com          I figure
> I’ll post once a week for now.  If you feel like checking it out, go right
> ahead.
>
> It’s nearly one o’clock PM and I’m shot. Not much sleep last night.
>
>         OH! And we got a cat! Her name is Tziptkeh. She’s about 9 months
> old, a calico/tortoise shell mix. Smart.  Beautiful. a kid. destructive. It
> got a lot better when I accepted that the house is hers not mine. She likes
> classical music and she likes me to sing to her. And I thought I was done
> raising toddlers.
>
> Love,
>
> Tobie
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> Humans think they're so smart!   But it's taken them 100,000 years to
> destroy the planet.             THS, 2014
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> Tobie Shapiro
> mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>
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