TheBanyanTree: Something new has been added

[Kitty Park]

I hope the blog works for you, because it works for me!  Discovering and
reading your periodic posts to Banyan Tree is like learning I have just won
an all-expenses-paid trip to an out-of-this-world destination.  You
repeatedly make lemonade out of lemons, albeit probably lacking sufficient
sugar to your taste in the end, but still palatable. And five stars for
your perpetual efforts to keep life livable.

I’ve bookmarked your blog. After reading there about searching for
appropriate housing for Meyshe, I backtracked to your welcoming message. As
you continue journaling and sharing thoughts and experiences, I will be
watching for updates.

Kitty Park
kcp-parkplace.blogspot.com


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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