TheBanyanTree: Something new has been added

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

Tziptkeh

Just  say, "zipped" but put a T in front of it, then add the keh as in "meh".

	She is neither zipped nor meh.


> On Oct 26, 2022, at 3:17 AM, Pam James via TheBanyanTree <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Tobie Shapiro
>> mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>
>> 
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>> 
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"Money is the root of all evil. Hoard it and watch it grow."  THS 2020


Tobie Helene Shapiro
mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>