TheBanyanTree: Something new has been added

Fri Oct 28 19:09:36 PDT 2022

I love to read your writings, Tobie! Thanks for sharing!

On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 4:35 PM tobie--- via TheBanyanTree <
thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> wrote:

> Thank you everyone for your encouragement!
>
>
>         About that article.  I was hoping that other people in my
> situation would contact me after they read the article. And they did. But
> mostly, here’s what they said (synopsis)
>
>                 "Great idea! Let me know when you’ve done all the work."
>  (implied: all by yourself)
>
>         Yeah. Way too big a job for one person. Imagine all the government
> agencies that have to be involved and the funding and the working through
> bureaucracy after bureaucracy and then if you get that far, the lawyers!!!
> ……. the    l  a  w  y  e  r  s…………………………………..
>
>         You know the first and last thing any parent of someone with
> disabilities thinks of from the moment there is a glimmer of a problem is:
> what will happen to my child after I leap off this flying orb (or take a
> flying leap off this orb).  Seeing as how a Jewish group home is a big IF,
> I have to have alternatives. The idea I suppose would be to make a group
> home myself without the officialdom of the government agencies and lawyers
> .. nah. Lawyers are always involved. Maybe the government can be quieted by
> special effects and fancy dancing. This would mean buying a house that can
> accommodate housemates and coming to agreements with other parents.  And
> there you have your lawyers, don’t you. I felt the scare of time at my neck
> and realized I’d better set up a special needs trust for Meyshe. It’s a
> specialty and you need someone versed in all the local, state and federal
> rules and regulations and red red red tape to make sure your choices are
> secure because you’re not going to be here to protect your kid if the legal
> documents are sloppy. Fearful stuff. The specialist I found charges Five
> Hundred Fifty dollars an hour, or for the full nine yards (Will, Trust,
> Coordinating this Trust with the divorce settlement trust, etc.) eight fat
> thousand dollars.  This money comes out of what? The money to buy a
> house….which is what I need the lawyer to protect.
>
>         The buying a house thing is crazy in the bay area. The average —
> and I said AVERAGE, not "nice" or in a good neighborhood (meaning not
> scary. Frankly I don’t care about my property values if a Jew moves in next
> door) so the AVERAGE cost of a home in Berkeley is One Million Four Hundred
> Thousand dollars.  I keep thinking that if I lived in Alabama I’d be a rich
> woman for the rest of my life. But I’d have to live in Alabama, or rural
> West Virginia or Barrow, Alaska. I’ve actually thought about Barrow Alaska
> as a balmy haven when climate change REALLY kicks in. I do wonder though if
> there are any world class art museums in Barrow, or whether the lecture
> circuit comes through or if David Sedaris arrives to great fanfare to read
> at the local independent bookstore.
>
>         Well that was off subject.
>
> But what was the subject?
>
>         The subject was thank you for your encouragement.
>
>         I wish I could post a picture of Tziptkeh here. It’s not that
> she’s so beautiful, which she is, but she’s a remarkable contortionist. She
> also plays fetch. No. Really. I toss little crumpled balls of paper off my
> bed at night while I’m writing and she leaps in the air to bat them in her
> desired trajectory (terrific eye/paw coordination) then hurls herself off
> the bed, tortures it for a while (involving some impressive acrobatics)
> takes it in her mouth, leaps back on the bed and drops it where I can reach
> it. Repeat a hundred times.
>
> Okay. I’m done.
>
> Love,
>
> Tobie
>
> > On Oct 26, 2022, at 8:31 AM, Teague, Julie Anna via TheBanyanTree <
> thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> wrote:
> >
> > Great to hear from you.  I've read a few things on your blog and have
> bookmarked it for future reading.  The housing situation for Meyshe sounds
> very challenging.  I hope some options open up for him.
> >
> > Julie
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: TheBanyanTree <thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com> On Behalf
> Of tobie--- via TheBanyanTree
> > Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2022 4:06 PM
> > To: The Banyan Tree <thebanyantree at remsset.com>
> > Cc: tobie at shpilchas.net
> > Subject: TheBanyanTree: Something new has been added
> >
> > 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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>
> "Leave alone de hoss!"
> Great Grandpa Goodman Brodofsky (c. 1905)
> "Leave alone de hoss, Pop!"
> Great Uncle Max Brodofsky (c 1932)
>
>
>
>
>
> Tobie Shapiro
> mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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