The Week That Was

When we were living in England in the '70's, there was a popular TV program that later was taken up in the States and became popular here, too. It was called TW3, with the 3 written small, to indicate the TW to the third. It stood for That was the week that was (three TW's) It talked about English politics that week and gave you all the royal scandals - which was the way it stayed in business, I think! Even back in the '70's there was at least one scandal a week which held the public's attention. It was Britain's Saturday Night Live. Well, this past week I had a TW3 myself. I'll set it up for you. Since we are in Open Enrollment, I made an appointment with my insurance agent to change my Medicare Advantage Plan. During the conversation my age came up and she mentioned she had liked the bitter poem I had written a year ago when I had lost my insurance. She said I should publish it. I replied, "Well, actually I have it in Draft form addressed to the Publisher of the New York Times, but hadn't gotten up the courage to send it yet." Then I laughed and said, "I believe in starting at the top!" That evening she sent me an email, saying only "Small steps.." So, partially as a joke, I wrote back, "Okay, I've just submitted it to the Tucson Daily Star." I thought that they might print it in a little column the size of a Letter to the Editor, if they published it at all. Two days later, I got an email from the Editor of the Opinion page, asking me if I had written it myself and that they wanted to publish it. I confessed I had indeed written it and that I had experienced each of the stanzas I had written. (It's titled "When you're an old woman in America" and all about the poor medical system in the States.) The Editor said it would be printed in Wednesday's edition. Since I haven't subscribed to the paper for several years, I advised my daughter to be on the lookoutfor it and to save it for me. WELL: All Hell broke loose! She had chosen to print the whole thing all across the top of the Opinion page and headlined it in big, black letters. And she had gone through their archives and found a photo I had sent for a long article of mine that they had printed three years ago, about the terrorist attack on Barcelona. She had cropped my husband out of the photo and had placed me in the center of the poem, giving my name and age. But what gave it importance (besides the huge black headline) was the fact that David Fitzsimmons saw it, liked it, attached it to his Facebook page with just the message: Read this. Please. David is the immensely popular cartoonist-columnist for the Daily Star, syndicated in 800 papers worldwide, and has 5,000 Followers. My granddaughter in Denver discovered it first because she follows him. In just a few hours, my poem went viral. He had 249 Replies, 65 Likes and 59 Comments. All were positive except for one, who thought I should get a life, but everyone else was congratulatory and told sad stories how the poem related to them and how compassionate they were for all the old women out there. Two actually wanted to start a Go Fund Me website, so I could pay for my eyedrops. (I had NO IDEA, when I wrote the poem, that it would have that much effect on perfect strangers.) I have opened my own Facebook page, but can't figure out how to send a message. I have sent a message to David asking him if he could let all these lovely, generous people know that I'm okay, have insurance again and can afford the eyedrops. Apparently the message didn't go through. But trying to cope with hundreds of messages has taken up my entire week. Furthermore, my computer wouldn't compute for 2½ days, constantly telling me my Internet was disconnected. I spent three hours with Cox on the phone and got nowhere, then called my own Techie, paid him, and he "reconnected" me in FIVE minutes! Besides all this, I had offered to deliver the lecture to my Zoom meeting on Friday afternoon for the Writers Group I belong to and had chosen the Subject to be "Writing Obituaries vs. Back Cover blurbs." Fortunately, I had written my speech on Monday, before all this started. The lecture went well, and they all enjoyed it. (More emails.) So there you have it, Gentle Readers: my 15 minutes of fame. I have changed my mantra from "Be careful what you pray for" to "Be careful what you publish." Janice

The Plus and Minus

Hi, everyone, Today the world stopped for a minute or two, but I mananged to get it going again. I have a wonderful electric clock which I bought in Kelowna, just before moving back to the States in October, 2009. It had no normally numbered sequence around the outer edge like most clocks. Instead it showed all the numbers fallen to the bottom of the frame, and above the pile of numbers, was written "Whatever". I love that clock! It was to be symbolic of my future life down in Tucson, with my family, my jewelry business, making new friends, finding a beautiful place to live, and getting on with my life. This morning I was starting to answer emails and the cursor suddenly stopped. Couldn't get it to move and I realized that my mouse probably needed a new battery. I keep a stash on hand, so I went to the utility closet and found various batteries, presumably to restart up various parts of my life. I opened things up and took the dead ones out, then picked up the two for the mouse. Oh, dear, I should have taken them out and laid them on the desk in their correct position. Now I had to look for the plus and minus and it was hard to see in the black interior. The same was true of the dead clock. As I struggled to see which end was "up" I finally got them installed. As I reset the time, and started swirling the mouse to watch the Cursor move around my screen, I casually thought how many things run on batteries, much like the way we run our lives. Life is full of pluses and minuses, and if we don't get them in right can slowdown or stop what we feel or think and eventually cause us to run on Empty. But if we choose the positive side instead of the negative, we're up and running smoothly. Nowadays, during the Pandemic, the fires in California, the inertia of Congress, and the rage echoing from the White House, I tend to think of it as everyone having put the battery back in with the minus side. Get the negative out of your lives and turn the battery around. Push it down till you hear a click. Then get on with your lives. The clock will run around and the hands will point to the corect time even without numbers being there. And the mouse will scoot all over the monitor, allowing you to contact all your friends. The past week I discovered from my Writers Group that Yes, indeed, the copyright laws do exist and they forbid my including the contents of any song from my chapters. In which the lyrics of the song perfectly depicted what I was trying to say, but said it much more poetically than I ever could. So that is that, friends; I have to find every chapter that contains lyrics, delete them then try to re-create the meaning in my own words. What a great way to "dull down" a chapter! Oh, yes, I can use the title, but that's it. The complete irony, if not idiocy, is that you can Google the title, and instantly up pops the words, and the several different artists who recorded the gem, So it's right out there for the public to read or listen to. And it's not the composer who gets the fee charged: it's the Publisher! They might grant you permission to use, but you have to pay anywhere from $400 - $900 for the privilege. So, back to the computer, rewrite many of my chapters, and hope I've put the battery in right side up. Till next week, Love, Janice

What I hope to accomplish

Gentle Readers: Now that I'm blogging again I thought I would like to ahow you what I have in mind for my future Blogs. First and foremost, I hope to answer your questions about writing a book, some of the pitfalls to avoid, and to give you some easy rules to follow. Did I just use the word "easy"? The only "easy" part is writing it! As they say, "The devil is in the details." But: You can't get anything published until you've written what you have to say. So have fun if you're writing your Memoirs, dredging up all those details from 70-80 years ago, and chuckling all over again, or maybe shedding a few tears. If you're writing fiction, anything goes and if you're writing a mystery, I'll assume you've got a new spin on whodunnit. As the chapters pile up you move them to a large carton next to your computer desk, and start going through old photo albums if you intend to include photos of the interesting places you traveled to, autograph albums which you had hoped to sell to an Antiques dealer, and also toss in How To suggestions to incorporate into the first drafts of each memory. Since I assume you were already smart enough to have joined a Writers Group at your local Library, they will have torn each chapter apart as you presented them each week, and your next step is to start the Revision Process. Read their suggestions thoroughly. Some writers who have been published think they are the smartest creatures God ever created, and your first task is to acknowledge that fact. Then when you start analyzing each little "e" (written with a curlicue) and see them scattered all over your first draft, accept the fact that you need to eliminate everything that has an "e" on it, and TIGHTEN UP YOUR WRITING. You will probably be amazed at how much more interesting and pertinent your chapter has become. Then try moving entire paragraphs to the beginning, to the end or delete them and see if it "reads" better. The key word here is "flows". Oh, my goodness, these critics do know what they're talkming about. By the time you've made all the corrections, you begin to feel a sense of pride and satisfaction in what you've created. You're becoming a Writer. Hope you're taking notes. There's a lot more to come. Love, Janice

Here we go again.

Hello, Everyone!

    After a long hiatus, today I was inspired by my Writers Group to make one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.  I have decided to make a determined effort to finish my book of memoirs, so I'm opening up my Blogpost again as well as a website and will keep you updated weekly as I forge through the potholes of editing and preparing the book for publication.

    To explain my long absence I moved in January 2019 to a new Independent Living Facility, called Atria Valley Manor, after they raised my rent at the old address to $4,000/mo.  In my new place, I am much happier: I have a two-bedroom apartment, ground-floor with huge patio, so it's more like living in my own house again. At $1,000 less per month, what's not to like about THAT!  It's smaller, only 74 residents, the staff is kind, generous and helpful, and the residents well educated with interesting professions.  I intend to start teaching jewelry classes as soon as we don't have to practice social distancing. It's been a long journey to get everything unpacked and organized but I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and hoping it isn't the train coming at me.

    I'm revising already-written chapters, have only a few new ones left to write and add to the large carton next to the computer desk.  I already have a Formatting Expert lined up and the cartoon cover is drawn.  I'm serious.  This time we're going to go through all the steps of writing a book and publishing it, and I will give you clear instructions on everything as it happens.  Cheers!  Janice

Bienvenidos. Mi casa es su casa.

Yes. Mi casa es su casa.  So states a ceramic plaque on a shelf outside the front door of my new residence. 

I've only been here not quite three weeks, and they have been pretty hectic.  I moved on Sept. 14th, a sort-of-symbolic date.  It would have been Fritz' and my 72nd Anniversary.  I wonder what he would have felt about this rather dramatic change.  Well, he definitely would not have liked being in a more social element. He liked his silence, his dominating the situation, and doing everything his way.  But he also liked a strictly-followed routine, so having to take his meals between defined time limits would not have bothered him, although having to pick and choose what to eat would have created a dilemma for him.

But for me, it has been a fairly complete change and a fairly complete pleasurable experience.  I still have cartons to unpack and my daily dilemma is not what to eat but where to put all my jewelry components that I can't bear to part with yet.  I hope to continue teaching classes, but downsizing from a four bedroom, studio-garage house to a one bedroom, one closet apartment is a bit of a challenge.  I wonder if renting one storage locker will turn into a two storage lockers situation....

I continued my writing today with the first report of life in a Senior Living environment.  I'm sending it to my former writing group so they can see what my life is like now.  I have joined the Writers Group at Atria Bell Court Gardens, and they do two writing challenges for two weeks and every third week you present something you have written, so I'll continue to get feedback on my chapters.

With all the other activities presented every day, plus the writing, plus the jewelry classes, I'll be kept on my toes. 

And there are still all those cartons waiting to be unpacked and a space found for the contents! Gotta go!

Good Morning, All!

It seems like I have a knack of finding all sorts of things to slow me down on finishing the book.
Last month it was all the things going wrong with the computer, printer and telephone.

This month it is because I suddenly decided the house was getting to be too much for me and I began looking at Independent Living facilities.  The second one I visited, had a nice apartment that had been vacated two days earlier and had not been listed yet. The business manager said, "I have someone coming to see it tomorrow and he will take it, I'm sure."  Since there were only three of that floor plan in the complex, I didn't take much convincing and got out the Visa card. Never did anything that rash in my entire life, but told myself, "Sometimes the rash decisions turn out to be the best decisions."

So everything has come to a halt while my time is now spent arranging appointments with the realtor to sell my house, getting the carpets cleaned, having the photographer take the photos for the newspaper ad, and deciding that I am going to need two enormous garage sales, one for all the furniture I can't use, and one for all my jewelry tools and materials.  The house is covered with Post-It notes. I'm delaying the sale of this house until after I've been in the new apartment for at least a month to see if I like it.  If not, I just move back here.

In the meantime I have managed to write a chapter every week for my Writers Group. The last two were about my Dad and Mom.  If you'd like to read them, let me know in the comments and I'll email them to you.  In my new place they have a Writers Group also, with published authors so it will be fun to see and hear how they think. They also have a Book Club, water-color group, Knitters and Sewers groups, and an interesting discussion group named What is Going On in the World Today.  If they have that figured out it's worth the rent right there!

I'm exchanging jewelry classes with a young lady who graduated from Cartoonist school this summer and she has three different versions of a cover for Life as Observed from the Middle Seat.  We're getting there, Friends, getting there!  TTYS

I'm so sorry for the lack of recent Blogs.  Not what I intended at all when I started one.  But when your printer stops printing, when your modem breaks, when the company supplying the new one never ships it to you, when you finally get it and the installer neglects to activate the telephone setting, when your phone dies for five days, followed by your MedAlert, all the settings on your computer change, the telephone tech doesn't come on the appointment day.  Finally get the telephone on, and the printer goes out again.  Now the phone rings, but the Printer says "Not connected to the Internet..............................You get the picture?

Up to my neck in techsupport calls, online chats, 3-hour tech support calls with three different techies, one dumber that the one before.  And I'm PAYING for all of this!!!

Never mind.  I've been writing chapters for the book, getting them critiqued, and making the revisions.  We're getting there. The next Bio photo may show a woman with totally white hair.  Don't worry.  It's me,
Janice