Internet and Writing, Caregiving, Sanity

It’s a strange new world today, that of webs and nets that are not only invisible to the naked eye, but that are morphing and being manipulated continuously by people most of us would never have had any contact with a decade or so ago. Like all the significant developments of man, there is the positive and the negative side to the new cyber world we live in.

The Internet is accessible to all economic and education levels. It only takes a half a dollar in many underdeveloped countries for a person to walk into a cyber café and sign on to the internet for a half an hour. This ability changes the perspective, the awareness, the goals, the possibilities and the self-esteem of a whole generation world-wide. It makes the world a smaller place, our differences, values, morals more obvious, but as we are exposed to them less scary, more manageable.

For the writer, the Internet has opened possibility of making a lonely job less so. Whole communities of like minded people develop with our technology and meeting your writing group doesn't neccesarily mean you go down to the coffee shop anymore. Though I still prefer it.

My last two and half years have had an odd shape of solitude, yet of feeling I was never alone. I was the primary caregiver for my mother, who passed away several weeks ago, (thus the long absence from blogging). I spent most of the time alone in the house with her. A good deal of that time, she was not present. So though I was alone, I wasn't. I guess the Internet saved my sanity. It gave me a connection to the world. Let me feel as though I was still fully present in my own work, yet it also gave me opportunity for escape. I learned a lot. Alot about the way the Internet functions, the vast variety of uses, the scary lack of control and how you can fool yourself into thinking you are accomplishing something...when maybe you aren't.

I know first hand the Internet is not always used for what we Westerners consider the common good. In fact there is a large faction of very clever users around the world, perhaps more motivated in third world countries, whose goals are to damage in some way users in developed countries. I try to remember the positive aspects and possibilities of this new world, when I am inundated with ever evolving and more clever scam emails and with spammers who find new ways around filters and new ways to waste my time.

Play Writing with Teens

Like every subject I am interested in I just discovered there is a confusing number of website related to play writing and teens. I thought I was feeling rusty when I facilitated a creative writing workshop for teens this winter. Hadn't worked with that age group for several years. Now I have been asked and agreed to work with a group of teens who will create a stage production for the entertainment of children in their local libraries summer reading program. I am an old teacher. I am a published writer. I have edited a variety of writing projects including plays and truthfully I used to think myself quite the thespian when I would stage, write and direct my younger brothers and cousins through productions based on my favorite comic strips. But, I still felt I needed a little guidance on this project.

Still confined to the house 90% of the time as caregiver to my elderly and ill mother, I naturally looked to the Internet for my research. Again, I am reminded of the Tower of Babel (see my blog post titled Babel, February 7, 2007 ). So, please, old teachers and active writers, which source of guidance would you suggest for assisting teens in structuring a play?
Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Fuzzy Writing from Fuzzy Memoires for a Fuzzy Period

A friend from Marine-on-St. Croix, Jimmy Johnson, pointed out to me one spring about twenty-eight years ago, that this is a fuzzy time of year. Well, not exactly fuzzy! Maybe, he said blurry!

Everyone knows my memory is not so great today as it was three decades ago. What I do remember is that we were standing on the steps of the Lutheran Church (what else) in the nearby town of Scandia on an April morning. Neither of our families belonged to that church. It being Minnesota, we had our own perfectly good Lutheran Church in our own Scandinavian community of Marine just three miles down river. I think the Johnson's were Catholic anyway. I can only guess that we were in Scandia for a wedding, a funeral, or a Minnesota cultural exchange program for our children. Ya, you betcha, let's show the kids how those northern Lutherans do things.

Jim pointed towards the trees in the park. He said he loved the particular shade of green that occurred for only a few days in spring as the trees start to bud. Then, he said it gives everything a blurred quality, as though you had slightly crossed your eyes. It was a passing comment to a neighbor. It stuck with me, maybe because there was joy and passion in the observation, or maybe because the poetry of it took me by surprise. I thought of Jim as a jock, with interesting political views, who liked to joke. However, for most of three decades, I've watched for those days every spring, where ever I am, but not this one.

I've been doing one of the hardest jobs of my life for most of two years; caring for my elderly mother who has multiple health issues, the primary two being cancer and dementia. I never expected the job to go this many months, nor would my mother have wanted to live to the debilitated state her diseases have brought her. Unfortunately, her mind did not survive in tact long enough for her to make the deal of surrender with her spirit. Now it is out of her hands and ours. I say of her physical survival, "she is a mean little Irish machine." No, not Scandinavian.

The last two months have been the most demanding and, as things progress naturally, the next weeks will each be harder than the previous. Some time early in March, with spring approaching, my vision went fuzzy, figuratively. I've spent the two months since plodding through the damp, smelly, sticky, silent tasks of care giving, fuzzy day after day, wondering each morning if it would be the last. Days have blurred into weeks and the weeks into two months.

Suddenly, this morning I see that the leaves of the Maple tree in the front yard are wide, approaching jade green. They're defined, identifiable by several sharp points on each as descended from the Maple leaves of last year. I've missed that crossed eyed lime-hued blur of spring, two months of positive writing and two months of writing this blog! I have been writing, as I must, whiney poor me bits, and the basic stuff to make my deadlines. I have taught a couple of workshops. But, this morning's message for me is that it is time to sharpen my focus, emerge from the fuzziness of a spring unobserved and keep living. My mother would want that.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse