Friday Jottings-Changes

Changes. They happen to all of us. Some of them welcome, some not so much. There's an old saying to the effect that 'the more things change, the more they stay the same.' This is true, to some extent. The world changes around people, all right, but human nature pretty much stays the same, absent a deep fundamental change is made. Again, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes due to circumstances around them. When I sought and obtained a job outside my home, my life changed dramatically. I became part of a large group of telephony employees who were like another family. Nowadays I seldom see most of them, but my fond memories remain. Dear Margaret Cobb, who trained a country girl who almost walked out when she saw that long switchboard, has gone to her well-deserved reward. As have others I worked with through the years. Change happens.

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    ‘Split tours’ and ‘late straights.’ If you recognize those terms you’re probably one of a vanishing sisterhood. A generation to whose hands  iPhones appear to be surgically attached have no conception of the history behind their most cherished possession. Once people did not carry in their hand or wear on their ear the means of  talking with someone on the other side of the world.
   After several years of being a stay-at-home mom, I decided to look for a job. I don’t remember how I hit on the idea of applying for a job as a telephone operator. At that time over a hundred operators worked overlapping shifts at the telephone company downtown. I called, was told to pick up an application and then call for an interview with the Chief Operator.
   The Chief Operator’s office opened off a long room filled with a constant buzz from women wearing bulky headsets, their hands in constant motion. I was ready to bolt from the building at my first sight of that long switchboard with its thousands of flashing lights and snaking black cords. But when she interviewed me the attractive dark-haired woman, who became a good friend, apparently saw something in me that told her I would be a good employee. She hired me.
   For training by patient soul, Margaret Cobb, I was paired with Donna, still my sweet younger friend, who yet labors in the vineyards of telephony. (Or may be retired by now. I need to get in touch.) Though always an introvert, preferring a book to interacting with people, I learned and even became a competent operator. An enjoyable part of the job was connecting to operators all across the country as we ‘built’ our long-distance circuits for calls. Some of them would try and keep us talking a bit longer to hear our southern accent. We handled ship-to-shore calls through marine operators and complicated ‘ring-down’ circuits to telephones in the deserts out west.
   Computers, fiber optics, cell towers, and orbiting satellites changed in a couple of decades the way our world communicates as completely as the internal combustion engine changed transportation a hundred years earlier.
 

Monday Musings,late-Worth More Than Money

The older I get, the more I know the truth of what I wrote in the column below. People are worth far more than material gain. Ask the lonely, the forgotten persons who sit home, wishing just to be able to exchange a few words with someone, anyone. Maybe this explains the great growth of various and sundry online groups, from support groups to dating sites. How fortunate and blessed I count myself to be that I may count dozens of people as friends. Some of many years standing. True, many are acquaintances not seen on a regular basis, but many I do see often. If you know someone who needs a friend, why not be that friend? I know I must do better at following my own advice >

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If I should someday make a lot of money from my writing, the money would not be what I'd value most about my adventures along that path. It would be the friends I've made. Without them, I probably would have given up long ago.

Before the flesh-and-blood writing colleagues who walk and stumble along with me, there were those I've never met in person. Like most who dream of seeing their scribblings in print, I huddled at home over typewriter and later computer, reluctant to expose my dreams to the light of day.

Then this wonderful medium of communication called the personal computer came upon the common scene. The first computers were only available to companies and could do the work of many warm bodies. Not so good. As a matter of fact they had a negative impact on my own job situation. But I fell in love with them anyway and when personal computers became available I had to have one. And then a whole new medium called the Internet sprang up, with instant connections to almost anywhere on the globe.

This included the ability for a writer to expose his or her writing to others with almost immediate feedback. You didn't have to wait weeks or months to be rejected by an editor at your target market. Classes and critique groups were, and are, also available to learn more in your chosen field of writing. I am so grateful for this exposure to online writers and teachers. Their acceptance gave me the courage to seek out flesh-and-blood writers to interact with in person.

A writing career is still about as easy as herding cats. You get tired of the battle and a voice whispers, 'Why don't you just give up.' That's when friends come in and encourage or push you along. I prefer to sit home and stare at the computer even knowing I should get out, talk, try to sell books. Two of those friends called and got me into two venues I'd never done, which I actually enjoyed. Even sold a couple of books. And made connections with new writers. Those friends didn't know what they'd done for me. But I do.

Friday Jottings-Rememberies

Is it the fall season or getting older that bids us look back and consider our past? It's been several years since I wrote the column below. The jar has gotten a little dusty. Life has gone on, I'm older and wiser. I hope. I keep busy with housework, church, writing guilds. Today I did something I used to do often, though it is not mentioned in the column. My mother had the greenest of green thumbs, and I inherited some of that skill. I once kept many houseplants, but let them go. I do like to keep an aloe plant or two around for its medicinal value. A dear friend gave me one a couple of years ago and it multiplied, I divided it into three pots and they became potbound also. I knew they must be divided again and now - eight? - eeek! If they survive I shall gift some of them. I now again have a row of plants in my front window. I've also been sewing a little again. What else will I dredge from the past, I wonder.

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Rememberies

A clear glass pumpkin-shaped jar sits on my desk, doubtless meant to hold cookies or some such. But I have crammed into it various mementoes that mark significant moments in my life.

Visible on one side of the jar is an old address label with my mother's name and last apartment address. More than thirty years after her death the poignant ache of loss lingers in my heart. I'm reminded of the hardships she endured, raising eight children in deep poverty, and am very doubtful that I could have done as well as she.

Peeking through the other side, my grandson's name tag from the family reunion Holston Valley Medical Center provided for babies who spent the first few days or weeks of their lives in the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit. I don't like to remember my fear at first sight of his tiny, mottled body after long, anxious moments waiting for the delivering doctor to bring him into view. Or his Lilliputian form as his Mom held him for brief moments, IV tubes in a matchstick arm, feeding tube in his button nose. Now a strapping father of two himself, he bears little resemblance to that preemie in the NICU incubator.

In the jar is a round piece of molded plastic, which covered an indicator lamp on the old cordboard where I began work as a telephone operator over thirty (edit: now, 45 years) years ago. The job that gave me not only independence, but growth and the realization that I was a person in my own right, not just wife, mother, caretaker of an aged parent.

A parking permit from the local community college symbolizes my long-delayed college degree, not fully earned until after retirement. An Allen wrench. I used it to assemble a large modular desk for my computer, ownership of which began another major turn for my life. A red and gold enameled keyring fob with a menorah and the word "Shalom" from my first and only trip outside of the US, to Israel.

A name tag from the Citizen's Police Academy class I took, seeking realism for my writing. Still another tag identifies me as facilitator for a home Bible Study. And finally one ringed with ivy leaves from a ten day writers retreat in North Carolina.

I found me at that retreat. I'm a writer. One who seeks to trade bits of myself for personal gratification and, occasionally, money, through essays and columns. I now have books as evidence that I'm a writer. Books won't fit into the jar, but the objects it holds show me the path I took to get to the place I am now. And they provide me with inspiration for further journeys on that path.

20 lb. kitten

When my grandson came to live with us late last fall, he brought along his cat, Monkey. A pretty gray striped tabby with some noticeable marking showing he has Siamese somewhere in his lineage. He was standoffish with me at first, would run when I wanted to pet him, never mind pick him up. And we have a loud-mouthed Chihuahua who wasn't about to give ground to a cat, even a cat bigger than her. She'd run at Monkey to let him know who was boss and he would run to my grandson's room.

Fast forward a few months, Monkey hangs around my office, loves to lie on my desk whenever there's room among all the papers and flotsam. If there's not room on the desk, he finds an empty box or something else of mine to lie on. At some point, if I'm working at the computer for a while, he'll get out of the box and come to my chair, meowing. If I don't pick him up immediately he'll paw at me to get my attention. Both arms are required for me to pick him up as he's about two feet long and heavy. Ever try to type while holding a 20 pound purring kitten on your shoulder?