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A Must Read from Barbara Rose Brooker

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Nothing Works

Barbara Rose Brooker

Jul 25 · 5 min read

hate technology.

Nothing works. I’ve done nothing today. Not only do I have virus anxiety, but the only thing that works is my TV, which is on twenty four seven, reporting the rise of virus cases, and deaths. Even Alexa isn’t working. When I shout “Alexa!” there’s silence. She’s not working.

Anyway, it’s the middle of the night and I hear loud talking. My heart racing, sure that there’s a break in, I press the 911 panic button on my phone. In fifteen minutes, three burly police officers with keys clinking from their belts, arrive at my apartment. Shaking, I’m ranting someone is in the apartment, hiding. “I heard talking! Someone is hiding!” I repeat.

“Hey! Lady! It’s Alexa,” sighs a tired looking officer, looking at me as if I’m nuts. “You need to get Alexa fixed!”

As the weeks pass in mostly quarantine, I spend hours on Google, taking notes on technology, calling tech friends with questions, but they always say they’re in the middle of a Zoom meeting.

Still, nothing works.

If I scramble eggs on my fairly new stove, the fire alarm goes off, and then the tenants run down the stairs, yelling “Fire!” Now they give me dirty looks. Not to mention my pandemic anxiety. Obsessively, I worry if I get the virus and end up dying, my poor fifty something kids will have to face time me to say goodbye, and in the middle of our conversation, an 800 number will interrupt our call and my phone will go dead.

My tech anxiety is so bad that I’ve doubled my shrink zoom sessions. Even sending an attachment, I break into a cold sweat. My printer doesn’t work and sometimes my TV sticks on Netflix and the same movie stays frozen. No matter what I do, what buttons I press on the several remotes, nothing works.

You have to understand that I’m from the typewriter generation. I yearn for my little pink business cards printed with one telephone number on it. Now business cards have lists of links and Apps.

As the pandemic rages, and my anxiety grows, I have a recurrent nightmare: I’m lost. I’m driving. It’s dark, the road is thin, and as I drive, the road is thinner, and below, a vast dark green ocean is ready to swallow me and the car won’t stop. My cell phone is attached to the little hook on my belt but it only has ten percent battery juice left in it, so I call 911. A recording comes on, and my phone dies. I wake shaking. I look at the vase filled with yellow roses my daughter sent and I smell the fog floating from the open window and I’m glad I’m alive.

Never will the world be what it was. You never can go back. But I need to work, make money, need to develop social networking skills. Zooming has replaced the telephone, skype, and e-mailing. Recently, I was zooming on this hot national TV show and the host was promoting my latest novel, when my land phone rang, and the computer screen went dark. The producer called on my cell phone, shouting that I have to shut the phones off and that I “fucked up” their show.

Today, I have a pitch meeting with an LA network producer. He and his colleagues are interested in one of my books for a TV series. I’ve been in this game many times but I’m a fame whore and I won’t give up.

I wear a turtleneck and weave two black ostrich feathers into my long brown silver streaked hair. I glam up. I take a deep breath. It’s time. I click the zoom link. Wham! The little green camera is lit. A blast of music. Boom! Bubsy Jacobs about forty something, thin as a pipe, stands next to a huge rocket ship. “I’m virtual.” He laughs.

The head producer they call Ro Ro, short for Rothman, says with a yawn, that the network “loves,” my project. I’m sure he has never read my book. He has a large face and tiny distracted eyes.

Epic Glassman, about thirty and gorgeous, in a bored monotone, gushes how much she loves Should I Sleep In His Dead Wife’s Bed, and that she read it “head to toe.” She pauses, her round blue eyes behind huge chic round glasses, glaring. “However,” she continues in her voice soft as a gnat, “ I would like to see your protagonist Heather do something besides look for love. Also, she needs to be …younger?” She presses her full pale lips, disapprovingly.

I take a deep breath. “Well, first, her name is Lisa. And I want to keep her at sixty-five. She’s a Phd psychologist, researching the sex lives of men over sixty. She wants more than work. She wants love and fights ageism and sexism.”

“How do we know this?” she asks, impatiently.

“It’s on the first page,” I reply. “You’re in her office. She has a patient. It’s right there.”

“Who do you see playing the part?“ Ro Ro asks quickly.

“Diane Keaton,” I reply.

“Too old,” Epic says, with a bored sigh.

“I agree,” says Ro Ro. “The old actresses are in Rehab or in assisted living.” Just as I’m about to reply that his reason is ageist and sexist, and that I won’t let the networks change my work, I realize that my audio is off and I can’t hear them, nor can they hear me, and their faces are frozen on my computer screen. Frantically, I’m looking for the un-mute tiny red arrow, but when I click the arrow, the screen goes black.

The pandemic rages on. My anxiety continues.

“Mom. I put money in your Venmo app,” says my daughter on the phone. “It’s a gift. You didn’t get your unemployment.”

“Venmo?”

“My husband put the app on your phone! The money goes directly into your account. It’s a three-hundred dollar gift. No one smart goes into banks anymore.”

“Wow, thank you, “I say, thinking I’ll have extra money this month.

The weeks pass and I’m thinking I have three hundred dollars extra in my account. Whoopee! I buy shampoo, books, a New Yorker membership. Until I check my Citibank account and not only am I overdrawn but checks bounced.

“It can’t. You made a mistake!” I shout at the customer service man. He has a heavy accent and I keep saying, “What? What do you mean the money isn’t there? I have Venmo. Citi Bank has to make this good!”

“Venmo is not a bank. Venmo transfers your money into your Citibank account. I will talk you through.”

“So why do I need Venmo?” I shout. “I could walk to the bank.”

“Bank closed. Pandemic.Now go to your venmo App. I help you.”

Perspiring , I try to follow him as he instructs me step by step. But when I press my password’s tiny letters , a Reset Password bar pops up. I’m not breathing.

“Try again,” he says,patiently. I try again.

Again.

Again.

Finally a little bar says you are now transferred to Citi Bank. You will receive an e-mail.

“Success!” he says. “You see. You can do it.”

Every day, I’m zooming, apping, instagramming. I go on the singles sites. Some dudes have passwords to get on their zoom accounts, others sit in virtual atmospheres, their faces strangely young as they use Google Virtual for to erase lines, bags, wrinkles.

Nothing works.

To be continued.

BarbaraRoseBrooker/author of her latest novel Love, Sometimes, published Feb 2020, Post Hill Press/Simon Schuster

Brooker is working on The Corona Diaries and Other Things. Her national TV appearances, and podcasts The Rant are on You Tube and www.barbararosebrooker.com

Barbara Rose Brooker

WRITTEN BY

Barbara Rose Brooker, author/teacher/poet/MFA, published 13 novels. Her latest novel, Feb 2020, Love, Sometimes, published by Post Hill Press/Simon Schuster.

Welcome BACK BASEBALL 2020

June 23, 2020

THE DAY THE MLB OWNERS AND TEAMS AGREED TO PLAY!

“Major League Baseball’s owners have approved a restart plan for MLB and, in keeping with the acrimony and suspicion between management and the players we’ve seen for the past three months, sent it as more or less an ultimatum to the players association. But it does mean the sport is coming back.”

 

I have always enjoyed the game of baseball.  I grew up in Detroit and my introduction to baseball was the Detroit Tigers.  Although we didn’t go to many games back in the day my Father either listened to the game on his AM Radio or we watched in on our Black & White TV.  During my teens, we lived in Minneapolis and I felt like a trader rooting for the Minnesota Twins, but Harmon Killebrew played for them and my dad’s name was Harmon, so became loyal to them only to feel torn when in 1968 we moved back to the home of the Tigers.

During my lifetime, I have lived in cities with other teams such as the Phillies, the Reds, and the Indians!  My first introduction to the Indians was in the late eighties or early nineties when they were still playing at Municipal Stadium.  My husband and I were invited by one of his clients to attend a game and party in a Logue.  Well everyone else partied (assuming the Indians would lose which was their pattern at that time,) I sat and watched the game rooting for the home team.

In 1994 as I traveled for business one night when I called home, my youngest son Alex who as 4 years old at the time informed me he was watching the Oreos on TV and he couldn’t talk to me.  After he hung up on me very abruptly I called back and his father told me that Alex was mesmerized by the baseball game and was intently watching it.  That was the beginning of true love in our home!  Ever since the summer evening, Alex has gravitated and absorbed the game that it is difficult not to enjoy his love for the purity of the sport.

COVID19 has hit us all hard and baseball not starting on time in March has been difficult on many (but it is very apparent here in our home.)  You see Alex always wanted to play baseball and despite the lessons he took and his knowledge of the game past and present, some obstacles (COACHES) stood in his way.  However, his dream has always been to work for the Cleveland Indians.  Two years ago that dream came true and although he is working his way through the system for him it’s not just working because when he is at Progressive Field he feels complete!

However, this horrible virus has meant he is out of work along with many others working for Major League team, however, he plans on returning when the opportunity avails itself.  Now that an agreement has been met he is all smiling because he will at minimum be able to follow his team and the sport he loves.  I too am smiling again because despite being from Detroit, and once rooting for Twins, Phillies, and Reds, my love and devotion go out to the Cleveland Indians.

I don’t want to wish the summer away but I cannot wait till they take the field at the end of July so I can, “Root, Root, Root for MY HOME TEAM.  GO INDIANS!

 

Terri-Lynn Pellegri Writes 6/14/20

Believe
I have to believe that we are all connected and continue to be, even when our bodies are no longer here…when we cease to breathe and our flesh is no longer alive with blood pumping through our veins. I have to believe that we somehow still communicate, have interplay, that our energies relate to one another in ways that we are not aware of. I have to believe that we all matter and that it matters what we do and how we live, and that we live. I mostly have to believe that loving matters, and that the energy that love generates, that our caring for one another, and our support for each other is necessary. I have to believe that the space in between one human being and the next is not a void or a distance…but an invisible glue that is our human connection. #saratoga #saratogasprings #love #lovematters #brother #create #creativephotography

It’s Getting to ME!

Like many of you, I did not expect that hunkering down would be easy, but I also did not expect my emotions to rise and fall numerous times during the day. However, my reality is more like living on a teeter-totter than a roller coast. When something sends me to the top, I feel my heart beating extra fast, numbness in my dangling feet, and tension in my arms as I hold on with a fear of heights and falling. Yet, when I lower myself and touch the ground, I feel as if I am being pushed down as my knees sink into my chest, and my head leans down, almost in a fetal position…
This is not how I expected to spend the Spring of 2020. As summer 2019 came to an end, I was making some positive life changes beginning with working out every day, developing better eating habits while finding an inner peace that helped strengthen my relationships, new and old. And then, one day, I hurt my knee, and the best-laid plans of this ‘chick’ changed overnight. Instead of working out, I was attending Physical Therapy. The weight loss and physical changes that I had made began to diminish and try as I may keep that positive attitude; it teased me with bouts of anxiety and depression.
2020 was to be the year to get my new bionic knee (total knee replacement) and return to daily workouts and redeveloping my positive plan. If you have been following my journey, you will know that I had surgery seven weeks ago, and yet I am not as recovered as I would have thought I should be or planned to be. I am having excessive nerve type pain in my knee to my ankle, and I am walking with a limp, which is throwing off my whole right-side, causing aches and pains. I think this discomfort is noticed more due to the limitations of the STAY AT HOME and BE SAFE PLAN.
This pandemic has touched all of us, and for some, it includes the loss of a parent, child, friend, or relation of someone you know. Trying to do what is right is simple, but it can feel painful, both physically and emotionally. The physical pain comes from the change in our routines, and that affects our emotional state as well. If you are like my family and me some days, you get inspired, and you do something active like cleaning out a drawer, reading a book, baking, or planting a garden.
Whatever it is, it most likely makes you feel accomplished, and that, in turn, raises your endorphins, increasing your wellness state.
It may not be easy to do something each day to provide this endorphin rush and try as I may do so, I find I am napping and vegging out, losing time to nothingness. Some nothingness is good for us, but too much can be infectious. It is not unusual for us to feel like we are riding the waves, and the rush may make us feel physically ill. However, we each have this opportunity to turn it into that “aha” moment. We can do something that erases the ills and leads us to health.
This pandemic time will end when it is supposed to end. We can do our part now to stay well, so when that day comes, we will walk out with pride and confidence for a better tomorrow.

Entertainment Should be Just That Entertainment (thanks Amy Ferris!)

Dear Hollywood,

How about no more disaster movies or bad reality shows with hosts who become Presidential candidates and decide to march us into hell, how about no more limited TV series that fill folks up with fear & worry & shaking in their boots – keeping humans under the covers for days on end. Please, no more crap about the end of the world and who’s gonna save us – fuck, man, no more of that. Please, no more dreck about millions of folks dying from pandemics and the apocalypse and for the sake of all fuck, no more movies where people are trapped in buildings and elevators and homes and cruise ships for weeks & weeks & weeks on end wishing they could see and touch and hug their loved ones. No more of that shit. No more. No more spending hundreds of millions of dollars on movies and TV series that could be spent on bringing humans joy and love and truth and a few hours of glory and grace into their hearts. There are so many fucking Heroes and SHEroes and Warriors and Goddesses and Mensches and WOmensches in the real world, so many, real ones, humans who put their lives on the line every single fucking day and none of them, not one of them, wears a cape. Those folks are wearing humanity straight out. Make movies about redemption because who the fuck doesn’t need to believe that their mistakes can turn into their mission – who doesn’t need that? Find those folks, make those movies. Make movies about the human condition – folks who scale mountains of rejections and piles of sorrow and make it to the other side and stand up tall and inspire the rest of us that we too can fulfill our dreams. People need to be inspired and encouraged – to believe in beauty and goodness again, to have hope, to find love; folks need to sit in a movie theater – or stare at their massive flat TV screen – and think: holy shit that IS me up there, that IS me. Make movies that fill humans with the belief that they too can change the world not because they need to be SuperHeroes but because they are SuperHearts.

Reality TV gave us trump, dumped him in our living rooms where he was firing folks without even so much a care in the world and look what he’s doing now – the same exact shit except we’re all paying the price of his cruelty and ignorance, and all those disaster movies – look, look… we’re all sitting in our homes wondering who we know who will die next from this horrific unbearable pandemic that is giving us all the heebie fucking jeebies, so how about throwing some compassion & hope our way, some good sexy humor, ROMComs and love stories where yes the people up on the screen are in their 50’s and 60’s and 70’s and the lines on their face are the lines we remember because they are us, how about making movies about the human spirit and the irrefutable magnificent power – the superpower – of humanity.

How about giving us some of that?

Best & warm,
Amy

REDEMPTION with Amy Ferris & Teresa Stack

2/6/20 Message from Amy:

Today, Teresa Stack & I begin our glorious Podcast journey… on REDEMPTION…which, yes, is coming soon! Thank you Karen Moss Hale!

We will have great guests on the show.

I am a firm believer that our mistakes can become our mission, that poison can be turned to medicine, that our scars are indeed our stardust & our blemishes are in fact our beauty marks. And no, I don’t believe all folks can be redeemed, but I do believe, with every fiber in me, that humans, and no, not all humans, can take their worst moments, their worst experiences and use those moments and experiences to inspire and encourage and enlighten others. I believe that through and through. We, humans, are capable of so much greatness and beauty. That our pain can help us understand another heart, that our failures make us stand taller so we become more determined, that our heartbreak can teach us how to love ourselves first and foremost and yes, become more compassionate. I believe that who I am in this world – who I am today – was born out of many mistakes, many fuck-ups, many fuck-downs, much pain, much heartbreak, and heartache; the bits and pieces, the edgy and the frayed, the lessons learned, the wrong turns, the one night stands, getting lost got me found. And getting found filled me with compassion and passion, determination and much beauty, and all of that makes me quite extraordinary. I imagine the very same for you.

So, today, love yourself more.
See the beauty in your life.
Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not worthy.

You are worthy.
So very worthy.

Please Be Kind!

Sharing:  http://postcoffeeprewine.com/posts-2020/

An Amazing Start for Sherapy

Today was an amazing day, the first of many Sherapy: Therapy with Sherry Amatenstein. Sherry is an NYC-based psychotherapist and author. Her podcast is a little unconventional for some. Still, it is becoming more traditional, especially to Millennials, as well as working professionals who want to participate in therapy but are limited on time and travel. Each episode of Sherapy is a 50-minute therapy session. The aim is to demystify and destigmatize psychotherapy. Too many people in distress still suffer silently. None of the participants are her private patients. On Sherapy, a person can receive complimentary therapy and remain anonymous. If interested, please contact Sherry at sherrymsw@earthlink.net

I am so excited to have Sherry Amatenstein on our podcast show real she may be heard by clicking on https://newclevelandradio.net/sherapy-real-therapy-with-sherry-amatenstein-3/real-therapy-with-sherry-amatenstein_podcasts/ – choose a streaming service to listen to this podcast.

Sherry Amatenstein (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) is the author of The Complete Marriage Counselor: Relationship Saving Advice from America’s Top 50+ Couples Therapists; Love Lessons from Bad Breakups; and Q&A Dating Book.

She writes advice columns for www.womansday.comwww.thirdage.com andwww.brides.com, and is frequently called upon to give relationship advice on many national radio and TV programs, including The Today Show, Early Show, Inside Edition, GMA Live, CBS News, and HuffPost Live.

I hope you will enjoy the show and learn more about yourself by listening to others share their journeys.

HIV – Is it Still REAL?

Amy Ferris, thank you for sharing your words.  In Memory of beloved cousin, Stuart Freedman Colby, you were loved by many and recognized for the kind and wonderful individual you were.  I think Stuart often and my heart hurts that he had to hide and live without the support of his parents. We all should live our lives to enrich the community we are all part of.

World AIDS Day- Amy Ferris

A day we remember those we loved & lost; friends and family, neighbors and co-workers, lovers and partners.
A day we stand up for and with – alongside – those we love & cherish who are living with HIV/AIDS.
A day we honor all the activists & all the warriors & all the human rights champions – all the extraordinary humans – all the men & women – who fight every single day of their lives against discrimination and the stigma; who showed us and taught us that silence is not golden – to be loud and noisy and to make a fucking ruckus.

Heroes and SHEroes all.

I raise my voice & my coffee cup in your honor.

#WorldAIDSDay #NeverForget #WarriorsWalkAmongUs

A Podcast Legacy_Share in the Memories


What is a podcast?  Why Should I list? Why would I want to create one?
A podcast is a digital recording. Here at newclevelandradio.net, we have several podcast hosts who record with us and place their recordings on our site that where it is distributed to various listening platforms such as iHeart, Spotify, Google, Spreaker, etc. Each podcast has a host, and I (Karen Hale) produce, engineer, and develop social media for each program.
Check out https://newclevelandradio.net/podcasting-line-up/
Gary Moss (https://newclevelandradio.net/jftsoi-taking-you-on-a-journey/) suggested to me that this would be an ideal platform for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends to share their legacy/life journey.
When Gary began podcasting with us, he had just started his 77 Sunset Trip, driving cross-country to play Scrabble™, meeting up with friends and family from the past as well as finding new and exciting individuals along the way. One such individual was a mechanic who fixed Gary’s car during his travels for under $5 (who would have thunk?)
This is when our proverbial wheels started to turn. We all have so much to share (not the FAKE NEWS,) but the journeys we have taken in life and our experiences that have helped influence us and others. So with the assistance of Gary in Southern California, and specifically in his Senior Citizen community, we are offering this service to YOU!
What a great holiday gift this is for your family as well as for others.
Too often, we forget that our elders have the wisdom to share by leading us down the path they have traveled. The stories they will bestow will enlighten as they explore their past. The history recorded will allow them to leave behind their thoughts and wishes. A podcast will provide them the venue to remember and share their memories guiding us all through our tomorrows.
Contact newclevelandradio@gmail.com for more information or jftsoi.moss@gmail.com