Note the date: April 22, 2018. It's
EARTH DAY
Google started you off, if you were as lucky as I am, with a brief video of Jane Goodall chatting about the importance of every single person every single day on this earth. She clarified the point I was planning to make with this belated blog. My last entry was April 20 but so much has happened this week, up to a blogging achievement, that I must start back with a blow-by-blow - no - blog-by-blog account of the Week That Was. Implicit in this (b)log will be the reason(s) I didn't write sooner.
1) First (last Tuesday), I attended a jury-luncheon during which two judges decided the winner (plus second and third runners-up) of a playwriting contest for Senior Playwrights, not emerging, not submerging, just struggling to keep their heads above water without a Flotation Device. I was one of the judges, also these days without an FD, but still breathing after all these years. The other judge, also a woman but much younger than I, is a meticulous, careful, thorough, gifted person who follows the guidelines of the contest and sets the standards for our discussion. We have met on this jury two or three times before. I'm easier-going than she is, sort of going along with everything as long as we are roughly on the same page/script, but I have stricter guidelines than those of the contest - stricter but softer, with allowances for creative deviance. After which, I mean, after the allowances have been granted, I am not so amenable, adamant, in fact. It took us longer to discuss than to eat, and we're not through yet. More of that later.
2) Feast or famine. definitely a feast day. After lunch, I had time at home to change and dress for a Donor Award Night staged by Community Living#
#Community Living Toronto changes
the lives of people with an intellectual
disability by giving them a voice and
supporting their choices where they
live, learn, work and play.
My son, Matthew, has been under the wing of Community Living for well over 30 years and I have tried in my small way to offer my support and gratitude for the blessings and care he has received. I was surprised - astonished - to be invited to the first Donor Awards Night honouring ordinary workers-in-the fields, just relatives not philanthropists, ordinary like me. I took Matthew, and he knew more people than I did: other 'clients' like him, whom he has encountered in the course of his long association with CL.
It was a lovely evening but I was tired before it was over.
3) By 8:30 the next morning I was registering and getting my name tag (second name tag in as many days) for the third annul all-day conference ("Maintaining Creativity") presented by CSARN.#
#Originally known as the Canadian Senior Artists’ Resource Network, CSARN was created to assist professional artists to keep active and creative as they age. ( www.csarn.ca)
The theme this year was RELEVANCE, very apt, very necessary.
I would like to be relevant, need to be relevant, trying hard to be relevant. I do keep on writing, as you know, but I am having increasing difficulty with the selling. You also know, because I have commented several times, that I feel like a duck in a shooting gallery with all my contemporaries and cohorts being shot out from around me, not only family and friends, dentists and doctors, but also publishers, editors, producers, dramaturgs, agents and reviewers/critics (they are dwindling for other reasons and getting hungry). But I'm all alone up here and the air is getting thin. And now, thank goodness, there is CSARN.
You can readily see where I fit into this one. All us old folks have different problems but the common denominator is age. I am pretty healthy so I don't need to use the resources of SCAP (Seniors' Care Advisory Program). The last item on the agenda dealt with Housing and I am fortunate there because I own my place, mortgage-clear. (The service fees do keep rising and my income does keep dwindling but, as I have said, I am keeping my head above water - so far.)
Anyway, I left early and went home to lie down. I told you, I'm old.
4) The next day was a LOST DAY. I'm sure you have a few. I'm not sure what I did, oh, yes, catching up on the (London) TLS (Times Literary Supplement). Lots of paper! I have one more script to bring up to speed and then I will immerse myself in paper as I gather and collate my files for their ascendancy to the Archives of the University of Manitoba. Ascendancy or apotheosis? Better than a dumpster, and very fitting, considering that this is Earth Day.
Now for my blogging achievement, also fitting for Earth Day: this morning I became a great-grandmother!
Suddenly I feel very relevant.