I am pleased to feature Audrey Mitchell as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Audrey has been a member of the “Me, Myself & I” memoir-writing class for 11 years. The class was cancelled indefinitely last March, but Sharon Kramer  (another writer in Audrey’s class) generously volunteered to start (and lead) the “Me, Myself and I” memoir-writing class for fellow writers on Zoom. Sharon is a graduate of the online Beth Finke Memoir Teacher MasterClass, and Audrey assists her by collecting everyone’s contact information and emailing updates to all so we can keep in touch. This being Thanksgiving weekend, I thought it a good time to share this essay Audrey wrote about something she is particularly thankful for.

That’s Audrey being recorded for a video about the class.

by Audrey Mitchell

One Beatle’s song that resonates with me and brings a smile to my face every time I hear it is, “With A Little Help From My Friends.” The title suggests what friends are for. During good times for fun and frolic, yes, but they are also there when you really need them. It is a choice…they don’t have to be there,, but they are there because they want to be there.

The lyrics imply that you are earnestly going to try to do your best. But what if you don’t? What if you’re sad? What if you’re alone? What if you sing out of tune? Will your friends still be there?

Well, the song asks those questions, but I think the answer is a given…that a friend will be there for you under any circumstances.

So here we are, doing hard times in this damn pandemic. Where are my friends? There they are… keeping in touch, listening to my angst, allowing me a pass on my misgivings… and, finally, giving me hope.

You guys, my friends of the “Me, Myself & I” memoir-writing Class are like best buds. You write essays that make me smile, cry, listen, and become fulfilled. You have saved me, and we have saved each other. We faithfully meet every Tuesday, writing for us, reading for us, sharing our thoughts. And when some of us cannot write? We are patient and encouraging and wait for them to write when they can. We get by, we get high, and we’re gonna keep on trying…all thanks to help from our friends. The line about getting high doesn’t necessarily refer to us having a toke together, but it does mean that being in each other’s company brings on a natural high.

Did I say thanks? I will now.

Thanks, friends.

here’s some happy news: the Chicago Public Library contacted me last month to see if I’d be willing to lead a three-part memoir-writing workshop on Zoom. Thanks in large part to writers in my ongoing memoir writing classes who encouraged – and continue to help – me feel comfortable using Zoom, I could, with confidence, say, “YES!”The three-part memoir workshop is intended for people who are just starting to think about memoir-writing, anyone anywhere can attend, the first of three 30-minute sessions starts December 2 (a week from today) and best of all: the entire three-week session is free! Here’s the info:

A Memoir Writing Workshop Series

Author, journalist and teacher, Beth Finke shares the craft of memoir and first-person narratives in this writing workshop. Unlike autobiography, memoir doesn’t have to include every part of one’s life, only the moments that are most significant. Through discussions, observation exercises, and writing prompts, Beth will explore the ways friends, family, celebrations, milestones, moments and place can be catalysts for unlocking memories and uncovering stories.

How to Attend

This event takes place on Zoom. Register here and you will receive an email with a link to the secure Zoom meeting about 24 hours before the meeting.

Dates and Times

Each workshop is 30 minutes long. We’ll Zoom from 1:30 to 2 pm on the following Wednesdays:

Wednesday, December 2

Wednesday, December 9

Wednesday, December 16

Questions about attending online events like these at CPL? Check out the Chicago Public Library Events faq page.

Zoom you later!

A friend of ours once said, “I don’t want to be alive after the last person who lived before there was television is gone.” He’s no Marshall McLuhan, but he gets it—the medium is the message, and the message is not all that great. More of a pollutant.

Diana, The Crown, Windsor, The Great British Baking Show. Enough with Anglophilia!

Smart phones, tablets, even computers—they’re all a form of TV. Once TV was unleashed on the world, its narcotic effect drove us to want more phosphorescent screens with moving images, in more places.

I listen to more radio than ever—partly a function of living with a person who is blind. There’s a ton of smart stuff on the radio, and I wouldn’t have known it if Beth wasn’t such an avid listener.

I don’t watch TV news. I don’t like Fox and I don’t like MSNBC or CNN. That we’re clutching our pearls about social media’s influence is a little quaint—after all it was cable news that invented the twitchy, nervous, fearful, desperate, reactive news cycle. It perfected bottom-of-the-screen crawlers that read: Breaking News: Election Still too Close to Call. (Breaking news: there’s no news! But keep watching!)

And now we have streaming. Which is just TV on steroids. It better feeds the addictive quality of screens. In the past, we had to be present on Tuesday evening when “St. Elsewhere” was on, or hope we catch it in reruns in the spring. Otherwise, well, we didn’t see it. Now, we can binge watch. We can have anything we want when we want it. Sort of.

The volume of stuff is off the charts, and to distinguish themselves, more and more programs seem to have jumped the shark before their first episodes. A high school teacher turned drug kingpin. A money launderer moves to Missouri. It’s like craft beer: “This IPA is insanely hoppy.”

“Oh, well, our IPA is more insanely hoppy, and it has avocado!”

Then there is the sort-of-historical stuff, the worst of the ilk being docudramas about the British royals. We have a friend in Britain who rails against the royals. And against Americans fetishizing them. It’s as if he’s saying, “Don’t encourage them!”

Couldn’t agree more. But then, against my better judgment, Beth persuaded me to turn on The Crown. Everybody loves it. They talk about it on Fresh Air. We have nothing better to do, so I think, why not be like the cool kids?

If you’re waiting for something about a change of heart, don’t hold your breath. I’ll take St. Elsewhere, or LA Law, or hell, The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

I’ll just say my favorite part of The Crown was the warning that was superimposed with the program’s audience rating: I read it out loud without providing context for Beth—as I am wont to do with odd billboards and other curiosities. It’s a bad habit in any situation, but especially when you live with a person who can’t see. Beth squints, trying to understand. And then I explain myself.

“Sex, nudity, language, smoking,” I said. She squinted. I had no explanation.

The irrepressible Regan Burke, author of “In That Number.”

I am pleased to feature author Regan Burke as our Saturdays withSeniors guest blogger today. News stories this month inspired me to assign “Transition Team” to her writing class this past week. “Focus on a significant change in your life,” I told them. “Who helped you through?” The long-awaited publication of Regan’s memoir In That Number: One Woman’s March From the Streets of Protest to the Halls of Power motivated her to write this 500-word gem about transitioning from a life of chronic pain to her life now as a successful published author, and the team of doctors, writers, bookstores, friends and editors who helped along the way.

by Regan Burke

A few years ago I finally transitioned away from chronic pain through bibliotherapy. Dr. John Stracks, the CEO of my Bibliotherapy Transition Team, introduced me to the writing-for-healing workbook, Unlearn Your Pain. One of the book’s first lessons asked me if I had any particularly stressful or traumatic events in my childhood. If I answered yes to that little ditty, my next assignment was to describe any of the following:

• deaths
• moves
• taunting
• teasing
• emotional or physical abuse
• changes in schools
• changes in family situations

Every time I completed a paragraph, pain slipped away. Not only from the sciatica ripping down my leg but also from the stenosis at the base of my backbone that had been squeezing the life out of the nerves in my spinal canal. The mysterious agony of fibromyalgia began to subside as well.

I was writing away my pain.

The next part of my transition team came with a memoir writing group. On my first day I came with no writing of my own and listened to stories about the family cat, road trips to the West and baking cookies with Grandma. My stories were about an alcoholic family that turned out alcoholic children. I had no fond memories of family vacations or beloved family pets. I slid out of that classroom into the endless dark corridor. A class member caught up to me and urged me to come back the following week.

“I can’t write like that,” I said, “my writing is too dark.”

“Everyone has their own story to tell. Come back and tell yours.”

And so I did. My classmates read their written stories out loud. I heard my words fall loosely on the table in front of me. Shame kept me from lifting them up and out. Pain relief continued at a more dramatic pace as I wrote and shared stories of my distressed childhood. A year or so in, my words managed to reach across the table to the writing teacher, then to Veronica, then down one side of the table and up the other. I created my own blog and posted my weekly writing for public view. Public!

Readers nurtured me with their comments, wanting more. More!

“You should write a book,” friends said.

“A book?” I said. “Never thought of it.”

And then I did.

Writing teacher Beth Finke included one of my stories in her memoir, Writing Out Loud. When I submitted a writing sample to Tortoise Books, publisher Jerry Brennan emailed, “I heard you read your story from Beth Finke’s book at the Book Cellar. Send me your manuscript.”

Manuscript? I had written 500 words a week for four years, but I didn’t have a manuscript. Beth told me to find a big room, spread all my stories out, then pick them up one by one in chronological order and number them. “Then you’ll have a manuscript,” she said.

From Jerry Brennan’s edits, I revised, revised, revised. Each sentence brought its own ache. This twenty-five-year old physical torment transitioned to an end with the final chapter of In That Number.

I have enormous gratitude for all those beautiful and gracious souls in my transition team.

You can order any of the books mentioned in this blog at your favorite bookstore, and learn more about In That Number at www.reganburke.com. And mark your calendars: Regan will be on WBEZ-FM with Reset host Justin Kaufmann this Thursday, November 24 at 11:20 a.m. Chicago time. Outside of Chicagoland? Just tell your Smart Speaker to “play WBEZ.”

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If you’ve had a personal experience with COVID, it changes how you view it. Having had a very personal experience with it back in March, it’s been maddening and infuriating to watch our country go without a national policy, and to watch so many of my fellow citizens behave in selfish and reckless ways.

As a consequence, it’s sadly very clear that if you don’t personally know someone who’s had it, you will. And sooner, rather than later. And that first friend or family member will be at the top of a growing list. I’d lay money on it.

Planning a Thanksgiving get-together? Use this nifty tool from Georgia Tech. Click the number attending then hover over your town or county. And afterward, maybe thing again.

We know a fair number of people who have tested positive and many have fallen seriously ill. In the beginning, we chalked it up to city life and a dense population. I’d been going to the office as usual before contracting it, often taking the subway. My daily life simply made me more vulnerable.

But we’re clearly in a new stage. The rest of the country, rural or not, is catching up. And it terrifies me. Our list of friends who’ve had it increased by two last week, one of them from the Chicago suburbs, the other downstate. They’re both health care workers who have been meticulous in their anti-COVID protocols and have escaped until now.

In one case it infected our friend and her colleagues in her clinic, leaving their department strained. The outbreak was traced to an intern who’d done a shift, and who, for some insane reason, had attended an in-person training. Apparently, a good many of the participants had also tested positive.

Our other friend has been on the front lines for a major regional medical provider. That’s including administering COVID tests, and tending to sick COVID kids who’d contracted it on spring break. She’d sort of assumed it was inevitable, and even took a B&B to avoid bringing it home to her family. She miraculously avoided contracting it—until a week or so ago. She got pretty sick but the virus has cleared and the worst symptoms have subsided—except for the smothering, lingering fatigue. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. It was a slog just getting out of bed every morning. I’d wake up, have a coffee, feel pretty good and work at my computer and then…90 minutes later BAM! Napping wasn’t a luxury, it was mandated by my body. And then, it was murder getting out of bed again, and repeat.

Don’t let uninvited guests join your Thanksgiving.

Our doctor friend is experiencing that now. But she has to go back to work tomorrow. Because the provider she works for is down 200 staff to COVID right now.

And it’s going to get worse. How much worse depends on us. As I wrote in an earlier post, “Let’s take care of the people who take care of us.”

We’ve been using a little app called Marco Polo to send video messages back and forth with distant friends for the past few weeks. One of them told us that she was agonizing about whether or not to go home for Thanksgiving for a planned gathering. Her sister was adamant that they both should stay away. And she issued a pretty effective warning she’d heard:

Don’t let your Thanksgiving celebration cause Christmas funerals.

PS: It’s not the flu. Just ask Chicago Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens.

PS #2: It’s not the flu. Just ask R&B performer Jeremih.