Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – From Me!

October 31, 2006

A Wonderful Sense of Community

Carol Roach

I was sitting at the computer half in a daze and hoping that flu bug would leave me for sweeter pastures.  At that moment in time I was typing an answer to email I received from Pamela Tyree Griffin here on gather. The computer just froze on me.  Having that happen to me before, I was not all that concerned and tried rebooting.  However, the system did not boot up.  I got crazy messages such as some software was not found.  I turned around and looked at my son and said "something is wrong with the computer." He jumped up and tried to fix the computer.  He then said the dreaded words I was hoping that I was not going to hear, "The hard drive is gone."

About a month ago he warned me that the hard drive was about to give out.  But what could I do, I did not have any money to replace it.  I am still looking for a job without any success.  I said to him at that time, "well if the hard drive goes, that is it I am off the computer.  I have no means of getting it fixed."  And now that dreaded day had arrived.

I panicked, internally though, because if I am stressed and show it, my son gets stressed and let's just say you wouldn't want to be in my household at that time.  Thoughts kept running through my mind, "How am I going to contact all my internet friends?  How am I going to get my newsletter out? What about gather and the birthday club – how can I let my friends down like this? It truly is sad when the major part of your social life is cyber friendships. 

It was my choice, I preferred my cyber friends to my real world friends; many of whom were no longer people that I had much in common with anyway.  I used to be much more socially oriented before I met Matt and then not by choice but by divine fate, I guess, we both just preferred the company of each other and occasionally the company of a few close friends.  Faced with the thought of "no Internet", at this moment in time, it became apparent that choice no longer was a good one.  I was cut off from my life's blood; I was cut off from humanity.

Of course I still had my telephone, but because of years of customer service work and taking over one hundred calls a day, I no longer wanted to go near a telephone especially if it was just for the purpose of socializing. So I resigned myself to watching Television. 

I did get to see some real good movies that I would never have watched because my face was permanently glued to the computer screen. But in between the movies, I was only half watching the programs, the other half of the time I was thinking about how to contact my friends on the net and how I never backed up my work and everything was lost. 

I couldn't remember exactly when I backed up the info the last time. I knew it had to be sometime in August.  I was horrified; the amount of work that I just lost was incredible. I had made corrections to my manuscript, Angels Watching Over Me, and the only person in the world who had those corrections was Pamela G here on gather.  If she deleted them, I was out of luck.  I had hundreds of stories and poems saved up in the queues for publishing at Storytime Tapestry.  I had the gather birthday list that I had spend hours on, of course my "favourites" that were bookmarked and my personal email address book. Everything was lost forever. My stomach was in knots; trust me on this one, it had nothing to do with the flu.

My son was looking for the best value on hard drives and said we had to have a burner to copy s so that he could get it up and running again. Something about it was the only way he could get the computer to work.  Apparently there is something wrong with the computer besides being old and he can only reformat and reinstall using the burner.  We did have a copy of the operating system XP. At least I am fortunate enough in not having to pay for repairmen as my son is pretty good with computers.  He figured the cost to repair my computer would be roughly $250.00. 

But when it came time to reinstall windows XP, we suffered yet another setback.  The disc was damaged and we could not use it.  Nobody I knew had windows XP or so I thought.  I asked Matt and he said he had windows 98 and everyone else said that they did not have any discs, the operating system was already loaded into their computer when they bought it. My son then decided that we needed to purchase windows XP update.  We could never afford the full version which cost $400.00 but we could try to find the money to buy the update which cost $133.00.  So now the $250 has just jumped up to roughly $400.00.

I went down the list of all the people I know who could help me with this financial disaster.  I came up empty. Everyone refused.  They said to me, "You are not working, so how will you ever afford to pay us back?" I hesitated about asking Matt, I knew he was in a financial bind himself. If I borrowed from him it would mean that he would no longer have the money to pay the gas bill or another personal bill of his own. 

The crash happened on Wednesday October 18, and by the Friday I was climbing the walls.  I just had to have my computer back.  I needed to stay in contact with everyone I loved and missed so terribly. 

I was pleasantly surprised when on Friday, October 20, I received a long distance telephone call from my dear friend Rosanne Catalano, a Storytime Tapestry member and a gather member as well.  She was very worried about me and wanted to know what was going on. My emails were bouncing back.  I explained the situation and she promised to get word out to the few people. These people were Paula Booher of Storytime Tapestry and gather, Mark Crider of Storytime Tapestry.  I knew that both of these people would be very worried about me.  They are my dear sweet friends. 

Paula took it one step further and between her and Rosanne they managed to get word out to the gather community. I did not have the email of Clara Wersterfer, my moderator for Storytime Tapestry readily available as it was locked away in my useless computer hard drive but I managed to get it from information and explained to her what was going on.    

Clara the angel that she is also wrote Mark Crider and a few other people.  She sent out emails on Storytime Tapestry and let my members know what was happening and asked for donations to help me out. 

Both Rosanne Catalano and Clara Wersterfer called me daily and gave me updates on what was being done and stood by me throughout this horrible ordeal.  I owe so much to these two wonderful ladies.  Clara even sent me a contribution through western union.

By the 25th of October, Clara told me that Mark Crider would be looking in his office to see if they had an extra computer. After I got off the phone with Clara,  I had a knock on my door and guess what, the people who refused to lend me money, came to the door with the hard drive, burner and windows update that I previously said I needed.  They went to Future Shop themselves and purchased it for me but I would have to pay them back A.S.A.P.

I received another surprise long distance phone call the very same night.  A man by the name of Travis B from gather called me all the way from Dallas, Tx.  I did not know this man but he said he was a member of the gather community and he had some software he could send me.  He had a hard drive, licensed copy of Windows XP, and a version of Microsoft word.  He asked me if I could use it and that he was willing to send it to me by UPS.  I was jumping for joy, it looked like my computer problems were coming to an end.  I would have everything I needed to get my computer set up again. Travis said this was his one good deed for the year and I am so grateful to him for being the recipient.

I was curious to find out how Travis got my number and he said he got it from Kathryn Esplin-Oleski. I figured that Travis was a friend of Kathryn's and she just happened to know that he had some computer stuff available that might help me.  I knew that it had to be either Rosanne Catalano or Paula Booher who had notified Kathryn, thus creating a support chain.

At this point in time I did have the hard drive, and DVD burner and a useless copy of Windows Update as I explained to Travis, whom I kept calling Trevor for some strange reason.  Travis told me to take back the update and get my money, I wouldn't need it anymore.  Unfortunately since the package was opened, I couldn't exchange it.

The call from Travis came in late in the evening and still later, I was speaking to Matt who told me to come and pick up the windows 98 the next day. I arrived at his office early in the morning.  Matt didn't have windows 98, instead he had a Windows XP CD. He didn't even know he had windows XP.  I wasn't about to refuse it. This was what I wanted from the beginning!

By October 26th, I was partially functionally.  I did not have a windows program yet to see what I had lost in terms of word files, but I was able to connect to gather and get out my emails.  Imagine my surprise when I checked into the birthday club and found out that Kathryn had started a donation drive for me.  I had no idea.  In fact I said to Travis the night before that I didn't know I would be missed by so many people. 

I started to cry when I read all the comments submitted by the gather community. Most were so heartfelt and some were down right funny; just the right medicine for poor stressed out me.  Kathryn is graciously donating the points accumulated from her plea for help along some of her own money to help me out.  When I contacted her she mentioned another member will be donating some money too.  I am sorry I didn't get the member's name but as soon as I find out this info I will in turn be thanking her personally from the bottom of my heart as well.

I returned to gather on the 26 of October and by the 27th I had gotten my hands on a copy of MS office.  I began playing catch on gather emails and Storytime Tapestry work.  As I feared, I lost loads of info for Storytime Tapestry and I have to rebuild the newsletter.  Everything from the end of August onward was lost.  The damage for gather and the birthday club was less severe.  I just have to reconstruct the birthday club list of gather member's birthdays – it is doable.

I want to thank the gather community from the bottom of my heart.  I never expected such an outpouring of love and support.  I figured I was just a small fish in a big ocean.  I now know that I might be a small fish but a very important one.  Gather is by far the best online community that I have ever participated in.  I may be poor and not have money but I am rich in friendship and love.

Thank you my  Storytime Tapestry and Gather angels.

Carol Roach

winterose@videotron.ca

A Native of Montreal, Quebec, Carol is a graduate of Concordia, and McGill University.  She holds a bachelor in psychology and a Masters in counselling psychology.  Carol Roach is a published writer and newsletter editor.  You can purchase her book: Picking up the Pieces: A Woman's Journey at www.publishamerica.com, or www.amazon.com.  You can also go to your local bookstore and order it there as well.  Be sure to quote the isbn number: 1-4137-1921-X for local purchases:  Carol’s second book: Angels Watching Over is currently looking for a home. Stay tuned for details. 

If you are interested in other stories feel free to join her newsletter: Storytime Tapestry at: http://subs.zinester.com/98907 , or email her directly at winterose@videotron.ca and she will be glad to accommodate you.  Carol enjoys email and responds to every inquiry.