I’ll spare you the gory details. Suffice it to say that my new/old PC now lies smoldering in the dust heap, while I type this on my spanking new Macbook Pro. But I couldn’t leave the PC world behind entirely, no indeed. After all, the wheels of the publishing industry turn on PCs. It’s comply or die. So I solved my dilemma with a MAC program that allows me to run a virtual PC in my MAC. It’s literally two computers in one, and I’m loving it. I feel like I’ve awakened from a sweating, gripping nightmare to see the sun peeking over the horizon and hear the birds chirp.

All this has got me thinking. Just how and when did my life became so interconnected with computers, the Internet, and email? Just when did my entire day get flushed down the loo if my computer froze or had to spend a week with Dr. PC? Anymore my days consist of dozens of emails, electronic manuscripts, copyedits in WORD, htmls and pdfs and jpgs and tifs, chirps and tweets. In fact, there’s so much techno “support” for my career that I can hardly get any writing squeezed in there.

I’ve begun to pine for the good ol’ days, days when authors used ink pots and quill pens. When they didn’t have spell checker and actually had to get off their butts to pull the dictionary off the shelf. Mary Shelley was only twenty years old when she finished her novel, FRANKENSTEIN. As the story of its creation goes, it was a contest between friends as to who could write the scariest story. (Apparently they were holed up in some villa near Lake Geneva. The weather was nasty.) Now mind you, the contest was not who could watch the most movies, or who could post the most tweets, or who could text the fastest, but who could write the scariest story. Kind of scary when you think about it. A whole bunch of people choosing to go to their separate rooms and simply write. With old-fashioned ink on old-fashioned paper. Probably illumined by the light of an oil lamp. On a hard chair.

Thinking of Mary Shelley, I sometimes wonder if I’ve lost my center. Any time a piece of machinery can hold the key to my happiness/success/productivity (circle one), then something’s seriously out of whack. I don’t know the answers. I’ll think about it. I think it’s all tied up with future progress somehow. Like we’re all headed somewhere important and only computers can take us there. Meanwhile, I’ve got some tweeting to do. And laundry. But this evening I think I’ll kick back and read FRANKENSTEIN. Should be easy enough. After all, it’s on my Kindle.

But the real reason has been brewing for more than forty years. When I was a little girl, for some reason, the name “Africa” seemed to quiver with mystery. It was remote, exotic, and foreboding. . . . I’m not alone in my mysterious imaginings. Historically, Africa was known as the “dark continent,” not because of the dark skin of the inhabitants, but because the interior was so inaccessible that the Western World really didn’t know much about it beyond its boundaries. Though calling Africa the “dark continent” today is definitely not PC, and though the interior of Africa has long since been explored and exploited, the continent is still shrouded in mystery, conjuring up images of adventure, danger, and “other world-ness”. At least it did for me as a child.

Today, Africa is a continent in turmoil. I could go on and on about its troubles, but I’ll just mention one here that is germane. Due to AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases, there are currently over twenty million orphans in Africa. It is estimated that by the year 2010, there will be fifty million orphans. Africa is in the throes of a vast humanitarian crisis– a crisis that will only worsen unless the world awakens to its cry.

I first visited Africa in 2007. I’d agreed to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with a friend of mine, Connie. But while we made plans, checked schedules, and tightened the straps of our backpacks, something kept bothering me. How could I just waltz into Africa (Tanzania), climb the mountain, and then leave with only a “thank you very much”? Didn’t I have a responsibility to effect positive change? Didn’t I have a responsibility, as Emerson wrote, “to make one life breathe easier”? This was the continent that had beckoned me all my life. Perhaps there was a deeper reason for that beckoning, a purpose beyond curiously fathoming its mysteries.

I began to search for volunteer opportunities — you know the kind: fly in for a couple of weeks, teach at a school, sing songs, clap, smile a lot, and then show’s over. The schools were pristine, the uniforms pressed and gleaming-white, the students smiling and healthy. While this was all well and wonderful, I felt a deeper calling. After more searching, digging the dregs of the internet, we discovered a small, grassroots organization called the “Marilyn Orphans Projects Foundation,” founded by Zambians and Tanzanians. This ragtag group of nobodies went around building schools for orphans, staffing them with volunteer teachers, and putting orphans (yatima) in the care of kindly widows (wajani). This ragtag group had nothing and yet they were making a difference. Their vision, their passion, moved me to tears. I signed on to volunteer and managed to talk my husband, Carl, and my friend, Liza, into going with me. By this time, I no longer desired to climb the mountain.

We spent two weeks there. No running water, no electricity, no clean uniforms, no nothing except the extreme need of the orphans and the heartfelt goodness of the adults who were trying to help. We came home exhausted, but on fire. They needed our help and we were going to give it.

Since 2007, the three of us have founded a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit charity called Orphans Africa (www.orphansafrica.org).We have helped to construct three schools, each at various stages of development, educating several hundred students. In just a few short weeks, the dormitories will be finished in one of the schools, and we will then be able to house forty orphans. We have sent hundreds of books and countless school supplies and equipment. We’ve planted hundreds of trees on 80 acres donated by the Tanzanian government and will soon break ground on a self-sustaining K-12 school where orphans will learn agriculture and animal husbandry. Someday the orphans will be able to raise food to put on their table, while selling the excess in the market. Someday it is even our dream to send the most academically inclined orphans to university, and others to our on-site vocational training school, to help them become productive leaders and members of a struggling society. We have big plans.

In a few short weeks, we leave again — Carl, Liza, and me (Connie’s coming too — but later). This time we’ll travel to interior Tanzania, near Zambia, where it is even more primitive. There is little infrastructure, no medicine, no running water, and no electricity. Communication is by word of mouth, by bicycle, or if you’re lucky, a rickety car. Once there, we’ll meet with community leaders and revisit our strategies for the orphans. It is our hope to see new buildings rise out of the dust, witness hope spring anew on tired faces, and to see lives transformed. It’s the highest mountain I could possibly climb.

Climate change is a hot topic, and in this legislative session, it was no exception. I signed in, slapped a neon green environmental sticker on my sweater, and then opened the door to the chamber. It was wall-to-wall people; standing-room only. Big industry representatives were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with us “greenies.” There was nothing for it but to wade my way through while apologizing profusely until I found a few feet of unclaimed floor space. Lo and behold, there was Governor Gregoire just ten feet away speaking to the House Ecology and Parks Committee in support of the bill. When she made a particularly potent statement in support of tougher environmental controls, us greenies burst into joyful applause. The representatives on the committee looked a bit taken aback, as if they hadn’t noticed us greenies until that moment, squished together as we were, plastered with neon green. (Perhaps we were leprechauns that had magically popped over from Ireland.)

I stayed for several hours, long after the governor had left with her entourage of security officers. I didn’t give any speeches (although it was allowed). I didn’t refute any arguments. I wasn’t brilliant in any way, other than nodding my head at just the right times. But, I was there. I showed my support in a tangible way. I showed my support at a time when big business overwhelms us little guys who are just trying to make a difference in the world, for the world.

Afterward, when I walked up the marble steps and craned my neck to gaze up at the huge dome, I was overwhelmed to once again realize what a great country we live in. To be a little person (even a green little person), and yet to have the right to step into the place where laws are made, where futures are determined, and make my views known . . . this is what makes America great. Maybe even St. Patty would have been proud.

There was a time when, if someone called you a “rascal,” you would have run them through with your sword to avenge your honor. Now though, we just laugh with incredulity that anyone would use such a word. “A rascal!? Oh, ho ho, ha ha. That’s rich. Ha ha ha!”

We accept the evolution of words as part of the language territory. But researchers in the U.K. have used a supercomputer to determine that certain everyday words are already on their way out. Words like guts, squeeze, dirty, stick, bad, push, turn, wipe, and stab, will likely not be with us a thousand years from now. I don’t know about you, but this bad news makes my guts squeeze! No push? No stab? No wipe? No sticks and stones will break my bones?

I think it’s a pity we don’t use words like rascal anymore. And to think of “squeeze” following in “rascal’s” footsteps, well, it makes me mournful. Just how on earth then, would we ask for fresh-squeezed lemonade? “May I have some of that soothing liquid made from fresh lemons that have been chopped in half and mashed down on a pointy thing so that the juice squirts out?” (And since words like “fresh,” “mash,” “point,” and “squirt” would be obsolete as well, the lemonade merchant would likely be staring at you, wondering what planet you’re from. “Do you mean treeling-squoozelicious?” he inquires politely.)

You get the picture. It’s ugly. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a word elitist, although some would accuse me as such. Rather, I’m a believer in equal-opportunity for all words. Words like “rascal,” “eschew,” and “thuggery,” should never have fallen by the wayside. It’s just so wrong. Therefore, in the name of equal-opportunity, I say we dust off the musty words in our lexicon and use them right alongside our everyday words. Are you with me? Here are some helpful examples to get you started:

“Just hurry up will you, and don your toggery! We’re late!”
“Well, my little poplet, you don’t have to get so peevish.”
“What’s for breakfast? Why, we’re having mashed loblolly and milk, of course.”
“Hard day at work. I’m super vexed.”
“Wow, you’re looking tricksy today.”
“Totally awesome! Most eximious!”
“What a cute, chuffy little baby.”
“Get off my back! You’re beleaguering me!”
“I desiderate some fresh-squeezed lemonade, please.”

Should you have additional helpful examples, please, by all means, elucidate.