Barbara J. Hamby

Vicarious Living

I’ve pretty much decided that my travel from now on will be vicarious through friends and relatives. Yesterday my daughter flew to San Antonio for a week’s vacation with a woman friend. They plan to visit the Alamo—a site I missed seeing when I was in the vicinity because of traffic. So she will take pictures for me.

For the last couple of weeks, a friend of mine has traveled to Greece and is now in Turkey, sending pictures and reports via Facebook. I’m enjoying her trip through that medium. Those are both among the many countries I never got to in my traveling days.

All of my writing activities (a life story class, a memoir writing group, and a critique group) include stories of people from all walks of life about their adventures and other experiences that I can enjoy. Of course, I also share stories of my life, including travel and other adventures.

My political activities are pretty much vicarious also. I no longer campaign actively, but act on email petitions and participate in other push button advocacy.  I’ve watched with interest “The Occupy” protests all over the world.

Earlier this evening I received a phone call that Caller I.D. showed as from a 206 area code. I have a number of relatives in Seattle and don’t know all their telephone numbers off the top of my head, so I answered. The call hooked me up to an alleged 10,000 people exchanging ideas for effecting changes the protestors would like to see. The initiating organization is called American Workers or Workers of America or something like that and purports to represent the 99% the protestors are advocating for. I listened for a few minutes, and approved of what they said. I already vote and do as much as I feel I’m able to do to help with change. I had no questions for those who were responding to questions from others, so I left the line.

I hope I’ll hear more about it, and how long the conversations lasted.

Fortunately I’m still able to make my trips to the pool and hot tub in person and I plan to do that later today.

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