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That's Yiddish for family. Trabish has used her online skills to keep her mishpocha network connected. It includes her three children, four grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, lots of nieces and nephews and some close friends. And she is keeping the network updated on her latest project: a family history starting with the move from Poland to Brooklyn. Everyone will get an e-mail copy, except for Trabish's two brothers and two sisters, who are still holding out on the revolution. "I am the oldest person in the family," she says impatiently, "and I use the computer. My nieces and nephews keep getting mad with their parents--'Why can't you do it if Aunt Sara does it?' I said, 'I'm enjoying it. I feel you would enjoy it too.' But they think I'm crazy. They say, 'What do you want to do that for?'"
Gerald Schwebke of Kansas City, Mo., had practical and personal reasons for getting online. After his wife died four years ago, he found himself "rattling around in this big house alone." He says, "She was always the one who took care of the books, and I said, 'What should I do?'" The retired regulatory expert decided to learn to manage his money on the computer. Then he got the idea of trading stocks online. "I'm kind of a do-it-myselfer," says Schwebke, 60. While he leaves his ira in the hands of brokers, he took some of the money he inherited when his father died in September 1996 and invested it on his own. So every morning after Mass at St. Therese's, he sits down at the computer next to his twin bed to check on his stocks. He uses the online service E*Trade, which is hooked up to his local bank account so he can wire money into it as needed.
"I like the independence, I guess," he says. "The satisfaction is that you do something and sometimes it turns out good. I could go down to the riverboat casinos and gamble it away, but this works out better."
With Kay Denhardt, the reasons for getting online were not financial; they were physical. Four years ago, she had surgery for a brain tumor. Afterward, Denhardt, now 56, wanted information she couldn't find in her hometown of Newark, Ohio. "It was really hard for me at first after surgery," Denhardt says. "I had memory problems. I lost my hearing, and some of my face atrophied. Doctors don't tell you about things like that." When her daughter Teresa moved home to help, she introduced her mom to the Internet. Denhardt searched the Web, learning about new drugs and joining online support groups that allowed her to communicate directly with people around the world who have the same condition. "I've talked to people from Japan, Sweden, Germany, England and Israel," Denhardt says. Emboldened by her online contacts, Denhardt has decided to get a business degree and plans to start a nonprofit group to act as a liaison between patients and doctors. Says Teresa, who now e-mails her mom from a new home in Paris: "The Internet changed her life. I'm very proud of her."
And Denhardt is proud of her new social network. While some folks become misanthropic as they age, most of us still crave human contact--especially at a time in our lives when it's harder to achieve. Children move away, spouses die and infirmities limit mobility. The Internet widens the reach of those with the resources and the gumption to get online.