Singalong
songbooks
now for sale

Easy sheet music
for 300+ favorites

$39.95*

Including free templates
for audience lyrics sheets

Finally, a singalong songbook of sheet music with easy-to-follow melody lines, chords and lyrics for more than 300 oldtime favorites. songbookIdeal for singalongs at nursing homes, senior residences or just at your own home. Bound in a loose-leaf binder of durable vinyl, unsnaps for access to pages. (To see a photo of the book, click here.)

Each songbook comes with templates for copying lyrics of more than 240 songs to hand out to audience members, a great way to get audiences involved.

To order Sing along with ease, email sidleavitt@yahoo.com directly or enter your email address as a comment in our latest blog entry and we will email you. (Your email address won't appear in the comments section.)

To review our sales procedures and philosophy, click on our entry entitled We trust you.

*plus $5.40 shipping in U.S.

Free books
still offered

from frustrated writers
to adventurous readers

This site offers a library of original text works – nonfiction, fiction or poetry of all lengths, published and unpublished – that have been submitted free by their authors. To find these, please visit the 'Works' section in the upper righthand column of this page. This site does not claim copyright to any of these works, and no modification of any work has been done except for style formatting. No work may be reused commercially, and any noncommercial reuse must give credit to the author.

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Readers are free to download any listing from the 'Works' section, subject to the aforementioned restrictions, and to provide comments to the site administrator at sidleavitt@yahoo.com for publication in the 'Comments on works' listing. To comment on any excerpt or other post shown in the center column, simply do so directly beneath the post by clicking on the '(No) Comments' link. Unless otherwise specified, all comments will be published, subject to libel guidelines.

About us...

This blog was started as a nonprofit website giving writers a place to publish their work at no cost and readers a chance to read that work and, if they chose, to comment on it. Now we are concentrating on a singalong songbook, also an idealistic project that promotes volunteer music programs at nursing homes and senior residences as well as family singing at home, all through easy, low-cost sheet music. Although we no longer accept new works from authors, all previous submissions are still available in our 'Works' section. We also maintain a blogroll of diverse sites, all well-written, for readers to explore, although at present, no new sites are being accepted for listing. The site's founder and administrator is its first nonfiction contributor, Sid Leavitt, a retired newspaper editor who lives in Lake Katrine, N.Y.

Meta

A blog for all sizes

November 22, 2007

plfrederick

A weblog called Small and Big measures up well in both dimensions: The little whimsies are entertaining and sometimes downright funny, and the poetry and philosophy can be grand.

The author, who identifies herself only by name, P.L. Frederick, writes in her April 11, 2007, entry about waking up on a cold morning from the following dream:

A pink angel-fairy woman about the length of a baby hovers, Tinkerbell style. Her gentle but sure voice explains any number of truths to me, now forgotten. All but one — a memory of a memory echoes deep in my ear. It is the last thing she said before I awoke to warm cozy green flannel sheets. ‘Even mathematics cares,’ she says. ‘The whole world, it cares for you. It loves and it waits and there will come a day when humanity discovers that even mathematics cares.’

Eyes looking up to a painted white ceiling, I let the first and the last three words swirl within me. ‘Even mathematics cares,’ I whisper over and over, nourished by two promises. The first, that infinite numbers, tall quiet pine trees, flying red kites, and even weapons care for us. And the second that, some day, this will be commonly known by all persons.

Or consider the following poem, part of a collection called “Two Liners” in her blog’s first entry, Aug. 15, 2006:

We slip away
light as day.

There’s a lot of poetry in Small and Big, subtitled “Ways to Use Up the Alphabet” with the word ‘Up’ elevated from the line, and also a lot of cartoons, jokes, wordplays and illustrations as well as tidbits the author has found on the Internet and a variety of community events she thinks might be helpful to readers.

Although she gives us only her name — if P.L. Frederick in fact is her name — we surmise from reading her blog that she’s married (at least she lists as her ‘better half’ someone named Pablo, which we will accept on face value), is in her 60s (born during World War II) and lives in the Boston area. We say area, not city, because her June 26, 2007, entry is a review of a brochure left after her septic tank was serviced.

The black and white tri-fold photocopy concerns the use and enjoyment of the Septic Tank. It’s got it all, and starts off with a bang.

Good bacteria helps break down ’solids.’
Anti-bacterial soap kills good bacteria.

See how the Good Guy Bad Guy moralistic setup occurs straight off? I like that. There’s not a lot of space on an 8.5″x11″ document to dilly-dally.

Things quickly get hot and heavy, with:

Anti-bacterial soap can wreck a septic system.

A long running family feud between the Anti-bacterials and the Septics makes a gripping read — just look at the Montagues and the Capulets in Romeo and Juliet. There’s trouble a-brewin’. It’s called conflict and it doesn’t end there.

‘Solids’ never break down 100%.

. . . In all, I rate the action-packed brochure 3.5 stars out of 4. My single gripe is that the brochure is evasive about what, exactly, ’solids’ are. Great mystery remains even after reading all six panels. I feel like I’m left dangling.

One of her favorite pastimes is redefining words. What does ‘morals’ mean? “To need more L’s.” Pigment? “The other white concrete.” Oh, and here’s her No. 1 pick on a list of 25 favorite cartoons.

If you didn’t click the link, it’s to her May 27, 2007, entry showing a Gary Larson cartoon. A chunky kid with plaid trousers and a large book in his hand is pushing as hard as he can against a door clearly labeled ‘pull.’ The door leads into a building identified by a large sign as ‘Midvale School for the Gifted.’

Speaking of gifts, perhaps P.L. Frederick’s best is the ability to turn a small phrase into something more: In her Nov. 28, 2006, entry, she describes taking a cheese-tasting class with Pablo only to find both are repelled by the stench of the selections. She has to look away from Pablo “so I won’t laugh and take cheese air into my mouth.”

Or her March 22, 2007, description of a favorite kitchen appliance that has now grown old: “The once-white refrigerator I inherited with the house bravely soldiers on, refusing to be stood out behind the barn with a cigarette in its mouth and shot.”

One caveat: Small and Big has no archives, so you have to scroll back screen-by-screen — on our browser, 14 screens — to get to the blog’s earliest posts. Still, we gladly add it to our blogroll of well-written sites.

– Sid Leavitt

Posted in Uncategorized |

5 Responses

  1. P.L. Frederick says:

    I think this is the best review ever! The world needs more of this.

    Thanks very much for your nifty posting. =-)

    P.L. Frederick
    SMALL & big

  2. P.L. Frederick says:

    P.S. I added archives to Small & Big. Thanks for letting me know that you missed ‘em!

    P.L. Frederick

  3. Sid Leavitt says:

    Thank you, P.L., for your nice words and especially for that new archive.

    Unlike broadcast media that quickly go out of hearing and sight or newspapers that head for the bird cage, old weblog postings in most cases (unlike old news or political rants) are just as fresh to the new reader as the newer ones. And as much as I like my browser, neither it nor I am fond of scrolling back screen by screen.

    By the way, since writing this post, I have discovered that P.L. Frederick in fact is your real name. I know some bloggers post under pseudonyms, some of them for good reason, but it’s always refreshing to see openness in any media. I know you’re from the Boston area, and I’m a New Englander by birth and upbringing, even though I’ve lived in New York for some years now. So I like to think that being straightforward is a common trait of us Yankees.

    (Oooops, I said Yankees instead of Red Sox. That’ll probably get me thrown out of the club. Well, go A-Rod, anyway.)

  4. P.L. Frederick says:

    Thanks, Sid! =-)

    The “Yankees” talk reminds me that Boston’s year-end holiday season includes many Yankee Gift Swaps. Oddly, I don’t think any of the gifts include NY Yankees items. I’m not sure why. Hee hee!

    Today, a jokey news release was posted on Small & Big that mentions Readers and Writers Blog. It’s at http://smallandbig.blogspot.com/2007/11/blog-added-to-sweet-blogroll.html. Please let me know what you think!

    P.L. Frederick
    SMALL & big

  5. Sid Leavitt says:

    I think it’s great, P.L.

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