Ideal 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 
Cleaning up my desk
Actually, my desk already is clean. It always has been. Even during the years I was a newspaper reporter and later an editor. I used to spread my notebook pages out on the desk, write the story and then throw the notes away. For files, I clipped my stories out of the paper and stapled them to note cards that I then stored by subject and date in a desk drawer.
Too Felix Unger? Maybe, but it makes life easier for me.
These days, it’s all electronic files, and I’ve got a few remaining in this computer that I’d like to share with you:
• A complete rewrite of Jeri Cafesin’s novel Disconnected, a cinematically drawn story of a woman who struggles with her skeptical intuition as she tries to find a meaningful relationship in life at the edge of Hollywood. The new version has been expanded from five to nine chapters, with epilogue, and Cafesin has plans to make it the first book in a trilogy.
• The remaining nine chapters of Ann M. Pino’s novel Steal Tomorrow, a story of children and teenagers fending for themselves in a world left without adults by a global virus that continues to kill humans as they approach adulthood. Yes, it’s a fanciful premise but so well written that disbelief quickly suspends.
• A new poem by Laura Elliott, our contributor from the United Kingdom. Her new offering, ‘And Don’t Ya Know. . .?,’ throws us a lifeline at a moment of darkness.
• And, oh yeah, a note from a blogger in, of all places, Tasmania, bringing to our attention an entry she wrote about a border collie who herds sheep. Now that’s not so unusual, but the Oct. 21 entry by Fiona Stocker in her blog, Treechange Tasmania, gives the rest of us in the English-speaking world a chance to read some of the vernacular used in the island state south of Australia. Not just metric terms like ’square metreage’ but vehicular terms like ‘four-wheel-drive utes’ and farm talk of ‘tussocks’ and ‘chooks.’ Thanks, Fiona, and good luck.
And now, right beside my clean desk and its computer with now-clean files, a music stand holding a notebook of old songs, most transcribed onto staff paper in my neat hand, beckons to me to pick up an acoustic guitar sitting in its own stand just to the right of the music. Practice me, the music says.
I hope to arrange at least three sessions a week playing singalongs at nursing homes and senior residences in our area besides the Sunday sessions that our little band — my wife, Bonnie, her parents, Glenn and Virginia, and I — play at a senior residence just around the corner from our home. Glenn and Virginia say they’ll join my weekday sessions whenever they can, and Bonnie, when she retires next year or so, may join in, too.
But I’ll still be around at R&W Blog, certainly reading our blogroll colleagues and filing an entry every now and then.
Meanwhile, watch out for those chooks.
– Sid Leavitt
Posted in Uncategorized |
October 28, 2008 at 7:49 am
Hi Sid,
Many thanks for publishing my work again. I hope that it isn’t the last time that we work together. I would like to thank you for all you have done for me — the comments in particular! — and wish you luck for the future. I will never forget what you’ve done for me — even if you’re not a Bruce Springsteen fan!!! I’m just jealous that you met him first! I actually wrote my dissertation on Bob Dylan (”The Narrator’s Quest for Salvation in the Lyrics of Bob Dylan”), so you can see where my true loyalties lie!
Good luck with everything. I’ll keep my eye out for your return.
Thanks also to RJ Keller for your comments, they’re greatly appreciated.
Laura.x
October 28, 2008 at 1:44 pm
As I’ve said to other contributors, you’re the one who deserves the thanks because you’re the one who did the work. We’re the beneficiaries.
Your dissertation theme sounds interesting, by the way.
October 30, 2008 at 11:18 am
keep enjoying the music you share. that almost sounds selfish, but music is really like that, right? the fun is always two-way.
October 30, 2008 at 5:32 pm
That’s right, May. We keep telling the senior citizens who thank us for showing up with the music that we get as much pleasure from it as they do. Maybe more. And that’s the truth.