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 
Good to hear from you
Thank you, Jerry Waxler, for your comment. I have posted it in the comments section for this entry, not for our previous entry, ‘Riddled by spam,’ which was where you sent it.
I have brought it forward because after reading hundreds of spam comments since our last post Dec. 7 — actually, about 7,500 spam comments, most of them unintelligible — I was delighted to receive yours and wanted to bring attention to it since it raises several issues worth discussing.
Thank you for your recommendation about a spam trapper, but I must confess that as I get better at scanning these conglomerations of self-promoting links and nutty messages, I’m getting somewhat fond of reading spam.
As a reporter, I always enjoyed the weirder side of society, and believe me, there’s nothing stranger than some of this electronic stuff.
Anyway, you have no doubt noticed that I did not file an entry for Dec. 14, 21, 28 or Jan. 4, despite our intention stated in the lefthand column here that we would try to post a new blog entry each Sunday.
The reason I haven’t filed since Dec. 7 is that, like some writers I know, I’m in one of those periods where I haven’t had anything to communicate. This wasn’t a problem in the years I wrote for newspapers as a reporter and editor because I was always responding as a reporter to some news or feature story or as an editor to some reporter’s story. But I did go into those periods of noncommunication when I wrote a book — Adrift in America, which is reprinted in our nonfiction section.
I started writing the book in late 1985 after I met a guy named Steve Lutes in Colorado during a cross-country trip, one of many I’d make in the next five years. During those years, I was living in a truck — actually, a micro-motor home with the barest of necessities — that allowed me to follow a minimalist lifestyle in which I could spend hours, days, sometimes weeks by myself in some remote part of this country, sometimes just thinking, sometimes just looking at the sky. At other times, I would write, sometimes furiously. And then I’d go back to thinking and skywatching. I finished the book in late 1992.
As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I don’t mind being by myself, cut off from the world, doing nothing, saying nothing. And I guess I’m still more or less in the dawdling mode.
But you, Jerry — I’m glad you’re not the same.
– Sid Leavitt
NOTES:
The image above is the cover art for Incommunicado, a book by Margot Heller and Tom McCarthy, published by Hayward Publishing, available through the Cornerhouse website.
Jerry Waxler is author of the weblog Memory Writers Network, a site that discusses memoirs and how to write them.
Posted in Uncategorized |
January 6, 2009 at 11:41 am
Hi Sid,
My blog has an excellent spam trapper, called Akismet, for Wordpress blogs. It really makes my life easy in that department. I highly recommend you look for something similar.
As for blog ranking, I wish I knew the secret. Some blogs get more hits than others. I often have to rely on the fact that over the 2 years I’ve been blogging, I know from comments that I have reached some people, and will trust the quality, hoping the quantity is yet to come.
It’s a lot of work, but I feel that plugging into the web has been one of the most energizing projects of my life.
January 14, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Hi Sid,
Funny you should mention cross country trips. I just finished a book called “Zen and Now,” by Mark Richardson, a memoir of a guy who rides his motorcycle following along the same trail Robert Pirsig wrote about in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Do you remember Robin Williams’ comedy skit, singing Elmer Fudd’s imitation of Bruce Springsteen? It’s like that. Richardson does a virtuoso job weaving Pirsig’s book, Pirsig’s time, and Richardson’s own trip, and even some of his flashbacks. It’s amazing what a good writer can do with a good idea, and inspiring for the rest of us. Wow. Living in a truck. Life on the road. I bet you have a lot to write about.
Best wishes,
Jerry Waxler
Memory Writers Network
January 14, 2009 at 10:51 pm
I did have a lot to write about. And I guess I wrote most of what I had to say in that book and subsequently in this weblog. Right now, though, it’s down time.
By the way, I enjoyed Pirsig’s book, but my all-time favorite road book is William Least Heat Moon Trogdon’s Blue Highways, a book so well written that it blurs the line between prose and poetry.
Thanks for the additional comment.
February 28, 2009 at 12:11 am
Hi Sid!
Just checking in. The web isn’t the same without ya.
Kel
February 28, 2009 at 9:51 am
Why, thanks, Kel.
I’ve been doing other things these days, with some success, but I’ve tried to keep up with what our R&W blogroll colleagues are writing.
I enjoyed your road trip. The roadside snow looked a little grim, but that’s the way I remember it in Maine about this time of year — until, of course, the April and May blizzards come.
Best regards.
March 9, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I get things automatically filtered by wordpress with my blog, it’s pretty handy…hopefully it will prove more effective than my hotmail spam filter which takes loads of useful things out - especially doesn’t like emails from my friend B. Hoare!
July 5, 2009 at 1:48 am
Sid, come back! We miss you!
I understand that keeping up with all the tasks involved in running this blog/site are wearying… I don’t blame you for needing a break. Just don’t make it a permanent one, OK?
Please?
July 5, 2009 at 11:05 am
Thanks, Lisa, but I don’t see a return to R&W Blog any time soon. Whatever free time I have is spent sharing old-time music with other old-timers and making our lives a little better. Best wishes to you and yours.
September 8, 2009 at 8:50 pm
I go through those non-communicative phases about once a year. I just get into this funk and want to be left alone. Of course, this isn’t very good for your writing career, but it does seem to be a part of it.
October 27, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Sid,
I know how you feel. I said most of what I wanted to say on my blog in the first three years, and now I only post when the spirit moves me.
Along with the others, I like what you have to say, so I hope you will continue to share your pearls of wisdom, even if they are only occasional.