Just A Little Rain

The following post is from a friend, Nina Egert. Thank you, Nina. This is very apt as we all wonder what kind of rain is falling on California. And yes, nothing seems to have changed since the 1960’s.

Nina:

Back in the 1960’s, Malvina Reynolds, a 40-something CAL Ph.D. in English, began writing songs for the coffee house movement.  While not a great singer, her simple lyrics are some of the most profound ever written.  Luckily, people like Joan Baez and Pete Seeger picked up on her material.

Newport Folk Festival, 1964

In those days, the concerns were over nuclear war.  The fear was that fall-out from bombs would travel through the atmosphere, destroying the planet.  How little has changed.

On a rainy day in California, when news from power plants in Japan worsens, I though people might appreciate a link to this song on YouTube.  Malvina’s version is tender, but missing some of the lyrics, so listen to Baez’s as well:

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/and on Twitter (#alonshalevsf).

 

 

 

Congratulations Amanda Hocking

I recently shared the story of Amanda Hocking, now a full-time author through primarily selling e-books and working really hard to create a dynamic social platform.

Though Amanda has been a pioneer of the alternative way to sell your books and make a living as a fiction writer, she has been rewarded with a traditional four-book contract that according to the New York Times, is worth more than $2 million. The deal is  with Macmillan imprint St. Martin’s Press, and follows what the Times described as a “heated auction” in which they beat out Random House, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins.

Ms. Hocking wrote a blog entry on Tuesday in which she shared her decision to enter the conventional publishing world.

“I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling emails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full time corporation,” she said. “My goal has always been to put the highest quality product I can out in a way that is the most accessible to readers.”

I appreciate your honesty and your hard work in bringing yourself to this point, Ms. Hocking. You are an example and an inspiration to the rest of us. You are the first to succeed with this route, hopefully the first of many.

Ms. Hocking won’t be speaking tomorrow at Copperfield’s Books in Napa, but I will – between 1-3pm. Copperfields is at 3990 Bel Aire Plaza (between Highway 29 and Transcas Street. Happy to chat with you about these exciting developments, accidental activists, and anything else you can think of.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/and on Twitter (#alonshalevsf).