Pamela Leavey

words and pictures....

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Category: Women

Late Night Blues: I Just Want To Make Love To You

One more Etta for the night…

I Just Want To Make Love To You & Born To Be Wild (LIVE)…

Oh yes she could rock the blues…

 

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Etta James R.I.P.

I posted earlier today on The Democratic Daily that Etta James has passed away at 73. The New York Times said, of Eatta James passing:

Etta James, whose powerful, versatile and emotionally direct voice could enliven the raunchiest blues as well as the subtlest love songs, most indelibly in her signature hit, “At Last,” died Friday morning in Riverside, Calif. She was 73.

I posted a couple of video’s on The Dem Daily in my earlier post, but wanted to post a couple more favorites here tonight.

Fool That I Am (audio only)(more…)

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I Am So In Love

My heart beats wildly

In the arms of Mother Nature…

And I could dance with abandon

Like the bare trees in winter…

I am so in love

With the Great Mother Goddess…

(Dancing Tree Woman ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2012)

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Book Review: To Be Sung Underwater

It’s hard to know where to start with my thoughts on Tom McNeal‘s new book, To Be Sung Underwater.

As a women who’s own mid-life crisis adventure placed her back at her roots a couple of years ago, on so many levels I could identify with the main character in the novel, Judith Whitman. In To Be Sung Underwater, Whitman’s life took her from Vermont to Rufus Sage, Nebraska and then California, where she ironically ended up living in Toluca Lake, CA, the area of Los Angeles that I lived in for 19 years.

I could not help but wondering when reading the book if there was not something in Los Angeles, that for small town people like myself and Judith Whitman’s character, drains the soul for lack of nature. Because surely in reading To Be Sung Underwater there was a sense in my opinion, that as Judith Whitman returned to Rufus Sage to meet her long lost love after 25 years, she returned not only to a relationship she left behind, but to a place where life was simpler and far more serene. A place that where simpler truly connected the soul to the earth, sky, air and water.

In our youth the idyllic notion of love is far more simplistic than the reality of adult life. Marriage and children bring responsibility that can be difficult at times to settle into and often as the years pass by, leave us wondering about that simpler time in our lives. This time when we start to wonder, mid-life, for many brings a strong desire to reconnect with our lost youth.

Judith Whitman’s wake up calls in mid-life, triggered a series of round-about events that brought her back to her past. And what she found there was profoundly heartbreaking yet enlightening. In the time spent reuniting with her lost love, Willy Blunt, Judith Whitman was given a chance to grow, and make peace with the past. I finished reading To Be Sung Underwater and felt that in time she would.

I was immediately captured by the characters in To Be Sung Underwater. I felt the author, Tom McNeal was at his best in describing scenery in the book only in writing about Nebraska and looked for more about her surrounding in Toluca Lake which were vague. Perhaps it was the parallel of my own life spent in Toluca Lake, but I think it was more of interest in Judith’s life there.

Once immersed totally into the book, as the story deepened I could not put To Be Sung Underwater down. Then when I knew I was nearing the end, I needed to step away to breathe deeply before I finished it. I was glad I did.

If you’ve been through your own mid-life crisis, or long to rekindle with a lost love, you’ll feel this powerful book very deeply as I did. In truth, To Be Sung Underwater is book to get lost in at any stage of adult life.

I may just have to read it again because it’s one of those books that I know will cast a different light the next time around. So much to absorb, so much to feel. So good to read.

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Fighting Mid Life Mid Zone

At 54 years old, I’ve watch my waist-line get a little bit wider over the past couple of years. I never used to have worry about this, and I’m determined to not let it become the norm.

This is great little abs work-out I ran across online:

I’m one of those women who does way too much, so making time to go to the gym is tough for me. Excercise, particularly cadio, is key to keep weight off in mid-life.

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In The Secret Garden

My mother had the the most amazing gardens when I was a child. She loved to be outdoors gardening and her labor of love always showed in our yard. That love for gardening is something that was shared among other members of her family and passed down in generations.

The Secret Garden is nestled in Newburyport and it belongs to my cousin who spends each day working in her garden paradise, tending to her perrenials with love and devotion.

When I have the time to visit with my cousin in the Secret Garden, I am transported to a place of peace and always feel a sense of being home. As the love of gardening has been passed down through generations of women in my family, so to have perrenials been passed along and kept blooming for generations. The Secret Garden has iris and peonies that belonged to both my mother and my aunt, even my grandmother.

My mother would tell me as a child that nothing was more important than tending the earth. She knew the connection of our need to treat the Mother [Earth] with love and respect…

(Photo: c. Pamela J. Leavey)

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