How to persist text on the screen when the client exits?

Dear All,

I've just joined this list, so please excuse me if I ask an obvious 
question.

I'm trying to get a server status monitor system working, monitoring a 
set of parameters of my choice (the lcdproc defaults aren't suitable for 
me here)

So, I have LCDd running   (with a 20x2 picolcd), and found the text 
client here:  http://lcdproc-client.sourceforge.net/

I have a bash-script that sends strings to the client every few seconds, 
and they display on the LCD as expected. A simplified example:

while : ; do
   hostname | lcdproc_client.py -f -
   sleep 1
   date  | lcdproc_client.py -f -
   sleep 1
done


This displays the hostname and the date, alternately, as I expect.

BUT, between these, every time the python script exits, the system keeps 
going back to either the LCDd default screen, or to blank  (the value of 
ServerScreen).

How can I get LCDd to just leave the text on screen as it was, until I 
explicitly overwrite it?

Thanks very much,

Richard


P.S. Might I suggest that a "--text" option to lcdproc i.e. "write this 
line to screen, and exit" would be really useful in the default 
distribution.