
HAUNTED HOUSES
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ann Leary, author of The Good House
Author of The Good House

HAUNTED HOUSES
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
For some reason I haven’t taken any photos this fall and it’s been a beautiful fall up here. So I looked in my photo file and came across some pictures I took last winter. I was still driving my daughter back and forth to school at the time and her school is almost a half hour away, so I spent a lot of time, once winter set in, driving along, looking at a sometimes bleak horizon.
Sometimes there would be a new snow and there was nothing but whiteness all around:
It’s a rainy, gloomy day and I thought it might be a good day for one of those fascinatingly creepy poetry animations made from photos of the poets that I have posted here in the past. Here’s one of W.H. Auden:
In my search for another good one, I came across this actual footage of Anne Sexton reading her poems. I guess it was part of a documentary about her. I was quite obsessed with Anne Sexton poetry for a time, when I was in high school. Yes, I thought I was as deep and dark and dangerously troubled as she. How is it that I never knew how GORGEOUS she was? I had only ever seen still photos of her, and of course, to me at the time, she looked rather old. Now she looks so, so young.
I’ve owned dogs all my life, have read stacks upon stacks of books on the behavior, care and training of this, my most beloved species. But today, I learned something new. If your dog eats an entire cooked chicken, or anything toxic, you should induce vomiting by filling a turkey baster with hydrogen peroxide and then forcing it down the poor beast’s throat. My friend Leah, who called right after Daphne jumped up on our counter and devoured every last bit of a rotisserie chicken that we had only half eaten, told me to do that and then my vet, Dr. Ferris Gorra, verified. And so I did, and thank God because the poor thing produced the entire chicken – all the fat and sharp bones and gunk that would have made her very ill indeed.

For more than a decade, the Learys have pursued patient and honorable efforts to defend ourselves against our enemies – The Mice – without war. In those years we have used various nonviolent efforts to reinforce our boundaries, while sending clear and indisputable signals that we will not tolerate their threats of invasion. These efforts have included completely reinforcing our basement walls and packing steel wool into every hole we could find, no matter how small. These nonviolent efforts to disable the rodent forces have failed again and again – because we are not dealing with a peaceful, God-fearing species. We are dealing with vermin.
During recent days,, I have found it difficult to carry on with my blog, as if everything in my life is as usual. I don’t use my blog as a platform to discuss political or controversial issues in any way. It’s just meant to be entertaining and enjoyable, hopefully.
This past week I have received countless emails from people who are not regular blog readers, but who are very angry and upset about something that was excerpted from my husband’s forthcoming book. Denis doesn’t have a website, so I guess when people Googled him, they found my website and decided to reach out to him through me.
I love to be scared, but if you don’t, I advise you not to click on this video. I found this ages ago on youtube. I was looking for “ghost” videos.”
One thing I learned when I moved up here from New York, is that EVERYBODY believes in ghost, and many have seen them in their own homes. In New York, you can ask just about anybody if they believe in ghosts and they’ll likely laugh at you. Here in CT, you can ask anybody, no matter how learned or intelligent; you can ask a nuclearphysicist if he believes in ghosts and he’ll tell you about the one that strides through his hallway every night at exactly eleven.
Tammy and others have been kind enough to ask how I am recovering from my surgery and I’m doing great. I really have no pain anymore and feel so much better than I did before the surgery that I am just thrilled to have it over with.
Now that I can drive, I feel much more like myself. Am going into the city today for a doctor’s appointment. I think the reason I’ve been doing so much posting of other people’s poems and adoptable dogs is because I am FINALLY making some headway with this new book I’m writing. I actually feel like it’s writing itself at this point and there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day.
It’s time for this week’s “Ann’s Picks” from the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah. I received a nice email from the Best Friends people last week, to thank me for featuring their dogs and to also ask me to remind people to check your local shelters as well for adoptable pets.
I’m featuring Best Friends dogs again, mainly because Devin has fallen in love with Big Buddy, and wants somebody else to fall for this handsome fellow and take him home. I think he has some hip issues – but who doesn’t? Supplements and meds do wonders.

Okay, as I started to explain in my previous blog, I often ride my horse Mark in a local land preserve called Steep Rock. For more on Steep Rock, just look at the right hand side of this page and under “Categories” click on “Steep Rock Diaries”. Not everything there is about Steep Rock, but it’s all about local stuff.
Copyright © 2013 Ann Leary