Ann Leary, author of The Good House
Author of The Good House
If you’re not doing anything this Friday, July 31st, why not come to the fundraiser at the Hotchkiss Library in Sharon, CT, where I will be signing books?
It won’t be just me (and I won’t be making this face, promise), many of your favorite authors will be there including Frank Delaney, Michael Korda, playwright David Rabe and Francine Du Plessix Grey. It starts at 6:00, the admission is $25.00 and that includes an open bar! And it’s for a great cause – a library!
I recently read an article suggesting that scolded dogs look guiltier if they are actually innocent. I was amused that somebody actually took the time to do a scientific study to determine what anybody who has carefully watched the behavior of their dogs already knows. Dogs display submissive behaviors – cowering, lowered tail, etc – when they anticipate punishment. This has nothing to do with “guilt.” I truly believe that humans are the only species that have saddled ourselves with the emotions of guilt, regret, remorse and shame and we are so childishly narcissistic, as a species, that we assume that other species (especially those we dearly love) experience the world in exactly the way that we do.
One of the reasons I haven’t blogged in a few days is because I’m still having problems with my camera. The camera that I loved so much, but dropped in a puddle. So today, I decided to take a few photos with my iphone camera. I am always pleasantly surprised at the quality of the iphone photos. The color is often quite nice. If only it had a zoom. But here are a few shots of what I call my “Bridge of Sighs.” It’s the bridge I drive across on my way home from New York City. When I reach the far side of the bridge I feel like I’m home. Then I sigh.
Somebody recently suggested to me that I appear to be a very high self-monitor. I took this as a compliment, as I am not often called a “very high” anything. So, I did a little research and came across this “Self-Monitor Scale.”
Yes, indeed, I score EXTREMELY high on the self-monitoring scale, but as I answered the questions, an uneasiness came over me. There are 25 questions, but here are the first five, and my answers:
Many famous authors – Eudora Welty, Joan Didion, Virgina Woolf, John Gardener, Stephen King, Edith Wharton, Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard (I’m sure I’m leaving out the most obvious) have written essays and/or books about the craft of writing. I was recently doing some research about Robert Louis Stevenson and learned that he wrote a book called, The Art of Writing. I had read most of the above authors’ works on their craft, but had not been aware that R.L. Stevenson, probably my very first favorite author (my mom read us A Child’s Garden of Verses before we went to bed each night, when we were very small) had wriiten one, and now I’m in the middle of it. Thought I’d share something he wrote about the use of words:
“After a full belly all is poetry.”
— Frank McCourt (‘ Tis: a Memoir)
I have just learned that our friend Frank McCourt passed away today.
Denis and I first met Frank several years back when he and his wonderful wife Ellen moved to our town in Connecticut. Frank was, of course, a very famous writer by then, having published Angela’s Ashes which was an international bestseller and probably his most well-known book, though he has written several other great books as well. I’ve read all of Frank’s books, but Angela’s Ashes is my favorite. Truly one of my very favorite books. I couldn’t put it down, once I started it and I stayed up almost an entire night with it, when my kids were still quite young and needed me to be a little bright in the morning.
Mothers and daughters are very much on my mind, so today, a poem about motherhood by Sylvia Plath.
Morning Song
by Sylvia Plath
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
Once upon a time there was a young woman named Patty Heffley who moved to New York City to be part of a scene. The punk rock scene. She found herself a cheap apartment on the fourth floor of the only residential building on a block near the meatpacking district and there she remained for thirty-one years, in relative obscurity.
There’s this great/evil online shopping site called Gilt Groupe that I got suckered into joining some time ago. The way they lure you in is by sending you an email that says that your friend has invited you to join the very exclusive Gilt Groupe. They make it sound like it’s just you, Tinsley Mortimer, Celery Kemble and a few others who have been asked to join, but in fact, your “friend” gets $25 for each friend they ask and anyone can join. The Gilt Groupe has daily sales that begin at noon and include some top designers at incredibly reduced prices.
I’ve been in the city for much of the summer because my daughter is taking a pre-college course there. A few of you have asked to see pictures of our critters, since it’s been awhile. So yesterday, I wandered around the farm and took some photos.
First, for you gardeners, what is wrong with this rose bush? It used to have roses on it. Of course, I have never fed it anything nor pruned it. It’s supposed to be “hardy” so I didn’t think I had too. Is it neglect or just too much rain?
