Last night, Denis and I attended a tribute to Frank McCourt at Symphony Space, which is a performance space in our old neighborhood in Manhattan. Symphony Space is where all the Selected Shorts series are performed and recorded (if you haven’t downloaded anything from this Public Radio series for a car trip, I’m not sure how you’ve been able to tolerate a car trip). Symphony Space is also where Frank used to meet, annually, with other authors and celebrities, to read from the works of James Joyce at Bloomsday on Broadway, so it was quite fitting that the space was chosen for his memorial evening.
Ann Leary, author of The Good House
Author of The Good House
A Tribute to Frank McCourt
October 7, 2009 by 32 Comments
A Lord of Nature, Weeping
October 3, 2009 by 23 Comments
I stopped at my friends Moses and Cynthia’s house yesterday, and Moses brought me to his sunflower garden and cut me some flowers. You need a man to cut certain sunflowers. I can’t see Martha Stewart delicately clipping this monstrous beauty from its stem:
Moses approached the eight-foot-tall stalk of the sunflower until his body almost touched it. He placed his knife’s blade against the curved stem just under the bowed head and then, turning his face away (he couldn’t look, it seemed) he lopped the thing off at the neck. Then, after gazing down at its face for a moment, he handed it to me carefully. I was astonished at its weight.
Forgot I Had These Joints
October 2, 2009 by 24 Comments
Yesterday I had another tennis lesson with Val. We were hitting the ball back and forth and he had me doing this drill where you hit the ball cross-court, then hit the ball straight ahead, then run over to the backhand court, hit the ball cross-court, then straight ahead, etc.
It was quite fun but I was often hitting shots into the net. I believed this was because I wasn’t swinging properly. Val said, “You’re a little stiff.” I thought he meant my shoulders and I said that yes, my shoulders were a little stiff. Val said, “No, your legs. When you run, you don’t bend your knees.”
Dogs and Horses
October 1, 2009 by 25 Comments
“There are unknown worlds of knowledge in brutes; and whenever you mark a horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses. They see through us at a glance. ”
Herman Melville
(Photo courtesy Litchfield Little Britches)
(photo courtesy Litchfield Little Britches)
