The other day, my friend Helena sent me a poem called A Summer Day, by Mary Oliver. The poem ends with these lines:

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I’ve only had a few hours sleep, so I’m a little ragged and these words are bringing tears to my eyes, right now, as I think back on this year.

What else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

I’m very, very emotional today. I overcame that hurdle in my novel and have been writing almost day and night. The year has come to an end, a wild and precious year and I pray for another and another and another, for all of us. I remember, one New Year’s Eve, kissing my husband at midnight and praying/wishing at that moment for a baby in the New Year – a daughter. And she was celebrating with us the following year! So all things are possible. I have a prayer/wish for this year too.

We’re having a snowstorm, a big warm, woolly white one, where there’s no biting wind, just fluffy gentle flakes.

Okay, I know I promised less dogs, but please:

Happy New Year!

In the mornings I write in bed. This is a very luxurious way to write especially now that my husband is home. He rises with the dawn to play hockey, and he feeds all things canine and equine and even brews a large pot of coffee, so all I have to do is pad downstairs for my coffee, and then snuggle back into my bed with my laptop.

I’ve hit a bit of a roadblock with my novel and, while sipping my coffee this morning, I flipped through one of the collections of poetry that I keep next to my bed, and found this treasure by Walt Whitman. It’s so perfectly fitting for me right now. I hope the gossamer thread of my soul catches somewhere today, and I hope yours does too, whoever you are and whatever you do.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them–ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,–seeking the spheres, to
connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d–till the ductile anchor
hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
Walt Whitman

I was in Marblehead this weekend, visiting my family. My sister and I went for a walk and I took some photos. Here’s a cove near my mom’s house that I photographed last summer at low tide:

This is what it looked like yesterday at high tide:

We walked through the streets of old town, through the warm fog, and found ourselves at Fort Sewell, which is at the edge of town – at the edge of the continent, really. Then there was no place to turn but back home.

I’ve watched Slumdog Millionaire twice and will probably watch it again tonight or tomorrow. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, GO!

Happy holidays to all my dear friends and readers.

Here are some chilly scenes of winter for you:

That’s Gabriel’s back above. No we don’t blanket in the winter, they grow thick cozy coats of their own.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to make my blog less doggy, as I think some of you get sick of seeing our girls all the time. So I’ve decided to go out with a bang.

Here are three sleepy girls after a long day.

And finally a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, which makes me think of our exciting new president and all our hopes in the coming time of change.

RING OUT, WILD BELLS
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Yesterday I visited the Manhattan home of Lisa Sharkey and Paul Gleisher and their three children, and I interviewed them for an upcoming episode of IN HOUSE. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Lisa and Paul live in a green, eco-friendly townhouse on the Upper West Side and they have written a beautiful book about “eco-fabulous” homes. This is their roof garden:

The green stuff that looks like grass is actually a form of moss that helps insulate the house, keeping it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. It is a small eco-habitat now and Lisa says that the sounds of crickets on their rooftop at nght often drowns out the noise of traffic and other sounds of the city. In answer to Mary’s question on my previous blog, the moss that you see in the photo requires very little water and no mowing. Also no subsoil. Paul describes it very well in the interview. Also, I will find out who makes those beautiful blinds.

The interview was fascinating because the Sharkey-Gleishers know how to make your house more eco-friendly no matter what your budget. And they’re nice. And their kids are great. Lisa has won two Emmys, Paul is an award-winning architect. Carter, their King Charles Spaniel has the softest coat I’ve ever felt and he cuddled with me throughout the interview, making it even nicer.

We stayed in the city last night and this was the view from our window this morning:

Pretty huh? Well, it was pretty then, but now it’s slushing out. That’s right, slush is falling from the sky. Denis and the kids are attempting to drive to the country, but it’s snowing where they are and they’ve been driving for hours and are not even close to home. I stayed in the city an extra night because tomorrow I’m interviewing Lisa Sharkey and her husband Paul Gleicher who have co-authored a beautiful book called Dreaming Green: Eco-Fabulous Homes Designed to Inspire.

Click on the link above to see photos of their gorgeous “green” townhouse, and if you have any questions or comments for Lisa and Paul, post them here and I’ll ask them during our interview tomorrow, making this blog thrillingly interactive! The interview won’t air on IN HOUSE for a few weeks though, so you’ll have to be a little patient.

Anyway, I hope everybody is surviving the weather, wherever you are!

Last night we attended a New York screening of Marley and Me, to which dogs were invited (they were allowed to bring their owners as well). There was a red carpet and all the dogs had their photos taken. Here we are with Daphne, who was, by far, the most well behaved dog at the event. She really was shocked at the behavior of some of the other dogs. In the photo, she is looking at the antics of the dog who played Marley, who was just off camera. The Marley dog had been trained to act a little wild and bark at people and Daphne was absolutely mortified. She posed politely for the cameras, then slept on the floor at my feet during the whole film.

She is a good dog.

I took photos of other dogs on the red carpet and today, when I get my new USB cord, I will be able to load them all on the computer for you.

I haven’t posted in a few days because I can’t find the USB cord that attaches my camera to the computer, rendering me virtually mute, as I’ve become seriously dependent on photographs for this blog. Now I’m forced to use my words, as I did at the beginning of the blog, when I didn’t know how to load photos. But, I’ve been working and reworking my pathetic collection of words all day and can’t summon enough wit for an interesting post, so instead, I’ll print a short passage from Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

If you indulge yourself in nothing else this holiday season, I implore you to march yourself over to itunes and download the audiobook recording of Dylan Thomas reading this treasure himself. Get the Dylan Thomas version, not a version read by a famous actor!

I’ve been listening to it all weekend, whenever I get in my car, and there are parts that I play over and over again. Here’s just a small sampling, in which he describes the “useless presents”:

“Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor’s cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons.”

It’s $8.95. That’s two iced lattes, where I live. You won’t regret it! Here’s another sampling for you:

Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.
I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o’-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Maybe some of you will recall that I have a weekly NPR radio show called IN HOUSE. The show was on hiatus for a while because I had surgery and then really needed some time to work on my book. Well, tomorrow WHDD-FM, (robinhoodradio.com), will broadcast a brand new episode of IN HOUSE, featuring author and NPR commentator Heather King.

I interviewed Heather when I was in Los Angeles. She’s a dear old friend and during the interview we discussed why she, a native New Englander, chose to make her home in LA. We also discussed her books and her relatively recent conversion to Catholicism. As I was editing the interview, I thought about how wildly radical it is, in this day and age, to devote oneself to a religion that is relatively out of vogue with today’s popular culture. It seems that the Catholic church has become a much scorned institution, as has Christianity in general, in our society. Of course some highly unethical priests and hate-mongering fundamentalists are mostly to blame for this, but it occurs to me that it takes a very brave and devoted individual to proudly (and wittily – she’s one of the funniest people I know) assert her faith, despite the prejudices.

Yesterday, when Denis and I were shooting this video about buying books for the holidays, the producer kept warning us not to use the word “Christmas,” but instead, to use the word, “holidays,” when discussing gift giving. I would have said “holidays” anyway, because that’s what everybody says now, but it sounded like letting the word “Christmas” slip would be like accidentally saying the f-word on camera. When did Christmas become so obscene? It makes me sad, thinking about it, because, I’m not a religious person, but as a Catholic child, I was in love with the story of the baby Jesus and this time of year still is very precious to me because of those memories, which are enmeshed with the memories of my own babies and their early Christmases. Now, it seems, it is very appropriate to talk about all the material things you plan to buy and get, but any mention of the spiritual aspect of the holiday is considered almost vulgar. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Anyway, I plan to do monthly installments of IN HOUSE now, at least until I finish the book, because the interviewing and editing takes up quite a bit of time. Have a couple of great interviews lined up, though, so stay tuned!

Today, Denis was nominated for a Golden Globe for the HBO movie, Recount!.

I was on my way to the set of Rescue Me when he called me with the news, which made me very happy, but I was already whipped into a state of delirious excitement that bordered on mania because a) I was approaching a major metropolitan area and b) I was leaving a very quiet rural area.

It’s 8:00 in the evening and I’m back in the country but I’m still wound up. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks almost completely holed up in my office and I had forgotten how fun the people can be!

I wanted to take photos of Denis’s dressing room for my blog, but I knew he’d be annoyed, so you’ll just have to imagine the world’s messiest dorm room, throw in a plasma TV and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what the space looks like. It’s a large room because he and the writers and producers and assistants all work there between takes. They have sports playing on the TV constantly. Every minute, whether they’re writing, sleeping, eating, being interviewed – whatever Denis and the writers and assistants are doing – a game is going on at the same time.

So, I was perched on a chair, taking it all in – all the show-biz razzle-dazzle (five guys watching a hockey game on satellite TV), when I saw Denis lift what I first thought was a small computer, but came to discover was a gigantic remote control. It was like a circus clown prop and I burst out laughing, thinking it was some sort of a gag. But, in fact, this is a real remote control that the guys use. It really is every man’s dream – a remote control that is impossible to lose.

I had gone in to do a video with Denis which promotes book buying for the holidays. When I get a copy I’ll post it here.
Now I’m going to try to recover from all the stimulation. I’ve literally been talking to nobody but dogs, and occasionally my daughter and husband, for weeks.