Photo by Moses Pendleton

HER KIND, by Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

It was very spooky at the Daly Farm this week.  All the Little Britches ponies and riders were dressed up for Halloween.

That’s Connor on the left, dressed up as a firefighter. Connor is riding Dually, who is very pleased with his  wizard costume.

It’s been an exciting couple of weeks for Connor, his sister, Em, and their parents.  They’ve just adopted a puppy named Kailey.   Here’s Em and Connor and Kailey on the right.  I wonder if they know that there is a scary witch’s shadow to the left of EM?

I’m sorry about the quality of these photos, they were taken with my iphone, and the light wasn’t great at that time of day.  Em and Connor and their family chose Kailey from a litter of puppies at a local animal shelter.  Em and Connor both love animals, in fact, I am usually with Connor during his riding lessons and he shows a tremendous amount of concern and empathy for his mount, Dually.  I know Kailey is very lucky to have found a home with them.

The kids all mounted up and then we followed a spooky path through the woods.  Ben, dressed as a ninja, led the way, riding Summer, who was dressed as a tiger.

And here’s a Halloween poem for the Little Britches gang.  (That’s superstar rider Audrey with the crazy clown hair next to Connor, below)

Devin and I visited Charlotte yesterday to check on the puppies.  They’ve really grown in the past week and it’s clear that their father(s) outsized their dear little mother, Peanut.  They’re almost half her size already and they’re only four weeks old.

The puppies need names.  I’ll introduce you to each and we can help Charlotte think of appropriate names.  Also, all five four puppies are still available for adoption.  Charlotte will only consider very good homes. She’s asking for a $50 adoption fee which she will then turn around and use to pay the adoption fee at the kill shelter where she finds dogs to rehome.  So, for each of Peanut’s puppies that finds a new home, an older, perhaps needier dog will be rescued.

Now,  let’s meet the puppies.  First, Male Number One:

Male 1

This bold fellow has a lovely white bib and likes to greet new friends with a gregarious “high-five.”  He thinks it’s cool.  We won’t tell him how dated it is (plus, puppies can’t make a fist for the fist bump). His coat is black now, but it has brown highlights and will probably lighten up a little as he matures.

And this is his only brother, Male Number Two:

Male 2

This wrinkly-nosed snuggler seems to have a bit of hound in him.  He will likely be short-coated, and, like the others, on the small size.  It’s impossible to hold him without smiling, as Devin is demonstrating.

Now allow me to introduce the girls:

Female 1

Yes, she’s a blonde bombshell and the eye-catcher of the crew.  This chubby love-bug might have to watch her figure as she matures.  She loves her meals.  Charlotte thinks she’s the smartest of the litter, so take that blonde-mockers.

Her sister, Female Number Two, has a pretty white bib and two little mittens, and a white beauty spot under her chin. Like her sisters, she shows signs of having a whiskery terrier face and coat:

Female 2

And finally, my personal favorite, darling little Female Number Three:

Female 3

Devin and I fell for her.  Hard.  Can’t really explain why.

Yes, we have a new feature here at the blog. If you scroll down a little, you’ll see it on the right.  It’s called “On the Nightstand”.

Originally I was going to just display the books I am reading, but now I have decided to show one book a month, give everybody a chance to read it as well, and at the end of the month, we’ll have a discussion.  Here.  On the blog.  It’s not going to be a live chat. I’ll just start the discussion and you all can weigh in throughout the day, commenting as often as you wish.  I think that’ll work best as we all have different work schedules and live in different time zones.

The first book I have chosen is Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.  It has been brought to my attention that this title is not on Kindle, but it should be available at any library, or you can order it here.

I have marked December 1st on my calendar as the book discussion day.

I would love to hear any suggestions you all might have for future books.

Yes, that’s my sleek nightstand pictured above.  There’s my beautiful bed where I recline in my organic pajamas and read, whilst my hired man Batman massages my feet.

Okay, this is what my nightstand really looks like.  I have photographed it exactly as I found it this morning.

Photo by Phil Holland

I can’t bear to have that depressing grey photo in the previous entry appear at the top of my page.  Not with that depressing grey header. Fortunately, my friend, poet/professor Phil Holland has just emailed me these beautiful photographs from Greece.

He wrote, “On a warm day like this you can almost hear the pomegranates slowly ripping apart to expose their seeds like the baskets of rubies in the Sultan’s old palace in Istanbul.”

Very nice.

Photo by Phil Holland

It was a spooky, rainy weekend here in New England.  I took this photo of my house the other night.  See all the rain spots on the lens?  Or are they actually ghostly orbs?

Devin is working on her college applications and last night she made the mistake of telling me the topic of one of her essays.  It was something like: If you had to come up with a title that would describe your life up until now, what would it be?

Devin joked that she was considering calling her life Of Mice and Bats.

This got me started.  I wanted to help.  ”How about The Beautiful and Damned?”  I offered.

“No,”

“A Little Princess!”

“Mom!”

“The Scarlet Letter!”

“Okay, stop, I really don’t need your help.”

“The Bad Seed!”

“I’m going upstairs now.”

“Psycho! The Creature From the Black Lagooon! Apocolypse Now”

Silence.

“The Thing!”

What will she do without me next year?

I mentioned in a recent comment that Batman dropped by last week.  I wasn’t here, but when I arrived home, the guys working on my bathroom told me he had been there all afternoon and had rigged up some contraptions that would rid the house of bats for good.  I hadn’t noticed any contraptions, so I went back outside and saw what he had done.

Oh Batman!  Dear, sweet, misguided Batman!

The other day, I visited my friend Charlotte. Why?  Because Charlotte  rescues dogs from a kill shelter and one of her recent rescues just had a litter of puppies.

As many of you know, Denis has put a freeze on the acquistion of new dogs in the Leary household.  The kids and I are always whining about getting a new dog, but Denis always brings us around to his sensible viewpoint, which is that we have a very amiable pack at present, never a growl or raised hackle between them.  They’re all trained and relatively well-behaved and there is almost enough room in the bed for Denis and me to stretch out between them at night.

So I didn’t tell him I was going to look at the puppies.

I just went for a little look.

Well, I needed to see that Charlotte had everything well in hand!

When I got our of my car, I was greeted by Charlotte’s pack of small rescue dogs and in their midst was a wonderful female version of our former Pongo – a scrappy terrier mutt.

“Oh my God, I love her,” I said, pointing to the terrier, and Charlotte said, “She’s the puppies’ mom, Peanut!”

So into the house we went to look at the puppies.  Peanut trotted ahead of us and turned her head around every few seconds to bark and yap at me.  Her barks weren’t aggressive, nor were they entirely friendly.  She was stating, in no uncertain terms, that she had her eye on me; that if I thought she was going to let me anywhere near her puppies, I had another think coming; that I’d better just watch myself; that she knew a puppy stealer when she saw one; that she didn’t want my germs on her puppies, etc.  We proceeded through the house listening to Peanut’s list of things I could and could not do, and finally arrived in the bathroom where the puppies’ whelping box is kept. There we saw that one of the puppies’ elderly foster uncles (a portly and grizzled chihuahua mix) had stepped into the box to have a sniff. Peanut leapt into the box and sent him on his way with a long, low admonishing growl, then she frantically sniffed and checked all her pups, looking up at us every few seconds as if to say, “Did you see that?  That disgusting ….male …was in the box with my babies.  Did you see? Did you see that?”

After she gave her babies a snack and licked them all clean, she was much more relaxed and allowed me to hold them.  I want to go back and take some better photos and maybe we can help Charlotte place these gorgeous pups in wonderful homes.

Charlotte is very special.  She takes in dogs that are on death row at a Waterbury, CT shelter, and she has had great success placing them.  She ends up keeping some of the very old dogs that she can’t place.  She had found a home for Peanut soon after she rescued her, but when the prospective adopters learned she was pregnant they changed their minds.

After learning about the pregnancy, Charlotte decided to keep Peanut and the puppies until the puppies are weaned. On October 1st, Peanut climbed into her whelping box and began delivering her puppies, while Charlotte and the other dogs quietly watched.  She is a very dedicated and fastidious mother, dear Peanut, and has wonderful manners in the house.  I told Charlotte that if she doesn’t become too attached to Peanut, and still wants to place her after the puppies find homes, well…..

I showed Denis the photos last night.

“NO PUPPIES,”  he said.

Then he said, “The mom is cute.”  He asked me to hand over the computer so he could have a better look.

“She’s a Pongo, alright,” he said, smiling.

“…and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”    James Joyce, Ulysses

My friend Davyne Verstandig, head of the Litchfield County Writers Project, recently asked me if I would like to attend a lecture about James Joyce, given by author Frank Delaney.

James Joyce? Frank Delaney?  Yes I said yes I will Yes.

I met Frank Delaney at a book signing last summer and have been an admirer of his work, so I was thrilled at the opportunity to hear him speak about Joyce.

In his book, James Joyce’s Odyssey, Frank Delaney describes Ulysses as, “an entertaining, funny, absorbing, exciting, enjoyable novel, a book to get lost in, a book to take to a desert island, a book to keep by your bedside, and discover each day something new, a book to be quoted from, recalled, discussed, contemplated, bequeathed, bestowed, but above all to be relished, savoured, a work of intelligence and delight.’

Author Frank Delaney (photo by Jerry Bauer)

I have found Ulysses to be a puzzling, challenging, difficult and maddening novel, a book to not only get lost in, but to lose one’s mind in, a book to take to a desert island and leave there, motoring off with something lighter, like Paradise Lost, a book to keep, not by my bedside, but prominently displayed on a coffee table, to impress others.   I know Frank must be right when he says it is a work of intelligence and delight, I’m just not intelligent enough to feel all the delight.  But I want to be – wicked bad.

The thing is, I have read and reread Joyce’s Dubliners many times because I love the stories so, and have always wanted to appreciate Ulysses, so I decided to attend Frank Delaney’s talk last night, and  I don’t recall when I’ve had a more enjoyable and enlightening evening.  Frank was once a television and radio personality in Ireland and the UK, so he has a wonderful stage presence and his knowledge of Joyce is seemingly fathomless.

Ireland, death, sex, alcoholism, writing, self-loathing, romantic love, begrudgery – all things Irish – all my favorite things –  were touched upon in Frank’s delightful discourse last night.  One of the many tidbits I took away with me is Frank’s theory that one of the reasons Ireland has produced so many great writers, is because the language they write in, English, was forced upon them by their enemies – the English.  Their inventive and provocative use of the English language is a sort of rebellious and retaliatory one-upmanship.

Having spent a little time in Ireland, I have seen what the people can do to the English language, just in conversation, and it’s impressive, to say the least.  Ireland is the only place I  have heard old men (or any men) use the C word as a vowel in regular conversation.  ”I looked up and there she was, herself, the c*%#ing cow, standing like a fecking statue in the rain, in the fecking rain, in the middle of the fecking road.”

Last night’s lecture was the first in a series of talks given by Mr. Delaney. If you live anywhere near Litchfield County, Connecticut, I urge you to try to attend the others.  The schedule is here.  The series will also be available at the LCWP website, along with many other talks, readings and interviews with authors.

Remember when I blogged about the New York Times coming to our house to interview us and take our photos? Well, I have just received an email from our very own Tracy, informing me that the piece is up on the Times’ website. You can view it here.

There’s a slideshow on the Times site and I’ve nabbed some photos to post here.  The photographer, Andrew Sullivan, was really great, as was Beth Maker, the reporter.

Now do you see why I love that grey horse almost more than life itself?  Have you ever seen a horse with a sweeter expression. Love.

Here I am trying to be all pose-y.

Well, it’s hard being photographed next to HIM.  He always looks good..

I’m still trying to sort our how to arrange photos in this new format.  Is it weird to have typing in between the photos like this?

Here’s a shot of our home:

Please go on the site if you want to see the slideshow.  There are a few blog mentions, so everybody on their best behavior tonight.  Tea bags are for brewing tea!