I’m a little hesitant to blog about our puppy AGAIN.  You all will tell me if I’m getting to be a bore, right? I feel like the annoying mom who keeps showing pictures of her baby to all her friends.  But just …please :

This was Holly before our hike today.  Yes, she likes to sleep on the center console of the car!  Here you can see how she rests her hind feet on my legs and sleeps against the gear shift.  I think she likes the vibration:

I know.  I know.

Well, she was resting up for her big hike in the snow.  We’ve been hiking with my friend Marcia and her gorgeous puppy Gus.  Today Gus was sporting a very jaunty vest, due to the snow:

And Marcia’s beautiful daughter Ava joined us because she had a snow day.  Holly was rather taken with Ava:

Holly would like to be carried on snowy hikes.  It’s a lot of work for those little legs, but I encourage her to walk most of the way.  The whole point is to tire her out.

Eventually, though, if she starts to shiver, I end up tucking her into my jacket. It makes her happy:

Me too!

I was in the city today and had plans to meet a friend for lunch.  I noticed that the stores on Fifth Avenue already have their holiday decorations up.  Seemed odd on such a mild day.  But beautiful.

I drove past this little park on East 51st street that I had never seen before:

After I parked, I walked past it and saw people enjoying themselves in the area.  I don’t know if you can see it in the photo, but there’s a lovely waterfall in the back.  There was a big sign explaining that it was a “private space open to the public” and there was a long list of things you could and could not do.  You could eat this, but not that, drink this, not that, etc. Well, with the beautiful trees and the waterfall, I decided it was the nicest private space open to the public I have ever seen, so I took a few photos and was careful to eat and drink nothing.

After lunch I brought my friend back to look at the space.  All the people had gone, but I noticed a sign that I hadn’t see when I took the other pictures.

Still can’t read it?  It said this:

Okay, Private Space Open To The Public, get over yourself!  I mean you’re beautiful and everything, but no photos?  You’re too important to be photographed?

I now am going to make it my mission to mark the seasons by the changes in the Private Space Open To The Public. I am now officially its paparazzi stalker.

On Friday, I drove to Glastonbury, CT to meet up with three old friends –  Jackie and Jill Desrochers and Wendy O’Connor.  We all first became friends when I moved to Marblehead, MA, in the 8^th grade.  Jackie, Wendy and I used to ride together and Wendy went on to become a rather successful young eventer and then she moved to Ireland after college.  Though Wendy and I have stayed more or less in touch, I haven’t seen Jackie or Jill since junior high school.  That’s Jill on the far left, Wendy, me and Jackie.

So, as I drove to Glastonbury, where Jill now lives, I thought about all the old times with these dear friends and I became very nostalgic and a little emotional.  These girls were my friends at what was really the end of an innocent time – I know it sounds trite but its true.  Wendy and I used to spend hours in her room, sprawled across her bed, listening to Elton John and studying Millers tack catalogs, talking about all the things we’d need to buy when we bought our first horse.  Wendy got her first horse soon thereafter – it would be a few decades before I got mine.  Wendy had two German Shepherd dogs named Cory and Terry, I had two dogs: Beau and Gus, and Jackie and Jill had this amazing little dog called Putz. Yes, Putz.   Putz was a wonder dog.  He was a medium-sized mongrel who I met for the first time when he came soaring over the very high bottom half of the Dutch door that led into the Desrochers’ home. He knew about a hundred tricks.  We all lived on Marblehead Neck, which is like an island connected to the mainland by a causeway and every day “Putzers” could be seen by the morning commuters, making his way across the causeway to the mainland, where he would do his day’s business (there were several generations of Marblehead mutts who bore his trademark splotched coat and cocky attitude)  and then in the evening he could be seen trotting back home across the causeway.  He frequented Old Town, loved hanging around the landing with the other town ne’er-do-wells, meeting up with old mates and new girlfriends, checking out the shops, getting into scraps, etc.  Things were different then.  There were no leash laws and it wasn’t at all unusual to see dogs wandering along the aisles of Penni’s, the local grocery store.

Well, when I pulled up to Jill’s house, my head was all full of memories of our animals, and the fun we had and the trouble we got into and I thought I might just burst into tears of joy at the sight of my old friends, but when I climbed out of my truck I was distracted from my nostalgic reverie by a sound that I at first thought was a siren, I’m not kidding – it was LOUD and high and long and shrill, and as I drew closer to the house it became even louder and now sounded like the shrieking of tortured prisoners or dogs.  It was scary.  I was about to step back toward my truck when suddenly the door flew open and it was my dear old friends, just shrieking with laughter at me and my giant pickup truck.  I can’t tell you what a coven of screaming, laughing witches we were for the next four hours, as we looked at our old yearbooks and tried to explain to Jill’s teenaged daughters why we all looked like boys.  We tried to explain, but really, we don’t even understand it.  Everybody in our junior high school yearbook with the exception of Wendy V and Katie W (the prettiest and most popular) looked like boys EXCEPT FOR THE BOYS, who all looked like girls.

Last night I went to a dinner party to celebrate the birthday of my dear friend Marcia, and today we took Denis to meet somebody:

Today I received an email from the original man of the blog himself, our very own Alan, who very gently and quietly reminded me that his friend, author David K. Leff, would be reading and signing books at my favorite bookstore this afternoon.  So off I went at 2:00 to hear David Leff talk about his book, Deep Travel: In Thoreau’s Wake on the Concord and Merrimack.  His talk and his book are about what he calls, “a methodology for looking.”  They’re about looking mindfully at the everyday places and things and thereby gaining an understanding of their history and man’s part in it.

I lifted part of a review of the book from Amazon: “Leff follows Thoreau’s paddle-strokes not only by traveling the same rivers, but by creating a ‘fusion of inward and outward experience,’ incorporating essay-like musing about time and place—and the power of both stories and history to evoke them. Deep Travel is a primer on the art of ‘sight-seeking’ and ‘forensic observation,’ and Leff offers penetrating readings of the river, the vernacular landscape, and Thoreau.”—Ian Marshall, author, Peak Experiences: Walking Meditations on Literature, Nature, and Need and Walden by Haiku

David’s talk was very interesting and now I’m dying to get started on the book.  Outside the Hickory Stick we all posed for photos for the blogs.  David Leff has one too.  It’s here.

Now, I hesitate to show these pictures, but I will, as it will serve as a lesson to all you ladies.  This afternoon, as I headed out after hours squinting at my computer, I looked in the mirror and considered applying makeup.  Just a little mascara.  Then I actually thought: why bother, I’ll just have to take it off later.  And I also had the completely delusional thought: at a certain age, women look quite lovely without any makeup at all.

Somebody actually said that to me recently.  That women look “softer” without makeup at a certain age. Well, how’s this for “soft”?

That’s me with Alan, above. Yes, my face is so soft that my eyes have completely disappeared.

Here I am with David Leff:

Yes, I’m displaying my man hands.  No, I don’t usually wear my wedding ring.  Yes, I’m married.  Any other questions?

David Leff also writes poetry and so I will close with a poem that I lifted from his website:

Halftones

by David K Leff

Bathed in drizzle at dawn, I walk down to the river without
coffee or shower, the haze of slumber not yet fully lifted.
I’m quieted by a world hushed in a glaze of moisture. Light
slowly leaks into a dingy sky, creeps silently without wind
as fugitive wisps of ragged clouds drag mist across hills of
dew-lit grass. All is a muted charcoal smudge,
a sketchbook landscape.  Deep within the fog, on a leaden
millpond framed by a fretwork of gray tree-branch
shadows, geese softly echo each other, hoarsely calling
to ignite a pallid morning growing as vivid as the video
dreams that stirred me from sleep.

Photo by Devin Leary

We have had a lovely fall weekend, despite the fact that Denis wasn’t here.  Dev and I went into the city to attend  the birthday party of our longtime friend Richard LaGravenese.  Richard and Denis went to college together and then Richard wrote the movie, The Ref, which Denis starred in with Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis.  Since The Ref, we have remained very good friends with Richard, his wife Ann, and their daughter Lily, who is the same general age as our kids..

Lily is now a beautiful college student, majoring in musical theater and she sang “Unforgettable” to her father, which made me cry.  So sweet.  But it was a late night and it seriously took me all day yesterday to recover from the excitement and lack of sleep.

Now, I’m back to work on the animal book proposal.  It’s easy to be inspired when surrounded by your subjects, as I am.

Photo by Devin Leary

I get lots of feedback.

Here, Snoopy is trying to slam the laptop shut onto my fingers.  He doesn’t think much of my writing and believes I should get a day job.

Mark likes anything that is written about him.

Photo by Devin Leary

Many thanks to Elise, who mentioned this interesting New York Times piece in a recent comment.  It was in today’s paper, and discusses the ways scientists are learning that dogs are useful, not just for the blind but for people with many disabilities.  It says, in part:

“…over the last several years a growing body of evidence, culled from small scientific studies of dogs’ abilities to do things like detect cancer or seizures, solve complex problems (complex for a dog, anyway), and learn language suggests that they may know more than we thought they did. Their apparent ability to tune in to the needs of psychiatric patients, turning on lights for trauma victims afraid of the dark, reminding their owners to take medication and interrupting behaviors like suicide attempts and self-mutilation, for example, has lately attracted the attention of researchers.”

Very interesting.

Photo by Devin Leary

Well, this one doesn’t have to turn on lights or palpate my breasts for lumps or talk me off of window ledges or any of the other amazing things these fancy therapy dogs can do, but she is a great shrink.

She’s just a good listener.  She doesn’t believe in telling you what to do, but, rather, she listens quietly while you wail and sob and whine and complain and she lets you come to your own resolution, in your own time.  She’s like a blank canvas – allowing her patient (she just has the one – me – but I’m a full-time job) to project all her anxieties and fears and sadness onto her, which she absorbs, and reflects nothing back but an unconditional and all-abiding love. She’s a great, great shrink, and her hourly rate can’t be beat.

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

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.

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.

Last night’s event was a wonderful celebration of Frank’s life as a teacher, friend, father, husband and Pulitzer Prize winning author. The event was hosted by author Peter Quinn, who commented on Frank’s great generosity as an author, mentioning that, as he watched people file into the theater, he counted 340 authors whose books Frank had “blurbed”.  I don’t know if Peter Quinn counted me among those 340, but I am one of the authors who receieved Frank’s generous praise for the cover of my book, Outtakes From a Marriage.

The night was funny and sad and everything a memorial service for a real Irishman should be. I had never been to an Irish wake before I met Denis and I was so astounded by the first one I attended, years ago, for one of Denis’s elderly relatives, that I talked about it for days. Denis had never really thought about the Irish wake before, but when I pointed out the behavior of his relatives and friends, he was amazed and amused too, and we have talked for years about writing a movie that takes place, entirely at an Irish wake.

Irish people love wakes. They peruse the obituaries frantically each Sunday, saying things like, “Jack Donnelly of Federal Street is dead. Isn’t that the Jack Donnelly that Uncle Tim used to work with down at the Post Office?” Then, when there is even the remotest link made to any of the dead, the family will dress up and rush off to the funeral home for the festivities. The casket is at the front of the room and people line up to kneel beside it and offer a prayer. There are rows of folding chairs and after offering their condolences to the family of the deceased, people sit in the chairs and talk about how sad it all is, the dead person being dead and all. How sad the family looks. How the little ones don’t seem aware, God bless them. The people who have flocked to the wake wonder why so-and-so isn’t there, and why another so-and-so dared show his face. They talk about how old this one looks, how beautiful that one’s daughter has become, and how crazy her mother is. And then the whole party moves to the home of a survivor of the deceased where everyone will eat and drink all night and many old, stale grudges are refreshed and sometimes fights break out, and young lovers meet and old people outdrink the young. Well, if you’re Irish, you know what I’m talking about and if not, I’m so sorry, you’ve really missed out.

But none of this really has anything to do with last night, except for the fact that Irish people experience loss with much sadness and great cheer.

Frank’s surviving brothers, Alfie, Michael and Malachy McCourt, told heartbreaking and humorous stories about Frank – about how he helped them all come to America, about how he loved this country and teaching and writing, and traveling and meeting his fans. How his wife, Ellen changed his life and how she inspired him to write Angela’s Ashes. And how funny he was. One of my favorite stories was told by a friend of Frank’s who recalled the time a drunk homeless person staggered up to them on a New York sidewalk and asked for five dollars to buy a bottle of wine. Frank immediately shouted, “And how can I be sure you’re not going to use that money to buy yourself a bowl of soup?”

One of the best parts of the evening was when the New York City Chancellor of Education, Joel Klein, announced that there will be a new public high school in Manhattan called the Frank McCourt High School, which will be a selective school that will focus on the teaching of writing to New York City kids.
The very best part was a speech by author William Kennedy, at the end of the evening, in which he stated the obvious – that Frank is not really dead at all, nor will he ever be, as people will be reading his books for eternity.

“The Irish are experts at two things: words and death,” said Peter Quinn last night.

They are, ’tis true.

Somebody needs a little horsey Prozac:
He was just sad to be left behind today. Have I mentioned that I’m rather fond of this horse?
Well, I was up with the dawn to feed the horses and then I met up with the Little Britches gang at the Washington Horse Show. The Washington Horse show is an annual horse show to benefit Steep Rock Land Preserve and there is a category for handicapped riders. I assisted three young riders who all won ribbons (deservedly so, they all did an outstanding job). Then, when the Little Britches riders went home, it was still early so I drove home, watched Denis and his friends play street hockey for a nanosecond, then loaded up Snoopy, picked up Jen and a new horse she’s trying out and headed BACK to Steep Rock, just to see how the new horse would do with the show crowd and the trails and the river and everything. New horse (yet unnamed – have at it, blog readers) did wonderfully.
He’s a Paint Horse, which is a type of horse that usually has large white splotches on a darker colored coat. Sometimes it’s the opposite – dark splotches on a white coat. This horse has a white splotch that looks like the continent of Africa on his rump. I wish I took a photo of that. I thought Africa might be a good name, but Jenny already has a mare called India.

Well behaved Paint Horse with Africa on his butt is for sale by the way. Christmas is just around the corner!

(Blogger’s note – photos below were added later. They were sent by our friends whom we saw at the show):

And to prove you can hug your horse with helmet on:

It was just another gorgeous fall day. When I arrived home, I let Snoopy graze in the yard while Denis and I sat outside, and I heard all the gossip about this week on the set, while the dogs put on a show:


Then I hung with Mark a little. Sorry about the dumpster. It’s still there from my dehoarding weekend with Meg.

Remember Oliver? I last photographed him when he was two days old:
Well, his mother, Jen, sent me some new photos of four-month old Oliver the other day. I hasten to inform you that I’m not one of those people who calls the owners of dogs, cats or horses, “moms” or “dads.” Oliver really thinks Jen is his mother. This is why:
(It’s a sad story, sorry, but there’s a happy ending)

Oliver’s birth mother was Mimi, a beautiful chestnut Thoroughbred mare, whom Jenny had owned and loved for years. During Oliver’s birth, unfortunately, Mimi suffered a ruptured uterine artery, which is an unpreventable, unforeseeable birth complication and poor Mimi didn’t survive the birth. Jen is an equine veterinarian and did all she could to help her, but she lost the mare.

Fortunately, Oliver survivied. So Jen bottle fed him and comforted him until she was able to find, through some kind of veterinary network, a mare who had foaled, but who had lost the foal. Jen had the mare brought to her farm the very next day, but by this time, little Oliver had already imprinted on Jen. He believed that Jen was his mother, and when the sweet foster mare arrived, she became his milk wagon, but in Oliver’s mind, Jen was his real mommy.

Once, I was visiting and we were playing with Oliver in his stall. Jen left the stall and as soon as she was out of view, Oliver hastened to the stall door, his ears pricked, listening for Jen. When she said something, he tilted his head, just like a dog, trying to locate her by the sound of her voice. I know that most of you aren’t horse people, but this is very untypical foal behavior. Usually foals are seen peering out from behind the flank of the mother. They follow the mother mare all over the field and will approach humans if the mother does. Oliver roams around their field very boldly on his own, only returning to the foster mare’s side for refreshments. He also will race over to the fence (like my Mark) whenever he sees any human and engage in adorably naughty behavior, like pulling on our clothes and trying to otherwise get attention any way possible. I personally think Artful Dodger might have been a more appropriate name for him.

Well, he’s a lucky (and very happy) little orphan, young Oliver:

(Photo by Katie Hylen)
Isn’t he gorgeous?

(Photo by Kate Hylen)
“Wh-e-e-e-ere is love?”

Photo by Katie Hylen)
“I’ve taken to you so strong, it’s clear …we’re… going to get along!”