Ann Leary, author of The Good House
Author of The Good House
Last night, Denis had the great honor of hosting the annual Navy SEAL Foundation dinner. The Navy SEAL Foundation provides assistance to families of Navy SEALS who have been injured or killed in the line of duty and last night there were 1600 people at the dinner, which raised a tidy sum for the foundation.
How much?
I’m afraid that’s classified.
It’s official. I have the nicest blog readers in America on earth in the strato-blogosphere! Need proof? How about this?
Painting by Sandy Oberg
Our own Sandy Oberg painted a portrait of Holly and sent it to me. She was very clever and contacted Bernie, our EMS chief and arranged the delivery of this beautiful oil painting to our firehouse because she didn’t know our address. Then he delivered it to me! Today!
Here it is in front of our model, herself:
Doe resting near lake
For, lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone;
the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land
Song of Solomon, King James Bible
Last fall, I was riding in Steep Rock Land Preserve and I came across a lovely hiker on one of the trails. She asked me if I would mind if she took a photo of Mark and me, and I said, “Mind? We’d love it!” We’re not shy, Mark and I, and never tire of photos taken of us together. I asked her if she’d email me the photos and we exchanged information and learned that we both live in the same town, both have horses and both have kids who attended the same college. Later she emailed me the photo and I believe I posted it here, but will have to go back and look. But why bother, because today, Carol Johnson sent me a photo of an oil painting that she made from the photo.
Tomorrow, May 24th, at 5:00 PM, I will be moderating a Q&A with bestselling author Susan Orlean at the Apple Store, 103 Prince Street in Soho, Manhattan. What will we be talking about? Susan’s fabulous forthcoming book, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, for one.
The Apple Store in Soho has been doing a very cool series of “Meet the Author” events and tomorrow’s event with Susan Orlean is also part of Book Expo America which is taking place in Manhattan this week. It’s free, but seating is limited, so get there early.
Cynthia Kaplan
This coming week I will be onstage with not one, not two, but three gorgeous, funny, brilliant ladies gals chicks oh, you know, broads!
Julie Klam
First, this Friday, May 20th at 9:30 PM, I will be at the West Bank Cafe in Manhattan’s theater district, co-hosting The New Jack Paar Show with my friend, the hilarious author/comedian/songstress Cynthia Kaplan. We have several exciting guests lined up including my dear fellow Hash Hag, Julie Klam! You may make reservations here.
Pupils Equal & Reactive to Light
Well, to begin at the beginning, the dog was kicked in the head by one of the horses. It was Gomer, the Leonberger, not little Holly, fortunately, but he was kicked in the head! He’s fine now, but it has taken me this long to sufficiently recover from the trauma, and then the house flooded and our air was polluted with carbon monoxide…but, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.
My most recent IN HOUSE Radio interview had aired!
This week, author Elyssa East and I chatted about her book DOGTOWN: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town, which was published to great acclaim last year and which has just recently been released in paperback. If you haven’t read Dogtown, I highly recommend it. Dogtown is about a very tragic murder that happened in the early 1990s in a part of Gloucester, MA with a rather dark and haunted reputation that dates back to colonial times. I used to live in nearby Marblehead and had heard about the murder so I was very interested in the book when it was first published and was delighted by Elyssa’s writing style and also by the many facts about that part of Cape Ann, that I had never known.
We had almost a foot of snow on the ground and yesterday we got another foot. So now we have, well, just tons of snow.
This is what that table normally looks like. I’ve been meaning to put it in the garage to protect if from snow. Ooops.
Most winter mornings I wish I could stay in my warm bed instead of having to trudge up to the barn to feed the horses. But not today. We had the most beautiful snow yesterday. Unlike our last storm, where the wind blew the snow sideways and at times, it seemed, right back up into the sky, yesterday’s snow fell gently, as it should, down to the earth. The flakes were puffy and soft and gathered like multitudes of cotton balls on the dogs’ ears and on my mittens. This morning, everything was still and white and as we walked up to the barn there was no sound but the steady, muffled crunch of my footsteps and the excited huffing and whining of the dogs who were trying to sniff out rodents beneath the deep drifts.
