My daughter has forbidden me to post it. My son has left my home in shame after having viewed it with a friend. Still, this is America, where we have freedom of expression and I have made a film so frightening yet empowering, so controversial yet provocative that, though it has been banned in my home, I am going to screen it here, for you, my blog readers.
Ann Leary, author of The Good House
Author of The Good House
If It Ain’t Broke – It Ain’t Mine
February 28, 2010 by 76 Comments
Somebody very kindly posted my (Leo) horoscope yesterday or the day before and I’ve been scanning all the comments because I’m wondering if it warned that I would break a tooth and then a computer in one weekend. I still can’t find the comment with the horoscope, but did get a new laptop today. Mine has been on it’s way out for a long time. It didn’t close and I had to tape it shut when I traveled with it. I guess you’re not supposed to keep dropping the laptops on the ground. And it wasn’t really my tooth that broke, on Friday, just a veneer. On one of my front teeth. Oh, you thought those were my real teeth? No, no, my real teeth have been filed down to scary little nubbins in order to make way for the veneers. You see, I had a less than perfect smile. I had a big gap between my front teeth that somehow looked cool until I was 35, and then, overnight, made me look like a witch. I’m not sure how that happened but the exact same thing happened to a friend of mine when she turned 35.
Hag Alert
November 8, 2009 by 44 Comments
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.
Twelve-Fingered, Out Of Mind
October 31, 2009 by 51 Comments
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.
Brewing a Cauldron of Botox
April 16, 2009 by 29 Comments
As some of you might recall, I’m working on this book with a bit of a witch theme. Today I read that during the English witch craze in the 1640s, the Rev. John Gaule recorded that “every old woman with a wrinkled face, a furr’d brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue … is not only suspected, but pronounced for a witch. “
Okay, conveniently, the stinky old men who hunted and tried these witches, left the pretty, young unwrinkled maidens out of the mix.
Witch Dung
November 20, 2008 by 10 Comments
“Yes, it is a witch’s life.” Anne Sexton
So, as some of you know, I’m working on a novel set near Salem, Massachusetts. One of the characters has an ancestor (ancestress?) who was a famous witch. I used to live in nearby Marblehead and went to various schools in New England and met a few people who claimed to be descendents of one or another witch who was hung in Salem. I think it’s interesting that so many claim to be related to the 29 martyrs that were hung in Salem Village, but I’ve never heard one person claim any association with the hundreds of others – accusers, jailors, quiet do-nothings who lived in an around the village.
Fashion Tip
November 11, 2008 by 11 Comments
Here’s a helpful fashion tip for the ladies: When tending to your barn animals, make sure you look your best, just in case your charming Irish blacksmith should show up a little earlier than announced. I recommend you try to duplicate the smart outfit I wore this very morning when farrier Eammon Gillespie arrived:
Working Away
October 22, 2008 by 3 Comments
Tammy and others have been kind enough to ask how I am recovering from my surgery and I’m doing great. I really have no pain anymore and feel so much better than I did before the surgery that I am just thrilled to have it over with.
Now that I can drive, I feel much more like myself. Am going into the city today for a doctor’s appointment. I think the reason I’ve been doing so much posting of other people’s poems and adoptable dogs is because I am FINALLY making some headway with this new book I’m writing. I actually feel like it’s writing itself at this point and there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day.
Mim, Prim and Miniminy Mouthed
April 3, 2008 by 3 Comments
I’m working on a new novel and I’m sometimes led to interesting places while doing my “research” (procrastinating). The book I’m working on is set in a small town in New England and it involves a psychiatrist and a scandal. There is also a theme that involves witches, but you know, the modern kind. Anyway, my internet meanderings led me to this article that was published in TIME Magazine in 1956. You can find it here.
