Big Weekend Coming

I'm all ate up today because we have the hugest week and weekend coming up. Tonight, a monster rehearsal for a long-awaited re-engagement of The Swinging Orangutangs at the Whipple Tavern on Friday, February 13. Oh my goodness. Our small band of hangers-on is primed to storm the Whipple (as everyone calls it), have a ball, dance, and not smoke. Two rehearsals today: the gig rehearsal, and also one for Phoebe's and my maiden recital on Sunday--she for piano, me for voice. Eek.

Phoebe and our teacher Jessica Baldwin will play the duet, "Old Abe Lincoln," while I'll sing a pop song, because that's what I do. No German opera just yet.

When I'm practicing my song (I'll sing "I Can't Make You Love Me" by Mike Reid/Allen Shamblin, made popular by Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Hornsby) I have to push away this image of Simon Cowell saying, "That was in-DUL-gent, it was cabaRET, it was an AB-so-lute dis-AHS-tah." He's always there, up in my head, although I have been able to get through the song twice recently without hearing that voice. I think I am watching too many American Idol auditions.It's funny how I can sing in front of a lot of people in a bar without breaking a sweat, but call it a recital, put me alone by a piano with a bunch of well-dressed people sitting politely with their hands folded in their laps, and it's a whole 'nother beast. A recital is like golf---all mental, instead of a gig, which is like basketball, where either you're able to pound the ball down the court and into the basket or you aren't, but either way you don't have much time to think about it. You just get down and deal with it.

So Friday we'll be going nuts with the Orangs, and Sunday I'll be in recital mode. I don't know if that's a good thing or not; I just hope I don't shred my voice at The Whipple. That's mainly why I'm taking voice lessons--I want to save what I've got; I want to be singing when I'm 88. Whatever Simon says.

So, in addition to the gig and the recital, we have friends coming down from Columbus to catch the gig and visit us. They are the city mice to our country mice. Although they spend most of the summer in the country in Vermont, and absolutely love to hike and be outdoors, they are accustomed to, shall we say, somewhat finer provisions than we are able to get 'round these parts. Luckily, they bring them to us, always offering to make a Trader Joe's stop for us before embarking. If you are a fan of Trader Joe's, you MUST watch this video.


If I have succeeded in embedding a video, the recital should go just fine. Thanks to my fine friend Matthew for alerting me to this homemade masterpiece.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a few pictures of Yo, Kate, Anna and Kellie from their last visit.Yo and I went to high school together in Richmond, Virginia, and for a couple of years we even waited at the same bus stop. We had the same amazing English and World Lit teacher, my guiding light who I love and still talk to after 30 years. I was a year or two ahead of him, and we didn't really know each other, and it kills me now to think that we were a couple of blocks away and didn't hang out. We're making up for lost time now. Yo heard me talking about a dying beech tree on NPR one afternoon, emailed, and now we're yakking all the time. The best part is that our kids get along like a house afire. The worst part is that our kids now pester us constantly to go to Columbus and Whipple.
We took the Yo's, as we call the family, down to Beechy Crash, a place where, 17 years ago, a huge beech smashed down in a ravine. That beech is nothing but a mossy log now, but the name stuck. There are always good icicles in the weepy seepy cliffs of Beechy Crash.
Luckily no one was impaled. I had to tell Liam to get out from under the icicles; he was catching drips with his tongue...Kids don't think that the icicle's ever going to come crashing down, but I've seen them crash, and no kid of mine is going to be under something like that when it lets go. Shila and I learned that the hard way in Beechy Crash a few years ago.

We came up to the old car that used to run a wildcat oil well deep in the woods. It's slowly deliquescing, and I commented on its beauty. The kids wanted to know what was beautiful about a rotting car. Well, I said, take a look at this:
and this:
and then there's this bit:Abstract paintings, all, reminiscent of lichens and shells, landscapes and skies...

and let's not forget this:
and I believe they looked at the car a bit differently then, with more sympathy and reverence for all it had once been.
We visited the beech tree, OK 1902, which brought us together in 2007, and which is now thoroughly and sadly dead. If bringing us together was its highest purpose on earth, I hope it is content.
We were hiking along when suddenly Bill hurried forward and disappeared up the trail. It wasn't long before the smell of smoke came on the air, uncomfortably, alarmingly close. I never want to smell that unless I know exactly where it's coming from. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. I was pleased but not surprised to find my caveman hunkered down near the carcass of OK 1902.
In no time at all he had a fire big enough to warm Liam's feet, which were very wet after a slide down a steep bank into the stream.
It was time to put out the fire (Bill, Liam and Yo took care of that in the most manly of ways while the females went on ahead) and turn for home. This gave Yo, a frighteningly well-versed oenophile, a chance to razz us about our "wine cellar," which is a climate and humidity-controlled cardboard box nestled against a roll of extra insulation and some mops in our messy basement.
He went through our collection, which is heavy on Ohio wines because those are the ones that are left. This one is from Trader Joe's, and it was a special buyout, and it wasn't very good. It has a train on the label, so we took to calling it Night Train.


Yo likes burgundies and vouvets and all kinds of types of wines I haven't even heard of, and he brings bottles for us to experience and completely ruins us for the grocery-store rotgut we usually drink. It is no favor he does us, though it's really nice at the time.

If he weren't so cute, and didn't arrive bearing burgundies, I'd probably clobber him with a bottle of Terra Cotta Sweet Red Table Wine.

Plus, Chet Baker likes him.
And anyone who will let Chet Baker fall asleep in the crook of his arm and stay still until he wakes up is a friend of mine.
We were all kind of cold from the walk so we started a fire and put our feet to it, but in a nice way.
These photos are by Bill Thompson III. The first, ugly flash photo is to show the lineup. But this is what it really looked and felt like.
Friends are the best.

Rabbit Heroism

All my container plants are up on blocks. This is Appalachia, after all, it matches the cars. Actually, it's because I have a rabbit nemesis in the yard who climbs up into my planters and eats everything down to stubs. She chews up geraniums, reducing them to a pile of leaves and stem segments. Some thanks that is for saving her babies.

I am happy to report that the shadbush she bit down from 14" to 1" has resprouted, and is now enclosed in chicken wire. Thought you'd like to know, TreeLady.

On Thursday, July 12, my commentary on heroic rabbit mothers aired on All Things Considered. You can listen to it here.

For Mojo Man

This essay aired today on All Things Considered, in honor of Earth Day. You can hear me read it here. I couldn't have written it, much less felt it, without a letter that Mojo Man, a self-described frustrated forester, wrote to me more than a year ago, when I was complaining about selective cutting. In essence, he said, "Get over it. Think of the alternative. Logging is a sustainable use of a forest. Forests are dynamic systems, and even logged-over woods beat a housing development."

Sometimes we don't know the impact a few well-chosen words to a friend can have. Mojo's letter got me through the logging, got me through the snarling chainsaws and the shrieks and cracks of dying trees. Did I enjoy it? No. Would I allow it to be done to our forest? Never. But I repeated Mojo's wisdom to myself over and over throughout February and March; I repeated it to Bill and the kids; kept it in my head as I spoke respectfully to my neighbor, and it truly got me through. This old earth is a renewable resource, bouncing back after unthinkable injury and insult. Think of the Exxon Valdez disaster, the healing that's gone on in those diesel-soaked beaches. We owe her so much more honor, love and respect than we'll ever give her, but like a good wife and mother, she keeps coming back, taking care of us even at our spoiled, self-centered and destructive worst.



Our neighbor is logging his woods. We listened as the bulldozers and chainsaws moved closer each day. One by one, the big trees fell. The loggers were taking everything over 18” in diameter, leaving the smaller trees to mature. After three weeks, there was only one giant left, the tulip tree we called the Privacy Tree. We called it that because it shielded our house from the road, made it feel like a secret.

I knew the logger was saving the biggest tree for last. He couldn’t have overlooked it. It was time to say good-bye. I walked out through the snow, meaning to wrap my arms around it, and had to spread them for a good-bye hug. I know, I’m a tree hugger. But it’s something, in this cut-over, degraded forest, to find a tulip tree that’s 36” at breast height.

“Can’t we ask them not to cut the Privacy Tree?” asked Phoebe, her voice plaintive. “Doesn’t the logger have a heart?” Well, no, honey, we can’t ask him. A 36” tulip is worth money, and it’s on our neighbor’s land, and that, dear, is that.

While she was at school, I did call my neighbor and offer to compensate him for the value of the tree if he’d leave it standing. It was a reckless act, born of a mother’s desire to fix what’s wrong. I had no idea what it was worth, figuring I’d either be able to meet the price or not. I just wanted to buy it, to leave it standing, so the tanagers and wood thrushes could still perch in it and sing. He turned me down flat. “Nope, I’m gonna cut it. If it dies and falls down, I can’t get anything for it. And I don’t want it lying on the ground. Trees are a crop, just like anything else, and you need to harvest them before they fall down.” I suggested that trees might have another value as habitat, even after they fell down, and we hung up, agreeing that we saw things differently when it came to trees.

Two days later, my husband and I watched in silence as a chainsaw snarled into its base. The Privacy Tulip trembled, groaned, spun slowly, and smashed down, taking five other trees with it.





Four years ago, I watched with dismay as another forest I loved was logged just like this one. I’d drive by every day, watching it get thinner and thinner. The loggers took all the big trees, piling them like Lincoln logs on a flatbed truck, hauling the forest away in a cloud of diesel fumes. I ground my teeth and muttered as I passed. The next spring, underbrush sprang up in the newly opened woods, from seeds that had been waiting for decades in the soil for just such conditions.

Within three years, new, strange bird songs rang through the opened stand: Wild turkeys, American redstarts, blue-winged, prairie, hooded and Kentucky warblers flocked to the thick young growth that sprang up in the wake of the cutting. Come spring, I’ll park my car where the logging truck once sat, and watch jewellike birds fetching insects and nesting materials in the flickering sun, in the new growth racing toward the sky.

For birds like these to survive and thrive, some trees must fall, some sunlight must strike the forest floor. Even as I mourn the Privacy Tree, I know that my neighbor’s is a changed woodland, and not necessarily for the worse. Come spring, I’ll be listening for new songs.A postscript:
Even before the branches had settled, five hawks appeared in the sky directly over where the Privacy Tree had stood for so many years. Two red-shoulders and three redtails circled and screamed, keening an unearthly chorus in the space where the tree had been. Their cries tore through the pearly sky. Who can say why? I think that we are not the only ones who mourn it.

Charlie on NPR

Just a quick demi-post to let you know that one of my commentaries aired on National Public Radio last night. It was a surprise to me--a quick substitution for something that fell through in last night's All Things Considered program. Titled, "A Delightful, Awful Marriage to a Pet Parrot," you can listen to it by clicking here.

As of 9 AM Friday, the piece has climbed to #7 on NPR's Most E-mailed Stories list, which means it'll make it to NPR's weekly podcast, and get heard by all the folks who are too busy to sit around the radio in the afternoon. If you'd care to email it to a friend (you can do that with a click on its NPR page), maybe it'll climb higher! All cause for celebration around the house. I hand-fed Charlie a big warm wad of mashed baked sweet potato and gave him some extra hugs and kisses this morning for sticking with me.
Though I've been braced for hatemail from parrot fanciers, so far there's been none. I got an interesting email from a woman who rescues cockatoos, thanking me for telling it like it is where living with parrots is concerned. "If you keep even one person from going out and buying a parrot, you deserve a medal," she wrote. She directed me to a site warning people against buying cockatoos. Though cockatoos are special head cases in captivity, much of what appears on this site applies to other large parrots and macaws. It's well-written and honest. I wish I'd been able to visit this site in 1986... Check it out.

MY Feeder. Got that?

Clientele is kind of thin at the feeders these days.


This was taken soon after he arrived, in October '07. He's spending a fat winter here.

There's been a little immature male sharp-shinned hawk hanging around our yard for three months now. Soon after he showed up, he bonked himself on the studio window, and I watched him cartwheel crazily into the shelter of our Virginia pines to sleep it off, and worried about him. He seems to be fine now, if a bit tame...a correlation I've made with other known individual window-hit birds. Not sure what it means, but it's happened enough to make me think it's not coincidence.

I think he figured something out in that accident. I think he figured out how to use plate glass to his advantage. He wouldn't be the first to do that, nor the last. He comes bombing around the corner of the house and scares everyone up from the feeders and sometimes one or two birds fly and bonk themselves on the same glass that got him. He's no dummy.

He's getting tamer and tamer. He sits for minutes on end on the feeders now, waiting for a titmouse to fly in, waiting for a junco to not notice him and land right underneath him. It hasn't happened yet, but a hawk can hope, can't he?
Several times we've seen him sitting in one of our little birches, a flustered titmouse right on the other side of the trunk from him. The titmouse dithers and scolds, knowing that it's not safe to break for better cover, but also knowing that the sharpie wouldn't be able to fly through all the twiggage to get him if he stays put. These golden pictures are from October, when there were still leaves. The sprucy ones are recent. Same bird, though. I had a couple of wonderful salons with the sharpie the other day. He came to the feeder twice in the afternoon, just hanging out. He watched me disinterestedly as I shot him through the glass, occasionally turning a withering glare on me.

What a gorgeous little bird, all fluff and needle-sharp talons and a stringy strong body underneath.
Don't let his contemplative look fool you. If you were small enough to carry away, he'd kill you, too.

If you'd like to hear the whole story, in the form of my NPR commentary, click here.

What's That in the Corner?

Just a quick note to let you know that one of my commentaries, about houseplants that are no longer an asset, should air this afternoon (Friday, Jan. 4, '08) on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Should you miss it, you can find the audio file here.
I consider these an asset, but beauty's in the eye of the beholder. Tippy pots of sprawly orchids aren't to everyone's taste.

Boot Haikus

It's odd, but I know
Whose boot this is, growing moss
His name was Gary.

He ate the squirrels
For acres around his house
Those remaining, run.

He died in his house
Standing alone at the sink
Was found, still standing.

People spoke his name
And then, quietly, "He drank."
Here: His jars, his boot.


Yesterday afternoon, my commentary about my neighbor, Gary, aired on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. If you'd like to hear the whole story, listen here.

Turn on Your Radio

This just in: I've been told that one of my commentaries will air this afternoon (Wednesday, August 22) on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. It will air in the first half of the second hour of the show. Here in the Eastern time zone, that would have it airing between 5 and 5:30 p.m., since our show starts at 4 p.m. It should air right after a story about a survey of married couples.

The piece is about some of the things that happen (and don't) when you've been married for a long time.

It's been a bit of a dry spell; I haven't been on the air since May, when I admitted to doing dastardly things to house sparrows. There wasn't a Zick embargo that I know of; I was just traveling too darn much to write or record anything. This is a piece that NPR's been holding for a couple of years, and my genius editor remembered it and found that it fit right in with a story that came up. Hope you can tune in and hear it! If you miss it, listen here after 7 p.m. today.

In another bit of shameless self-promotion, I've received word today that Letters from Eden is one of five finalists for a Great Lakes Book Award. Didn't win it, but it's a finalist. Not going to argue with that. Life is good.

NPR Alert

Blue-winged warbler, foraging in the frost-burned black raspberries.

Remember when I was carping about having so much yard and housework to do? Well, the day I got up at 5 to start it, and had the whole day laid out to do nothing but gruntwork, I got a call at 11 AM from NPR, wanting me to report to the studio in Athens (1 1/2 hr. away) for a taped interview with Melissa Block. It was to be a followup on the one titled, "Waiting for Spring, Waiting for the Birds," that aired April 10. Well, OK. I can do that.

Before I left at noon, I threw together a photo gallery at Melissa's request, for an NPR Web Extra. They're all birds I've photographed in the last couple of weeks, right on our farm. There's also one by BOTB, the worm-eating warbler, which was too sublime not to include. Emailed those off, leapt into the car, arrived at the studio with 15 minutes to spare, disgorged what I thought to be true about this spring's migration, and jumped back in the car, arriving at the bus stop in Whipple with ten minutes to spare, at 4:00 PM.
It definitely beat doing housework.

Understand: I have never considered myself a bird photographer, but I am waaay more excited about the photo gallery on the NPR web site than about hearing myself blather on the air. You can see it, and listen to the new interview, here.

The piece aired at about 4:10 pm Eastern time (the third story in the first hour of All Things Considered) and in many places it will air again at about 6:10 p.m. Eastern. Give it a listen if you read this in time, or you can hit the link above to hear it online.

Part of what's working here is luck, and part of it is being willing and able to throw my plans out the window at a moment's notice. It sure beats scrubbing toilets. You were right. The toilets and floors can wait.

A white-eyed vireo, puffed up like a tennis ball in the frost-burned willow. Today, it's all leafed out again!

Hotdog Brothers Love Flowers, Too

Friday, April 20, another of my commentaries aired on All Things considered. This one was about Liam, and how much he loves flowers, and all beautiful things, especially those that smell good. I took these pictures in a garden outside the Smithsonian Museum on April 20, 2006, as it happens, while Liam and I were on an adventure together to Washington, D.C. So if he looks about a year young, that's why. Now, he'd be more likely to have a Hot Wheels in his hand than a train. Sigh. He's moving on.
I was surprised and very pleased that my editor managed to get the commentary aired, because it's about the long, cold spring, and the endless winter (which is clearly ending now) and how starved we get for something beautiful and sweet smelling. Even grubby little Hotdog Brothers pine for flowers. Airing it Friday, just as the weather seems to be turning finally toward the light, was literally the 59th minute of the eleventh hour. It's at #8 on the Most E-mailed List on NPR's web site as of Saturday evening. I think people need something nice in the midst of current events.
You can listen to the commentary here.

I'm hangin' in there at the Mohican Wildlife Weekend, too beat to download any of my photos, having a great time. There is hardly a leaf on any tree here, and the migrants are wisely staying down south where there are leaves (and presumably small soft caterpillars, aphids, and the like). But the landscapes around Bellville and the famous Malabar Farm (where Bogie and Bacall got married) are incredibly beautiful, and the crowd is big and very appreciative, and I'm having a lovely time in my motel room, directly adjacent to an in-house waterpark called Splash Harbor. I confess that I have not used my wristband to gain access to this kiddie paradise. My experience of Splash Harbor is limited to hearing water roar in an irregular but predictable pattern through pipes under my room's floor, on its way to the revolving pirate ship water feature that I can dimly see out my window. Some people think it's fun to have tepid kiddie soup dumped unexpectedly on their heads. Most of them are under four feet tall.
I thank my friend Weedpicker Cheryl Harner for inviting me here, for taking fabulous care of me, feeding me, introducing me to the coolest folks, squatting in the leaf litter examining hepaticas with me, and for taking this picture of me with my new friend Gary sitting on an air-conditioned rock in Hemlock Gorge near the Rock City.The weather is smashing. Life is good. Wish you were here!

An NPR Day

This day: big exhale. It started off with seeing BOTB off yet again, this time to Akron, Boston, and parts of northern Ohio. Looking at our schedules this winter, I wondered what it would be like to live through this spring, and now I'm finding out. Our wonderful home feels like a place where we throw our suitcases, run the washing machine, and sleep occasionally. I started missing him before he left. It gets harder to wave goodbye each time. He knows. He came dashing home to say goodbye again at lunchtime before he had to leave for good. It helped.

I was feeling blue for a number of reasons. The underlying reason: April 10 is the day my father died in 1994. I always try to suspend the normal stuff that fills my days on April 10, and do something that honors his memory. I decided to plant peas. He was a gardener, a man of the earth. So last night Liam and I counted out and soaked about 400 sugar snap peas and this morning they were nice and fat. I was digging a trowel trench for the first row when the phone rang. I was wanted in Athens, an hour and a half away, to record an interview with Melissa Block, about the effects of the cold snap (is it a snap when it lasts more than a week?) on birds. We'd corresponded about it, and she decided it would be newsworthy. It was about 1:15 when I got the call. I had to be in Athens by 3. I called Sue, the beloved school bus driver described in an early commentary, and asked her what I should do, because Phoebe had softball practice, and I'd miss him at the bus stop, and Bill wasn't here to catch for me. This is part of what I love about living here. People stop to help. Without a moment's hesitation, Sue suggested that Liam ride home with her, and I was off, pedal to the metal, headed for Athens. I grabbed a handful of tamari wasabi almonds and a pint of yogurt on my way out the door. That was lunch.

Oh, rot. Gas tank empty. Why would I need to keep gas in the car, living 20 miles from town? Red "CHECK GAGE" light and all. Yes, Ford spells it "GAGE." Stop for $20 worth of gas. Throw the bill on the counter and race back out to the car. They know me at the Pit Stop and didn't bat an eye. Jump back in. Speed all the 50-mile way, thanking the powers above that the road to Athens is fairly straight, and you can see a long way ahead, scanning for cops. I hate speeding, have been pinched more than once for it, (see Nature Girl Gets Pinched, one of my favorite posts of all time) but when NPR has studio time reserved at 3, you're darn well there at 3, even if you have to fly low to make it there. The engineer at WOUB, Mark Robinson, staved off a prior studio commitment to help me set up the audio connection with Washington's NPR studio. Gosh, I have come to adore Mark Robinson. He is THERE for me.

I slid into the padded chair in the darkened studio at 2:57. Melissa greeted me through the headphones at 3:00 on the dot. We talked about cold weather and birds. A lot of our conversation didn't make it, doubtless because it would have been impossible to fact-check before 4 p.m. Heck, it would be impossible to fact check before 2008. Like the information I got, via a desperate cellphone call to Bill, who called Louise and then called me on my way to Athens, from my friend Louise Chambers at The Purple Martin Conservation Association. Louise said that this cold snap may have caused a nearly complete die-off of adult male purple martins in the affected areas (most of the upper Midwest and Northeast). See, the poor things came home on schedule in late March, but couldn't endure more than a week of subfreezing temperatures, and no flying insect food. That's the bad news. It's likely going to be the worst die-off since the early '80's, when there was an Easter snowstorm. The not-so-bad news is that the breeding female and subadult martins are only just hitting the Gulf Coast, headed north. So there will probably be a whole lot of subadult male martins who get to breed this year, who ordinarily would have been outcompeted by the mature males (the "scouts" in martin landlord parlance). Now we just have to pray the freakin' nature gods don't hit those birds with a late April snowstorm. That would really, really be awful. I'm holding my breath until we hit 80 again and hold it.

So bits and pieces of our conversation made it, and it was good, and I feel deeply honored to be asked to talk about nature on NPR. It aired this evening, while I was out planting the rest of the peas. Liam wandered out to find me, saying off-handedly in his dove-soft voice, "You're on the radio."
WHAT? NOW??
"Yup."
I tore into the house to catch just the last third of it, so I had to listen to it online. Kissed my boy for thinking to come find me. He is the sweetest thing.

What's cool is that I feel as though my deep connection with the natural world is finding its highest use--connecting millions of NPR listeners with nature, too. Making them think about things that might not have occurred to them, locked as they are in home, car, city and office. It's an everyday thing for me. It's something that may not enter others' consciousness unless they hear it on the radio. Bringing it to them feels good, and deeply fulfilling. You can listen to my chat with Melissa Block here.

While I was listening to the audio file on the NPR web site, I saw a banner ad for the brand-new Driveway Moments collection. Those are the stories that people nominate, the ones that kept them sitting in the car out in the driveway, listening to the end.

"When Hummingbirds Come Home" is on the newest Driveway Moments 5 Collection: All About Animals.

So it was an NPR day. A saying goodbye day, a Dad day, a sad day, a wild, hairy pea-planting day. DOD, I miss you. Wherever you are, I hope you get public radio.

First Day of Spring

Sometimes we become inured to the miracle of flying thousands of feet over the good earth. I was reading The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, and I glanced out the window to see what had to be the Finger Lakes rolling by beneath the plane. Oh! Oh! I snapped photos madly, figuring out what I was seeing and planning to check it with Google Earth later. That had to be Lake Erie just out of the top of the picture, and the snaky lake that looked like an effigy--a Swami, actually, wearing a towel on its head must be Cayuga Lake. I was distressed to know that Ithaca was out of sight at the swami's feet, under the plane, but man, it was cool to be able to recognize something on the ground below. Poor things, all snowed in... In fact, I was flying right over my friend Lang Elliott's house in Ithaca. Lang just contributed sound recordings to my commentary about American woodcocks that aired on NPR this evening. I was picking out some toys for my new grand-nephew in a toy store in Cambridge when Bill called to say the commentary had just aired. That was a day-maker. I had recorded it especially for the first day of spring, and if it didn't air today, it probably wasn't going to air. Yay!

Flying into Boston was absolutely beautiful. It was all laid out, the city rising up like a growth, the harbor sparkling blue before it, the Charles River, an artery leading to the harbor's lung.
I bumpity-bumped my 47-lb suitcase over countless blocks of brick sidewalk before reaching my dear college friend Kris Macomber's house. After a cuppa tea and some yakking, we took a guided tour of Cambridge's wackier and more arcane wonders. Kris has lived here in the Cambridge/ Boston area since 1976. As a result, and thanks to a curious intellect and love of architecture, Kris gives a house tour that people ought to pay for. Here, she shows me the pooh Tree--an abandoned stump that's been carved into Pooh's house, complete with furnishings in a hollowed out space beneath the roots. A small jar of hunny marks the spot.
Continuing the theme, Owl's House adorned a tree farther down the block, and Owl himself perched high above, sporting some Tootsie-esque specs. I love stuff like this--urban art, that comes unbidden from quarters unknown. The best kind.

Hi Phoebe, Hi Liam, Hi Will...Hi Baker. Love you!!

Boston Terrier Breed Standard

At long last, a day that got as warm as 40, brilliant sunshine, a rinsed blue sky. I woke up at 3:55 AM with the moonlight streaming in through the blinds, and knew I was not going to go back to sleep. My mind revved up and I couldn't stop it. I knew I'd have to start working on my book proposal. So I got up and went to get my laptop. When I came back Chet was already snoring softly under the covers, making sure the air was perfumed the unique atmospheric enhancement he offers. It was nice to have company.
You can get a whole lot done when you start at 4 AM. I suspect that, like many women my age, I will become conversant with the small hours, as I was when the kids were babies. It's different now, though, because I'm not having the life blood sucked out of me every couple of hours. I don't want to be awake at 4, but I don't seem to have much choice in the matter, so I might as well use it to my advantage.
I worked on the proposal without looking up until 2:30 p.m., and it felt good to focus like that. 31 pages later, it's ready to rock.
The light crept in the windows and it was time to get the kids up and ready for school. I got up and looked out the window. Two fawns were walking in the meadow, looking like solid bits of goldenrod. The snow fell yesterday, 2", just enough to make the road really treacherous for my drive to Athens to record four commentaries. It took me almost 2 hours to get there, and thanks to some technical difficulties getting the hookup to Washington established, I had only 20 minutes to record all four. Since each one runs about three minutes long, it was going to be one take or nothing. There is a zone you get into when you have to get it right, no stumbles. I would imagine professional newscasters are in that zone all the time. So I'm sitting there with headphones on and I can hear my editor in DC coaching me through, asking for different emphasis on this word or that. When we wrapped the last piece, the line went dead and suddenly Susan Stamberg was doing a live interview with a musician in my headphones! Weird! That's how tight studio time is at the Washington NPR studio. You can't be late. And you have to be ready to jump at a moment's notice. But back to bed...
Phoebe came in to get her morning face wash from Baker. It's a ritual. I have a theory that he thinks he needs to clean her up for the new day.
Missed a spot.
Full coverage. My other theory is that Boston terriers are bred primarily for kissability. Perhaps Chet's breeder can corroborate this in the Comments section. I for one am concerned about the extremely short muzzles on show Bostons. This eliminates one vital smooching spot--the stop between forehead and muzzle. I do not approve of stopless Bostons. I also believe that Bostons should weigh about 25 pounds, the size of a good ol' honkin' 10-month-old baby. My personal breed standards are firmly based in the desires of a perimenopausal woman with occasional bouts of inexplicable baby fever. I am content to play with other people's babies. Problem is, there just aren't enough of them around. So Baker has lots of good work to do.His day started at 3:55 AM, too.And he is a hard-working doggie.