Live Secretly by Myfanwy Collins On the bare trees now are chickadees and blue jays. Fat gray squirrels forage alone, the foxes having eaten their fill. The oaks have dropped their leaves, slippery on the ground. One leaf, held up for inspection, was massive, as big as a person’s head–an intimidating leaf from a tree much smaller than the robust pines bordering the property. … Read More

a photo of the moon from last week.

This is my favorite present. It’s called “Clueless Cow.”

Read Your Fate by Charles Simic

Prayer by Myfanwy Collins I think of the woods and of losing you there and of the dark path that leads down to the cottage where I was walking when a half-dozen gray and silver wolves surrounded me. Some showed their white teeth in a snarl or a smile and others just stared. I was full of fear, fearful; there was nowhere for me … Read More

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed … Read More

Wikipedia is one of my favorite tools on the internet. No, I don’t take the information there as utter fact–no more than I would any one encyclopedia or source, but I do use it, find it helpful and informative. With that said, I was interested in the technologyreview.com interview with Wikipedia’s cocreator (he left Wikipedia in 2002), Larry Sanger in which he discusses, among … Read More

bread loaf 2005

WHAT a great faculty list: Bread Loaf 2005. Applications for general applicants are due March 19, 2005 and for those seeking financial aid, March 1.

on our way to 2005 with the industrious clock

poem(s) for 12/23/04: Two Horses and a Dog by James Galvin & Dear Miss Emily by James Galvin (note: he gets two because I just found him and I am in love with these poems)

I am baffled that someone would commission a clone of a dead pet to the tune of $50k, but apparently this is exactly what a woman in Texas has done and the cloning of pets does not stop there: The California company that produced the cat, Genetic Savings and Clone, says it hopes to produce the world’s first genetically cloned dog by next May. … Read More

Squaw Valley 2005

Some of the instructors and special guests for Squaw Valley’s 2005 writers’ workshop have been listed on the web site (although it seems there is still more info forthcoming). They include: Elissa Schappell, Mark Childress, Sands Hall, Carol Edgarian, Tom Jenks, Alan Cheuse, Amy Tan, Diane Johnson and many more, including some to be announced (and the poetry workshop has Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds … Read More Squaw Valley 2005