and puppets now hmm...

This is my friend Karen helping her pal strut his stuff.

So Much Fun!

I did not get permission to post this. Hope it's OK!

Crazy Pet Guy

Marc Morrone has often been a guest on Martha Stewart's shows, but before that he was on local cable out of Long Island. People would call in for pet advice. The chaos was magnificent ("Let me just get the cat out of the iguana cage here" and "Don't bite the puppy's head!") and the suspense always kept us watching.

Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future

I loved this show so MUCH!

You're Our Llama, Mama, Part One

HERE IS THE BALLAD OF MAMA BOO, THE MOTHER OF MY CHILDREN

In early spring 2007, I noticed this sweet kitty loitering on and near my back deck on a regular basis. I used to have a bird feeder back there. Here she is hanging around under my finch feeder hopefully waiting for a little bird snack:

I took this photo through a window (on May 5, 2007) because she always ran away when I appeared outside. I thought she might be one of the kittens that was born here in 2005, so I was very interested in her reappearance. I had no clue that she was already a Mama Cat, but I should have known.

[When a long-haired black cat loitered here two years before in 2005, her presence predicated the sudden appearance of five kittens from underneath the deck and I fervantly believe that one of them grew into our Mama Cat, the mother of my children. The working theory here is that the dark recesses under my deck are somehow very attractive to pregnant cats...I have since removed the bird feeder because it just didn't seem fair to the birds. Oh - and let's call that long-haired black cat "Grandma".]

FLASHBACK TO 2005 WHEN MAMA CAT WAS BORN
(my journal entry from August 19, 2005):

"Yesterday was Friday and I had to go to work. I was making breakfast, washing dishes, etc. when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of animal movement on my deck which I thought was a squirrel (likely) or a woodchuck (also likely.) On my second look, it turned out to be a kitten! And on my third look, there were two kittens!

"Kittens! Kittens alone are definitely strays. Kittens alone must be fed. I have no cat food! Milk! I have milk. Wait. Milk is bad for cats. But I have milk. OK, milk. Jeff gave me a bowl for the black cat. How does the black cat fit into all this? Oh-milk! OK-I put the milk out and they scurry under the deck over near the hose. Wait. Watch. They're back! They're drinking milk! There's three kittens!

"Then I thought of canned chicken in the pantry. Wait! Tuna fish! Flew on tiptoe to plant rack and got a plate. Put half a can of tunafish on the plate, chopped it up and scared them away again when I opened the door to put it out. They came back. Now there are five. Five kittens! Five was my favorite number when I was five!

"Last night was exhilarating. I stopped on the way home and bought cat food. I saw a couple of the kittens on the deck when I got out of the car. I divided a can of cat food onto three plates and some kitten activity was just starting when Jeff arrived. I went to the front door and hushed him and we tiptoed into the house to watch the fun through the back door.

"The most handsome kitten has tufted ears like a Maine coon cat and is very shy-sometimes only his eyes and ears show as he peeks at us over the edge of the deck. The bravest kitten is soft gray stripes with wispy white paws (now read carefully - this is me in 2010 talking to you - here is the evidence that I first met Mama Kitty when she was a little kitten recently born) and the second bravest kitten is just the same except that the whiteness of her paws is bold and well defined and she has a brilliant white chest and chin ( Now look at this photo of Mama Kitty in 2008. Look familiar? Hmmm? Doesn't she have a "brilliant white chest and chin"? And doesn't the photo to the left show that "the whiteness of her paws is bold and well defined"?) There is a long-haired black who looks just like his mother and #5 is a nondescript tabby that I don't remember very well.

"But this morning I am bereft...Where did I go wrong?...Did I peek at them through the door too often? Did I talk to them too much?

"A bowl of water and three dishes of food sit out on the deck now. Waiting.....waiting.....except for the birds, things are very quiet. Very different from my fantasy of them waiting for me outside my door this morning, alert but less afraid, until finally I would be able to sit outside with them while they ate, unperturbed....oh well." (end of 2005 journal entry)

TWO WINTERS PASSED WITH NO MORE CAT ACTIVITY.

FAST FORWARD TO 2007...

Sailor appeared under my truck parked in the driveway as I arrived home in the car during a midnight monsoon on a dark, rainy Sunday night - June 3, 2007. He spent our first night together in a cat carrier in the bathroom. By the next night he had a name and he’d been to the vet. Dr. Poster said he was about 7 weeks old (but he was probably closer to 5 or 6 weeks.) He could eat solid food, but his eyes were still blue.


I had a sudden revelation that the bird-feeder kitty was probably this little boy kitten's mother. With the vague idea of somehow helping her, I shamelessly decided to use her kitten to lure her to stay in the area. The next day, even though it was still wet and drizzly, I cruelly put Sailor into the cat carrier and placed him alone outside on the back deck. It took only a combination of his pathetic mewing and some judiciously placed food for me to discover that not only did he have a devoted mother - he had two adorable twin sisters!

(note Mama Cat on the path in the background)

It was a very cold & rainy June, so I set up a feeding station on the deck under a blue tarp to keep the rain off. I photographed the two sisters through the kitchen window on June 16, 2007, barely two weeks after Sailor came inside.

From outside, Sailor’s family watched Sailor and me. They waited for mealtimes. I put a lawn chair on the back deck and the two sisters (I had started calling them T.C. - for Tortoiseshell Cat and Smokey) would sleep there in a knot, sometimes all night - sometimes with Mama. Life changed again in August 2007 when T.C. casually walked into a cat carrier that I had baited with food and allowed me to close the door behind her (now it was her turn to spend the night in the bathroom.) Within 24 hours I caught the more timid Smokey in a raccoon trap and, after their hysterectomies, Sailor's sisters started living in a giant dog cage in the back of my pickup truck. For a while I was too busy to take pictures (but check out this short movie of life inside the cage.)

In October 2007, Smokey Boo Boo went to live with Jeff. T.C. Sissy stayed in the house with me and Sailor.

Mama Boo was left outside all alone.
To be continued.............

(A visit from Mama Cat on Halloween 2007)

Little Dog Turpie, by Leila Berg (with illustrations by George Him)

Here is another story from Leila Berg. Apologies to Jane and Param for taking a year and a half to get around to posting this. Hey - just in time for Halloween!

Once upon a time there was a little old man and a little old woman, and they lived together in a little old house with their Little Dog Turpie.

Now out in the woods lived the Hobyahs. Every night they came running towards the house, up, up, on their long toes, creeping, creeping, through the soft grass, waving their wild tails, came the Hobyahs. And they shouted, "Break down the house, carry off the little old man, eat up the little old woman!" But Little Dog Turpie always heard them coming, and he would bark and bark and bark, "Wow, wow!" till they all ran away.


The little old man and the little old woman didn't know about the Hobyahs, because Little Dog Turpie always frightened them away. But one night the old man sat up in bed and said, "Little Dog Turpie barks so loudly that I can't sleep. In the morning I shall take off his tail."

So in the morning the little old man took off Little Dog Turpie's tail because he barked so much.

That night when the old man and the the old woman were in bed, out of the woods came the Hobyahs. Up, up, on their long toes, creeping, creeping, through the soft grass, waving their wild tails, came the Hobyahs. And they shouted, "Break down the house, carry off the little old man, eat up the little old woman!" But Little Dog Turpie heard them coming and he barked and he barked and he barked, "Wow, wow!" till they ran away.

But the little old man sat up in bed and said, "Little Dog Turpie barks too loudly, and I can't sleep. In the morning I shall take off his legs."

So in the morning the little old man took off Little Dog Turpie's legs, because he barked so much.

The next night, when the little old man and the little old woman were in bed, out of the woods came the Hobyahs. Up, up, on their long toes, creeping, creeping, through the soft grass, waving their wild tails, came the Hobyahs. And they shouted, "Break down the house, carry off the little old man, eat up the little old woman!" But Little Dog Turpie heard them coming, and he barked and barked and barked, till they all ran away.

But the little old man sat up in bed and said, "That Little Dog Turpie barks too loudly, and I can't get any sleep. In the morning I shall take off his head."

So in the morning the little old man took off Little Dog Turpie's head.

That night, when the little old man and the little old woman were in bed, out of the woods came the Hobyahs. Up, up, on their long toes, creeping, creeping, through the soft grass, waving their wild tails, came the Hobyahs. And they shouted, "Break down the house, carry off the little old man, eat up the little old woman!" And Little Dog Turpie heard them coming, but the little old man had taken off his head, and now he couldn't bark any more and frighten them away.

So the Hobyahs broke down the house. They didn't carry off the little old man, because he hid under the kitchen table and they couldn't find him. But they carried off the little old woman to their Hobyah house, and they put her in a bag and hung her on the doorknob.


When the little old man found the Hobyahs had carried off the little old woman, he was very sorry for what he had done. Now he knew why Little Dog Turpie had been barking every night. "I am a silly old man," he said. "I shall put back Little Dog Turpie's tail and his feet and his head this very minute." So he went out into the yard and put them all back right away.

Then Little Dog Turpie went running off on his four legs to find the little old woman. He ran and he ran till he came to the Hobyah House. The Hobyahs were not at home, but they had left the little old woman hanging in the bag on the doorknob. Little Dog Turpie bit the bag with his sharp teeth till it fell off the doorknob, and then he pulled it open so that the little old woman could get out. She ran all the way back home to the little old man, and they were very pleased to see each other again, I can tell you, and they had a bit of a kiss and a hug.

But Little Dog Turpie crept inside the bag himself, and lay there waiting for the Hobyahs to come home again. Presently they came, and the first thing they did was to poke the bag with their long fingers, for they thought it was the old woman, you see. And out jumped Little Dog Turpie, barking as loudly as he could. The Hobyahs got such a fright they all ran away, and they ran so far they never came back. And that's why there are no Hobyahs today, not one.


Text ©Leila Berg, illustrations ©George Him, from Folk Tales for Reading and Telling, published by Brockhampton Press 1966

I love love love this book and I have posted from it (and about it) before, with permission from the families of the author and the artist.

Here are some notes on this story from Leila's website:

"Folk Tales for Reading and Telling was originally published in 1966 and was reprinted several times in hardback and in paperback in the late 60s and in the 70s. The stories were traditional ones culled from a dozen different countries. Each one is prefaced in the text by an introductory sentence from Leila, always followed by 'And this is the way I tell it.' The children in the little nursery school Leila was running at the time of writing the book would always join in, 'And this is the way I tell it.'

"All the stories were enhanced by the illustrations of George Him, a brilliant artist whose extraordinarily evocative pictures capture scenes from the wildest stories as the innocent imagination of the reading child might see them. It was George's idea to make Dog Turpie into a toy-type figure, so that his different pieces didn't have to be brutally chopped off, but were just taken apart."

A Buffy Moment

Giles has just discovered that the ominous-looking mask hanging in Buffy's house is the reason that a (smelly) dead cat was resurrected in Buffy's back yard. Buffy's mom had brought the mask home from the art gallery where she works. As Giles races to Buffy's house to warn them (he couldn't get them on the phone), he says something that makes me explode with laughter every time I hear it, "Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It raises the dead! Americans."

The me show - all me, all the time - me me me

I don't know if anyone out there has noticed, but in my mind this is a place where I deposit fragments of my storytelling life. This past summer I got photographed a lot for some reason. I told Stephanie it was because of the great haircut she gave me!


This was taken by a co-worker for a newsletter:


I also happened to be handy when it was time for summer publicity.


Another co-worker took this.
I don't really like it - I wasn't feeling groovy that day:



Here's the Farmer's Market in July. This one is my favorite. Click on the photo to enlarge it and take a few moments to look at each and every child. The magic was happening at that very moment and the photographer captured it. This is why I do what I do:

And the big finish...

Both of the Farmer's Market photos were taken by photographer Phyllis Groner.

Last but not least, here I am in late July. The article is less than fun to read (sorry, Joseph - and it's not a "red chest", it's a Story Wagon!) but I liked the photos.

So - pretty glamorous, huh? Just kidding.

I need you to know that there are librarians all over the country who are doing great work with children and literacy. They read more books than I do so that they can make very personalized reading recommendations to children and their families; they keep up with current technologies to educate their patrons and colleagues; many devote themselves to disadvantaged children in libraries with very few resources. Most of those librarians are unphotographed, unsung heroes who are better than me me me.

Dance Ditties

New Wave sound, cute guy, festive medievalesqueness (what's not to like?):

(better view here)


Still the best girl power anthem on the planet ("I want to be the one to walk in the sun"!):

(better view here)


Oh Kate! This woman can do no wrong. Check out the whirling dervishes that first appear around 1:28 ("Don't ever think that you can't change the past and the future."):

(again here)

Beautiful

Our weekend of fun:




More to come...