More Betsy-Tacy

Harper Perennial just reissued the first four Betsy-Tacy books in a new treasury (with introductions by other authors who are fans, such as the great Judy Blume!). This cover includes the illustration I remember from the books I checked out at the library when I was a girl. Great memories, and a great community of readers.

The Mankato Free Press reports on the release and the activities of the Betsy-Tacy Society -- a group that is, by the way, "planning a Victorian Christmas Party, which will feature the Betsy-Tacy houses dressed up in their Victorian holiday best, refreshments, caroling and more. That event is slated for December 3."

No beggars, no peddlers

I noticed this sign at the bottom of the front door of a building I walk by a few times a week. Hard to believe I've missed it so many times before! It's almost more entertaining than the signs with long lists of prohibited activities: sitting, standing, loitering, ball playing, and so on. 

Get 'em while they last!

I can't vouch for the quality of Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe by Daniel Hoffman, as I sadly left this great moment in book-cover art on the shelf, but I can alert you to some awesome deals. Argosy Books, on 59th between Park and Lex, has biographies -- mostly hardcovers -- on its outdoors racks. They're $3 apiece. A small price to pay to learn about someone else's fabulous (or tragic, or complicated) life! 

I picked up Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by John Wain, and Elinor Wylie: The Portrait of an Unknown Lady, by Nancy Hoyt (I confess to picking this blindly based on a quick Google search that yielded the following summation of Wylie: "She was changeable, self-absorbed, and dangerously romantic ... in the end, few acquaintances had much patience or, for that matter, much good to say about her"). I've been on a biography kick lately; for my birthday, I got Joan Schenkar's The Talented Miss Highsmith (on the life of Patricia Highsmith) and Jane Fletcher Geniesse's The Passionate Nomad (on the wanderings of Freya Stark).

Well, what are you waiting for? Go! Read!

Gone in a flash

A statue of Mary in front of a church on Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side is distorted in the haze of my iPhone's flash.

Little love note

This piece of paper, pulled from a notebook, had only one word on it: love. There was also the faint outline of a dusty sneaker print. I left it where it was, on 35th Avenue near Steinway, but I can pass it on here nonetheless.

In the mist

Another photo from Niagara. It was pretty chilly out, and the general grayness, combined with the mist from the falls, was incredibly cool. Sometimes, when you can't see much, your world and the good things in it seem all the more clear.

Given that it's November, and thus time, once again, for National Novel Writing Month, I may not update much for awhile. Head down, fingers poised over the keyboard, emerging only for intermittent jogs and the odd cup of spicy, milky chai.

Happy Halloween!

Have a spooktacular night! I am, as I do every year, hoping trick-or-treaters will stop by. Two years ago, three kids rang our doorbell; last year it was only one. It's already pretty dark out, and no one's come, so I suppose I'll be eating "fun size" Kit Kats and 100 Grands for the next month or so. I am tempted, very tempted, to offer a 2.2-pound brick of white Valhrona chocolate to the first costumed person who crosses our path. But I suppose it is not to be. (By the way, does anyone have a recipe that calls for a kilogram of white chocolate? I'm stumped. My only idea is an awful lot of scones with cranberries and white chocolate chunks.)

Mighty Niagara

The falls, from Canada. We did a bit of touristing; great fun!

Different directions

At lower left, our cat, Pekoe. In the frame, a gargoyle on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Similar, no?

Sketches by Sylvia

Sylvia Plath would have been 79 today; this curious French cat is one of her sketches, part of a collection of 44 pen-and-ink works on exhibit in London's Mayor Gallery through mid-December. Such tremendous talent. From "Lady Lazarus":

And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.