Now, another chance to do some good for little money and with great reward. You can pre-order an interesting book about animals, support a great independent bookstore, support an author, and get a classy tote-bag free and also get your book personalized and signed by the author. Try doing all that on Amazon.
If you pre-order my new book, Talking To Animals: How We Can Understand Them And They Can Understand Us, all of those good things will happen. You will be supporting Connie Brooks and her independent bookstore, my work as a writer, and I will sign and personalize the books and you will also get a custom-designed classy tote-bag with a photo of the border and the words “sit. stay.read.” See below.
A neat thing for an animal lover who reads books. If you prefer, you can also call the bookstore at 518 677-2515. They take Paypal and major credit cards and are very nice to deal with. Humans can be like that. Check it out here.
Like almost all of the animals who live her, Fate loves to pose for pictures. The animals, with their superior instincts, seem to sense it is something I need for them to do and perhaps they sense my approval when they do it. I always have a camera on me, I am always looking for a photo, my photo muse is always hungry.
In the woods, there is an old wall with an opening, and I point to it sometimes and say “up,” and Fate, who is the smartest dog I have ever had, hops right up and turns to look right into the camera. She knows, I think, she knows. She looks great up there, the queen of the woods. And then, when I turn away she tears off into the woods after a chipmunk, or a smell, or a stick to grab.
My new Petzval 58 mm lens is a continuous challenge, with it’s manual, gear mechanism focus and aperture plates. Maybe one in ten photos really works. This one did. We were out in the woods walking and I was focusing the lens on the dogs when Maria turned to look into the camera, and I hit the shutter.
Maria and I have an agreement, she doesn’t pose and I don’t ask her to pose. But I love taking her portrait, she has an expressive face with much character, and while I meant to shoot the dogs, it turned out to be portrait.
The Petzval has a mind of its own, it pretty much focuses on what it wants to focus and this time, it went for Maria, and blurred the background, including the dogs. It worked for me and also captured the feeling of the deep and dark woods. It felt like a black and white photo to me, in some ways. Captured the soul.
Do not let all those woo-woo photos of Maria cuddling animals fool you, she is a woman of steel. She knows what she wants and gets what she wants. She will take a book right out of my hands if she wants to read, and looked stunned and hurt when I complained.
She has taken my socks, underwear, pants and shirts countless times for her quilts or hanging pieces. Just a few months ago, she eyed the jeans I was wearing and asked if I really needed them. I am wearing them, I said, somewhat hopelessly. The pants, or much of them, are now in California gracing a quilt.
Maria has a long history of conflict with hair cutters, she cannot seem to find one who will cut her hair in the short and even way she wants. She shocked me awhile back asking if I would agree to trim it, and I gulped and agreed. This was a little scary.
Maria dresses in a very individualist way, but she has strong ideas about how she looks and wants to look, and there could be big trouble of I messed up, I have never cut anyone’s hair in my own life, let along a hot-tempered German-Sicilian with a ruthless streak.
It went well, and today, she asked me to do it again. We went outside in the yard, and she put a towel over her shoulders. What Maria has always wanted, I think, was to trim the hair along the sides and back and leave the rest alone. I also needed to neaten and even things up a bit along the back.
So using a special hair scissors (from Amazon) and a comb, I trimmed the hair evenly across the back and trimmed up the sides. It was strange how comfortable I felt, as if I had been doing this for years.
I was not in the least bit nervous – maybe a little – but I did rub my Ganesh necklace from India, he makes things so smoothly, and is the remover of obstacles.
I was clear and confident about what I wanted to do and what she wanted me to do. The trick is to just take the plunge and go in small steps, you can’t mess up too badly. Although a lot of haircutters have, at least in Maria’s demanding outlook.
I love trying things I have never done before, keeps the mind growing.
It took about 10 minutes, and when I waited outside (so I could run to the pasture, she wouldn’t yell at me in front of the donkeys) and she came out quickly and gave me a big smoochy kiss. “It looks great,” she said, “perfect. Why won’t the hair cutters do this?”
I don’t know, but I am alive and intact to tell the tale. Perhaps something for me to think about when I can’t get a book contract.
When Cassandra Conety came by to help with morning farm chores when Maria was in India, she impressed me in many ways, one was the businesslike and efficient way in which she scraped and raked the manure out of the barn. Farm kids know how to do stuff.
I mentioned this to Maria when she came back, and this sparked her very competitive instincts, I could tell she didn’t like the idea that Cassandra was scooping out the barn so well (nothing personal, Cassandra, she is just not as gentle as she sometimes appears, she is half Sicilian).
She tried to show me her new raking technique, and I unthinkingly blew her off and got into trouble. Then I kind of embraced Cassandra’s technique, which was to use the rake turned upside down, all the better to collect the small sheep pellets, as opposed to the much larger horse or donkey droppings.
This week, Maria upped the game a bit, she came out with a broad and heavy shovel and scoops the pellets into a pile, and then removes them. This, I must admit, is impressive, as good as Cassandra’s technique and it might even be easier. I dare not say this, for fear of enabling her further and encouraging her competitiveness.
I am raking my half the old-fashioned way, but may soon switch to the back-of-the-rake concept. The Pole Barn is looking good.
