Well, go to Sam Cabot’s website and look!
Or, I suppose I could just show it to you:
Though if you go to Sam’s website you also get to read cool posts every day from Sam. By whom I mean, of course, Carlos Dews and me.
Archive for Journal
Sam Cabot’s website!
Is up and running and right here!
We’re doing a 30-day countdown to SKIN OF THE WOLF, featuring masks from around the world. Why? A mask is at the heart of the book…
You’re going to want to see these, so visit early and often. Also, Sam’s going to be blogging, posting cool links for you to explore.
So’s you know what’s coming, here’s today’s image.
Go check Sam out!
North Fork dogwoods, plus one
The dogwoods in NYC are pretty much gone, but here on the North Fork the summer starts later. The trees are sensational this weekend, thought you’d like to see a few. Plus, a clematis, just because.
Twenty-sixth Saturday, from Rancho Obsesso
Last purple blossom.
Pawlonia’s glory gone
In soft thump on roof.
Robin in a rush
Races through yard into trees
Chased by another.
Catbird on high branch.
Do raccoons still live in den?
Wonder if he knows.
River report
Some days at the river, it’s all about the quality of the light. Some days it’s the colors, some the sounds.
Today it was the tee shirts.
Cool, beautiful, not yet hot, runners out in numbers. A guy with an eagle swooping in on the front of his shirt, flying away on the back. A horse, a penguin. Two guys about five minutes apart in identical half-marathon shirts, must have finished the same race. A herd of cities ran by — Dayton, London, Atlanta, Paris, and of course Brooklyn. A shirt that only said, ominously and in big letters, GIVE BLOOD. Schools were well represented: Amherst, Princeton, Chicago, Harvard, UConn, NYU.
The best, though, was on a lawyer I know, a criminal defense attorney. In NYS you have to be certified if you’re going to handle death penalty cases. Like any other professional certification, you need to attend seminars, etc., to keep it up. This shirt was from one such four-day seminar, in Santa Cruz. It read, “Death Penalty College.”
Went to the supermarket, what did I see?
blood of the lamb paperback — first sighting!
AND
we’re #4 on the supermarket bestseller list!
LAUNCH PARTY!
Tuesday, July 15th, 6:30 pm
SKIN OF THE WOLF
by Sam Cabot
(S.J. Rozan and Carlos Dews)
Penguin/Blue Rider
The Mysterious Bookshop
58 Warren St., New York City
212-587-1011
http://www.mysteriousbookshop.com/
Rancho Obsesso wildlife report
Babies bustin’ out all over!
Last week we had a raccoon sleeping in the tree right outside my window.
Raccoons live in dens when they’re raising their young and then abandon the dens, foraging at night and spending the day in a series of what are called “rest areas.” (I can see the New Yorker highway cartoon now.) We postulated that this smallish beast had grown up in the nabe and the pawlonia was one of its chosen rest areas. As it turns out, we were right and wrong. It’s a she, and she may have grown up here, but the reason for the tree-limb snooze was to get away from the babies for a bit. She is mama. This morning I was having my tea under the pawlonia as usual and heard what I took to be bird-scrabbling sounds. Looked up and there in the hollow where once was a big limb, voila! a tiny ringed tail. I watched for twenty minutes as baby raccoon faces peeked over the rim of the hollow, as tails draped it, as little paws grabbed for a handhold. Their nails aren’t up to digging in yet, so they’re not ready to leave, but they were wrestling with each other and with the tree. There are at least two, which is how many I saw together, but there may be more, because each time I saw a single one how could I know it was the same one? Finally they stopped appearing and the hollow got quiet. Raccoon bedtime.
Meanwhile, there’s a crippled doe who lives in the woods behind our compost heap. She spent all last summer hobbling around on her three good legs. Unlike dogs, who can lose a leg and just go on balanced and bouncy as if they’d been born that way, three-leggedness is difficult for a deer. We didn’t expect her to make it through the winter, but she not only made it, she’s produced. Two fawns followed her out into the yard, nibbling on everything within reach.
Baby robins and catbirds, baby crows, a blue jay nest, a baltimore oriole nest, baby ospreys on the causeway, and limitless spiders spinning webs for limitless and interesting-looking other bugs — on this first day of summer, here on the North Fork, life abounds!
Twenty-fifth Saturday, from Rancho Obsesso
Long low morning sun
Glowing gold through fresh-cut grass.
Dewdrop on each tip.
Unfamiliar song.
New bird in town. Settling in?
Or just passing through?
Spider spinning web,
Chair to tree trunk. Guess we won’t
Move the furniture.
