Jean Zimmerman

Category: Dogs

  • The Pleasures of the Urban Arborist

    I wish I could suck it all up, absorb it and remember every single thing. Driving in the black night over the highways of New York City to get to the site. The lichen on the burly oaks. Their majesty.   The flashy red leaf plum. The smell of sesame oil wafting through the Chinese…

  • Slowdown Saturday

    A knuckle-sized frog hopped straight by the woodpile. A butterfly lit on a thistle. Chickadees flocked around the bird feeder, making off with safflower seeds. A long day, reading a long novel. Excitement: Oliver thundering from the porch toward the rabbit he’ll never catch. It grew cool, deep shadows stretched across the grass. Then there were…

  • Hummingbirds, Bats and Butterflies

    The Desert Discovery Guide invited us to enjoy three zones along a trail that led out from the Scottsdale Senior Center: a hummingbird nest, a saguaro and bat sanctuary, and a butterfly garden. I foresaw bliss ahead, an afternoon of hummingbirds, bats and butterflies, all in one swooping, fluttering place. We just had to follow…

  • Deep in the Novel Cave

    Sshhh. I can’t hear you. I am writing a book. Or as Father John Misty said in a song last year, “I’m writing a novel, because it’s never been done before.” I want to make amends for letting my daily posts slide a bit recently. It’s partly that I’m preoccupied by the release of Savage…

  • Long Winter’s Nap

    I’ve taken the polar express right upstairs to my bedroom, since my downstairs office is a good 15 degrees colder. Computer, books, coffee, check. The only thing I lack here is a canopy bed such as the kind they built during the middle ages. Long curtains to pull around the sides kept you cozy. Sleeping…

  • The Hearth of the Matter

    Oh, why am I out, seeking sushi sustenance, on the coldest day of the year? Because I have a touch of cabin fever, and because Maud all but forcibly pulled me out, plunked me on my scooter, and got me to a hot bowl of miso soup at Okinawa nearby. Living in the Cabin, even…

  • From the Chimney With Care

    They’re waiting. Waiting in plain sight, hung from the chimney with care, assembled of felt and yarn and sparkles. Everyone in the house for the holidays is an adult now, but still we hang our stockings. The practice of hanging a Christmas stocking… why hang a sock to collect treats, or put out a shoe…

  • Hudson River Haunts and Hustlings

    For my whole life I’ve lived up and down the Hudson River, in Hastings, in Ulster Park, in Ossining. New York City crouches on its shoreline, and I lived there for twenty years. The Hudson happens to be my favorite river in the world – although to be precise it is an estuary. I’ve written…

  • Thank You for Reading

    I am thankful. This is a post about this blog. At Thanksgiving, in a lot of families, a blessing is performed before the turkey comes on in its golden, crispy glory. The blessing consists of going around the table with every guest sharing some thing they are especially grateful for. On the occasions I’ve taken…

  • The Myths of Time

    I love that building, said my friend John, a publisher with a reliably elegant sense of taste. It was designed by Louis Kahn. The Yale Center for British Art, in New Haven, Connecticut, is housed in a sleek shell of matte steel on Chapel Street, the bustling main drag of the town. It was the architect’s last…

  • Historical Pork

    I brought the porker totem home to a curious canine, though Oliver didn’t seem to feel the swine deserved an aggressive posture. And though I debated on the drive back, porker clunking in the trunk, what Gil’s reaction would be – would he object to the creature because of its cost or size or general…

  • Making Change

    It’s a good day for working. I just finished proofing the third pass Savage Girl galleys. Found some periods and commas that persisted perversely in the manuscript despite everyone’s best efforts. A few tiny, tiny changes make all the difference. If. You. Ask. Me. Yes, it’s a good day for scrunching your forehead and working. Especially…

  • Melancholy and Industry

    On it comes, fall, my favorite season (do I say that every season?). In yoga class today, when we did the tree posture, holding up our arms and crooking our legs, I looked in the mirror and everyone actually looked like bare-branched autumn trees. A human forest. Things to do to jump into fall. Pull…

  • A Catskill Idyll

    I really ought to get out more. Even if out means going from a cabin to a cottage with an adjacent bungalow as I did this weekend. It was the gray, cool weather of late summer, more like fall. The Catskill Mountains. The cottage had a quaint disposition, the pet decorating project of antiquarian friends…

  • Crushes on Crutches

    At the movies I saw a woman on crutches. A young, pretty woman in a color-block sundress. As I watched, she hopped around the serve-yourself beverage kiosk, assembling her ice, her soda and her straw, putting the whole drink together before her boyfriend politely carried it away for her. I saw her next swinging her…