High on a hill it calls to me...

This is the view from the home of friends in San Francisco with whom I have just spent the past few days. So I have been playing hookey, not working, though now that I'm back, it is catch-up time; 300+ emails were waiting for me on the website.

I go there at least once a year to see these same friends. The wife is an artist, and one time when I was visiting I took her to meet Ruth Heller, extraordinary illustrator who lived there, and who showed us through her studio before we went out to lunch together. We had all three hoped for more such get-togethers but Ruth died, sadly, before we could make that happen.

I do love SF. The weather is so much milder—I returned late Friday night to fresh snow in Boston, with more flurries today; and they are predicting below zero temperature in the morning—but I doubt if I could ever leave New England, especially with grandchildren here. And so many good friends.

Week after next I will go up to Maine, to the farm, and hole up for a little while to get some work done without distractions. My friend Kay, on sabattical from a university teaching job and working on a book, will come with me, and we will set ourselves up in two different offices in the house and plug away.

Alfie stayed at a new kennel while we were gone. This one sends him home with a little report card that comments on his eating, sleeping, and playing habits while in residence. It deemed him...yes, they really used this phrase..a "party animal." I'm going to take that to mean what it used to say on my children's kindergarten report cards: "Plays nicely with others."

Comments

[Jane Squires]

I have never been to San Francisco but did get to San Diego when I lived in Arizona. I would give anything right now to leave all this ice behind and picnic in the winter time again in Arizona. I enjoyed your blog and wanted you to know you had a visitor. I am 57 and live in rural Missouri.

[Hilary Bernal]

Hello. My name is Hilary, I recently read your book The Giver as a class assignment in my 10th grade English. Admittedly I took the book and read ahead, and I'm glad I did. I enjoyed the book so very much! I hoped there was a movie to go along with it but sadly there wasn't. I looked up your name and found this site. I plan on reading more of your works and hopefully The Giver will be turned into a movie. Which I promise to own. I hated that the story had to end. Your a very talented writer and I found your book very inspirational. I hope to some day be as good at writing as you are.
Hilary Bernal