THIS IS THE BEAUTIFUL JEWELLE BICKFORD ON MY Arab mare, Gitane. And she thought she couldn’t do it!!!

...and here’s Nat Bickford. But what he really liked doing was fly fishing. Troy took him. It was cold but there were a few hits. He’ll come back in the summer and really get into it.

...and Troy and Simone, my son and daughter-in-law (I’m not a monster)

...Troy on the Argentine saddle that’s covered with sheep skin. Very comfy.

...Nathalie Vadim in foreground.

I cannot ride yet cause of recent and not serious back surgery. But I look forward to doing a lot of it in the spring and summer. Just because I’m falling apart doesn’t mean I have to stop doing what I love. I feel like Katharine Hepburn who said to me in her quaky voice while we were filming “On Golden Pond,” “ I’m going to live a long time, Jane, though I may spend the last of in in a chair.. All my organs are like spring chickens. It’s my joints that’ll get me.” Ditto to that.

See You Next Time

AT&T were a no-show for the five days around the holiday in spite of our continuous cries for help and as a result I have had no internet access. Our offices in Atlanta were flooded when a pipe broke and we had to move into new digs and the internet was a non-happening. That’s why my blogs are all backed up. Oh well. When these things happen I just think that a couple of decades ago the technology didn’t even exist. So—can it really be all that important in the end?

We gathered at the ranch for a week and it was great fun. My friends, the Bickfords joined us over the weekend. They were with us on the Galapagos trip so it was a 6-month reunion of sorts…though I see Jewelle all the time when I’m in New York and she’s just joined the board of The Women’s Media Center. Emily and George’s daughters, Nathalie and Elizabeth somehow didn’t make the photos but they were a delicious addition to the otherwise adult gathering.

I took everyone into town on Saturday and in the fabulous store called Nathalie on Canyon Road we all put on cowboy hats to have our picture taken.

Left to right - Laura, Nick, Nat, Jewelle, Richard, Me

Nathalie, the beautiful owner of the store, with me and Jewelle

Me with Jewelle

It was a snowy weekend…very appropriate for Thanksgiving. We played games like this one where we each had a name attached to our foreheads and had to guess who we were. I was Beethoven but didn’t guess it. We also played a fabulously fun games called Taboo. Men against women. We won. Then we sang Christmas Carrols…a holiday tradition for my family although I’ll have to admit I always have to strong-arm the kids to join me (I grew up singing the old fashioned carrols and want my kids and grands to know there’s more to it than ”Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer,” tho that’s perfectly charming).

Laura Bickford, her sister Emily Lansbury and Nathalie Vadim

Richard who is trying to guess who he is (Marlene Dietrich)

Troy, George Lansbury, Nick Jarecki and Nat Bickford

Laura and Nick gave me a beautiful Mexican bowl with a couple of skeletons dancing on the bottom. I love it cause I love how Mexico isn't afraid of death

Richard's not the only one to wear my mug shot T-shirt!!

Today’s our last day and we’re going into town for some Christmas shopping. As always, I am slightly down cause I hate leaving.

See you next time.

click photo to enlarge

Where has the summer gone? It went by so fast. I know that in some parts of the country where the temp is still over 100 degrees it still feels like summer but here at my ranch..brrr. The leaves are really starting to turn yellow and when I go back to Atlanta next Monday I hope I’ll get to see the gorgeous Liquidamber in their crimson fall finery.
I haven’t heard from my daughter as to whether the Georgia flooding had any impact on her house. Guess I’ll soon see for myself. Monday’s her birthday. Tuesday I do a nice fundraising event for G-CAPP— in the home of one of our board members, Walter Jospin…dinner and a reading I do about the experience of making “On Golden Pond.” It is a funny and moving experience for all. When it comes to the end, about my father winning his Oscar and dying 5 months later, I always have a hard time not choking up. I’m doing the same reading for a group from Santa Fe at my home for the benefit of the Women’s Media Center. Oct 1st I do it in Dallas.

3 more days at the ranch. I start to have separation anxiety about now, added to the inevitable melancholy that accompanies all transitions, especially at my age when there is a limited number of falls left—30 maybe.

See you next time.

As you can tell from my blog comments not to mention all the other internet activity circulating about the Toronto International Film festival protest letter that I signed along with 1500 or more friends and colleagues—there’s a lot of hatred spewing out there. I have not censored most of the hostile blog comments because I want to give space for the full range of voices. One of the hostile comments suggests that I wrote a follow up statement (released on the Huffington Post as well as on my last blog) because of pressure from Rabbi Marvin Hier with whom I met after I had begun composing my statement. What I said in my statement is true and I am not proud of it: I neglected to read the protest letter carefully enough. It was the outcry that ensued that caused me to study it very carefully. It was then that I saw that there were parts of it that I did not agree with. That is why I wrote my statement, not because I was pressured by anyone. It was a case of having to sit down, take a deep breath, go into a meditative state to clear away all the noise and zero in on my real feelings. I asked to meet with Rabbi Marvin Hier and others in the Jewish community to explain myself—why I was not taking my name off the protest letter but was issuing my own statement to clarify the things I didn’t agree with. I have learned a tremendous amount these last days and for that I am grateful. I’m also grateful for the outpouring of love and support..some from people I know, some from strangers. The statement of support from a group of Jews from Atlanta whom I don’t know made me cry. Then there’s the poem that Raeann McDonald wrote (it’s on this blog). She is the director of the retirement community in Oregon that Richard Perry’s mother, Sylvia, is a resident of. I got to know Raeann when she came to Los Angeles with Ms Perry. Such generosity and thoughtfulness!

One blog commenter asks how I maintain in the face of the hostility. It’s quite simply knowing who I am. That allows me to understand that what the attackers see is their problem and has nothing to do with me. I know my faults and try to own up to them but I also know I’m not what the venom-spouters think. It takes experience and age to stay confident in one’s reality—and to be free to admit when one has strayed from that reality, which was the case with some of the words in the TIFF protest letter.

Now I am back at my ranch, writing my book. There was a tremendous storm last night and the river is at least up a foot and very muddy. And—wonder of wonders at this early date—there’s a lot of snow on the mountains where the Santa Fe ski basin is. IT is soothing to be here and yesterday I took the most arduous hike since my knee was replaced. It was up the rocky slopes and through the fields that we cleared of trees 2 years ago. Lovely and diverse grasses and wildflowers now cover the ground that looked so barren after the trees were cut. I so adore the grasses here when the sunlight shines through them—so many varieties, most of them I know by name. The tree-cutting program is to conserve water, increase the grasses for the deer and reduce fire hazard. In this way, we restore the land to what it was before white Europeans arrived and began putting out forest fires. This high Chihuahuan desert used to be mainly savannah, not forest, and New Mexico simply doesn’t have the water to support an overgrowth of trees, much as I love them.

On that note, I’ll sign off. See you next time.

It’s always hard to leave this place and it’s been especially beautiful these last weeks. We’ve had plenty of rain so it’s very green. One can never use the word ‘lush’ when speaking about the high deserts of the south west but it comes close right now.

Richard’s been here this week and it’s been weird getting emails from our friends and family saying the NY gossip rags say we’re getting married. Ted even emailed me to say that Martha Stewart (who was at his ranch in Montana doing an interview about bison) told him Richard and I were marrying. Let me say right here that this is not true. Okay? You heard it from the horse’s mouth. If I ever get married again (which I doubt) you’ll be the first to know (after my family). Marriage aside, we have had a good time here. Richard seems to love the ranch, the house, the river. He didn’t seem to love fly fishing all that much. IT is very hard until you really get the hang of it which requires lots of practice and it’s unlikely Richard will get lots of practice. Guess he’ll just have to like to watch me fish cause I really love it. I’ve caught some big rainbow and brown trout here…26″, 28″!!!

Yesterday I listened to 4 radio programs done several years ago for the BBC Radio about the span of Richard’s career. It was narrated by Patti Labelle. It was interesting to learn more about the enormous diversity of talents he’s worked with….having top albums and singles in every possible category from pop, to R&B, to country western etc with stars ranging from Streisand, Carly Simon, Diana Ross, Fats Domino, Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, Randy Travis, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Garfunkel, The Temptations etc. No one, I don’t think, has ever had such success with so many different kinds of talent.

Tomorrow we go to LA where I am committed to concentrating on my writing, and seeing Troy and Simone and other friends like Sally Field, Carrie Fisher, Elliott Gould. Gotta save time for the writing, though.

See you next time.