Welcome to "On the Road with Mac and Molly" on Pet Life Radio

Welcome and thanks for visiting our Mac and Molly blog.

At the end of October 2010, I was given the opportunity to host a radio program on Pet Life Radio. I'm grateful to Mark Winter for his extraordinary patience as he's taught me some of "the ropes" of recording and podcasting. I am such a novice! I've been a writer for most of my life but radio is very new for me. I've used the first three episodes to introduce myself and set the stage for what's to come. If you've listened to the show or read the intros, you'll know that my husband Gene and I have just auctioned our home in Pennsylvania along with a good bit of our belongings so that we might embrace a nomadic lifestyle with our two Old English Sheepdogs Mac and Molly.

Over eight years, we'd poured a lot of ourselves into our little two-acre plot of land, 18th century farmhouse and barn in Chester County. It was a lot of work -- we did it all ourselves -- but we loved it. We made our impression on the land as had those who'd preceded us and as will those who will follow us. It was a privilege to live there but a 60-80 hour a week high-pressure job and the demands of the property left me with no time to write and Gene was also in need of some breathing room. So...here we are. Starting a new life.

As I write, we're visiting with family in Rouses Point, New York (a border town about 40 miles from Montreal). We're in what's called the North Country of the state and we're traveling around the area (and in the North Country of Vermont as well). In Episode 4, I’ll be sharing three stories of life in the North Country – the North Country that encompasses the uppermost reaches of upstate New York. We’ll greet the Canadian Pacific Railways Holiday Train and look at the transformation taking place in the border village of Rouses Point. We’ll wrap up with The Dirty Life, the story of the two love affairs that interrupted the trajectory of a young woman’s life: one love affair with farming and the other with a complicated and exasperating force of nature, the first generation farmer who would become her husband.

Gene's prepared a "magnum opus" (which I'll soon be sharing) on life as "keeper of the hounds" (our Mac and Molly: together equalling two-hundred-pounds-plus of dog). I've just had rotator cuff surgery so I'm useless in helping to walk them; truth be told, the last tear probably came when they were walking me. If you were to see us on a sidewalk, there could well be moments when Ben Hur -- in the chariot race -- might come to mind (it's really not as bad as all that...well, maybe it is). We've tried harnesses, couplers and more but, if the pair hears or sees a cat or dog, Gene needs to find a quickly-available post or street sign to wrap himself around so he can keep them under control. It was a whole lot easier when they were the size pictured above. More later...