Stacy Horn's Blog, page 193

I Support the Soda Ban in NYC

I got this mailing where I could sign a postcard supporting the ban of extra large soda and then send it back, postage paid. Instead, I wrote “I support this ban and your effort would be better spent toward changing the laws against medicinal marijuana.” I put that in the mail.

I’m sure the mailing was paid for by a soda company, or a company selling soda, and so my note would be ignored, but it felt good saying what I said.

One World Trade Center from a Hudson River point-of-view.

From the New York Police Department’s 1887 Annual Report

This was from a section called “Miscellaneous Statistics.” When I was copying all the annual reports going back to 1860, my goal was to learn everything I could about murder in NYC for the past 100 years or so. Of course I learned a lot more about crime in NYC over the years. (This was all for my book about the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad, The Restless Sleep.)

That reminds me, I read somewhere that Tom Fontana is working on a tv series about the 19th century NYPD. This is such a great idea I can’t believe it hasn’t been done already. The stories I came across … it could be that there has never been an organized crime group as effective and as scary as the early NYPD. It was insane.

Anyway, this is just one of many sad, sad lists that I came across in the course of my research.

City of Water Day – Swinburne Island

Thanks to my friend Marisa, this morning I got to go on a free Audubon Eco-Cruise down the Hudson and lower New York Bay. The picture below is of Swinburne Island, one of two man made islands created in the 19th century to house and dispose of victims of contagious diseases. The birds are sitting on the remnants of the crematorium.

We were on a big boat so we couldn’t get in close. I swear the guy said it was only 72 feet deep where we were, but that can’t be right, can it? You wouldn’t believe what’s down there. When I wrote my book about the NYPD’s cold case squad I learned that the police department used to just routinely dump guns (and other items) into the water. From my book:

“For most of the past 100 years, weapons were taken out to sea and sunk. In 1933, 3,816 guns, knives and swords were dumped into the sea at the Scotland Lightship station off the New Jersey coast. A couple of years later 1,575 phony token slugs were dumped into the Long Island Sound at Eaton’s Neck in Huntington Bay, along with 500 slot machines and 4,000 weapons. Two years after that the Property Clerk poured 10,000 gallons of wine, whiskey and beer into the Lower Bay. As of the 70’s they were still throwing what they could into the various bodies of water in New York, but in the 80’s they began melting handguns down in a foundry in Pennsylvania. Rifles and knives were put in a metal shredder.”

So apparently those guns and swords not that far down, if anyone wants to try to recover them. I wonder how many feet of mud is covering everything. Also, seriously? New Yorkers were killing each other with swords in the 1930s?

I could actually look this up, I spent weeks at the Municipal Archives copying sections of the police department annual reports going back to 1860. I just pulled them out. When they reported “cuttings” or stabbings, they didn’t specify weapons.

DNA Frenzy, the Philip Glass Sing, and Red Burns is Meeting Michele Obama TODAY!

DNA. A few days ago it was all over the news that a match had been found between DNA found on a chain used in a March Occupy Wall Street protest in a subway station, and the DNA found on the cd player of murder victim Sarah Fox, (her cd player was found in the park where her body was recovered).

I started to post about it because I read a quote from an expert in criminology, who called the DNA analysis a huge clue or a big break, which was kinda insane. First, all you could really say was that someone who touched the cd player also touched the chain.  Period. It wasn’t necessarily the killer.  I mean, it could be the killer, but even then the pool of suspects would have been narrowed down to the people who took the subway at the station that day in March. That’s a huge number of unidentified suspects—hardly a big break in the case.

Then, it came out that the DNA came from an NYPD employee assigned to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner! Anyway.

Philip Glass Sing. Here is the NPR video of the Philip Glass sing I didn’t go to (it was 1,000 degrees out and my camera was broken). I missed out. And the soprano, Rachel Rosales, is amazing.

Red Burns and Michelle Obama. The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum chose Red Burns as this year’s Design Patron (Red is the former Chair of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where I went to grad school). There’s a luncheon today at the White House to celebrate her selection and the winners of the 2012 National Design Awards. The big question of course is: what will they both wear??

My friend Howard shopping for fruit.

Buddy the Zombie-Wonder Cat Update

I keep meaning to post a Buddy update. Buddy was diagnosed with lymphoma in January, 2010 and he is still with us. I actually suspect he had it for a lot longer.

Recently he stopped eating, and his diarrhea returned with a vengeance, and I thought this was it. We tried a few things and nothing worked, and for seven days I gave him injectable steroids, pepcid and an antibiotic. He got better, but when I stopped he went right back to not eating and the diarrhea started to slowly return.

Once again I thought this was it, but then the vet switched him from prednisone to prednisolone, and his appetite returned. I started going after the diarrhea with:

1 teaspoon of slipperly elm daily.

1/8 teaspoon of canned pumpkin with rice bran mixed in.

A pinch of l-glutamine, saccharomyces boulardii, Prozyme, Pet-Dophilus (given in pill pockets).

And I resumed monthly b12 injections.

The diarrhea was under control within days and he’s gaining weight again. So wow, Budd. You keep hanging in there. This could all turn around again, but for now he’s good.

Thank You Nora!!

Nora sent me the most beautiful earrings a while back, and I recently lost them at the City pool where I swim. I did my best to adopt a positive attitude about it—maybe someone who needs them more found them and is now happily wearing them—but of course deep down I really missed them.

So Nora sends me a new pair AND a pair in quartz, which are now tied for my favorite earrings, AND three stones to wear as necklaces (I do have a silver chain)!! Thank you so much, Nora. I love them all! The stones are so beautiful!! I’m googling chalcedony now, it’s very glow-y, isn’t it? Oh! It’s said to have healing properties. Interesting. Maybe I’ll try wearing all the stones on a chain together. Thank you, thank you, a million times, thank you. You are very generous.

People sitting out on a pier along the Hudson River.

Dancing Along the Hudson

I was out walking down the river with my friend Howard and we passed by these people dancing. They were doing the tango. I have to say, the heat makes me so depressed. I don’t do well once the temperature hits 90. In truth, I’m such a heat-wimp 88 is probably my true upper limit. I’m grateful for air-conditioning, but after a few days holed up in it I feel like the last zombie on earth. There are no more people with brains to eat, and no more fellow zombies to fight over what’s left.

I’m glad it seems like we’re getting a break. It was so invigorating just taking a simple walk along the river. There was a breeze and the heat wasn’t beating-down-oppressive and I felt alive again.

I walked around the dancers, trying to get landmarks into the background of the shots, like the Empire State Building. But the best shots were the dancers blocking it.

I did like capturing people dancing with the growing One World Trade Center in the background though. It’s a nice recovery shot, I thought.

I want her shoes.

I wish I had zoomed in on the girl in the flowered dress. She looks so happy.

Fourteenth Ward Industrial School Of The …

… what? The sign over this building is broken off. It says Fourteenth Ward Industrial School Of The and then the rest of the sign is gone. It was a school for the poor, put in place in 1889 by the Children’s Aid Society and paid for by John Jacob Astor III, in memory of his wife. It replaced the original school that used to be at 93 Crosby Street.

At the time, the Times described the area as one of “wretchedness, poverty and squalor.” (This is across the street from where Alec Baldwin just got married.) Christ. I just browsed the Times a little about the school and the area. Just one sad story after another. IE, a 16 year old “colored” girl tried to kill herself drinking laudanum. They fixed her up and sent her home. Next! You only live once and some people get such a terrible roll of the dice. I wonder about the principal, Miss H. E. Stevens. She was the principal from when it opened in 1863, until I don’t know when. She was still the principal when this building opened. I can’t even find out her first name. Was she an unmarried society lady, or did she come from this neighborhood herself?

Wait, it seems like she may have lived at the school. I wonder if she worshipped across the street at Old St. Patrick’s? Maybe she’s in their records.

Some pictures of the building that housed the school.

A close-up of the sign.

I found this in the Museum of the City of New York’s digital collection. This is a picture of the inside of the school, taken in 1890.

Best Recordings of Beethoven’s Symphonies

I’ve been looking for the best recordings of Beethoven’s 5th and 9th symphonies (my favorites). Finding the best recording of the 5th was quick and easy (Kleiber’s) but finding my favorite of the 9th is tougher. Either they get the orchestral part right, but not the choral, or the other way around, but never both it seems.

Has anyone found the perfect 9th symphony recording?

These are pictures of the graveyard at Old St. Patricks (where Alec Baldwin recently got married, by the way — not in the graveyard of course, but in the church).

The Affordable Care Act Explained

Someone pointed me to this easy-to-read explanation of all the components of the ACA (Obamacare to those determined to misrepresent it). Please read through this list and let me know which parts you don’t like. I didn’t know about this one, I love this one:

“Congress and Congressional staff will only be offered the same insurance offered to people in the insurance exchanges, rather than Federal Insurance. Basically, we won’t be footing their health care bills any more than any other American citizen.”

Honestly though, there are so many good parts there are too many to list. Just take a look.

The fireworks from my roof last night. It was an interesting night on the roof! There was someone who used to live on 11th Street when I lived there, around thirty years ago, and a person who lived in the building I’m living in now around twenty years ago. That was a pretty mangled sentence, but you get what I’m try to say.

This is zooming in …

… and this is pulling back. There were four barges out on the Hudson River shooting off fireworks. Next year, mark my words, I’m going to watch from the river instead of my roof.