Stacy Horn's Blog, page 200

Carole King Loser’s Lounge Tonight

I can’t wait. Carole King has written so many great songs for so many great artists (including herself, of course) over so many decades. Can. Not. Wait. I’ll be back tomorrow with photographs, hopefully. The Loser’s Lounge regularly does tribute shows to various musical artists.

By the way, Carole King was on Piers Morgan recently and she looked absolutely fabulous and beautiful. Better than she did when she was young! She doesn’t look like she’s had work. If she did, she’s the rare star whose work turned out well.

On my way home yesterday, I passed by a mob of young girls crowded around a store window screaming and singing. I asked what they were looking at and was told that inside was a band called The Wanted. I googled them when I got home. (Because I do not have a smart phone. So deprived. Pity me!!) They’re a boy band from the UK.

Sad, Horrifying Picture

Yesterday, I mentioned a photograph I saw at the Municipal Archives in 2002 that has haunted me ever since. I decided not to post it, and if you follow this link to see it you’ll probably be shocked that I would even consider posting it.

The caption reads: “Homicide victim (male) undersize, naked bloated man [ship captain murdered by crew].”

With the exception of crime scene photographs involving children, this man is the most vulnerable, saddest, sorriest-looking homicide victim I have ever seen. I’ve come across photographs that are more gruesome, but the combination of his spread-out nakedness, the swelling, the squalid setting, it’s just so pathetic. Perhaps he was a miserable, awful human being and his crew had plenty of reasons to hate him, but still. Who was he? What led to this moment? What was the aftermath?

The photograph comes from a collection of glass plate negatives that are sitting in the basement of One Police Plaza. They sit in piles in a small caged room, cracking anytime someone steps too hard. They’re in bad shape and continually getting worse and eventually there will be nothing left if something isn’t done about them. (And maybe something has been done since the last time I was down there.)

I was going to post a more fun picture, but now that feels inappropriate! So I will post this one instead. I took this yesterday, walking back from the DMV.

All My Spare Time is Now Spoken For

The Municipal Archives has just put 870,000 photographs online. The server is down a lot, probably because a million people like me are going crazy all over it.

“Thank you for visiting the Municipal Archives Online Gallery, due to high volume you may experience delays. Thank you for your patience.”

I wanted to show this picture I saw there in 2002 that has haunted me ever since. It’s a picture of a murder victim from around 1915. But that will have to wait, I’m not getting through right now. In any case, I’m sure they’ll work out all the bugs. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the infinity power, Municipal Archives!!

Yesterday, a few complimentary copies of the Japanese edition of my book Unbelievable arrived in the mail. So exciting!! Thank you again Sayaka Nakai, (translator) Mr. Izumi (the editor) and Mr. Matsuda (the book designer) and Kinokuniya (publisher)!!

Why do so many cats seem to have lymphoma?

A friend of mine just lost her cat to lymphoma. I’m sure I don’t have to explain to any pet owner what she is feeling right now. They so insinuate themselves into our lives, don’t they? Weirdly, their absence is felt more than when we lose people. Maybe because, unlike people, they are always there, even if only quietly in the background, curled up in a ball nearby. And then they’re not. It’s awful.

Then all you have left is just the remnants of them. The litterbox, the food bowls. It feels like a betrayal to get rid of them, like you’re getting rid of the cat, like they’re just something to clean up. Like they didn’t mean everything.

My cat Buddy has lymphoma. He was first diagnosed on January 10, 2010, so he has passed the two year mark. He’d been showing symptoms for a year before that though, and we were trying everything until we finally did an ultrasound and then a biopsy.

He’s fine today. I try not to think beyond that. You hang in there little dude.

What I See on 11th Street

I’ve got this on-going thread in the book I’ve just finished up about singing, where I describe walking back and forth on 11th Street, going to and from choir practice. I write about the different seasons, what I see, who lived on 11th Street, the one cemetery I pass by. I’m so lucky to have a particularly beautiful route to choir.

Yesterday, I took a picture of this tree on the corner of 11th and 5th Avenue. Beautiful, isn’t it? 11th Street is amazingly thick with trees and greenery.

I’ve been fact-checking for weeks, and I’m down to the last chapters, which I’m going to try to finish today. These two chapters focus on the composers Morten Lauridsen and Eric Whitacre, and, because it’s me, life and death.

Feed Me

Starting at about 5:30 in the morning, an hour before their feeding time, Buddy starts doing things to get me to get up earlier and feed him sooner. These things include: shredding paper, eating books, knocking over books, knocking over anything I was stupid enough to leave out on the desk the night before, batting me in the face with his paw, nails extended, and eating plants.

The eating plants one is pretty sure-fire, because he always throws up the leaves later, and that can’t be good for his stomach. This also means it’s time to trim back the plant. Normally it’s hanging in the window out of his reach.

This strategy has been so successful over time that I now feed them at 6:30 in the morning instead of at 7:30, and 4:30 in the afternoon instead of around 7:30 at night. And, because their dinner was so early, they start bugging me again later in the evening and I’ve added a later-evening-snack meal! I am so owned.

I think I have posted about this before. Oh no. I’m the 21st century equivalent of the person who tells the same story over and over again.

I’m so blue it feels like Sunday

Sundays are usually the most depressing day of the week, but for some unknown reason I feel depressed today, on a Saturday, and that’s after seeing Cabin in the Woods! It makes no sense. (Cabin in the Woods: Not great, but funny, entertaining, a fine movie for a Saturday afternoon.)

What will cheer me up? Lots of cheese? Because I have some. What do you do when you’re having one of those days, when you’re feeling lousy for no good reason, but nonetheless, there you are?

I passed by this photo shoot on my way to the movies. The girl on the left in the yellow heels is the subject.

It’s the Loveliest Day

Although my day began in the most unpleasant manner possible. My toilet was clogged, I didn’t know how to fix it, but I googled how, ran to the hardware store, came home, and voila! I felt tremendously elated at the time. Like I’d conquered some incredibly difficult task. Mwah-ha! You did not win, toilet! Yeah, try and wreck my morning. I’m watching you.

I’m going out for a walk and to run errands. I have a feeling I will be drawn back to the basement where they are searching for Etan Patz. I read that the Patz family, in addition to never moving (so their son, if alive, could find his way home) kept the same message on their answering machine. So sad.

Anyway. I took this the other day for my “Dress I Can’t Possess” series, except I’d have to go back in time to possess this one. It’s a child’s dress. There’s another in the window, just as pretty, but this is astounding, isn’t it? Lucky little girl who gets to wear this dress.

The Search for the Remains of Etan Patz

As I type this the FBI is searching a basement on Prince Street for the remains of Etan Patz, the six year old boy who went missing in 1979. If you were living in New York at the time, this case probably still haunts you. The building they’re sifting through is within a block of where Etan lived at the time he went missing. The FBI must have a new lead or new information (I read that they’ve searched this building before).

When I was writing my book about the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad, I also interviewed the head of Missing Persons. I’ll never forget it. In my book, I wrote about how detectives keep their case files in brown, accordion-style folders that look like something school children might carry. Most cases take up only one folder. If it’s a complex case, and the folders start piling up, eventually they’re moved into a cardboard carton. As the case grows, the detectives start stacking cartons. A big case might ending up filling one to six cartons.

The cartons for Etan Patz filled an entire wall, front to back, and from floor to ceiling. It was a dramatic representation of just how hard they worked that case. They’d done everything they humanly could, and they were never going to give up on Etan Patz.

Here are some shots of what’s happening down there right now. The blue canopy is covering the entrance to the building they’re checking.

It’s a mob scene of media and neighbors and people like me, who never forgot Etan Patz. Such a lovely street, to be the site of something so horrible. But I guess every place on earth was once the site of something horrible.

Spring Cleaning Coming Up!

Regular readers of my blog know about my cleaning rituals, but for those who don’t:

Every May and November I clean my apartment from top to bottom. Although I’ve given these yearly rituals the rather ordinary names of “Spring Cleaning” and “Holiday Cleaning,” I look forward to them the way other people look forward to vacations. I’ve managed to infuse the thorough burnishing I give my home with all the clean-slate promise these generally hopeful seasons can bring. Twice a year I feel like I’m getting another chance, and I make it fun. While I’m scrubbing the place down or laundering every piece of clothing I own, every simple pleasure is granted and indulged. I light my favorite scented candles. I freely eat whatever I want. Dark chocolate, potato chips, bread, cheese, more bread, it doesn’t matter. I work so hard I always come out calorically ahead. The cats also get all the catnip and extra treats they desire.

These cleanings typically take three or four days, and all throughout there is music. The music of my childhood, (Snoopy’s Christmas) music I fell in love to (Baby, Now That I’ve Found You), my favorite music to belt (Oh Darling) my favorite music to dance around the apartment to (Rhythm of Love) and all my favorite choruses (everything from the Bach Mass in B Minor and many, many others). For at least three days straight I’m singing. Afterwards, when my apartment is sparkling clean, I’ll buy myself a very modestly priced new outfit; I’ll carefully scrutinize all the new nail polish colors and get a pedicure; have my hair done; find the most affordable flowers of the season and fill my apartment, and only then will I finally sit on my couch and bask and bask and bask.

This year, spring cleaning is going to be super-duper. I’ve made appointments to get the windows, rug, and couch cleaned. Woohoo!

People lining up to eat at Red Farm, where I will be sitting outside, doing a thousand loads of laundry. I am the 1%!