Month: September 2009

Except I can’t quite enjoy it. I have to go back and re-write this book proposal, and it isn’t even really fair to call it a proposal yet it’s so unfinished, and I’ve been so unable to get any traction on it. This is not like me. Hmmm.

For the last two books my job has been clear, tell the story of the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad, tell the story of the Duke Parapsychology Lab. I still had to figure how to do that, but the goal was as simple as it gets. This is a book about singing with the Grace Church Choral Society, but not really. It’s like Waiting for My Cats to Die was not really about my cats.

Right now I’ve been telling myself you only have to write an hour a day. It’s an insanely small amount of time.

In the meantime, this is a picture of a tree on WeeHawken Street. It’s a tiny street off Christopher, right before you get to the river. It’s kind of dismal place, and at the same time, old, haunting and beautiful. It has that back in time feel that I love, like sailors might live here, or spice merchants, and horses are kept in the stables, and people are getting drunk on beer and too many oysters in a real oyster bar, and doesn’t this tree literally look like a tree in a dream? God, I think that might officially be the most beautiful tree in Manhattan.

UPDATE: I thought people might appreciate a pulled back view, so scroll down to see this tree in context.

The street is better than it looks in this photo though, some of the buildings down this street have that from-the-past appeal I was describing. I should go back and try to capture it.

I was walking home along the Hudson River and I looked out at the remains of an old pier and saw what looked just like a dead turkey to me.

I knew it couldn’t be, I mean, turkeys can’t swim or fly (will never forget that WKRP episode) so how could it get out there? I zoomed in on it and took a picture and even though I still couldn’t verify its non-turkey-age, I knew I’d be able to when I got home.

Definitely not a turkey. But you see it, right? Imagine seeing it from more of a distance. This is a close-up.

Whenever I go to Petco to get birdseed I have to pass this cage on my way back up the stairs to the cash register. I feel bad for this little guy who is all alone.

I think (hope) this is like a showcase cage and they put different animals in it to show them off, and so no one has to be alone for long. I’m pretty sure I saw a different creature in there the time before.

I’m so excited, I have a new author picture!! On the one hand, I feel so exposed, this is me, this is what I look like now, but on the other hand, not bad for fifty-freaking-three.

The picture was taken by the fabulously talented and incredibly kind and generous Brad Paris.  He took my picture for the Tufts  alumni magazine, they’re doing a piece about Unbelievable (thank you, thank you, thank you), and he is letting me use this one from that session (Tufts chose a different shot).

I like this one because of the hint of a self-conscious smile from me.  It was taken in the garden behind the Morris-Jumel Mansion which I wrote about in the book.  I had my hair blown out, but I’m not wearing any makeup except a very subtle shade of lipstick, and liner on my lower eyelids, which I could have skipped, it doesn’t really show up.

I seriously need new jeans.  You can’t see but these are ripped to shreds, which is fine for hanging around I guess, but too sloppy for anything else.  And I’m making an appointment to get my hair cut.  That same cut just a few inches shorter.