Month: January 2011

A meeting for today was rescheduled so I figured I’d go to the library and get some research done. I love the library! I love walking in the snow! Heavenly day ahead! And then I read this on the New York Public Library website:

Due to the severe weather conditions, all units of The New York Public Library will be closed today.

What was my Plan B again?

Oh, I know what I should work on. I’ve been looking for a job, one that would complement my writing and research, and so far I only found one that was even close (didn’t get it). But I just read about someone who writes people’s life histories for them and I thought I could do that. Really really well. Every time I’ve written a book I’ve had family members write me to thank me and tell me that reading what I’d written about their father (mother, sister, brother) told them all this stuff that they’d never known. I could so do this.

After going out to play in the snow.

Non-stop coverage of what’s going on in science, for instance, would be a thousand, kabillion, trillion, katribillion, times more interesting. How did we get here? To deciding that 24 hour news coverage had to center on politics? And why isn’t there a 24 hour Cute Overload-like channel?

I’m going to work on A Sea Symphony now. Cleanse my palate, as it were. This is a picture of a side alley of St. Anthony’s in the snow.

Yesterday, when it was a billion degrees below zero and I had no heat, and couldn’t shower, I was sitting at my desk at the end of the day, wrapped in a blanket and still trying to get some work done when Buddy horked up all over my white comforter. I cleaned it up as best I could, but it needed to go to the laundry and since I was without heat that meant I had to go to the laundry right there and then! Even though I had just done a laundry on Saturday!

Buddy luxuriating in the nice, freshly washed comforter. Evil.

Something happened yesterday that almost makes me believe in fate. I’m struggling with this section about Frank Damrosch, who started something called the People’s Singing Classes in 1892, in order to teach music to working men and women in New York City. Then I remembered that last year, I did a lot of research into New York in 1892. I realized that all that research gives what Damrosch did context. It really shows why those singing classes were such great thing (it was a rough year for anyone who wasn’t rich in New York). And I picked 1892 more or less out of a hat! Woohoo!

Every once in a while I take pictures of the people crossing the street on the opposite side from me. It just amazes me how many millions of people whose lives I cross, people I will never meet, never get to know.

Hello people I’ll probably never see again!

I’m struggling with a section that shouldn’t be so hard, but it is. My response? Goof off. I read an interesting but morbid article about what is being revealed as the Andes melt. Next I’m going to watch a PBS documentary about the 1918 flu epidemic. Yeah, I’m definitely on a morbid streak this morning. Maybe it’s Jack Lalanne dying.

I’m trying to write a short piece about Frank Damrosch. Anyone with good Frank Damrosch stories, please email me. I’m looking at you Juilliard graduates.

Here’s Buddy. Who has cancer (in keeping with the morbid theme). He’s fine though. For now.