Month: October 2011

My neighbohood and others were bustling with OWS activity last night. I was curled up on the couch with the cats, happily watching America’s Next Top Model, but for the longest time the sky was filled with helicopters and I finally had to get up and see why. Turns out the OWS protestors were on the move, and apparently they were snaking through a lot of neighborhoods, including mine.

I have to say, I had fun following everything via twitter, live ustreams, and both watching the helicopters and the helicopter’s live streams at the same time. Oh, and a website link to the police radio broadcasts.

Here’s a shot looking towards Times Square from the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, where my choir will be performing in December.

I’m sure many of you have already heard about this book Sybil Exposed, which is said to challenge what must be the most famous Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) case: Sybil.

Last week, the author of the book and a few scientists were guests on the show Science Friday. I wish you would all go listen to it here, because one of the scientists was such a jerk, and in such an unnecessary way. I came across this so many times while working on the Duke book. Just make your point. If it’s a valid one, why the need for all the nastiness piled on top? Also, the author of another Sybil book calls in and by the end of his phone call they were all just laughing at him, which was unkind, but if you listen I think you’ll see how it came to that.

I just read some of the comments about the book on Amazon. Fascinating. I haven’t read Sybil Exposed, but the comments seem to suggest that the author is also debunking MPD as a diagnosis and some of the commenters have been diagnosed with MPD. If you go you’ll see some of the reviews have prompted discussions.

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Police walking by Grace Church last Saturday, at the end of the anti-police brutality protest. I was singing there just before the march started.

Except for West Side Story. I’m still warming up to Leonard Bernstein’s Missa Brevis, which a member of my choir, Brent, said was originally written for a play about Joan of Arc. I meant to remember that and see how I felt to sing it knowing that, but of course the minute we started singing it my over-riding thought was, “This is hard.”

I saw some tweets about a truck full of bees that over-turned in Utah, but I can’t find any pictures. I understand that people were getting stung, but come on. There’s no one nearby with a camera out there?? Which reminds me, I have a couple of YouTube videos I wanted to post.

A lovely film from Occupy Wall Street of muslims using the people’s mic in a nice way.

For Bones fans, outtakes [the video I linked to has since been removed].

This is one of my books (The Restless Sleep) at a library in the East Village, (the Ottendorfer, at 2nd Avenue and St. Mark’s). Thank you, New York Public Library and Ottendorfer librarians!

I found these on Talking Points Memo. These are from Buchanan’s new book, the chapter “The Last Chance”:

“Our intellectual, cultural, and political elites are today engaged in one of the most audacious and ambitious experiments in history. They are trying to transform a Western Christian republic into an egalitarian democracy made up of all the tribes, races, creeds, and cultures of planet Earth. They have dethroned our God, purged our cradle faith from public life, and repudiated the Judeo-Christian moral code by which previous generations sought to live.”

On the segregation era:

“Perhaps some of us misremember the past. But the racial, religious, cultural, social, political, and economic divides today seem greater than they seemed even in the segregation cities some of us grew up in.”

“Back then, black and white lived apart, went to different schools and churches, played on different playgrounds, and went to different restaurants, bars, theaters, and soda fountains. But we shared a country and a culture. We were one nation. We were Americans.”

A man with balloons on Fifth Avenue.

I don’t do this often, because I have a tendency to be too easily influenced. I read Tolstoy and whatever I write the next day has the flavor of War & Peace. But I copied this line from Jessica Mitford’s book Hons and Rebels, and made a note to myself to try and make observations as wonderful as this in my book:

“Debo spent silent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of the look of pained concentration that comes over a hen’s face when it is laying an egg.”

This is a building on Bleecker Street. Halloween! As fun as Christmas.