Month: June 2012

And boy did you know how to say goodbye. I just read his essay, Take Me Home, which appeared in this week’s New Yorker. Be prepared to cry.

I may have my camera back tomorrow. I took this last year, but didn’t post it because it’s not really a picture of anything. Barack Obama was in town and he drove through my neighborhood, except I missed him. This is just the aftermath, a sad picture of what I didn’t see, of barricades that someone had already started to put away.

In Grace Church, in the southwest corner of the church, right below the organ gallery where a professional choir used to sing, there’s a statue of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians and church music. Underneath the statue is a plaque which reads: “Her children place this statue in devout memory of Julia Northall Bodstein, who in this church through nine and twenty years sang the praises of God.” Julia was the soprano soloist for the professional choir and she sang in Grace Church from 1846 (when the church opened) to 1875.

I didn’t end up including her in the book, but I did research her a little. She was married to Frederick William Bodstein, and she had four daughter although one daughter, Flora, died when she was only three years old. Her other daughters were Clara, Lucy and Emily. Emily Bodstein Proctor and her husband, William Proctor, were the ones to install the plague, in 1920. The sculptor was John Massey Rhind.

Julia died on June 28, 1896, when she was 72. My picture of the statue didn’t come out well, I need to go back and try again, but this is the plaque. If by any chance any of her descendants come across this post, I’d love to learn more about her. And see a picture of her!

We’ve been singing at other churches for a couple of years now, while Grace Church undergoes renovations, and this winter we return to Grace! It’s very exciting for us. The last time I was in Grace Church, which was only a few weeks ago, it seemed not at all near ready, but I’m crossing my fingers.

I took these before a performance at St. Thomas. We look so fancy on performance night.

By the way, the copy editor went through my book and removed practically all the hyphens. I’m sure she would take the hyphen out of the “camera-less” in my post title there.

Today is shelter animal day, or something animal day, and there are related events going on at Union Square and up at the Wild Bird Fund, and I’m planning on stopping by. But it’s killing me that I won’t be able to photograph the animals and birds. KILLING. I am so frustrated.

My birthday is off to a great start though, because Buddy just ate two cans of food and now he is eating Finney’s food. He is pretty unequivocally getting better.

So, you’ve all heard the news about Amelia Earhart, right? It’s upsetting that the distress calls that were dismissed as bogus might have been genuine. Could she have been saved had they not been ignored?

What picture am I going to put here?? Here’s a shot I took a few weeks ago of a guy walking dogs. I always take pictures of dog walkers, because I always wish I was the dog walker.

Christ, these Canon G9s are delicate flowers. This is the third time this camera has broken. Buying a new camera costs more money so every time this happens I make the decision to repair it, and I should get a new camera already but the truth is I kinda love the damn thing. The techs don’t work weekends at my repair place, which means no one is going to even look at it until Monday.

I take pictures every day! How am I going to survive??

The statue of the Virgin Mary pictured below is a casualty from the Paring Down Process that is integral to my annual Spring Cleaning. Every year I have to get rid of a certain amount of stuff or my apartment starts to feel uncomfortably cluttered. We’ve been through a lot together though, Mary and me. Someone else had gotten rid of her roughly 36 years ago, when I found her and picked her up off the streets of Cambridge, MA, where I was going to school. Since then I’ve been carting her from place to place every time I’ve moved. She’s survived college, grad school, marriage, divorce, countless jobs, starting a business, five books, I could go on.

She was an interesting conversation piece too, because I’m not religious. “So, what are you doing with a statue of the Virgin Mary,” people would ask. I was raised catholic, I’d explain. I don’t believe but I still take comfort in and enjoy the beauty of religious iconography. But Mary has been falling apart for a while now, and leaves a pile of plaster dust wherever she sits.

Usually when I put something down on the street it’s gone within ten minutes. Mary was still around when I came back hours later. Thankfully, by the next day someone had decided they wanted her. I hope. Maybe the building super out her in the garbage. But I am going to chose to believe someone took her home.