Month: March 2013

I’ve always wanted Guantánamo closed and the prisoners there brought here to New York City. Then try the ones where there is enough evidence to bring them to trial and free the others. I’m sorry, but if you don’t have enough to put them on trial we must let them go. For the rest, I have always wanted the supreme satisfaction of putting them on trial.

I just read the Times article about Abu Ghaith though, (I’m not an expert on terrorists) and I’m reading that he did not play a role in the 9/11 attacks. They’re saying he was basically a propagandist who called on their supporters to attack us. But I remember being taught that in America you are allowed to say things like that, and it’s only an issue if the threat is imminent. IE, you can say, “We must overthrow the government,” but not, “Pick up your guns NOW and overthrow the government.” Although I was taught that decades ago and so many laws have changed since then. I don’t know if any lawyers read my blog but I’d love a clarification about that.

So settle in, Sulaiman. I hope you have a nice view of One World Trade Center. And I really hope your guards are female. I would particular enjoy how much you would hate to be bossed around by women packing heat.

Outside my window right now, looking west towards the Hudson River. I love snow, but this is a very dreary snowfall.

I’ve posted several times about the animal rescue efforts of Eldad Hagar, and most recently about a dog he rescued in South Carolina named Shaggy. Shaggy has a number of health issues and some of them are very serious. Every day she’s had one test or another. Today it’s a CT scan, and the results won’t be back until late today or tomorrow. Shaggy has a mass that could either be a tumor (lung cancer), a granuloma as a result of heartworms, or a hernia. She also has arthritis and other things I can’t remember.

I’ve never even met the dog, but every afternoon I anxiously await the results. I can’t rest until Patty Hall, the woman who adopted Shaggy, posts the latest updates on the Friends of Shaggy Facebook page. I don’t know what I’ll do if she can’t effectively be treated. I can’t imagine how Patty will be. Actually, yes I can.

I once thought being a veterinarian must be one of the greatest jobs in the world. But when I interviewed a vet for my book Waiting For My Cats to Die I realized veterinarians are doctors who eventually see all their patients die. Animals don’t live that long. A doctor who treats humans can reasonably expect that many of his or her patients will live decades and decades, perhaps most outliving the doctor. Every cat or dog who comes through a vet’s door will eventually be brought in for that final treatment. A veterinarian with a long career will eventually see thousands and thousands and thousands of patients die. If you’re like me, and a lot of people are, you pretty much fall in love with all animals on sight. In Shaggy’s case, you don’t even have to get closer than a livestream or a Facebook page for that to happen.

I realize being able to help animals the way veterinarians do must make up for all those thousands of repeated heartbreaks, but still. I’m glad there are people who are strong enough to do this work. Shaggy, please please please be treatable.

Update: It’s the best possible news. The mass they saw is a granuloma, and Shaggy is strong enough to start the heartworm medicine. They can address a bad cough she has, so it looks like all will soon be well for my favorite dog who I’ve never met.

This is looking up Broadway. I took this before heading into Grace Church for choir practice.

Somewhere around the year 2000 I was hired to pick writers for a web-based tv show that Barnes & Noble planned to launch called Behind the Words. The show was basically video interviews of the writers I’d chosen, and I also had to write the interview questions and the content for the pages we were building out for each writer. It never launched, and I don’t know why.

But it was an incredibly eye-opening experience for me about working with writers. About half were perfectly fine to work with, but a surprisingly large number were rude and difficult, and some were outright horrible. To this day I can’t read a word any of the horrible ones have written, they were that terrible. I’m surprised they’re still alive (one of them isn’t, but he was very very old). I always expected them to spontaneously combust from awfulness, or from someone finally deciding, “That’s it. You can’t be in the world anymore.” I’m sure the process was annoying for them, and my questions maybe have been irritating. Oh god, for all I know they were the stupidest questions EVER, but I was trying to think of questions that might illicit answers that would work on the web. The point is, I was doing everything I could to sell their books.

Some of the writers however, were absolutely wonderful. And of that group, the writer George Saunders was hands down the most gracious and fun. The answers he sent back were so funny and endearing they were passed around to everyone in the office and all our friends.

He’s now hugely famous and respected (he was known and respected then, but now he’s a mega-writing star) and I love the justice of that. Everyone I know is talking about his latest book. One friend said she wanted to read it aloud to people she loved it that much, and another is reading it aloud to a friend in the hospital.

I just went through a folder of old email I’d saved, hoping I’d saved the email with the answers he’d sent, but I couldn’t find it, damnit. Tomorrow I’m going to post about how depressed I got seeing some of that old email.

Yet another picture of One World Trade Center, this a view from Sullivan and Houston Streets.

I often think about things like, ‘What would I do if this train goes off the bridge and into the East River? How could I survive this?’ ‘If this plane starts to crash, could I land it?’ Insane, I know. I was thinking of starting a series: Insane Things I Thought Today.

But we had an earthquake not too long ago, and it must have freaked me out more than I realized, or maybe it dredged up 9/11 fears, but every once in a while I wonder what I would do if my building started to collapse. I’m pretty sure I’d be a goner, but the only thing I’ve come up with so far is to try to make it out the window and onto the fire escape. I figure less will be falling on top of me that way, and maybe more opportunities for saving myself will be presented when I get out there. I also realized that in the time given there’d be nothing I could do to save the cats. I can only hope since cats are good fallers they can take care of themselves.

Seriously though, or insanely though, I do feel like my building has been weakened. Is that possible? I swear it feels like it’s tilting more.

There happens to be a book about this very thing, which I own of course. It’s all about what to do if you find yourself in a number of precarious positions: The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook.

I will always stop to take pictures of bubbles. This was on Broadway.

Every time an article comes out about singing now I feel like someone has beaten me to the punch. Please, for the love of god editors and writers, I can’t take it. Can we call a moratorium on the subject until my book (Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing With Others) comes out on July 2nd? Thank you in advance.

I enjoyed coming upon this ad yesterday for a new A&E tv show. It’s at Houston and Broadway. Not that I’m going to be adding any more shows to the list of shows I watch. There’s too much good stuff on tv to watch. (I was going to use an exclamation point in that sentence, but there’s been such an exclamation point backlash, I used italics instead.)