Month: October 2013

Tonight, at 6:30 EST, (7:30 pm, CDT) to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Verdi’s birth, the Verdi Requiem will be streamed live by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. A pre-concert show begins at 7:15 p.m. CDT.

Remember when we all use to watch TV together? Everyone knew not to call anyone when certain shows were on. I specifically remember having an attitude about anyone who dared call me during: Moonlighting. Let’s listen to the Verdi Requiem together! I’ve never heard a requiem I didn’t love, but the Verdi is quite dramatic. It’s perfect for this kind of thing, I think.

An old subway sign at the 190th Street stop on the A train. This is right at the entrance to Fort Tryon Park, my new favorite park, located in Washington Heights. If I wasn’t on so many deadlines I’d be up there now. Except maybe not since it’s supposed to rain, but you get the idea.

I wrote about Baby Hope on my blog for my cold case book, but I wanted to also mention her here. This is a cold case from 1991 that is now on its way to being solved. I still remember the crime scene photos, they were so awful. Crime scene photos were part of the reason I decided I didn’t want to write about crime anymore. Here’s the section about Baby Hope from my book. You can tell from my description here how freaked out I was about the pictures.

On July 23, 1991, a little girl was found in a 40 quart, dark blue Igloo cooler off the Henry Hudson Parkway in northern Manhattan … Someone folded her in half, wrapped a cord from a venetian blind around her neck and behind her knees, and put her in a plastic bag underneath an cheap black tablecloth, and a bunch of red Coke cans.

Crime scene pictures show a naked little girl, hog-tied and badly decomposed, her tiny hands peeking out from between her legs. Her skin is black, brown and pink and bone is exposed all over. One eye is gone, and the other bulges like a horribly constructed toy. For the roughly four and a half years of her life, someone barely managed to feed her. She was a little over three feet high and weighed 20 pounds. They beat her. They sexually abused her. Finally, they suffocated her. There was almost no forensic evidence of the killers, no fingerprints, and no DNA. She was never identified, and her case was never solved. The detectives nicknamed her Baby Hope. For two years she was stored in the morgue, but that was more than the detectives could bear. They pooled their money, paid for her funeral, and buried her at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx in a plot donated by the Catholic Archdiocese.

Her mother was just identified and now that Baby Hope has been identified (not publicly) the real investigation can begin. Detectives can start talking to her family and people who knew her. I’d like to know why her mother never reported her missing.

Update: Baby Hope was Anjelica Castillo. She was born in Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens in 1987, so she was 4 years old when she died. Her cousin Conrado Juarez, 52, sexually abused her and killed her. Juarez’s sister, Balvina Juarez- Ramirez helped him dump Anjelica’s body. He’s been arrested, Balvina is deceased.

I’m going to be writing about this for Chorus America so I’m not going to say much for now except you cannot miss this. Go to The Cloisters and see The Forty Part Motet.

Also, The Cloisters and Fort Tyron Park are now my new favorite places in New York. Please scroll down for a couple of pictures of the park …

There’s a scene in the 1942 movie Cat People, when actor Kent Smith pointed to a sign in the Central Park Zoo with the same saying as the one below. For some reason that scene always stood out for me. I teared up a little when I saw this sign yesterday. I felt a wave of nostalgia for days past, when this sign would have meant more.

A lovely walk in the park. I have to go back when I am not rushed. What a peaceful place this would be to sit and read. Another thing of the past! Not just books but reading. Although I will miss books, I want a Kindle! I heard something described as a “long form” article, and it was maybe 700 or 800 words. That’s long form??

In a YouTube Video composer Eric Whitacre talked about singing with a choir for the first time. It was in college and the piece was the Mozart Requiem. “It was like seeing color for the first time, and I was regularly moved to tears during rehearsals, crushed by the impossible beauty of the work. I became a choral geek of the highest magnitude, I mean I lived for rehearsals and performances …”

We all feel that way. You take a breath, and masterpieces like Bach’s Mass in B Minor emerge. Sometime it’s hard not to just break down sobbing, the work is so magnificent.

Another composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, wrote, “If we neglect the amateur side of music and become a nation of mere passive listeners all the life will go out of our art … ” Given all the evidence that continues to pile up for the beneficial things music does to our brains, bodies, immune systems, and hearts—and by hearts I mean that both literally and metaphorically—it’s terrible that it’s not part of everyone’s lives. “Singing together and making music together,” Whitacre said in his YouTube video, “is a fundamental human experience.”

Yesterday Finney took the place behind my practice piano that Buddy used to take …

And then Bleecker showed up. “Can I sit here too? Can I, Can I??” Right, like we all don’t know what you really mean: “Can I jump on your back, put my paws around you like a vise, then chomp on your neck until you cry?” I’m sorry, Finney.

“Petition to light up the Empire State Building TARDIS blue on November 23rd to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who!”

“We are asking the Empire State Building to light up “TARDIS Blue” on November 23rd to celebrate 50 great years of Doctor Who. The Empire State Building regularly uses their spectacular light show to celebrate special moments in pop culture, such as sports events, the 15th anniversary of The Lion King, and Wrestlemania, as well as all the holidays and occasions it’s more known for being lit up for. As far as we know, however, they’ve never lit up to celebrate a SciFi show. What better place to start than the iconic series Doctor Who?”

These are pictures from last Halloween of the Tardis crashed into a building on Perry Street. They’ve done this two years in a row now, and I’ve never been happy with how my pictures come out. It’s so well done, it also glows and smokes.

Hopefully they will do it again this year and I’ll get yet another chance to do better.