Author: Stacy Horn

Well, we had another Echo catastrophe yesterday. I need to plan a mental health day for myself, but I can’t take it yet, and I’m supposed to start jury duty on Monday. I was actually looking forward to jury duty, but I don’t see how I can serve now (I’m the only one to respond to certain problems) and what if they don’t excuse me??

I had a really nice time on Sunday doing a Skype chat about my singing book with the North Shore Choral Society, a volunteer choir from Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. Thank you for inviting me, Linda Faller! It was a lovely break in the midst of a lot of madness. Choir people truly are the nicest people in the world. As if singing itself wasn’t a good enough reason to join a choir. But it’s really the singing and the people. Inseparable.

I have no new pictures because I’ve been inside either working or stressing about Echo. Here is yet another picture from the ballet rehearsal I went to recently. Before the nightmare began.

Echo Update: I estimate Echo will be back up in a day or two. People can ssh in now if you like, but you’ll find yourself in 2014. When Echo died we had our hosting service put together a virtual machine and now we’re running on a version of Echo we compiled and started working on in 2014 There’s a fuller version of this story in Item 317 in Central.

But if you’re going to SSH in email so I can alert you to some issues.

It’s a little hard to see, but this position cannot possibly be comfortable!

Vivian Swift, who I am friends with (<---bragging) sent me her new book, Gardens of Awe and Folly: A Traveler’s Journal on the Meaning of Life and Gardening. Thank you so much Vivian! I actually recently started another friend’s book, and it’s War & Peace length (not a complaint, this book is so far a masterpiece) so it’s going to be a while before I can start yours. But I am being absolutely and entirely sincere when I say I am so looking forward to your book. You are one of my favorite writers. (Not just saying that because we’re friends.)

I will also post more about Gardens of Awe and Folly after I’ve read it, but I wanted to alert people to the fact that it’s out! I know people here loved When Wanderers Cease to Roam.

I thought it would appropriate to get a little green in my picture of the book.

Update: It looks like we’ve worked out most of the kinks with mail. Now we just have to get Echo the conferencing system working and we’re a little farther along. A tiny bit.

I’m exhausted and stressed and I’m trying to remain positive but it’s hard. I had a goal to reach with my book that had to be abandoned. That may end up being for the best, you never know.

Tomorrow is the Oscars, which I love watching so much it’s RIDICULOUS. I’m also doing a Skype interview with a group who read my singing book, and what could be better than people who read your book and want to talk to you??

A shot of Times Square on my way home the other day. There’s a certain beauty to tackiness.

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Attention customers of Echo: It looks like our machine may have been damaged when our host moved their data center last night. We are installing a new virtual machine as quickly as we can, with the aim of restoring the ability to receive and send email first, and Echo the conferencing system second. The web server came back up without a problem.

I am very sorry about this. Of course this kind of accident was the last thing we wanted and I am doing everything I can to get the new machine up as quickly as possible. Right now we’re restoring everything from backup, which will likely take a few hours.

Again, I am profoundly sorry this happened, and I hope to have service restored tonight.

And now, some pretty ballet dancers from the rehearsal I got to go to on Wednesday.