Author: Stacy Horn

Watching the Golden Globes Pre-Show. Look at my gorgeous, big, new tv!

My friend Laurie Gwen Shapiro won a Guide Association of New York City Award for Outstanding Achievement in Essay/Article/Series Writing for her New Yorker article, The Improbable Journey of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, AND a podcast I was a guest on, Gotham Center’s Lost NYC won the Outstanding Achievement in NYC Radio Program or Podcast (Audio/Spoken Word) award. Congratulations to them and to all the GANYC winners!

Trudging out to a meeting and hoping I don’t fall. (I didn’t. Not that day anyway.)

I hadn’t planned on listening, I get too upset, but I broke down yesterday later in the afternoon, and I’m listening now. Is anyone else listening? I came close to an anxiety attack yesterday. I honestly didn’t know that the riot was as bad as it was. The police officers screaming as they were bring crushed, attacked, the one who was tased, the one who was murdered. I felt terrible for the rioters too. Ashli Babbitt. I hadn’t seen the video of her being shot. I wondered about the two men who helped her up so she could crawl through the window, an action which led to her death. Of course that was not their intention, but how can they not feel terrible? I also didn’t know how many people had really come there to actually kill people, or, at the very least, tie them up and what? (If anyone doubts me, watch the trial, the evidence for this, and there was a lot of it, was presented.). I also didn’t know it had gone on as long as it did before help for the Capital Police arrived. I’m sure many thought they were going to stand outside the Capital and chant, but if they joined others and swarmed inside they must also be held accountable.

As readers of my blog know, there’s a building on 11th Street which regularly puts up signs on the front of their building. I pass it by on my way to work. This was the sign they had up in late January.

Two of the evilest cats in the universe lounging on the couch they helped to destroy. This couch cost a fortune, and it’s going to cost a fortune to reupholster. Did you know that reupholstering costs thousands?? I didn’t when I first started looking into it. I could buy a new couch for less. Except, I had this specially made so it’s big enough to sleep on, and it comes apart into two pieces so it can fit through my very narrow doorway.

I guess I could buy a sectional someday, that comes in pieces that would probably fit through the door.

By a weird stroke of luck, every book I’ve bought to read during the pandemic has been absolutely perfect, and just what I needed except one. Gore Vidal’s 1876. I bought it because I’ve always loved his books, but this one felt … pointless. I think I got halfway through before I just couldn’t give it anymore time. It wasn’t adding up for me. I switched to Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life and gobbled that one up in every free moment I had.

Now I have to pick what I will read next. The contenders:

Kate Atkinson’s God in Ruins (the next in a series, Life After Life was the first).
Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.
Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge.
Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

For the curious, these are the books I’ve read since the pandemic began. I just realized I only skimmed the James Baldwin book. I specifically got it in hopes of reading about what life was like in NYC in the 1960s and 1970s for people of color, and there was only a relatively small amount about that.

– Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.
– 1876 by Gore Vidal (but not finished).
– No Name in the Street by James Baldwin.
– Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson.
– The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa.
– Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro Kazuo.
– The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.
– Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy by Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano.
– The End of October by Lawrence Wright.
– Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
– The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.
– The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel.
– The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.

A doorway on Leroy Street, a favorite block of mine near where I live. I almost moved to Leroy Street. It would have been my first apartment in the City, but there was some problem with it that I’ve since forgotten. Leroy Street is such a beautiful and magical block. The only downside is there’s a ballpark, a playground, and a city pool (where I swim when it’s open) across the street. So, it’s noisy during the summer. Honestly, I like the sounds of playgrounds and ballparks and I don’t think that would bother me. (I also don’t mind traffic noise. The sounds of trucks, cars, and sirens never bother me.) But I love how they’ve just let the vines grow over this door. How do they clean the windows though?