Author: Stacy Horn

I come home, put my key in the lock, but my door is already unlocked. This happened to me once before and it was unlocked because my apartment had been robbed and of course the burglars hadn’t bothered (and had no way to) lock the apartment when they were done. Then I hear voices inside! I run to my neighbor’s and call 911.

I’m all panicked. You can see inside my apartment from my neighbor’s kitchen window and I keep looking and looking. The police come. “Just stay where you are …” We wait anxiously. Nothing. I hadn’t been robbed. My apartment is now full of police, who climbed five flights for nothing. AND, it smells a little because the cats did the smellier one while I was out and if I don’t scoop that out right away there’s a problem.

“I’m so sorry! Ugh! I’m sorry,” I kept saying. They were all so nice about it. “This is what you pay your taxes for.” They told me to put bars or gates on my windows and left. Bottom line: I had left my apartment unlocked! So not good.

Mannequin heads in an alley. I passed these by on my way downtown yesterday. They are so artfully placed I wonder if someone put them there on purpose, maybe for some sort of photo shoot? I shot them through a fence.

Every September 11, I walk down to St. Paul’s Chapel where I was a volunteer. (I just learned today that I am classified as a “responder,” and I need to register in a key database by October 3, or lose out on future help should I need it.)

It was a pretty horrendous walk today because it’s a billion degrees out, but I wanted to do it. I always take the same route. I walk down the highway, passing by the corner where I held up signs saying “thank you” to the rescue workers. Some people return each year to hold up signs. I wonder how many drivers know the back story.

This is where I turn off to get to St. Paul’s. It’s a big subway stop/hub, whatever it’s called, it’s also right by where the WTC workers go in and out of the site.

I’m almost there. That’s the graveyard of St. Paul’s Chapel up there on the right, and the site is behind me now. As you can see, tons of news people are there, getting their story.

Inside St. Paul’s Chapel was a table and a punch of post-it pads. People were invited to leave messages. It reminded of the days when we’d cover the fence around St. Paul’s with brown paper and people would fill it up with their messages. We kept replacing the paper and replacing the paper, bringing the rolled up remains to a storage facility nearby. There must have been thousands of them!

A closer look. I wish I knew what the Egyptian one says. Most of the messages were in other languages. It’s one of my favorite things about NYC, visitors from all over the world all the time. You walk down the street and often will hear a half a dozen different languages in the span of one block. I googled Paul Poston, the one towards the bottom, and found a bittersweet tribute video made by his family. That was the saddest moment of my day. I guess because his death was recent. And there were chihuahuas in the video who must miss him.

Tonight is the first rehearsal for the season! Our holiday line up this year is a joyous sweep of old and new, including pieces I’ve never done before, ensuring more gray matter and more and stronger neural connection for me! So yay! It’s also primary day, so today an exciting feel to the day all around.

If you live in Brooklyn and you’re thinking of joining a choir AND you’re looking for something positive to do on the anniversary of 9/11, I just read that the Brooklyn Community Chorus welcomes new singers at their rehearsal tomorrow night.

I had lunch on the High Line again yesterday and took some shots. Of course. I loved this cacophonous view.

This was a weird view. On the southern end of the High Line you get to look into this bar, and people’s backsides are right in your face. Who thought that was a good idea?? It looked like there was a Fashion Week event going on inside, so I have to assume this weird pants fit was on purpose.

The Statue of Liberty. It was like every possible view was carefully choreographed. No matter where I pointed my camera there was something to shoot.

My favorite parts of the High Line were the pieces that gave a flavor of how it once looked. Here they left the original train tracks in tact. Sigh. I love Manhattan, but sometimes I want to live in the woods, in a spot that looks like that, but with a river or stream nearby.

The Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals sponsors an adoption event every year and I went and I just kept circling all the booths, looking at the animals, unable to tear myself away.

This was inside the cat tent. I guess that one woman didn’t like the smell. It was actually pretty slight, and considering how many cats were in one small space it was astounding how little it smelled. OH! I have a cat smell story. I’ll tell it tomorrow.

Pit bulls have that look of longing down. I gaze into a pit bull’s eyes and I’m, “Okay, whatever you want, it’s yours.” The sweetest faces in the world.

This dog just adored the woman holding him. True love. She was a volunteer so I don’t think she’d be taking him (or her) home. But I hope he/she got adopted. There was something especially endearing about this dog.

I was so focused on the dog I didn’t look at this guy, who is giving me quite the expression. I love his tshirt! Isn’t that a great tshirt? And what a beautiful little dog. I want him too.

In the spring of 2005 the Choral Society of Grace Church performed a piece written by our then associate conductor Dylan Chan. (At the time my book went to press he was a fifth-year resident in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at Stanford University.) Toward the end of my book, I told the wonderful (and scary) story of premiering Dylan’s Memoranda.

A number of people have asked for a way to hear it, so I made a YouTube video with Memoranda as the soundtrack. I used pictures of the Choral Society so there was something to look at while listening. The pictures don’t really fit what we’re singing about and I basically had to use every picture I had, good or bad or redundant, to fill up all the time, but here it is!

Memoranda consists of three movements, all of which contain the words dead or death. But like most songs about death, each is really about resurrection in one form or another. Dylan hoped to get around death by showing us that music would never die. The text for the piece comes from poems by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Enjoy!