Author: Stacy Horn

As many people know, every night at 7pm we open our windows and clap for the essential workers. My block is not as engaged as the blocks on either side of us, at least that’s what it sounds like to me. I hear what seems like tons of people making a jubilant racket woo-hoo’ing and banging pots and pans. On my block we have a few regulars. In my building it’s me, and Eamon, who lives in the apartment next door to me, and across the street I always see Nicole, a fellow Choral Society of Grace Church singer, and a woman in the building next door to her. Others join us from time to time, but we rarely have enough to make a lot of noise. But the four of us always do what we can. I hope I get to meet the woman next door to Nicole.

This was nice to see, a group of neighbors visiting.

A lovely mood-lifting video of birds and natural life in Cuba that was made by Suzanne Abruzzo. I love the music she chose, too. I’m posting it here because I think everyone will feel better after watching it, it’s very soothing. It reminded me of something though. I meditate in the mornings, and one of my favorite things about meditating is becoming aware of the sound of birds. But I’ve been hearing them less and less over the years. Where are they?

I took this during a walk along the river last year.

It’s called Flattening the Truth on Coronavirus. Now I’m going to go listen to what Dr. Michael Osterholm (from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy) has to say.

Meanwhile, what?? What are you looking at? Please be an eagle, please be an eagle. Or the Tardis.

A sign I passed by on 11th Street, in the West Village. This building has had great Halloween decorations the past couple of years (maybe for more years, but my memory only goes back two apparently). They also have a lovely garden (scroll down to see). Thank you for the encouragement!

A picture of the pier at Christopher Street near where I live went viral on Saturday. It showed people packed together, and not wearing masks. So I went down there yesterday to see for myself. I had gone for a walk on Saturday past the lawns around Battery Park City, and it was packed there as well, but the groups managed to keep six feet apart from each other.

I think part of what was going on in the Christopher Street picture was it was looking down the pier lengthwise, which doesn’t show the space between people. It squooshes the distance and makes it look like people are on top of each other. But viewed from the side you can see how far apart people were sitting.

When I went down there yesterday people were sitting at least six feet apart. But part of that might have been because there was a greater police presence due to the picture having gone viral. (Scroll down for more pictures.)

I didn’t take a picture of the long view, to show how crowded it can appear, but here is the side view.

I also saw the police walking through the crowd giving out masks. Here’s another thing I witnessed: some people said no thank you to a mask, because they already had one. They had just taken them off when they sat down. I might have done the same thing had I decided to take a break on the grass. So while it might look like all these people are going around with masks, that’s not entirely accurate.

Another shot of giving out masks. I almost asked for one, because free stuff!!