Author: Stacy Horn

I miss Polaroids. I think my first was a Swinger. “Meet the Swinger, Polaroid Swinger.” If you’re in my age-range you know the song. The memories are the borderline painful kind, they’re so good it hurts, and for the billionth time: why can’t there be time machines??

This is me biking on an island called Ile d’Yeu, off the western coast of France. I’m on the right. This was shot with my SX-70, one of my favorite polaroid cameras ever. I’m not sure of the year, but it was sometime in the early 1980’s. (More below.)

After climbing the stairs to the top of Notre Dame. God did I love Paris. (More below.)

When I taught at NYU, (early 1990’s) at the beginning of every semester I had my students take pictures of each other using my polaroid camera. By then I was using a Spectra. I did this because it was a nice ice breaker for them, and also because I can’t remember names (I had them write their names on their pictures).

After they’d take the picture they would always shake them. This was such a universal gesture it was in OutKast’s song Hey Ya, “shake it, shake it like a Polaroid Picture.” But when I asked them why they were shaking the pictures they never knew why.

For those of you who didn’t know why you shook your polaroid pictures, it used to be when the picture came out you had to wipe them down with a fixer. We shook them to make them dry faster. I loved that people continued to shake them longer after there was any need.

This is me and my mom in my apartment on 11th Street after I got home from Paris (which she and my step-father paid for). While I was gone she decorated my apartment for me as a surprise. I had recently separated from my husband and had moved into my own apartment with almost no furniture. Look at all the flowers. I learned about the joy of filling a place with flowers from her. Look at the red phone! And ashtrays! I’m an ex-smoker. (More below.)

What an awful haircut. What was I thinking? I still have the coffee table, and the vase, and that rug although it’s really seen better days, and that cow painting, which was painted by my former mother-in-law (who I adored) Jean Zaleski.

I shot this yesterday afternoon on Perry Street. The signs said it was a shoot for “Tommy.” They’d been setting this up for a couple of days. They installed this … rail? along Perry Street so the camera could follow these boys as they played hockey down the street. Doesn’t that look fun? I could see this being a great scene in a movie, kids playing hockey down the streets of NYC.

I want to learn how to skate, but I’m such a fall-er.

So. I’m going to drink my coffee and answer email. I am WAY behind. If I haven’t answered your email I’m sorry. It got away from me.

Movies I’ve seen recently: District 9 (good, but upsetting, hard to watch for me, but I’m a wuss) and 500 Days of Summer (very sweet).

TV shows I’m watching: I can’t stop watching Warehouse 13 because the leads are so charming, but it’s never been as good as the premiere. They need better scripts.

Project Runway!! Tim Gunn is back in our lives!! YAY!! Oh Tim. We’ve missed you so.

The Empire State Building from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You can kinda tell how hot it was, can’t you? The Empire State Building looks positively steamy. (More below.)

On the train down to DC yesterday I read the first of the Robert Nathan books I bought recently. Nathan is the author of Portrait of Jennie and The Bishop’s Wife, which were made into movies. The one I read yesterday was But Gently Day. It was a sweet, quick read. It’s about an Army guy who is heading home after serving in the South Pacific and he finds himself back in time, meeting his great-grandparents just after the Civil War. I wouldn’t say it was a great book, but it made me feel … good. And I loved the barely there character of the chaplain, who wasn’t so chaplain-y, he was more thoughtful. Here’s one exchange, when the local reverend, Dr. Gilpin, pays a call, and he and the chaplain have a talk.

“Shall we forgive the Democrats for their slanderous attack upon the Administration?”
“It will soon be forgotten,” said the chaplain.
“Never,” said Dr. Gilpin stoutly.

And of course it was and this will always be true. I get so disheartened by the relentless poisonousness from the Republicans, but I guess politics was and always will be like this. Then there was this exchange.

Dr. Gilpin cleared his throat. “At least,” he said drily, “you do not ask us to love the Mormons, or the Jews.”
“You will need to do that, also,” said the chaplain.

This was written in 1943.  That seems off to me. Shouldn’t there have been more sensitivity then? Also, I think I might be representing the book as being more simple than it is. It really did make me feel somewhat at peace reading it. He achieves that sense of enchantment that I just love, and it makes me feel transported.

There are some things that were referred to that I want to look up. For instance, he talks about something called the Pattenburg Massacare. A quick google search only turned up one reference, from an old New York State newspaper. “Two more white prisoners have been identified in the Pattenburg Massacre investigation as having firearms in their hands.” Okay, the New York Times referred to it as the Pattenburg Riot. On Sept. 21, 1872, in Pattenburg, NJ, a mob of Irish men went after a bunch of black laborers and murdered three of them. This looks like an interesting story to research.

I worked on a number of things this week that were difficult to do so I’m calling today Reward Day. I still have to do some work, but only fun work, like updating my Unbelievable blog, which I love. So, I’m off to celebrate Reward Day! Bye!

Her husband put up this memorial plaque in a small garden a few blocks away from were I live and where she worked. Sad.

First, a picture of my customers.  “Hello birds.  I’m Stacy.  I’ll be your feeder today.”

Here’s my issue. As you can see below, right now the birdfeeder hangs over the fire escape stairs. I’d like it to hang over the platform part to the left, where I was able to put the shower curtain down to catch seeds shells, and whatever mess they make. I need something that I can clamp on either of the two places indicated by arrows, so the feeder can hang over the platform. The picture that follows is something I’ve found, and I will discuss the problems with it below.

Here is the hook/arm thing.

I’ve found others, but like this one, they will all raise the bird feeder beyond my reach. I need an arm that extends straight out, and only a few inches. I couldn’t find anything like that and I’m guessing nothing like that is made and I will have to jury rig something myself, which I’m happy to do but I am not handy. Maybe there’s some sort of shower device clamp thingamagjig.

Oh birds of NYC. Do you see all that I do for you? With all these nice people’s help??

Does anyone have any suggestions?

In other good news, I had my last doctor’s appointment and I absolutely positively do not have breast cancer, so YAY! I will live to feed birds another day. Which reminds me, where are the starlings? I love starlings. Although this might be a careful what you wish for thing. I love all the noise they make, but if as many starlings showed up as doves, I’m guessing the racket might drive me insane.

Speaking of which, I was freaking out in the doctor’s office reading Musicophilia and about all the different kinds of audio hallucinations some people are afflicted with. The story of what happened to Schumann destroyed me. Schumann heard music that wasn’t there and at first the music was pleasant, then it became demonic, and then finally at the end of his life it had devolved to “a single, ‘terrible’ note, an A, which played ceaselessly day and night with unbearable intensity.” Can you imagine? Please god don’t let this happen to me. It’s so unfair that it would happen to a composer who gave us such beautiful music. Proof that the universe is completely indifferent to our suffering.

I get the thing where music I practice intensely gets fixed in my mind and then plays over and over, lasting days, but it always stops eventually. If it didn’t I would go mad. When I was younger, ambient sound like air conditioners would sometimes resolve into brass bands or distant choirs.