Author: Stacy Horn

By Monday I should be normal. I swear. But today is the day that I talk about the fact that I still have no idea what I’m going to do tomorrow for my birthday. My favorite suggestion is “do something you’ve never done before or learn something new.” I still like those ideas but the problem is, I have a lot of faults, but not doing things I want to do and not learning new things are not among them.

I was trying to think of a new place to explore for old archives. I love going through basements, attics, closets and old file cabinets that no one has looked in years or decades. My first real job after college was working as a photographer for the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They let me look around there, and I found a collection of old glass plate negatives in a closet. No one knew they were there or what was on them, so I started making prints from them in my spare time. The best was a picture of Halley’s Comet from 1910. Pictures of the comet from 1910 are, of course, the first pictures in existence. I gave all my copies away, damnit.

I found a picture of Einstein. I don’t know who he is standing with. There were no records with the plates.

Compare that to a picture I took of M. K. V. Bappu of the India Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore, standing with George Field, who was the director on the Center. I feel like one photographer in a long line of photographers who took pictures of visiting dignitaries. Note how the visitors look happier than the hosts.

Sadly, Bappu died unexpectedly on August 19, 1982, just a few days after his 50th birthday. Oh god.

Here’s another print from that collection from the closet. I don’t know who these men are or where this was taken. The scanner cut off a little on the right, but I’m too lazy to re-scan.

So, what to do, what to do. Things I’m mulling over:

– Find new place to explore (running out of time, this kind of thing takes preparation).

– Go to the drumming gigs.

– Ask Howard to lift my bed so I can go through what I’ve stored underneath. (I’ve got a bunch of stuff stored in the space underneath my platform bed, but I can’t lift it myself to get it.)

– Go to a boxing class. Or, start learning a new language or a new instrument.

– Walk around the entire perimeter of Manhattan.

I can’t think of anything else. It’s official. I no longer have any imagination.

Last night I went drumming on the West Side Highway, across the street from the Hudson River. A practice I started although no one is this photo except the head of the band (Manhattan Samba) is aware of that.

I wrote about this two books ago. Actually, there’s a nice synchronicity to me drumming last night. I learned to drum in response to turning 40. It was too loud to practice in my apartment so I would practice down by the river and annoy everyone there. (Most of them were very nice about it, especially the construction workers, which I wrote about. It was a sweet story.) One day I brought Ivo there to help me with patterns I was having trouble with. Now he holds classses there in the warmer months. It’s so nice to drum outside.

If you’re going to be in New York on June 15th, 16th or 17th, go here now and buy tickets for the Loser’s Lounge Tribute to ABBA. I mean it. Do it now before tickets sell out. You’ll thank for the rest of your life for insisting, it’s that good.

Are you still here??? Go get those tickets. It’s the most fun and entertaining musical thing in New York. You’ll be dancing on the table tops, even if you’re not a dancing on the table tops kind of person. By the end of the night you will be.

I’ve done everything I wanted to do before beginning to write this book. I’ve still got tons of research to do, but it’s all the kind of research that needs to be done as I write.

It’s always a little scary, beginning. But exhilarating. I feel completely ready and absolutely the right person of all the people alive to write this book. A group of people came together from around the country to Duke University, driven to answer questions that science would barely acknowledge as legitimate questions. For a time the Parapsychology Lab was on intellectual fire — it was the place at Duke to meet interesting people and it was one of the most popular places on campus among the students. But for the scientists there, it was was also a battleground. While they tried to understand their findings, it was one fight after another, getting their peers to accepts the results of their experiments. And the whole world watched. Books that came out of the lab were best sellers and that made scientists outside the lab NUTS. They had trouble getting grad students to work on their research because no one could compete with the charismatic Rhine and the kinds of questions being asked over on the second floor of the West Duke Building.

I’m going to begin in Boston, with a woman who claimed to be able to talk to the dead. She was investigated by Harvard, people from Scientific American, and then by J.B. and Louie (his wife) Rhine. All hell broke loose. The Rhines knew how to make an entrance!

AND — and I know I’m making such a big deal about this — this week is also the count down to my birthday, which is on Saturday. Everyday this week I am going to try to do something pampering for myself, and, as per a suggestion from someone I knew in high school — everyday I will also try to do something I’ve never done before.

It’s a big deal week for me! Wish me luck!

In the morning I saw Over the Hedge with Jonathan. It was okay, I love Steve Carell, and apparently even the sound of his voice is entertaining.

And in the afternoon I saw Poseidon at the IMAX theatre with Jim and Cori. That was a lot of fun. I think it was mostly due to the IMAX experience, it’s hard to say for sure how good the movie really is, but still. This is what holiday movies are about. This is me and Cori behind Lincoln Center, waiting for the movie to begin. There are lots of nice spots to sit all around Lincoln Center, although I do miss sitting inside. But the opera and the ballet are SO expensive. (Later, we had dinner at Tartine, which was fabulous. It’s only a couple of blocks from me, on the corner of West 4th and 11th, it’s delicious and reasonable.)