A blog about New York City, my books, and my cats. Mostly.
I have always been enamored of this alley downtown. I even imagined living here one day, except now I realize it gets absolutely zero sunlight and would be a terrible place to live. Better to just enjoy walking down it. Don’t you love that walkway above??
It’s hard to really see what’s going on here, but Bodhi has taken to sleeping in the weirdest position. He sits down, flops his head forward and down and sleeps in this sitting up/head flopped down in front of him position. That can’t be comfortable. Something I say to my cats a lot. (I have three.)
One of the prettiest blocks to walk down in my neighborhood. The movie Wait Until Dark filmed a number of scenes here. I’ve told the story many times, but I almost moved into an apartment on this block, but the building had a rodent problem. The apartment I ended up moving into was far prettier, and the block was almost as lovely. I had a working fireplace! God I miss having a fireplace. Sigh. (Been sighing a lot lately, I’ve noticed. I think it’s a getting-older thing.)
When I was working on my book about Blackwell’s Island, I wanted to address the experiences of people of color on the island. There were actually relatively view people on color in any of the institutions. Quick backstory: In the 19th century New York City owned Blackwell’s Island (now called Roosevelt Island) and they used it to build public institutions like the Lunatic Asylum, the Workhouse, a penitentiary, an Almshouse and a public hospital for the poor.
I started keeping track of how many people of color showed up in the yearly censuses for the buildings and at a certain point I also noted their names. It is a rough, very rough list, and not at all complete, but I just came across it and I thought this might be useful for anyone researching people of color on Blackwell’s Island, either for research or genealogical purposes. I don’t want to post names here, but if you are looking for someone of color who might have been on Blackwell’s Island, or are doing genealogical research, please feel free to reach out to me. stacymariahorn@gmail.com
An inmate/patient or worker on Blackwell’s Island:
People actually lining up to see our concert! We did an utterly sublime Ola Gjeilo piece, Serenity, (O Magnum Mysterium) and apparently he was listening and enjoyed it! The cello line in the piece is so beautiful it breaks my heart. You should go to YouTube and listen to it.
