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Should I plan a book party? There was a time when the book publisher threw a book party for you, and I’m guessing for some authors they still do, but for the most part this is a thing of the past. If you want a party you have to throw it yourself, which means you have to spend the $$$. I’m planning a few events to launch the book, but not a party per se, although I was thinking I might have a cocktail party after whichever event ends up happening. (I don’t want to say what the events are until I know which one is happening.)

It’s just that planning such a party is so anxiety producing for me.  Finding a place.  What will I wear?  I hate shopping and finding the right dress might mean going to a billion places over weeks.  It took forever to find the Agnes B. dress I wore to my last book party above.  And that’s the dress that is now at the St. Luke’s Thrift Shop. Will anyone come? Always a big fear of mine.

Oh it’s just endless.  I’d love to skip it.  It’s also my fourth book.  For my friends it might be kinda like going to someone’s fourth wedding.  Enough already.  Do we have to make a big deal about this every time it happens?

(The picture of me giving a speech at my last book party was taken by Ben Rosengart.  The speech!  Another thing to get all anxious about.)

A friend of mine posted on Echo about helping clear out a relatives apartment.  She mentioned finding a bunch of those envelopes of buttons.  I have a baggie full of those envelopes containing buttons. During one of my spring cleanings I gathered them all up and put them in a baggie.  I was kind of proud of that, getting them all into one place instead of scattered in the drawer. Whenever I lose a button, I’ll know right where to find the replacement!  Easily! 

But I’m sure I no longer own most of the clothes that went with these buttons that I hold onto so proudly.

Right now!  Or is that hail? Just the thought of snow puts me into an automatic good mood. Yeah, there’s snow in there, but it’s mixed with rain. Which way will it ultimately turn? Oh please let it be to snow!!

I took this picture last night, it’s the arch at Washington Square Park, which is mostly closed while they completely renovate it. Lots of people are unhappy about the renovation, because it won’t be what it was.   I can relate, I didn’t want them to overhaul the river, but what can you do?  I miss things about what it was, but there certainly is a lot to love about the new version.

But the thing about Washington Square Park is, it hasn’t been what it was for a long time. Union Square is now what it was, and it’s been like that for a while.  That’s where people go for protest, performance, or to gather whenever something important happens.  Washington Square was ripe for reinvention. I think the changes will be mostly good, as long as there’s a place for the chess players.

For the record, a broken record I know, I miss the grittier, more diverse New York, like most of us who are old enough to remember it. And I know people have been saying this for the history of New York, and that it is always changing, and someone is always missing something, I know.

I won’t go on about it, it’s boring, but seriously, you should have seen it.  It feels like a theme park of what it was now.

This guy in the most twee of all twee outfits, and these carts, which are done up in a Ralph Lauren plaid in the back where you can’t see.  For what? Shopping up and down Bleecker?  

Just to be Mrs. Buzzkill for a second, he’s standing in front of a store that was once a video rental many years ago.  The owner was horribly murdered, but not in the store.  It was in his apartment, also in the Village, but now I’m forgetting where.  I could probably look it up, but I have a cat on me.

I’ve been following the siege in Mumbia, which finally ended early this morning.  Plus, the story of the Walmart employee who was trampled to death.  I vaguely remember almost being trampled, although I forget the circumstances.  But I remember the sense that the people about to trample me didn’t even see me.  That term “blind panic” really does describe it. Something happened to cause the crowd I was in to fear.  Fortunately I didn’t panic, quickly spotted where no one else was headed and jumped there.  I was mostly lucky though, that there was a spot to jump to.  It’s hard to blame people who are terrified and don’t know what they’re doing, but I still remember hating them, just watching in horror and hating them.  I guess I was being only human too.

I gotta believe that no one in that Walmart crowd meant for that to happen, and we know from history and countless experiments how something like this can happen, the crowd-mind and lack of individual responsibility, but still.  I read that when employees asked the people to leave afterwards, that someone had died as a result of what they had done people continued to shop. That I find harder to understand.

Back to Mumbai, how do people get this damaged?  Interview after interview of people who managed to escape almost all use the same word to describe the killers:  remorseless.  They killed children for God’s sake.