Category: Uncategorized

Speaking of Halloween and living, I posted last month about a couple of girls who are going to recreate the parade dance scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off at the Halloween Parade this year. Their website says they’re expecting ridiculously large numbers of people to participate, and I don’t doubt it. It just looks like the best fun. They emailed me the following:

The time has come to begin rehearsals for the choreographed dancers. If you would like to be a part of the beer maid brigade, or if you personally have always seen yourself dancing upon some stairs, this is your moment in the sun. At night. E-mail us and sign up for this amazing opportunity!!

They are Mina and Kara and you can email them at: projectbueller@gmail.com

I see that some people didn’t understand that you need to email Barry Rutizer if you want to attend Aly’s memorial. His email is barryrutizer@eiu.com.  He’ll let you know the final details of where and exactly when.

(Elephant & Castle, a breakfast location of choice for Aly.)

If you’ve been following the story you know that the dig for Roger Dale Madison ended without finding his body.  Weston DeWalt described the scene to me.  “A Ventura County Sheriff’s Department chaplain said a few words and the sister went around and shook the hands of the 50-60 detectives, dog handlers, volunteers” and Weston himself.

I wonder how many people had to fight tears when Roger’s sister shook their hand.  It wasn’t ended because they didn’t think Roger had been buried there, but the dig had moved close enough to the highway to become dangerous to the recovery workers and the dogs.  But “all three cadaver dogs on scene were continuing to alert in the pit and upon the last of the dirt taken from the pit and upon the equipment which had been in use.”  Everyone believes Roger is in there.

His sister does.  And in spite of the outcome, I could see her being extremely grateful to everyone who clearly tried as hard as they could to find her brother. Whenever anyone has tried to help me when I’ve needed it, it meant the world to me that they did what they could, even if they didn’t succeed.  I could definitely see how this might be, in its own way, enough for Roger’s sister.  And when she shook their hands, even if she felt disappointment, it wouldn’t have been with a single one of them.  They must have been like angels to her.

Also, DeWalt said that because of all the media coverage, people “came forward and offered extremely important information. One individual had personal knowledge of how Mack Ray Edwards attracted victims, the methods he employed to gain their trust, and offered details about other criminal activity in which Edwards was involved.”  This will be an enormous help to Det. Vivian Flores and others who continue to investigate Edwards for other cases of missing children. Maybe other families, who never got the answers they needed, will find similar comfort from the work of all these people (and the dogs) who are still out there trying.

Alright, I thought of another Aly story.  I can’t help it.  Plus Halloween is coming up and it made me remember this particular Halloween story.  I wrote about it in Waiting For My Cats to Die.  Here is that passasge:

“Twenty years ago I sat on the corner in the West Village of Manhattan  where I live, where I’ve lived for my entire adult life.  I was watching the Halloween Parade when a pack of drummers came up.  There had to have been over fifty of them.  I stood up, started dancing in the street and I danced with them for twenty blocks straight.  I didn’t stop until they stopped.  Now, I am not a dancing-in-the-streets kind of girl.  I would like to think I am, instead of the overly self-conscious, trapped, and paralyzed person who chants “I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself,” every morning in the shower … For the next twenty years I would think about it but it wasn’t the dancing I couldn’t forget.  It was the drumming.”

Here’s what I didn’t say.  Aly was the one who got up and started dancing away, following the drummers, and I followed him.  I copied him and had the time of my life.  We danced through the streets of the West Village for the next couple of hours, until the parade ended in Washington Square Park.  It was absolutely exhilarating and one of my best memories.  Even though I described myself as self-conscious and trapped, I’ve never been a shrinking violet either, I’ve always been pretty game.  But I have my fears and also, it just would never have occurred to me to get up and start dancing and following those drummers like that.  Past all those people watching.  What I realize now, looking back, is that it un-paralyzed me.  It gave me ideas.  It was also confirmation that there is little in life more thrilling, more life-changing, more enormously invigorating than doing something you were afraid to do.  You feel so powerful.  Like a happy Godzilla.  I felt very self-conscious when I first stood up to dance in the street, but I knew it was going to be fun and I wasn’t going to let Aly dance away from me and have all the fun.

It’s like that Eleanor Roosevelt quote I posted a while back. “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”

I still can’t get on planes anymore though.  (A story for another day.) Anyway, so I was thinking, how could someone once so alive like Aly be dead?

The picture is me and my friend Marianne at the Village Halloween Parade, which I drum in every year now.

Good morning.  I took a bunch of pictures just now, but the light changed before I realized something this camera can do and so I will have to try again tomorrow.  I can hand hold the camera in low light without a flash.  I have a tripod, but there is something liberating about not having to use it.  These are two pictures which hang in the bedroom, and you can see my Christmas lights and the window behind me in the reflection.  You can even see the bricks in the air shaft beyond the window.  God, I wonder what else it can do that I don’t know about?

Also, I know zip and I mean NOTHING about post processing.  I’ve seen what people can do and I could really make my pictures look so much better.  I should learn how to use Photo Shop.

Plans for the day: call audio forensics guys back, go to the gym, get together with Howard … that’s enough.  For a holiday.  Also, no offense Italian people, who I love (and who are so good looking) but Columbus Day, with what we know now, it’s just a little weird.  But parades are great.  Nothing wrong with a parade.