Stacy Horn

I saw the new movie, A Ghost Story. I wanted to love it more than I did, but I liked it. It’s strictly my problem. I want answers about life and death, but who really has answers?

For this reason, my favorite parts were the very very brief times when the ghosts talked to each other. It was the sharing of confusion, and lack of answers, that touched me. It’s really all we have (I have). The ability to share our need and uncertainty.

Bodhi on my lap. I miss my kittens. They are back at the ASPCA, getting neutered. A process that takes two and a half days, the ASPCA way. (24 hour med check, procedure, 24 hours to check the healing.). They’re going to forget me and Bleecker!

I’ve been trying to find the best spot at Carl Schurz Park to sit and eat my lunch. Sitting right on the river is lovely, but it’s too hot out in the sun now. When I sit at one of the few benches in the shade, ants appear and start crawling on me. Not many, but enough to be annoying.

So I’ve been exploring inside the park. The problem was locating a spot I liked that’s both in the shade and has a nice view and feel. Then yesterday I stepped down into this. It’s a quiet circle of benches, most of which are under trees, and it has a slightly secluded, Secret Garden-like feel.

There might be better spots but this is already on the edge of too far from the ASPCA Kitten Nursery, where I work. I don’t want to spend half my lunch hour getting there and back. So I’m declaring this as my spot!

Three cats is a lot. Especially when you’re trying to sleep. This morning it was a non-stop Indianapolis 500 up and down my apartment. Yeah, sure, they’re resting now. A tiny statue I loved is broken. Hours after vacuuming before I went to bed tiny kernels of litter are everywhere. Someone has diarrhea. The smell should dissipate soon. I’m doomed. Except …

Bali, who hasn’t made up his mind if he even likes me, after knocking over the picture of Veets to his right, and biting my iphone cable, just this second came over to purr and head butt me. And almost knock over my coffee.

Bodhi is already a love. He loves to be picked up, he loves me and more importantly, he loves Bleecker. Poor Bleecker has never really had anyone to play with. Finney was already too old. (Sob. I miss you terribly, Finney. If you were here we could curl up together for hours, while the children play.) But now Bleeck has running buddies, and Bodhi might turn out to be a desk cat some day, after he’s finished destroying everything on it.

A friend sent me a copy of Helene Hanff’s Letter From New York. What a pleasure. She’s writing about New York in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. I moved back to New York and New York City in 1981, I think it was. I was here when she was here! She describes a New York that was already starting to disappear, although theatre (not like it was) and dog communities are still here, and other things will never change. She also writes with a certain timelessness. But I was into punk rock when she was writing, and CBGB’s, and soon after that, the internet. But I chase concerts in churches the way she did, and bemoan the fact that they are no longer free.

I was thinking if I described my New York, people in their twenties would have a similar reaction. I’m living in a bygone city. Actually, people in their twenties are now all out in Brooklyn, which I’ve always loved, but still don’t spend a lot of time in, out of sheer laziness.

Depending on which block I walk to the subway, I pass by these guys. The owner puts them out on the street daily to see the sights.

Elbridge T. Gerry, one of the founders of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, was a member of a three man commission whose job was to find a more humane method of execution than hanging. I originally had a chapter about a hanging on Blackwell’s so I wanted to learn what is was like to be hung, (it’s horrible). This led me to the commission to find an alternative.

They explored and ultimately went with electrocution. The first experiments were on dogs, (poor puppies) but they realized the amount of current would have to be adjusted for people. So they electrocuted a 124 1/5 pound calf at Thomas Edison’s laboratory in New Jersey (sob). A doctor from the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s witnessed and dissected the calf afterwards.

Elbridge Gerry was also a lawyer for the ASPCA, where I now work! I don’t see how he could have okayed such experiments. Except, if they believed electrocution was humane, I imagine they thought they weren’t hurting the animals. Still.

I took this at the park on the East River, while on lunch break from the ASPCA.