Stacy Horn

At 60 years old I think I may count as the elderly neighbor you’re supposed to checking in on during the heat wave. Please bring ice cream and baby animals.

The current baby of the house, and his favorite plaything.

And yeah, I was there. I swam 240 laps (that’s 2 miles plus 16 laps). I have to miss a bunch of nights so I can’t actually win the thing, but I’ll be able to swim 25 miles which is enough to get invited to the dinner at the end of the summer.

Except I know myself. It’s going to bug me. Maybe I’ll be able to swim enough to come in third.

Backstory: Every summer the NYC Parks & Recreation Department sponsors a summer lap swim contest. Anyone who swims 25 miles by September 2nd gets a tshirt and is invited to a celebration at the end of the summer. There’s also a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place trophy for the man and the woman who swim the most miles in their division at their pool between 7/5 and 8/5.

Two more shots from Fort Tryon Park. I love these steps to nowhere. There were a few sets of steps like this, but this one was the prettiest.

I know shots of fireworks are a dime a dozen, but I couldn’t resist. My apologies. I live on the west side and the fireworks were on the east side this year, so I was watching them from a distance. They’re almost always on the east side. But once or twice every decade or so they are on the west side, and there’s always an uproar. People.

I went up to Fort Tryon Park to sit and read and these two guys kept me company. What is the red one? Is that a cardinal? The feathers on his head would sometimes spread like a cockatiel.

I don’t know why it is, but anytime I have to read anything about Boss Tweed, a famously corrupt New York politician from the 19th century, I fall asleep. For some reason I found this history relentlessly tedious, not fascinating. That said, I have 52 pages of research from retired Sgt. Michael E.J. Bosak about him and a voting scandal from 1870. I have high hopes for this paper!

This is a shot from a courthouse he had built and which led to his downfall. Funnily enough, considering his history of voter fraud, it’s a voting site! This is where I’ve been assigned the past two times (I’m a poll worker.) I hope this is where I’ll be for the presidential election. Actually, I really wish I was working the poll site where I vote, just blocks away from where I live, but that won’t happen. The Tweed Courthouse is beautiful though, so it’s a nice 2nd choice.