Stacy Horn

In the sixties, places all over the City were designated as fallout shelters and stocked with the items the Office of Civil Defense deemed crucial to survival. I found various lists of them at the Municipal Archives. I’m dying to spend a few days going to all the locations listed to see if anything is still being stored there and what shape it’s in. From one memo:

“The Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Park Avenue and 50th Street will be the first hotel in New York City to be stockpiled with Civil Defense Emergency Fallout Shelter supplies and equipment provided by the Federal Government … Beginning Wednesday, March 6, 1963 at 10:00 a.m. … eleven trucks of the New York City Department of Highways will transport 7500 units of Civil Defense supplies to the truck entrance … The supplies consist of emergency food, water containers, medical supplies, sanitation equipment and radiological detection instruments.”

—March 5, 1963 press release issued by the City of New York Office of Civil Defense, Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Subject Files, Roll 18, Civil Defense.

The medical kits included, among other things, Eugenol, (a toothache remedy) Kaolin and Pectin (diarrhea medicine) Penicillin and Phenobarbital.

From yesterday: a beautiful dog wearing snow boots.

Our choir rehearsal tonight was cancelled for no good reason, in the end. The only times choir rehearsal has been cancelled in my entire 30 year history of singing with the Choral Society of Grace Church was on 9/11/2001, and during Hurricane Sandy! We only got what I would call a modest snowfall.

But New Yorkers are appreciating the atmosphere of a day off. I took a lot of pictures of people with their dogs after my friend Jackie explained the trials and tribulations of walking your dog in the snow. The one that got to me was how the salt hurts their poor little feet and some people put booties on their paws to address it. This dog was having a great time, though.

Runners gotta run. I stopped by my gym to see if I could take a swim and the answer was, “You can if a life guard shows up!” I’ll call later to see.

There was a bunch of sledding even though we don’t have much of what anyone would call “hills” around here. This was on the banks of the Hudson River.

Parents were using sleds instead of strollers to take their kids around. I got the sense that kids everywhere give this mode of transportation a big thumbs up.

More dog joy. This dog in the picture below was absolutely in love with the snow. My poor cats. They have never had the opportunity to play in the snow. Perhaps they are fine with that.

So that was our blizzard. Happy snow day everyone!!

Okay, I went out and took some pictures. Even though it was only just barely snowing there was almost no one out there! A cop car went by with a loud speaker calling out, “A curfew is in effect,” even though the curfew doesn’t begin until 11 (it was around 9) and there’s almost no snow on the ground! One couple was out on a romantic stroll at least.

Almost everything was closed but a few places saw an opportunity.

The Empire State Building from my roof. It is too soon to call bullshit on this storm? It’s supposed to really start going at 11, but it’s 11 now and nothing is happening out there. No wind, still barely snowing. Watch, it will get really bad, I’ll lose electricity and heat and hot water and boy will I be sorry then.

I loved this blizzard so much it made it into my book Waiting for My Cats to Die. I’d just seen this lovely movie, After Life (Roger Ebert gave it four stars). In it, everyone who dies goes to a place where they have to pick one memory, and that memory will be the only memory they take with them when they go wherever it is that dead people go.

So I wrote down my favorite memories, trying to pick which memory I’d take with me, and the blizzard of 1978 was one of the memories I considered (in the end I couldn’t pick one memory, I loved too many). It’s such a simple, small memory, but it stood out for me at the time. I was 20 years old, and even though I couldn’t see more than a couple of feet in front of me I just had to walk from my apartment on Chatham Street into Harvard Square, a five minute walk normally, but I think it took me maybe an hour, the drifts were so high. You couldn’t see where cars were parked. The snow accumulation was so enormous I was walking down the street at a level higher than the tops of the cars!

I’d never been in a blizzard before, I just loved it. It was scary but exhilarating. When I got to Harvard Square, everything was closed of course, except Buddy’s Sirloin Pit, my favorite restaurant. Even better, it was packed with people like myself, people who couldn’t resist seeing what it was like to be out in a blizzard. I wrote about pouring A1 sauce all over my meat and wolfing it down while the room steamed. (I’m a vegetarian now, so this is funny to read.) But I’d built up such a tremendous appetite trudging through those drifts, and fighting wind and snow that was coming at me at what felt like all directions at once, never letting up. It felt like I was in a hurricane of snow. I’d engaged in a battle with nature and had won!

Mayor de Blasio just declared a state of emergency and announced that traffic in the City will be closed at 11pm to all but emergency vehicles. I think I might have to be out and about to see that, if I’m still awake.

The calm before the storm. This is looking down onto the street from my apartment window. My friend Jackie says I wouldn’t love the snow so much if I had to talk a dog. It’s hard to see but this guy is walking a little dog.

I started this post this morning, got side-tracked, and now it’s 8pm. I don’t remember what I planned to post about because I’m all about the coming storm right now. I LOVE SNOW. Please, please, please don’t be exaggerating, please let it be a great big, true, white-out, storm-of-all-time BLIZ! ZARD! I’m charging my camera batteries in preparation.

People skating at Bryant Park, behind the main branch of the New York Public Library. I like that I got someone flying past confidently and someone who just wiped out. (Sorry wipe-out person.)