Stacy Horn

I have a cold, so I’m going to go curl up and binge watch Homeland or something. In the meantime, I give you a few shots from my childhood home in Huntington, LI in the 70’s. This is my mother and our dog, Jennet. God, my mother looks like a teenager. This was 1972, so she was 38, but I’d believe it if someone told me she was 20 in this picture.

This is my brother Douglas. Please note the box that says Odyssey in the upper left hand corner. This was a very early home video game. I just googled it. It was the first home video game. I think this shot was from 1973.

My brother Peter in a sling. I don’t remember what happened! Please note the 70’s hair styles my brothers had.

That’s my first love, Chris Baker, and a high school friend named Joanne. That is also the piano I learned to play on. All that music must be mine because I was the only one who ever played. Sigh. I miss having a piano in the house, but not terribly. I didn’t play much when I had one.

A friend of mine and fellow writer Brett Leveridge has a walking tours business called Avenue and Alleys. He’s starting a Christmas walking tour on November 28th which will go until December 24th. The man is Christmas and New York obsessed so I can think of no better way to spend 90 minutes strolling through the city. He’s very funny too, and I just happily found one of my favorite radio pieces he’s done. He’s the first one up on this episode of This American Life. It is SO worth listening to, and then you’ll see why I recommend doing his tour.

The Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which I joyously sang next to one year with my choir). I think I’ll just go back and sing next to again. Until someone stops me.

I went to Stephen Policoff’s reading from his new book Come Away at the NYU Bookstore. What he read was wonderful. Funny, haunting, magical and dark. He put this quote at the beginning though, from Yeats, which doesn’t bode well:

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
than you can understand.

So true, alas. I got a picture of one of his daughters taking a picture of her father answering questions. Very sweet. Her friend asked great questions, as did his students who were also there. You can tell a lot about a person by the people who show up for their readings, and the mood in the room was warm and friendly. Stephen is very much loved. And he has a lot of female friends! LLSP.

First, who knew there was such a thing as Christmas-y pumpkins?

Second, time to give these poor sad pumpkins a decent burial.

I was walking home, missing some people who are no longer with us, when I passed by the window pictured below and then I missed Tony Randall. We have an ongoing conversation on Echo titled, “Tony Randall—MR. NEW YORK!” It was started in 1995 and the last post was in late 2004, the year he died. From the description of the topic: “Tell us your favorite TR stories, experiences, Letterman appearances, real-life meetings, charitable works, hell, ANYTHING, about the man that defines True New York!”

Tony Randall really did epitomize a certain slice of New York, and this is my favorite story from that thread. It’s why I thought of Tony when I saw this window.

HOW TONY SAVED THE LIVES OF TWO LITTLE GIRLS

When Marla was about 14, she and a friend spent the summer studying ballet in New York and living on the Upper West Side. One day, they were on their way home from a class by Lincoln Center, and, being two giggly bunheads (Marla’s word), they carelessly stepped off the curb at Columbus and 66th, right into the path of a speeding cab!

As the cab screeched to a halt, a bystander grabbed both girls at once in his arms and pulled them out of harm’s way. “Now girls,” the man said gently, “you’ll never grow up to be Giselles if you keep walking into traffic like that!”

Marla and her friend turned to look gratefully upon the face of the angel who had saved their young lives and who else could it be but … TONY.

Isn’t that a sweet story? (Thank you for telling it, Kristen Mirenda.) I love that this is a place where people come to study how to dance the part of Giselle when they grow up, and that it’s filled with people who understand and appreciate the effort. We miss you Tony. And thank you for saving those little girls.