Stacy Horn

Quick Backstory: I’m entered in the summer lap swim contest sponsored by NYC Parks & Recreation. I have to swim at least 25 miles by August 29th. People who swim the 25 miles get a tshirt proclaiming their accomplishment. There’s also a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prize for the man and the woman who swim the most miles in their division at their pool by August 8th. Those people also get a trophy.

I’m in the Night Owl division at the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, so only the laps I swim there at night count. Last year I came in 3rd place.

This week is the last week for the people going for the most miles swum (swum just doesn’t sound right, is it??). I am currently in 2nd place!! As of last Friday I’ve swum 35 miles (+ 35 laps). 35-freaking-miles!! And I still have another week to add miles. Except I can’t swim tonight, I’m going to a summer sing that’s being conducted by the director of the Choral Society I belong to.

I have to repeat, though: 35 miles. I know for a serious athlete that’s nothing but for me it’s … 35-freaking-miles for the love of God!!

The pool I swim in. I took this yesterday afternoon, when only one person was swimming.

Who doesn’t love nice surprises out of the blue? First, I got an unexpected mention in a friend’s review in the New Yorker of The Strain and The Leftovers. All my life everyone around me has always revered The New Yorker. Any mention in their pages is such an honor. I screamed. I blushed (even though I was alone). I’d been reading Emily Nussbaum’s views about television for years, so it didn’t surprise me in the least when she ended up as the tv critic for The New Yorker, the best job in the universe that doesn’t involve saving lives.

Then, composer and conductor Jed Scott tweeted a picture of Jerry Blackstone, a Grammy award winning conductor and the Director of Choirs and Chair of the Conducting Department at the University of Michigan, reading from my book at the 2014 conference of the Michigan School Vocal Music Association.

Basically, this week I died of pride twice. Thank you Emily, Jed and Jerry.

Since it didn’t involve petting or feeding him, Bleeck is not impressed.

Earlier in the year Lynn Morecraft paid me the enormous compliment of asking to use one of my photographs for a painting. She just sent me jpeg of the painting and gave me permission to post it here! Here is the photograph.

And here is her painting. Isn’t it wonderful?? She titled it “Dog Love, NYC” and it’s going to be in a show next month called Dog Days of Summer at the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Gallery on Bainbridge Island. I see that among other changes two dogs were taken out and the breed of the one on the far left was changed. I love her version and the cropped in view. It’s sweeter, and more intimate. Great work, Lynn! And thank you for sending the jpeg.

I don’t know what took me so long to get around to reading it, but Helene Hanff’s Underfoot in Show Business is now my second favorite Helene Hanff book (Hanff is the author of the more well-known 84, Charing Cross Road). Thank you so much for sending it to me, Citizen Reader, I love it. That chapter which ends with Alfred Drake taking the stage to sing, “Oh what a beautiful morning,” made me cry.

It describes a New York that’s both long gone and still exists. The theatre has lost it’s place of prominence in New York, although it still has its moments, and the great writers now seem to be working in TV (something that started to happen in Hanff’s time). But there’s still that urge towards great art, and creative people still struggle the way they struggled in her book, finding all sorts of ways to find shelter, eat, and get dressed.

It is making me fall in love with the City all over again. I’m also so happy with the handwritten inscription. After Helene Hanff’s, which begins “To the Reader,” someone named Molly wrote this:

To this particular reader:

Thank you for bringing me and Helene together, two souls who love the big city, books and show biz —

Molly
New York
June 1982

I’m not making this up, but the book proposal I’m working on mentions the fact that when I’m buying used books I looks for books with personal touches like this. I wonder who Molly is. Is she in show biz? Did she make it? 1981 is the year I moved back to the City after college, so we would have been starting out at roughly the same time. What happened to her??

Miles Swum So Far in City Lap Swim Contest: 28 + 111 laps.

Stacy’s Law: If you’re downtown walking dogs, I cannot resist taking a picture of you.

NYPD helicopters started filling the sky outside my window (I live a block away from the 6th Precinct) and I just learned why: two U.S. marshals and an NYPD detective were shot in the West Village, on West 4th Street. The suspect is dead, I just read. The detective and the marshals were there to issue a warrant and their injuries were not life-threatening.

This is outside my window.