Stacy Horn

The day started out well. I’d met a couple of detectives for lunch. We hadn’t seen each other in a while and it was great to catch up. But I get home and Finney is in distress, going in and out of the litter box every 15 seconds or so.

I call the vet, rush him over, and they find something (too gross to explain). They address it and he is a lot better by the time I get him home. So, YAY. Except, it’s possible that he might have diabetes. I can’t even think about that now. (Note to universe: please spare us.)

BUT, I get home and there are a bunch of messages from the vet asking me, “Where are you? Are you still bringing Finnegan??” In my panic I’d called the vet I used to take my cats too, years and years ago. They were waiting for me to show up. That also means I had shown up at my current vet without letting them know I was coming!

Thankfully, both vets were very gracious about my mistake. I am never leaving the house again.

Current Miles Swum Tally: 9 + 109 laps.

They’re asking volunteers and recovery workers to register at the 9/11 Memorial Museum and to upload pictures if you have them. I scanned a few. If it looks like we’re partying instead of working, we are. I think most of these came from a barbecue we had.

This is me and Elizabeth Garnsey, who I believe is now an Episcopal priest. We’re inside St. Paul’s Chapel where we (and many others) volunteered. Rescue workers could have a meal there, or just a cup of coffee (or tea or hot chocolate) and sleep. The walls and the pews were covered with the cards and letters we received from around the world.

This next one is me, Jean Pascuiti, Elizabeth (I don’t remember her last name!) and Dottie Connelly. It bugs me that I don’t remember Elizabeth’s last name. As far as I know, four people were mostly responsible for initiating and coordinating the volunteer effort at St. Paul’s and I only remember one of their last names! I hope someone will let me know the last names of the ones I’ve forgotten.

But those four people are Diane Reiners (also now an Episcopal priest!) Carter, Dennis, and Elizabeth.

That’s Dennis, me, Alicia Babbit Hoffman, and Carter. I should say, there were also a lot of other supplies for the workers at the Chapel. Things like basic first aid, boots, gloves, and so on. And besides volunteers like myself there were podiatrists, other healthcare workers, massage therapists, priests of all kinds, nuns, grief counselors and therapists.

That’s me coming down from the galleys, a favorite spot of mine. It was one of the places where the workers slept, so it was peaceful. It felt the most like a sanctuary up there.

That’s Rose Harrington-Coulter, (who has sadly passed on) Jean, Tim Ranney, me, and Dayle Patrick. I don’t know why Diane wasn’t in any of these pictures! But I filmed her ordination.

A symposium for those lucky enough to be in London on September 10th. More information and registration details here. I’ve never even been to London, and with my fear of flying, I probably never will get there. Do not be like me! Go to this symposium!

Current Miles Swum Tally: 7 + 82 laps.

Update: Oh. My. God. I just realized I thought the contest ended on August 8th, but it ends on August 29th! I’m such an idiot. That means we have 40 days to swim 25 miles, instead of the 25 days I originally thought. (I went back and fixed the date on earlier posts.) I just realized my mistake, the contest for who swims the most miles ends on August 8th. So whatever you have swum by that point counts for that contest.

A Corvette sitting in front of my building. I don’t really pay attention to cars, but when I was in high school I loved Corvettes. And Mustangs. What else? Jaguars. I forget really. In the past 30 years I’ve driven a car maybe 3 or 4 times, but I still keep renewing my license. You never know.

I just read this wonderful article in the Times about Brooklyn. When I was growing up on Long Island, Manhattan was always my goal. “I will live there one day, damnit!” But I loved Brooklyn too. Brooklyn has this … feel. To this day, whenever I go out there I have a sense of deja vu, like I’ve come home. I wonder if everyone feels this? I swear to God I feel like I once lived there, long ago. And I feel it in every neighborhood.

You can time-trip in Brooklyn, something that is harder and harder to do in Manhattan. This happens when you come upon a spot that is relatively unchanged and you feel suspended in time. When it happens in Manhattan you feel like you’ve gone back to a time and place where people worked and played. In Brooklyn it’s where they lived. Again, home.

My friend Aly Sujo, who died in 2008, was the first of my friends to move out to Brooklyn. I forget what year, but it was way before anyone else, sometime in the 1990’s. It broke my heart. In many ways, Aly was Manhattan to me (although he grew up in Caracas and London). He lived a few blocks from where I live now, and he played in a band which played in all the clubs that are famous now, and long gone, like CBGB’s. A little bit of life left the city when he moved out.

From time to time I tell myself that I really do need to make more new friends, to replace the ones I’ve lost. But I’ll never be able to make ones to replace those who shared my youth, our youth. We won’t have history. As you get older it’s harder to create history together because we only have so many decades/years left! Aly was my twenties.

I took this picture of Aly sometime in the early 1980’s and it hangs in my living room now. I forget which club it was alas. He looks a little insane in this shot, but that’s one of the reasons why it’s my favorite picture of him. He was crazy. Unfortunately, that’s also what killed him. But it was also what made him so explosively and thrillingly alive. He lived and he felt everything so intensely and it made us feel so intensely about him.

I miss you, Aly.

Holy mother of God. Have you all read this? If not, READ THIS BOOK. Lawrence Wright is such a great writer, such a brilliant researcher. I will always love him for writing the sentence below. It’s from his book about 9/11, The Looming Tower. Wright is describing the CIA and how it would not share information with the FBI. However I must point out that the FBI is guilty of being the exact same way with the NYPD. I laughed when I first read these words though, a laugh of horror about how un-exaggeratingly true they are.

“… the agency was a black hole, emitting nothing that was not blasted out of it by a force greater than gravity …”

But back to Going Clear. It’s a history of Scientology, and what I learned was so terrifying and so jaw-dropping that when I started to talk to someone about it I felt a jolt of fear. “Are you a Scientologist,” I asked the person, before continuing.

I’ll never forget when a bunch of Scientologists surrounded us on the highway, after 9/11. The West Side Highway was closed down except to recovery vehicles and we were there holding up thank you signs to the workers as they went in and out of the site. Sometimes the workers would stop and chat with us after their shifts. A group of Scientologists walked up, circled us, looking for all the world like a bunch of big cats eyeing their prey. I swear to God that I’m not saying this in hindsight, I immediately felt threatened.

“Who are you?” I asked. They wouldn’t say! But I kept insisting and finally they said they were Scientologists. They left soon after. I’m sure they thought SP (suppressive person) about me, or Potential Trouble Source (these are real Scientology terms). They were there to offer a detox program, which, like everything else in “Scientology,” has no real basis in science.

I appreciate the position our government and the IRS were in but they certainly dropped the ball with respect to Scientology. Anyway, the book is an exhilarating read, and I recommend it highly.

Bleecker, known in our house as “the destroyer,” comes upon another famous destroyer, Godzilla.