Stacy Horn

I went to swim last night and the pool was closed. “Why,” I asked. Now I have to do my best to forget the answer when I swim tonight. Oh god. I get water in my mouth all the time. I learned about how they “shock the pool” when things like this happen, which means putting in so much chlorine the water starts screaming.

I love how sometimes when I come home Bleecker is sprawled out like this, waiting for me. The little guy loves his belly rubs.

A Q&A I just did with author Brenda Peterson just went up on her blog on Huffington Post blog. Thank you, Brenda! I hope we go viral! I’m particularly proud of my answer to the first question.

Most people in my neighborhood dress better than I do, whether they’re visiting or live here. The girl on the right probably lives here because one of those bags looks like a grocery bag.

Oh God. I’ve been invited to do a TEDx talk and in all my excitement I forgot: I have nothing to wear. Universe, please get on that.

I was walking home yesterday and noticed this dilapidated but clearly once beautiful small mansion at 2 West 16th Street. A little googling and I learned it used to be the home of Henry George Stebbins, a former congressman, briefly, during the Civil War, (I wouldn’t have wanted to be a member of Congress during the Civil War either) a banker/broker, and an intermittent president of the New York Stock Exchange. As a matter of fact, Stebbins died in that house on Friday, December 9, 1881, just before midnight.

Here’s a beautiful painting of him by Henry Inman, dated 1838, when Stebbins was 27. He looks like such a nice young man. The painting was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Josephine S. Stebbins in 2000 (clearly a descendant). Thank you, Josephine. It always amazes me when people donate such things of beauty. It’s such a generous thing to do. I don’t think I have that kind of generosity in me.

Stebbins was involved with lots of interesting things (he was the president of the Central Park Commission and a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History) but of course the thing that got my attention was the fact that he was a music lover, and loved singers. He shows up repeatedly in the memoirs of singer Clara Louise Kellogg.

“In 1857, my father failed … and we went to New York to live. Almost directly afterward occurred one of the most important events of my career. Although I was not being trained for a singer, but as a musician in general, I could no more help singing than I could held breathing, or sleeping, or eating; and, one day, Colonel Henry G. Stebbins, a well-known musical amateur, one of the directors of the Academy of Music, was calling on my father and heard me singing to myself in an adjoining room. Then and there he asked to be allowed to have my voice cultivated; and so, when I was fourteen, I began to study singing. The succeeding four years were the hardest worked years of my life.”

This undated picture of him appears in her memoirs. Unfortunately, things are not looking good for his former home. This scathing Yelp review by a former renter was just written last month.

I work myself up into such a tense frenzy. Yesterday I had an essay about singing published in Time. It’s gotten a ton of likes and tweets, and then composer Eric Whitacre tweeted about and his tweet got tweeted like mad. Was I happy? Did I bask? For about two seconds. I’ve been obsessing about sales ever since.

So, I’m taking the weekend off. I’m going to try to make myself leave the apartment, have lunch at City Bakery, and then go to a movie. We shall see if I manage it.

And, I want this make next Tuesday’s New York Choral Society’s summer sing. They’re doing Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, which I love.

A tiny shoot I passed on my way home from the grocery store.

I was mostly talking with my friend Judith, so I didn’t take a lot of pictures. But this is Manhattan, everyone. Man! Hat! Tan! The jungles of Manhattan.

These flowers were so bright and colorful they looked psychedelic. This picture doesn’t really capture it, alas. But they were! (I stomped my foot when I typed that.)

And this just demonstrates I’m still attracted to all things in the yellow family. This is a building we passed by on our walk. If you live here let’s be friends so I can visit you.