Stacy Horn

Quick Back Story: The City has a contest—if you swim 25 miles before August 30th you win a tshirt. The man and woman who swim the most laps at each city pool win … something else. I entered the contest except I had a dispute with the City about how many laps one would have to swim at my pool to make a mile.

They say each lap is 47 feet long, so 112 laps. But the City’s website says my pool’s lap length is 50 feet, so that would make 105.6 laps. I called to point this out and didn’t make an impression. I finally just measured it myself with a City employee watching. It’s 48.4. So close enough to 47 to just live with the 112, but technically it’s 110 laps = a mile at the Tony Dapolito pool.

My Current Lap Status: 10 miles and 86 laps. I usually swim a mile and a quarter or more each time, because I can’t be sure I’ll be able to get to the pool enough to make 25 miles.

This is the Domine Deus duet from Bach’s Mass in B Minor. I’m showing this because usually any part of a performance that doesn’t include me/the choir singing is, well … not my favorite part. But this is one of my favorite sections of the B Minor Mass, and the choir (ME) doesn’t sing a note. It’s not even the most dramatic part or anything, it’s the flutes. Just listen. (My favorite part of my favorite section begins at around :43.) The duet is lovely too (but keep listening to what the flute does with them).

[Video removed because the link no longer works.]

I’m cutting and pasting from our Facebook page:

The Choral Society of Grace Church will hold auditions for our 2013-2014 season on two or three weeknights in early August (dates TBD). We are looking for experienced choral singers in all voice parts who will blend as well as lead, tune sensitively without sacrificing vocal color, sing easily with and without vibrato, and master their parts independently in advance of rehearsal. Good intonation, a strong sense of rhythm and solid sight singing skills are important. The Choral Society values its members’ time highly and strives to offer a manageable, well-structured commitment.

Rehearsals take place on Tuesday nights between Labor Day and Memorial Day at Grace Church, Broadway and 10th Street. Repertoire for 2013-2014 features a varied program of choral favorites, including works by Palestrina, Pinkham, Bach, Mendelssohn, Gjeilo and Parry, on December 6 and 7, 2013, and a performance of Mozart’s Requiem with works by Verdi, Ives and Thompson, on May 9 and 10, 2014. All concerts are with professional orchestra players and soloists.

To request an audition, please send an e-mail captioned “AUDITION” that includes your name, voice part and choral singing experience to choralsociety@mac.com and someone will be in touch promptly. For more information about the group and to hear sound clips of our work, please visit www.thechoralsociety.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

Musicians I passed by when I went for a walk this afternoon.

“Apart from the lure of prospecting,” historian Lewis Mumford wrote, “no one entered the mine in civilized states until relatively modern times except as a prisoner of war, a criminal, a slave. Mining was not regarded as a humane art: it was a form of punishment …” (The picture to the left is of a coal mining accident victim.)

When I first learned that coal miners and singing was a thing I wondered how that even got started. With all that coal dust day in and day out, their lungs must have been shot. And then the long hours doing back-breaking work in darkness, often over a thousand feet below the surface, how did they even have any energy left for singing? I read though, about how the mines were echo-less, that they absorbed all sound. I could see how that might have created the need to make a beautiful noise whenever they left them, one that would freely resonate instead of getting swallowed up.

Then I read about a terrible mining accident in Pennsylvania in 1919, and I found this quote from James J. Davis, a Welshman who became the Secretary of Labor two years after the disaster: “I think the reason I have never cared for drink is this: the ease from mental pain that other men have sought in alcohol, I always found in song … ”

Why did I ever wonder why coal miners sing? They sing for the same reasons I sing. Also, choral singing was hugely popular in Wales, and when the Welsh miners immigrated to America, they brought their singing ways with them.

A picture from the June 5, 1919 mining disaster in Wilkes-Barre, where ninety-two men died. So horribly sad. That is a lot of people to bury at once for one small town. I write about this accident and the choral group that formed shortly after in my book.

I am so stressed out! But happy. A piece I wrote about singing for Slate came out today. I worked very hard on this essay and I’m happy with how it came out. So YAY!

Still, I’m stressed. My friend sent me this very soothing photograph of fawns in her backyard. Can you imagine living in a place where sometimes little guys like these show up? To me this is a picture of Heaven. I want to romp with them. We need kittens though. And some pumpkin pie, and: daisies, Love’s lemon scent perfume, puppies, what the hell, any baby animal pretty much, a hammock, a nice escapist beach-type read, maybe a light rain as long as we’re all under some trees where we won’t get wet, oh and I don’t know, a million dollars. Yeah, that just might do. Oh god, I seriously need to calm down.

I’m swimming later. In the rain it looks like. But that should calm me down.

Once again I’ve hit a wall and must rest. My pressing decision right now is: swim? Or watch tv? I’m up to 8 miles (and 10 laps) out of the 25 I must swim to get that free tshirt. Why oh why was I born with a competitive streak? And for what? A tshirt. I wonder what it even looks like. I just googled it and couldn’t find a picture of one. Please be awesome.

Oh for the love of god. I just read that the man and the woman who swim the most laps at their pool will also get prizes. Now I have to shoot for that. And I started late!

You know who can guiltlessly rest for entire days at a time? Cats, that’s who.