Stacy Horn

Many of you are probably aware of the big art theft that took place at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. The FBI recently announced that they know who the thieves were. I hope that means the artwork may actually be found and returned.

I went to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, which is roughly diagonally across the street from the Gardner Museum. I’ve probably posted about this before, but I used to go to that museum a lot, and what I always did at one point during my visit was sit down and stare at their Vermeer (The Concert). Unlike any other painting I’ve ever viewed in a museum, this one was mounted in a frame that is meant to sit on something rather than against the wall, and in this case it sat on top of a desk. A chair was provided and you could actually sit down right down in front of the painting, just inches away, and look at it at eye-level.

I took advantage of this and stared and stared at this painting, becoming intimate in a way that I rarely could with other famous paintings. There was a time when I probably could have recreated this painting from memory, if I had the talent, which I didn’t, but you get my point.

So I took it very personally when this painting was among those stolen. I don’t want to get into a whole self-righteous rant but it, but fuck you, you asshats, whoever stole it and whoever paid them to steal it. Criminals. I mean, most of us have done things we’re not proud of, and we rationalize our actions, but the mindset and character of people who rise to this level of wrong-doing (and much, much worse; rape, murder). How do you live with yourselves?

I saw this yesterday, on a stoop, I forget the block. Am I in pursuit of magic anymore? I guess in some areas I still am. I’m working very hard on a book proposal that I hope will be magical, albeit very darkly magical. I just googled it and this graffiti is the work of these artists.

I was watching two cute baby eagles being fed, and it was all very sweet until dad show up with what looks like—I swear to god—a dead baby kitten or puppy or something to feed them. If you go there right now (it’s 1-ish) and look at it full screen you’ll see the poor dead thing on the right. (Scroll down, the cam is on the lower right.) The worst is that it died for nothing. The babies totally didn’t like the taste of it.

Good fake doggy. You won’t kill anything, will you?

My friend, Steven Levy, found Einstein’s brain. I love this story. It was 1978, he was 27 years old. It just shows what you can do with a little (or a lot) of persistent digging around. You can solve a cold case murder (Jerry Mitchell, investigative journalist for the Jackson, Mississippi newspaper, The Clarion-Ledger) or, in Steven’s case, without the benefit of Google, or the internet at all, you can track down the brain of one of the smartest people who ever lived.

All good news from the vet, Finney’s blood work is perfect. The vet attributes the weight loss to mostly Bleeck, and a little to my meager efforts to feed him a tad less.

Thank God. Finney does seem happier lately. He’s more active, more affectionate. The weight loss and increased activity have been good for him and he’s probably feeling a lot less discomfort. So even though he barely tolerates the kitten, the little guy has been good for him overall. It’s that parable I love, in cat terms. Here is the Northern Exposure version:

My uncle once told me about a warrior who had a fine stallion. Everybody said how lucky he was to have such a horse.

The next week, the chief led a war party against another tribe. Many young men were killed. But, because of his broken leg, the warrior’s son was left behind, and so was spared.

I’m glad that the fact that Finney is doing so well might all be due to that pain-in-the-ass little guy, the one who chases him from room to room until Finney finally turns around, claws out, looking for all the world like he’s thinking, “For the love of God, take a nap or something.”

I was so hopeful when the FBI announced its initiative to work on cold cases from the civil rights era. Even though I watched from very protected eyes, the horror of that period has never left me. I was raised a strict catholic, and I thought everyone believed what I had been taught. From about ages 9 to 12 years old I saw hoses turned on black people, the pictures of the Little Rock Nine on the cover of Life, I learned about lynching, all the murders, Emmett Till, the murders of the civil right workers. And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, to see just how many people didn’t think that it was all that horrible, and that the murderers of Emmett Till for instance, were never brought to justice, and that people like Carolyn Bryant (the woman he was “accused” of flirting with and who is still alive) have never expressed a single bit of remorse.

So this article in the New York Times about the results was heart breaking. It’s like I’m still that kid, looking around thinking, “what the hell,” and wondering how people could do things like this and how a jury of their peers could basically say it’s okay.

I spent yesterday morning researching Cal A. Hall, Jr., the murderer of farmer Hosie Miller, one of the cases the FBI picked up and which was covered in the article. I was looking for justice in some form, some shred, however small. I wasn’t able to learn a thing other than the fact that he died in 1976, his wife in 1994.

The worst part was learning that Hosie Miller’s daughter is Shirley Sherrod, who was forced to resign her position with the Department of Agriculture because blogger Andrew Breitbart had edited a video of her to make her look racist, when in fact she had transcended what happened to her father and grew up to help farmers both white and black. From an LA Times article, “You don’t fire a black woman from the South like that,” Wilburn said. “Don’t you know she had to go through something to get to where she is?” It makes the sins against her that much worse.

Breitbart is dead, he died very young, but this is never the justice I want. I want people like this to truly become aware of the wrongs they committed and to atone for them, to live a life making the world better. The justice I want is for bad people to become good.

St. Patrick Day balloons. I took this from my veterinarian’s office yesterday. A weird juxtaposition I know.