Stacy Horn

Somewhere around the year 2000 I was hired to pick writers for a web-based tv show that Barnes & Noble planned to launch called Behind the Words. The show was basically video interviews of the writers I’d chosen, and I also had to write the interview questions and the content for the pages we were building out for each writer. It never launched, and I don’t know why.

But it was an incredibly eye-opening experience for me about working with writers. About half were perfectly fine to work with, but a surprisingly large number were rude and difficult, and some were outright horrible. To this day I can’t read a word any of the horrible ones have written, they were that terrible. I’m surprised they’re still alive (one of them isn’t, but he was very very old). I always expected them to spontaneously combust from awfulness, or from someone finally deciding, “That’s it. You can’t be in the world anymore.” I’m sure the process was annoying for them, and my questions maybe have been irritating. Oh god, for all I know they were the stupidest questions EVER, but I was trying to think of questions that might illicit answers that would work on the web. The point is, I was doing everything I could to sell their books.

Some of the writers however, were absolutely wonderful. And of that group, the writer George Saunders was hands down the most gracious and fun. The answers he sent back were so funny and endearing they were passed around to everyone in the office and all our friends.

He’s now hugely famous and respected (he was known and respected then, but now he’s a mega-writing star) and I love the justice of that. Everyone I know is talking about his latest book. One friend said she wanted to read it aloud to people she loved it that much, and another is reading it aloud to a friend in the hospital.

I just went through a folder of old email I’d saved, hoping I’d saved the email with the answers he’d sent, but I couldn’t find it, damnit. Tomorrow I’m going to post about how depressed I got seeing some of that old email.

Yet another picture of One World Trade Center, this a view from Sullivan and Houston Streets.

I often think about things like, ‘What would I do if this train goes off the bridge and into the East River? How could I survive this?’ ‘If this plane starts to crash, could I land it?’ Insane, I know. I was thinking of starting a series: Insane Things I Thought Today.

But we had an earthquake not too long ago, and it must have freaked me out more than I realized, or maybe it dredged up 9/11 fears, but every once in a while I wonder what I would do if my building started to collapse. I’m pretty sure I’d be a goner, but the only thing I’ve come up with so far is to try to make it out the window and onto the fire escape. I figure less will be falling on top of me that way, and maybe more opportunities for saving myself will be presented when I get out there. I also realized that in the time given there’d be nothing I could do to save the cats. I can only hope since cats are good fallers they can take care of themselves.

Seriously though, or insanely though, I do feel like my building has been weakened. Is that possible? I swear it feels like it’s tilting more.

There happens to be a book about this very thing, which I own of course. It’s all about what to do if you find yourself in a number of precarious positions: The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook.

I will always stop to take pictures of bubbles. This was on Broadway.

Every time an article comes out about singing now I feel like someone has beaten me to the punch. Please, for the love of god editors and writers, I can’t take it. Can we call a moratorium on the subject until my book (Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing With Others) comes out on July 2nd? Thank you in advance.

I enjoyed coming upon this ad yesterday for a new A&E tv show. It’s at Houston and Broadway. Not that I’m going to be adding any more shows to the list of shows I watch. There’s too much good stuff on tv to watch. (I was going to use an exclamation point in that sentence, but there’s been such an exclamation point backlash, I used italics instead.)

Alright, we’re going to die anyway, but hopefully not for a really long time. I’m sure you’ve all read this article in the Times about the Mediterranean Diet, but I thought I’d post a link to it just in case. Get on this diet. It helps prevent the number one cause of death in America, cardiovascular disease.

“The study ended early, after almost five years, because the results were so clear it was considered unethical to continue.” Meaning, they felt like they were practically killing the people in the control group, who were eating some version of the standard American diet. All the researchers in the study are now on the Mediterranean diet. I was glad to read specifics about what the diet entails, because I’ve been hearing this for years, get on the Mediterranean diet, but what, exactly, is a Mediterranean diet? Based on this study, I think the only thing I need to do is eat more beans. I’m still confused about the difference between a bean and a legume, but apparently it doesn’t matter, you need to eat both. So anything small, round, and bean-ish I’m eating. Except lima beans. Which suck.

Here is the actual study from the New England Journal of Medicine.

I eat well and exercise for health reasons, mostly. But I’ve been trying to lose a pound. One pound. Yesterday I walked 4 miles, swam for about 3/4 of a mile—that’s more than what I normally do in a day, but I do exercise every day and walk everywhere I go so it’s not really all that much more than usual. I eat a vegetarian diet. Why don’t I weigh, like, 80 pounds? I should be practically invisible with the way I live. What’s a girl got to do to lose a pound?

This is looking west, on the corner of Hudson and Canal Streets.

I’m not saying where this is because I’m afraid of getting in trouble. I know it’s very weird taking pictures in a public bathroom, but I just love the 19th century back-in-time feel of this room, and I swear that at the time no one was in there besides myself. Look at these wood doors, all the marble, the brass. And scroll down and check out the fire hose.

Maybe some of you see things like this all the time, but it looks like something we don’t even use anymore to me. Very steam punk.