Stacy Horn

I can’t say that 666 is a work of television art, except there’s one very telling thing, at least in terms of how much I enjoy this show: when I look at all the shows I’ve DVR’ed, if 666 is among them I always watch it first. (Sometimes I watch the best shows first in case the world is about to end—I want to make sure to get my favorites in before it does.) 666 is deliciously entertaining and if it’s on the list I can’t wait to watch it.

This is partially my fault. Had I been more ambitious and gotten a job in tv AND worked my way up to network president, AND then become the president of all the networks (made-up job alert) I could have prevented all the great shows from bring cancelled.

In the picture below, we catch Santa snatching a child at Rockefeller Center. Just kidding. A skating Santa was having a photo-op with a young fellow skater.

Wait, was the world supposed to end at midnight last night or is it tonight?

Anyway, while we’re all waiting, I want to draw your attention to this mind-blowingly great article in the New York Times, Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek. Not only is the article stunning and so well researched, their use of multimedia is the best I have ever seen. The Times has set the bar.

I left a comment, but I rewrote part of a sentence and then forgot to go back and change the beginning. Now it has a wrong word in it and I look illiterate. This is killing me. They don’t give you a way to go back and edit. Sometimes I read an old posts of mine here and I find mistakes and cringe (and fix them). I wonder how many there are.

Parents outside a school playground. The crowd stretches further right and left, beyond the confines of this shot. I live near a school and frequently have to walk in the street to avoid these mobs of parents. It bothered me at first but I realized there wasn’t much they could do about it. The space is small, their numbers are large, and this is life in the big city. We all must do our best to accommodate each other. I wonder what they do to accommodate me?

He’s never going to fit inside that cab with all those helium balloons, right? I mean, no way.

I’ve just got two more Christmas presents to buy and I’ve been putting them off because they are food items and I want them to be as fresh as possible. I’m afraid to wait until Christmas Eve though, because what if nothing is left? Maybe I’ll get them today.

I’m either tensing up too much, or it’s singing-cancer (sorry, that’s the way my mind works). I’m sure it’s something I’m doing because it started when I was in a rush to warm up a few weeks ago and I went straight to the high notes. I pushed too hard and too fast and hurt myself. Ever since, after singing for a while I feel pain in my throat whenever I hit the high notes. So, I’m going to start by seeing a vocal coach.

If anyone has gone through this, I’d love to hear about your experiences. I know I have a lifetime of bad singing habits to un-do.

More #20Acts and #26Acts. Some people do 27 to include Lanza’s mother and some people are even doing 28 to include the shooter because he was a damaged soul as well. Ann Curry who started it all said it was an individual decision. Honestly, I don’t see how one or two more kind acts is a bad thing.

A high school teacher told her students: “Go up to the quiet kid at lunch. Be the loners lab partner. Offer a kind word.”

“Went to ToyRUS and paid off someone’s layaway.” (I just read that someone paid off all the layaways at a Walmart.)

“Just paid the school fees for 25 children with AIDS in Mombasa, Kenya.”

“Gave a red dress and $ for shoes to a sweet 8yo in mem of Charlotte Bacon who wore her new dress&boots on Fri.”

“Got bumped upgraded to business class on my flight to London from US, gave it to a crying woman by herself.”

Christmas tree shopping on Jane Street in New York City. I love the what looks to be a cowboy with the iphone.

The other day, someone tweeted that perhaps an atheist could speak about the shootings in Newton. I didn’t give the suggestion any thought then someone named Michael B. Dougherty, tweeted, “there isn’t an atheist view on loss, or the meaning of life.” It was so ugly and stupid and I felt a wave of despair about humanity. How do people get this damaged? I decided instead to focus on Ann Curry’s tweet:

“Imagine if all of us committed to 20 mitvahs/acts of kindness for each child lost in Newtown. I’m in.” (It was later upgraded to 26 acts.) Since then I’ve been reading people tweet about their acts of kindness. If you search on #20Acts or #26Acts you can read them, too. A sample:

“I started with helping an elderly gentlemen with his groceries.”

“I bought 26 pairs of socks and am leaving for the patients being treated for radiation tomorrow.”

“Just visited a nursing home with my boy, my dogs, and some pies.”

“I fed a homeless man in Hollywood this morning.”

“Made donation for 6 year old girl in Indonesia to help get the heart surgery she needs.”

“I can’t help anyone financially, but took my sweet dog with me to visit with my blind next door neighbor.”

“Donating 26 toys to the active solders kids Christmas drive.”

I’ve been doing an act of kindness every day for the past seven years. It began as a way to get out of a very sad period, and I kept it up, well, for obvious reasons. You feel good and hopefully the other person does too, at least a little. My acts are more modest, generally, but now I’m feeling inspired to make more of an effort.

This is the view from The Writer’s Room. I was there for their annual Christmas party. If this were my view you’d find me at the window every night, hypnotized.