Stacy Horn

There was an incredible storm last night; monsoon rains, lightening that looked like it was going to slice the building across the street in half. But the most dramatic was all the chunks of hail that came down in such numbers I was sure all my windows would shatter. It was like machine guns spraying my apartment from all sides.

The cats were relatively calm until a particularly big one hit, which was every few seconds, and then they’d look up, all “WTF??” For the most part they were, “Why are you running around with your camera? Is something happening? Because we’re cool.”

This is looking out the window over the airshaft. It doesn’t capture the excitement, but I like the dark, dreary, New York City tenement look of it.

It’s crazy, I suppose, how attached I get to tv characters. I still miss everyone from In Plain Sight, which ended its run last summer. (Sob.) But Warehouse 13 starts up again on Monday, July 23rd. One of the funniest series on tv.

Even better, we now have the thoroughly charming Bunheads. If you loved Gilmore Girls (same creator) you’ll enjoy Bunheads. Sutton Foster, the lead, is completely lovable, the girls are great, and the relationship between Sutton Foster’s character and Kelly Bishop’s (from Gilmore Girls) is … I hate to say it because I think it might turn some people off, but … it’s … oh, I’m just going to say it, it’s heart-warming. Okay? Sue me. It’s heart-warming. I like heart-warming. I miss this kind of smart dialogue, welcome back Amy Sherman-Palladino.

In other words: tv life is good.

Update: I forgot, Political Animals. It’s got my attention. I hope it gets better, but so far, I’m in. Weak link, the squandering of the great Ciarán Hinds. Strongest link, the relationship between Sigourney Weaver and Carla Gugino’s characters.

Also, Newsroom. I don’t hate it as much as everyone else. I’m still in. But I do hate what Sorkin does with all his female characters. And apparently he still hasn’t recovered from the internet shellacking he was subjected to all those years ago (it was when he won an Emmy for the West Wing episode, “In Excelsis Deo,” and he was less than gracious toward the co-author of the script). The Social Network didn’t sufficiently neutralize the narcissistic injury and he continues to nurse it in this show.

Every day, on the way to swimming, I pass by this fantastic 70’s style poster. Takes me back.

I got this mailing where I could sign a postcard supporting the ban of extra large soda and then send it back, postage paid. Instead, I wrote “I support this ban and your effort would be better spent toward changing the laws against medicinal marijuana.” I put that in the mail.

I’m sure the mailing was paid for by a soda company, or a company selling soda, and so my note would be ignored, but it felt good saying what I said.

One World Trade Center from a Hudson River point-of-view.

The picture below was from a section of the police department’s 1887 annual report called “Miscellaneous Statistics.” When I was copying all the police department annual reports going back to 1860 (for my book about the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad, The Restless Sleep) my goal was to learn everything I could about murder in NYC for the past 100 years or so. Of course I learned a lot more about crime in NYC over the years.

That reminds me, I read somewhere that Tom Fontana is working on a tv series about the 19th century NYPD. This is such a great idea I can’t believe it hasn’t been done already. The stories I came across … it could be that there has never been an organized crime group as effective and as scary as the early NYPD. It was insane.

Update: Just saw a commercial for it! It’s a BBC America series called Copper. Such a great, great idea. Can’t wait. It takes place in the 1860s.

Anyway, this is just one of many sad, sad lists that I came across in the course of my research.

Thanks to my friend Marisa, this morning I got to go on a free Audubon Eco-Cruise down the Hudson and lower New York Bay. The picture below is of Swinburne Island, one of two man made islands created in the 19th century to house and dispose of victims of contagious diseases. The birds are sitting on the remnants of the crematorium.

We were on a big boat so we couldn’t get in close. I swear the guy said it was only 72 feet deep where we were, but that can’t be right, can it? You wouldn’t believe what’s down there. When I wrote my book about the NYPD’s cold case squad I learned that the police department used to just routinely dump guns (and other items) into the water. From my book:

“For most of the past 100 years, weapons were taken out to sea and sunk. In 1933, 3,816 guns, knives and swords were dumped into the sea at the Scotland Lightship station off the New Jersey coast. A couple of years later 1,575 phony token slugs were dumped into the Long Island Sound at Eaton’s Neck in Huntington Bay, along with 500 slot machines and 4,000 weapons. Two years after that the Property Clerk poured 10,000 gallons of wine, whiskey and beer into the Lower Bay. As of the 70’s they were still throwing what they could into the various bodies of water in New York, but in the 80’s they began melting handguns down in a foundry in Pennsylvania. Rifles and knives were put in a metal shredder.”

So apparently those guns and swords not that far down, if anyone wants to try to recover them. I wonder how many feet of mud is covering everything. Also, seriously? New Yorkers were killing each other with swords in the 1930s?

I could actually look this up, I spent weeks at the Municipal Archives copying sections of the police department annual reports going back to 1860. Okay, I just pulled them out. When they reported “cuttings” or stabbings, they didn’t specify weapons, alas.