Stacy Horn

I was tremendously influenced by the Feed the Birds song from Mary Poppins, which I just read on Wikipedia was Walt Disney’s favorite song. Even though I was going to catholic school at the time, it was the first time my eyes were truly opened about doing good works and kindness.

This man poured bird seed into my hand yesterday in Washington Square Park and …

… I fed the birds.

“Come feed the little birds, Show them you care, And you’ll be glad if you do, Their young ones are hungry, Their nests are so bare, All it takes is tuppence from you …

“All around the cathedral the saints and apostles, Look down as she sells her wares. Although you can’t see it, you know they are smiling, Each time someone shows that he cares.”

Spring Cleaning, in case you weren’t aware, is a precisely timed operation. For instance, it takes two weeks to clean my carpet. So I had them pick it up today in order for it to return all fresh and clean on the last day of my yearly Spring Cleaning.

The bulk of the cleaning will take place between 5/14 and 5/18, but there are a lot of pre-cleaning tasks, like going through all my boxes and files to see if I’m hanging onto anything I can get rid of. You’re supposed to save your research for future researchers, so I continue to store all my files for each book, but these growing towers of boxes bug me. Is there anything, anything at all I can get rid of?? I’ve started asking other writers what they save and I’m learning that not everyone holds on to their records. The thing is, I don’t have the heart to just chuck everything—I know how often I’ve accessed the archives of long gone writers and researchers. But maybe I can pare it all down a little more.

For some reason, even though I love wood floors, a completely bare floor depresses me, so I put a blanket down. It kinda works. That’s Finney over there on the couch. Finney loves a freshly cleaned comforter … to hork up a hairball on.

Taped to my kitchen cabinet are instructions for taking care of my cats. Across the top are big bold letters that say: In Case I Die. I had two diabetic cats at the time, and it occurred to me that if anything happened to me, even if someone was nice enough to take my cats the cats wouldn’t make it because the person caring for them wouldn’t know all their insulin schedules, etc.

When I wrote Waiting For My Cats to Die I made a blank version to give away as a promotional thing. I renamed it In Case You Croak because I thought for some people that was funnier and less upsetting than the idea of death. You can fill in information about your pets, what to do, who to call, etc.

I scanned and made downloadable pdfs. Front. Back.

A picture of a door on 11th Street. I took this picture because I loved the super high gloss of the paint, which this picture doesn’t quite capture. That reminds me, Nora turned me on to Humans of New York. I can’t thank her enough, I love this site, the guy who takes the pictures, his pictures. It made me realize, I need to take more shots of people. I’m too shy to take the kind of pictures this guy takes though.

Because apparently cockroaches have feelings, and they get lonely. I think I’ve mentioned how if I find a bug or a spider in the apartment I’ll coax it onto a piece of paper and escort it out into the hall or out the window. I can’t bear to kill anything. The exceptions are those giant flying cockroach things, which terrify me.

I don’t know why, but I start crying the minute I see them. If they fly right at me, which they seem to love to do, I feel this awful, primal, fear and dread. It’s all I can do to not to start screaming. Whenever they show up, regardless of the hour, I have to get one of the neighbors to kill them for me. Once, I got Howard to come all the way crosstown to kill one for me.

Last year I went around the apartment and found various ways they might be getting in and I plugged up all those holes and haven’t seen one since. Thank God. Because after reading that article I’d feel bad now. They’re nice. Their favorite thing is to talk about food! How can I kill them now, knowing that they sit behind the walls in groups, chatting about food??

Note to Nadine: Thank you for the review on Amazon for Waiting For My Cats to Die!

A music stand sitting out on the street. I wanted to take it home to paint and use, but what if belonged to a homeless street musician or something?

Yesterday, One World Trade Center became the tallest building in New York City. I wish my “before” shot was better, and I wish I had centered it, but from now on I’m going to be centering it in all my shots. In any case, you can see the progress they’re making. The before shot was from last November, only five months ago.

Before

Look rather gloomy, I admit.

After

A much prettier day! You can see how as they add those shiny panel things, they have also been adding height. It’s going to be glorious. I just read they expect to finish it this summer. Wow. (Here is the same view seven months later.)