Stacy Horn

Protestors have started occupying City Hall Park. I believe today is day four. I went by on my walk today to take a look, and to take some pictures. That beautiful building in the background is the Surrogate’s Courthouse, which also houses the Municipal Archives. As readers of my blog know, this is one of my favorite places to spend time.

I took this picture of some police coming out of the subway because they were wearing masks. The police aren’t wearing masks so much. It seemed like they were for a while, but now many of the police I come across are not wearing masks.

George Floyd and the Municipal Archives building. I should have talked to the protestors. Their position is extreme. But maybe they have a new vision for law enforcement. By the way, I wish these protests would include the courts, the DAs, and the Department of Correction. They are all pieces of the criminal justice system puzzle (and if you step back, there are bigger pieces that also need to be addressed) and all these pieces need major reforms.

The protestor’s setup reminded me of St. Paul’s Chapel and 9/11. We had stations all along the walls, ringing the pews, and each station had medical supplies, food, beverages, and so on. All the workers and volunteers could come to St. Paul’s, and they usually could find what they needed. Same here.

This really reminded me of St. Paul’s and 9/11. Every day we got donations from all over the world and we had to organize all the boxes and put them away.

Another shot of the supplies. I wish I had gotten a better shot of the sign with the name Eleanor Bumpurs. Decades ago I saw an interview with Spike Lee and he was talking about Eleanor Bumpurs. I’d heard the story when it happened, but I hadn’t given it any thought at the time. But the way Spike Lee talked about it made me research her story. It was the beginning of having my eyes opened to the fact that we weren’t handling situations like hers well, which led to a gradual awakening to many other problems.

The protestors are camped out at the park, and this is where they sleep.

Below is a list of my pandemic reading so far. It’s not a long list because I’ve turned into a slow reader. There’s also a lot more fiction than usual for me, I see. That’s interesting. I’m currently reading The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.

– Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy by Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano.
– The End of October by Lawrence Wright.
– Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
– The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.
– The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel.
– The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.

Here is Bali about to climb into my lap. As any cat owner knows, open books are preferred resting spots for cats.

I didn’t feel like going for a walk the other day, but I made myself and I was rewarded. It was Make Music day and even though it wasn’t as active years past, I was lucky to catch a renaissance singing group, and this guy playing piano in Washington Square Park. It was just so nice to see live performances again. And to sit among the human race. (The pianist invited people to lay underneath the piano for the sound, and people took turns trying it out.)

When I got home I listened to what was one of my favorite pieces to play when I had a piano and regularly played (this was WAY back in the 1970s): Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique.

I’m supposed to take a walk this morning, but I’m feel awfully lazy, and it’s just a tad too warm. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this summer. It’s supposed to be a hot one. They’re all going to be hot and even hotter ones from now on, probably. God, I’d love to take a swim instead of walking today. I wrote about swimming briefly in my book about singing. (Except it’s really about death.)

“A few weeks after I’d started swimming again, when it no longer killed me to swim laps, I slid down underneath the water, braced my feet against the side of the pool, then pushed as hard as I could and took off for my next lap. It’s my favorite part. For those first few feet as you surge forward underwater, before you break the surface again, you feel like a rocket taking off into another world, but in slow motion, as the water gently softens what would otherwise have been an explosive burst. In that brief pocket of stretched-out time, as I soared, adagietto, through the bright blue, enveloping water …”

The rest is about death. Some more graffiti from my last walk. I like the skeleton. Big surprise, right?

Seen on my walk yesterday. This looks like a father/daughter project, which made it even sweeter.