Stacy Horn

Tonight I’m going to have a perfect New York City evening! When I was young I was lucky to be introduced to the all the arts, which I ate up, except I remember having mixed feelings about museums. I was like most kids in this respect, mummies/good, everything else/eh. But my favorite was live music of any kind.

I’m meeting a friend from choir for dinner at a greek diner (first part of a perfect evening) and then we’re going to Carnegie Hall to listen to the music of Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen.

Tomorrow is the premiere of the Virtual Choir 3 and I’ve been blessed with a pass to go because I’m writing about it!! I’ll be taking tons of pictures and movies.

I took this the other day, this is Union Square. Normally this part of the Square is crawling with people on their various soap boxes (and others just relaxing while on break). Union Square has a long history of being a nexus of political expression so it was sad to see it emptied like this.

I wrote two angry posts recently, and I’ve saved both for later. I wanted to mull them over first. Sometimes it’s good to get mad. I posted the first one on Yelp and got a very gracious response, so I have to change that post to reflect that. The second I think might just be a preaching-to-the-choir kind of post, which is also okay. Sometimes you need to reach out to like-minded people. But I thought I would wait and then I ended up not posting anything for almost two days!

So here a few things I’ve been meaning to bring up:

Eldad Hagar rescued another dog! I want to marry Eldad Hagar and all the dogs he’s rescued.

Amy and Rory are leaving Dr. Who. I’ll be crying for weeks when that happens. Because I want to marry Amy and Rory.

A doctor weighs in about Virginia’s new transvaginal ultrasound law. Yes, I want to marry this doctor, too.

This next link has to do with an idea I have for a possible book (I have several ideas percolating). In my singing book I write about Mozart writing for his wife Constanze, and then I saw this video. Soprano Hila Plitmann talks about singing Goodnight Moon, written by her husband Eric Whitacre, who is also in my book. As far as wedding prospects, I happen to already be married to Eric and Hila. Okay, not really.

I’ve decided to divorce the Empire State Building, because this is the building I really want to marry. I took this on the way to the dentist, where I had my stitches removed and which hurt like hell. What painful thing is up next? Checking … oh great. I might need another bone graft.
I suspect I will want to marry all my dentists when I’m done (I have four working on my implant, the two students and their professors) but at the moment all wedding plans are off. (They’re doing a great job so far, though.)

I just saw a negative headline about a show I am coming to love, New Girl. Their ratings are going down the headline read, so I want to put in a good word for this show.

I actually almost cancelled the series and now I’m glad I didn’t. Jess/Zooey Deschanel toned down her act and added more intelligence to her character, but it’s two of the guys that I’ve come to love the most, Schmidt and Nick, and of the two, I love Schmidt the most. I don’t even know how to explain Schmidt’s appeal and if you watch one show you probably won’t get the full sense of him. Actually, his character is a perfect example of how if you watched an episode or two and said, “no thanks,” you have to come back and give it another try. He developed.

UPDATE: Brilliant explanation of why we love Schmidt here.

All the characters are developing wonderfully, and I crack up regularly during the show. Honest-to-god laughing out loud even though I’m alone. The writers are doing such a great job. So please give this show a try. And Raising Hope.

Yet another shot of the Empire State Building from my roof. I’m sorry. But if you lived here you’d find it hard to resist taking a picture of it every time you saw it, too. I’d be in worse trouble if I had a view of the Chrysler Building.

I was going to post about truth and integrity today, but I don’t have the energy. It’s just too discouraging to think about and I want to have a nice day. I got off to a bad start by reading this op-ed The Rich Get Even Richer. But today I’m getting my hair cut FOR FREE, and Thursday I get it colored, also FOR FREE (I’m part of the Bumble & Bumble model project). Also on Thursday, a follow-up appointment at NYU Dental School. Thank God I live in a city with a lot of schools.

A picture of Venus from my roof last night. But while I was taking pictures of Venus, I also caught a shot of …

… a UFO! I know, right? Why oh why can’t aliens really visit us? Without trying to wipe us out, of course.

I just read a review about another book, The Righteous Mind, which seeks to explain why so many Americans vote for people who do not act in their interest. I have yet to read a convincing explanation for this, and I didn’t really find it here either, but there were grains of truth, the beginning of an answer. Maybe my problem is I’m looking for a simple answer.

But I did like what this reviewer said about the author’s solutions to the problem.

“First, we need to help citizens develop sympathetic relationships so that they seek to understand one another instead of using reason to parry opposing views.”

I’ve learned it time and again my whole life, a lot of people do not listen to reason. I also personally have another problem, when I am faced with someone who is very conservative, (is against gay marriage, a better healthcare system, anti-Moslem, anti-atheist, etc.) I get so upset I can’t even reason myself!

I’ve also tried the above approach, by the way. Instead of trying to convince people I’ve tried to understand. “Okay, why is [fill in the blank] a bad thing?” Each time, this got the person even angrier. They either can’t come up with an answer (and get mad at me for it) or they come up with some version of “it’s tradition,” “we’ve always done it this way,” etc. Which brings me back to reason (“well, slavery was traditional, women not being able to vote was traditional”) and this never resonates for them.

I liked this suggestion. “Haidt also wants members of Congress to go back to the old practice of moving their families to Washington, so that they socialize with one another and build a friendly basis on which to cooperate.”

When I wrote my book about the NYPD I spent a lot of time with people with very conservative views, and likewise, they spent a lot of time with someone with very liberal views. No one’s position was changed, but we grew to like and trust each other, and to respect each other, and in this atmosphere, cooperation did occur. I could see how in a political arena, given similar repeated contact among families, compromise would be possible.
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Because I was inside so much finishing up my book, and recuperating from the bone graft I’ve been missing spring. I took these pictures to and from the dentist last week.