Stacy Horn

I get a lot of email from the friends and family of murder victims, due to my book about the NYPD’s cold case squad, and the blog I maintain specifically to help people (and to try to sell books too, of course). They ask for help, I tell them what to do and most of the time I never hear from them again. I wonder how they made out, but I realized I already know.

When I was working on my book I studied the numbers very carefully, had a statistician check my work and wrote the following: “An unsolved murder has up to 5 – 10% chance of being cleared within one year after it goes cold. After two years, that chance decreases to less than 1%.”

So the chances are that all those people who have contacted me over the past six years still don’t have any more answers than they did when they first wrote me.

An old-time barber shop on 11th Street that I pass by every Tuesday on my way to choir practice.

There’s this horrible gap between my temporary teeth and my gum line, which you can see when I smile wide. At least three people fainted from the sight of it on my way home. One child burst into tears. And this dog barked and barked and barked. I think he was trying to warn everyone. It won’t be fixed for another week and a half, so if you see me, cross to the other side of the street.

I can still sing, however. I may look like a monster, but my voice is unchanged.

One World Trade Center, rising up and up. This picture accurately captures my mood for the past two days. Dreary. Hopeless. Mostly about my book. I just can’t get it to where I want it to be. But I met with my agent and now I feel ready to try again. For the billionth time. Hope has returned. Thank you, Betsy.

I’m now reading New York Diaries in order, cover to cover, experiencing it as Teresa Carpenter intended. I’m getting glimpses of the moon through a telescope in 1844; the anxious thoughts of a young, single girl worrying about losing her beauty, and death, and never being loved; Michael Hirschorn’s scathing account of a book party (thank god I know for a fact that I wasn’t there); Theodore Roosevelt’s head-over-heels joy of having found love; 150 year old complaints about immigrants that could have been written today, (except even in the exasperation there’s more compassion).

There’s a number of “could have been written today” entries and I’m sure it’s no accident. In 1947 Simone de Beauvoir wrote, “If even so-called left-wing intellectuals are so proud of the boxes of condensed milk their government dispenses to us, ” and of course it made me think of those yellow boxes of food we dropped on Afghanistan, which, if I’m remembering correctly, were filled with pork and fed to their animals. Everyone meant well (mostly).

This is my kind of history book. If I was a history teacher, I’d assign it.

In one of the entries I worked on, a police inspector wrote about catching a run away slave named Henry Long and returning him to his “owner” in Virginia (the Fugitive Slave Act had recently passed). This is the jail known as the Tombs, where Long was taken.

A few years ago my previous dentist wrote me a prescription for five diazepam pills (aka valium). Whenever I had a particularly bad dental procedure I’d take one. I’ve been hoarding the last remaining quarter of a pill for a really rainy-dental-day and I brought it with me on Thursday, (teeth-pulling day) hoping I wouldn’t need it. But at one point I just broke down.

My student dentist has to explain everything’s he’s doing to his professor, so when the professor came back he said, “The patient took a valium.” The professor laughed and said, “Yeah, well that should just start to kick in by the time we’re done.”

I didn’t want the professor to think I was a valium addict so I said, “For the record, I’m not an addict and I don’t take valium at any other time.” And he said, “Well, for the record, we are. In fact,” he continued, looking around the room to the student dentist, the nurse, and the other professor who would be overseeing my student prostho-dentist later, “I think we’re all on it right now, aren’t we?” It was great.

In front of St. Paul’s Chapel on 9/11/11.

I recently read that there was a possibility that this might be the last season for Fringe. Oh god, I hope not. Fringe might be my second favorite show on tv. It wasn’t love at first sight. I remember thinking the Walter character was annoying, for instance, he had just too many tics. But then it rose to the level of great tv and Walter, like every other character on the show, became lovable. If not lovable, like the various bad guys or neutral guys, then interesting.

Why oh why is there talk of canceling this series?? I wonder if it never caught on in a large enough way due to the so-so start? In better news, I just read this on TV Tattle:

“Warehouse 13” expanded to 20 episodes
Syfy has given the sci-fi show seven extra episodes next season.

Me and the boys curled up on the couch. Later in the evening they will take turns. Buddy, who is at the bottom of the couch in this shot, will be at the top.