Stacy Horn

Yesterday I was reminded of the existence of this wonderful band, Manhattan Valley Ramblers. I saw them a couple of years ago at a house concert and I made a short movie of them. But now I’m obsessed with one of the songs they did, a waltz called Keys to the Kingdom. If you skip ahead to the 1:39 mark you’ll hear it.

Bill Christophersen, the fiddle player, has made made a fantastic recording of it, but I must admit I would love a recording with John Saroyan playing along on the guitar.

I made the colossal mistaking of reading some of the comments on Facebook in response to Lowe’s explanation for pulling their ad from All-American Muslim. There are so many ugly, damaged people in American. Here is my Christmas wish for those people:

“For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”

Petting Finney who bites me in return. Oh, what is that beautiful thing on my wrist? Thank you, Citizen Reader.

– The Higgs boson. Like a lot of other people, I’m waiting to hear the news from the CERN press conference this morning about whether or not they have found evidence for the Higgs boson. I don’t think anyone expects they have definitive evidence, but they must have something … interesting.

Update: Two experiments at the LHC (large hadron collider) found hints of the Higgs, everyone is very excited, but they need another year of data before they can yell “eureka!”

– Grimm vs Once Upon a Time. I was wrong. Once Upon a Time is the superior show. It kept getting better while Grimm kept going nowhere. I’m sorry Grimm. By the way, the sidekick guy (the Blutbaden) should be the star.

– The Christmas Spirit from a Jew during the depression. I read this story of kindness on the Smithsonian’s website (and it’s also a book).

– Lowe’s pulling ads from the TLC reality show All-American Muslim. For the love of God. Either they’re a racist company or they’re like politicians who will switch positions, sacrifice their morals and integrity and say whatever they need to say to get elected. (I’m looking at you, John McCain.) Either ways, Lowe’s sucks, as do the people and groups that put pressure on them.

Yes, another cat picture. Except for swimming, I was home most of the day yesterday working on my book. Here is my little hoverer.

Not that I need any. I know I’m the last to post about this, but a recent study showed that rats would free a trapped cage mate, even when tempted away with chocolate, which apparently they love. On the page for the NPR story there’s a video, and you can see that the rat is clearly distressed that his friend is trapped and desperate to help.

SPOILER ALERT: he successfully frees his friend. I put that in because I got upset watching the video. The poor rat was so frantic, but he succeeds!

Of course now I’m reminded of all the experimentation we’ve done and are doing on these creatures, which just like us, are capable of love and caring and heroism.

More giant Christmas bulbs—WHICH COULD ATTACK AT ANY SECOND—up at Radio City. I have to get out and take a lot more Christmas pictures. I want to get up to the Met and the Frick. Maybe I’ll take a day off and walk uptown, taking pictures of Christmas sights along the way. Sigh. That sounds really nice.

I love New York City. I love that there is a line around the block for a Messiah Sing and that so many came it filled up to standing-room-only proportions! We sang the entire thing, it was great. Usually they skip choruses. Of course, I stumbled through a number of them, having only sung some of them once or twice. But it was great! Thank you, West Village Chorale!