Stacy Horn

Can I just say I always loved clothes likes this, way before Mad Men? This was in the window at Lord & Taylor’s.

The holiday Fourth of July weekend is putting me in such a good mood, even though I’ll probably work most of the weekend. I’ve finally accepted that laying around on the couch all day is never as fun as it sounds (except on occasion). I’m much happier puttering. Besides, as long as you’re doing work you enjoy, when you work on a holiday, it still feels like a holiday.

Oh, and the fireworks are on the west side again this year!! Maybe I’ll make a movie of the people and fireworks along the Hudson.

The judges sent home the wrong dancer. Ashley is one of my favorites, but her dance for her life routine was completely lackluster, it had such a casual feel to it and not like someone who was fighting to stay in the competition. Caitlynn’s was kinda clunky and I have to say a bit stumbling and awkward, her rhythm was off. While Miranda’s was breathtaking and amazing. That girl really was dancing for her life and she was stunning. Why on earth did they send her home??

The guys were a harder call. Each routine was stellar. I personally find Robert a little annoying, and I feel bad saying that because he’s obviously a sweet guy, so sending him home was the lesser of three evils for me, but that was really an impossible decision. They were all so great. But Robert was the most limited, perhaps. Chris seems more able to … expand.

I was writing on the river last night and was treated to this beautiful dancer practicing on the pier.

INSANE. I went swimming in the outdoor pool yesterday and it was chaos! No lanes blocked off for lap swimming, kids all over the place who were completely oblivious to those around them, which is fine, I remember being a kid in a pool. But I basically had to zig zag around them, and still they kept crashing into me. The solution is to go at kid-adverse hours, which is whenever the pool opens, 7am-ish? Ugh. I loved swimming outside though, the inside pool seems so dreary in comparison.

This was the line for the evening hours (4 – 7pm, I think). It looks like there might be more kids waiting to get into the pool than could comfortably fit. I wonder if there’s a time limit or something? Okay, this is a downside to city life, the lack of swimming options. I feel bad that there isn’t a giant pool for these kids or more pools, or something.

A tequila truck? Really? I went insane my one night of drinking tequila and I’ve been terrified of it ever since. Shudder. Seriously though, how can this be legal?

Before I forget, there was some great, great writing on the tv show Burn Notice this week. One of the characters, Michael’s mother, mocks the idea of closure. She said something like, “I don’t buy it. When someone blasts a hole in your life it tends to stay open.” The truth of it, I could have cried with relief! I think sometimes the best you can do is do your best to walk around and avoid those holes.

My pool opens today and they still haven’t posted what the hours are. I’m going to try to swim today. Thing I’m afraid about (yes fear, not concern, it’s my fall-back reaction, how do I get through my life? I don’t know): the water will be too cold, there won’t be lanes for lap swimming, they will reinstitute “family hours” and “family hours” will be all the normal waking hours and I can only swim between 5:35am and 5:55am or from 11:45 pm to midnight, or the pool will be crowded with people who make swimming impossible.

I’m on a quest to find out something about a coal miner named Gwilym Amos. In 1919, he started a singing society named the Orpheus Glee Club, he retired in 1924 or 1928 (there are conflicting reports) he worked at the Lehigh & Wiles-Barre Coal Company, and he died on May 14, 1929.

I found a Welsh newspaper called The Druid which the New York Public Library got for me via interlibrary loan, but we didn’t get all the reels, we only got up to 1925 and so far I haven’t managed to uncover anything that gives me a sense of who he was. Mystery man! Well, mystery man, I’m going to keep looking. There’s got to be something to a man who works in the mines, then founds a choral society that The Druid barely deigned to notice (while at the same time reporting about other singing groups in every paper) and then nurtures that choral society into one of the best singing groups in the country, winning all the big singing contests, and finally making it onto the front page of The Druid.

This is New York City. Can you believe it?? Some lucky person (or persons) lives here. Except now I forget where I took this exactly. Somewhere in my neighborhood, 7th Avenue-ish.