Stacy Horn

My friend Jonathan Hayes has a new book out called A Hard Death. Jonathan is a senior medical examiner at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and you can read more about him here. Fascinating guy, really. A guy whose life is basically a thriller writes thrillers.

About A Hard Death from Jonathan’s website:

Jenner, the brilliant forensic pathologist hero of Precious Blood, has survived the horrific final denouement of the Inquisitor serial killings, but not the political fall-out. His medical license suspended, Jenner finds himself banished from New York to Douglas County in coastal Florida, and settles in to work as a Medical Examiner in the balmy seaside resort of Port Fontaine.

But nothing in Douglas is as it seems. First, Jenner’s former mentor is found savagely murdered, then an anonymous call in the middle of the night leads Jenner to a nightmarish discovery in the Everglades. He finds traces of a shadowy criminal conspiracy, and soon learns that he can trust no one.With his life on the line, Jenner refuses to walk away and let his friend’s murder go unpunished. The result is an explosive, edge-of-the-seat thriller in the tradition of Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs.

Publisher’s Weekly says his main character “emerges as a sufficiently flawed yet empathetic hero.”

And I’m sorry about the “nut jobs,” but come on. I am enjoying the response to the end of the world predictions. Like the CDC’s Zombie Apocalypse page [the page I linked to is gone]. I can’t imagine the parties that are going to happen in the city this weekend. I should go out with a camera and walk around.

Finney woke me up last night, but I sometimes catch the best tv when I can’t sleep. I watched a surprisingly captivating documentary about Benazir Bhutto recently. Last night I learned about whaling. But here’s what got me. They had a section about Melville’s book Moby Dick, which I’ve never read by the way (and my friends insist I would love it). The critics panned it, it bombed, and by 1866 Melville’s writing career was over. He died in 1891, while still working in the customs office.

How did Moby Dick go from no one reading it after it was published in 1851 to everyone’s top ten list today? The Wikipedia entry kinda explains it. His publisher reprinted it along with his other books a year after he died, so that put it out there again, people could take a second look, and a few people did, and so on.

But doesn’t that make you wonder how many Moby Dicks disappeared forever, without ever being discovered for the masterpieces they were?

The question does not engage Finney. You needn’t look so complacent little furball. We know you’re not going anywhere on Saturday. (Because he’s evil.)

Like I didn’t know it already, but we (humans) are insane. A lot of people are taking this whole judgement day thing very seriously, apparently. For instance, I’m hearing stories of people who took the week off, to what? Prepare? To pack for Heaven? Insane.

As long as we’re identifying flowers, what is this in the picture below? From a distance it looked fungus (very pretty fungus) growing up this tree, up close it looks like azaleas, but it’s a tree, so it can’t be azaleas, right? So what is this?

Three things that made me happy yesterday:

Reading Glamour at the doctor’s office, those moments on the subway when I remembered not hating myself so much, meditating with my monthly group.

I think I misunderstood the happiness formula. When the guy who gave the TED lecture said note three things that made you happy and (stupid word usage alert) “journal” about them—I think that is supposed to be one thing, note them and write them down. I don’t think I need to write three things down and also expand on them in a journal entry. One happy thing from yesterday: that guy holding up the judgement day sign below? He’s probably crazy.

But my real happy things from yesterday were:

The smell of the rain, a coupon for free cat treats, getting out of the focus group early.

I watched a TED talk about happiness yesterday. I’ve already forgotten the guy’s name but here are the things he suggests doing every day for 21 days in order to be happy.

– Note three new things that made you happy. I already do this. Here is my list from yesterday: Feeding the cats treats, John making the same points I did, not getting caught in the rain. I have a document on my desktop and it just takes a few seconds to update it every day.
– Write about one of them. I do this, but not daily. I guess I could do this here, on my blog.
– Exercise. I do this every other day, but I have been meaning to up the ante.
– Meditate. I already do this.
– One random act of kindness per day, if only a nice email. I’m sorry to say that of all the things on the list, this is the one I do the most sporadically.

The guy said to do it for 21 days and I started yesterday. I will report back on June 5th and let you know how it worked.

Happy thing: For the past year I’ve had this ongoing Q&A with the director of my choir, and he made some points in his last set of answers that were the same as some points I had already made. It wasn’t that they were earth-shattering or brilliant points, it just feels good to notice the same things as another human being. It’s that—”Ohmygod, did you see that??” “Oh yeah. I saw that.”—feeling.

Pretty flowers on 11th Street. What are these?