Stacy Horn

Thank God for them. I’ve been practically every day this week, and I have to run over to my local branch (Jefferson Market) to pick up a couple of books that have come in. What a great idea libraries were. Whose idea was it?

This is the main one at 42nd Street.

Two of them anyway. I’m sure I posted them before, I use them a lot. This first one is from the TV show Angel:

Angel: Well, I guess I kinda worked it out. If there’s no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. ‘Cause that’s all there is. What we do. Now. Today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward, and finally just to beat the other guy, but I never got it. 
Kate: And now you do? 
Angel: Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because, I don’t think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there’s no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world. 

This second one came from, of all things, a TV movie about alien abduction called Taken. I’d been dumped months before by the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, and I was sitting on my couch in a stupor, realizing that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.  I just wasn’t getting over it. Then this TV movie came on and the main character said:

“We’re all standing on the edge of a cliff.  All the time, every day.  A cliff we’re all going over.  Our choice isn’t about that.  Our choice is about whether we want to go kicking and screaming or whether we might want to open our eyes and our hearts to what happens once we start to fall.”

I started to feel better in that moment. Embrace the fall.

Christmas trees I passed by on my way home yesterday.

Which means I can write all day and night. Or, all day at least. Okay, maybe for a minute before I watch Buffy reruns until I pass out. No, shut up! Don’t do that!!

I am this close to giving up on our government. All of them. It’s just beyond insane. Not repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Come on. Is this how you want to be remembered by history? You do know you’re like the guys fighting until the bitter end to keep slavery? You are George Wallace standing in front the school house doors, preventing black children from entering. You threw things at the women marching around the country demanding the right to vote. And refusing to vote on the 9/11 health bill because giving tax breaks to those who are doing better than any of us is your priority? How did we get here? And where is your Christmas spirit??

I want every one of you to watch every version of A Christmas Carol repeatedly until you understand the message.

Light pretty. (I took this walking home from the library the other day.)

I’m going back up to the library this afternoon, I forgot a few things. (Ah, aging.) I took this picture of one of the windows my friends Marianne Petit and Matthew Belanger did for the library branch across the street, at 40th and 5th. Information about their windows follows the picture. (Yeah, that’s me. Look how long my fingers are, what a freak.)

Ada’s Shop explores the world and work of Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), the daughter of Lord Byron, who is recognized today as the first computer programmer. If you bring your phone you can listen to excerpts from her notes and correspondence with Charles Babbage as well as activate things that spin.

Ada’s Shop will be up from December 1st, 2010 through January 3rd, 2011 and is on view both day and night. There will be an artist dialog on Saturday December 18th at 2:30 pm.

The video is by Daniel Houghton and it’s for the song Third of Life from the band A Weather. The album is called Everyday Balloons. I just watched it again. Almost cried.