Stacy Horn

Their rally wasn’t held on the block of the proposed community center, it was a block away, and closer to the WTC site. I went with someone from the Census. When she asked attendants where the mosque should be they were silent.

Said by one of the speakers at the rally: The sections of the Constitution about religion refer to Judeo-Christion religions only.

For the record, from George Washington, “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.” (I know the first argument would be that what happened on 9/11 was hardly decent, but we don’t persecute an entire religion based on the acts of an insane few.)

From Benjamin Franklin, “Even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.” Thomas Jefferson owned and studied the Koran. I could go on.

Heard at the rally: “They have a secret agenda.”

They chanted, “liberty!” without a hint of irony.

To the man below, what if people said, “Everything we need to know about Christianity we learned from the KKK, Oklahoma City, the Crusades, our history with American Indians …” (I could go on. For a long time.)

A moslem man who lost someone on 9/11 asked: Why can’t I visit the site, like you, and then walk a few blocks away and pray?

These are our neighbors people!!

– Go through science articles. Organize which scientists to contact.

– Find out: Do most people like to sing?

– Go to New York Historical Society for choral society archives.

– Make a list of questions for fellow choir members.

– Research musical hallucinations. Are they scary?

– Was there are thing in the 60’s about reviving early music? Find out.

– Find best articles/papers about conducting.

– Organize questions for John (the choir director). Did I get the Bernstein connection from John?

– Email Michael Jawer about hearing and feeling music in a distributed way throughout the body.

You get the idea. I found this picture in the New York Public Library’s image database. Thank you NYPL!

I took this just a few minutes ago, walking by in front of the Magnolia Bakery, the bakery made famous by Sex and the City. I usually work it so that I’m not on this side on the street, but sometimes the universe isn’t in my side. I have to squeeze through crowds like this to get home.

It kills me when I want to mail letters. People like that guy on the phone are usually on the other side, and I’ll walk up, letters in hand, and say “excuse me!” It always takes them a minute. Then you see the dawn of understanding. “Oh! This is a mailbox! You want to mail something! People still do that!”

It’s funny when that happens, actually.

There’s a big demonstration at the proposed Islamic community center tomorrow. I feel ill at the thought of it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to resist stopping by and taking pictures. I work just a couple of blocks away.

I know, this is a weird picture with that kind of post title, but I didn’t take any pictures yesterday (which is also weird). This is the same shot from my last post, but the full frame, showing not only the model but some of the people working on the shot.

Anyway, the explosion. I was woken up at 5am by a huge explosion. It rocked my building. I felt immediately sick, thinking about people being hurt, because it really sounded like a building had been blown up. I waited for the sirens. None came.

I looked out the window for smoke or some sign of what happened or where. Nothing. I decided maybe it was something less dramatic, like a manhole explosion and it was close to my building and that’s why it sounded so big to me. But there still should have been some kind of response. What the hell was it?? It was a really big boom.

Also, I never got back to sleep so now I’m tired.

There’s a photo shoot! This was on 5th Avenue. I was lugging birdseed (as per usual).

I’m trying to shake off my weekly feeling of day-off-remorse. It never fails. Every week I feel like I didn’t spend my days off in the most productive way possible. Even though at the library today I got twice as much done as I thought I was going to get done.