Stacy Horn

I’ve posted about this on every single one of my blogs! I’m going to be on the Ed Norris Show this morning at 9:05, 105.7 in Baltimore, talking about psychics and crime solving. You can listen to it here, just click on Listen Live at the top right (thank you to Weston DeWalt).

I met Norris researching Restless Sleep, he was the first commanding officer of the NYPD’s Cold Case Squad. That’s him on left. He looks so different from when I talked to him. It’s funny, but I love being on the radio, it’s a lot of fun, but when I think of people actually listening to me I feel a little sick. I’m going to be talking about psychics and crime solving, so last night I re-read my chapter about psychics trying to help find a missing boy (it’s amazing how quickly you forget what you wrote) and spent some time researching psychics and crime solving in general.

Usually I get up at 6:30, but whenever I can work up the energy to get up sooner I never regret it. Just before pre-dawn is the best time of day. Almost magical. I just love the feel. I took this picture of the bird feeder the other morning when I got up earlier. It was so early I beat the birds! This is something I never see anymore, an unattended feeder that has seed in it.

I miss Polaroids. I think my first was a Swinger. “Meet the Swinger, Polaroid Swinger.” If you’re in my age-range you know the song. The memories are the borderline painful kind, they’re so good it hurts, and for the billionth time: why can’t there be time machines??

This is me biking on an island called Ile d’Yeu, off the western coast of France. I’m on the right. This was shot with my SX-70, one of my favorite polaroid cameras ever. I’m not sure of the year, but it was sometime in the early 1980’s. (More below.)

After climbing the stairs to the top of Notre Dame. God did I love Paris. (More below.)

When I taught at NYU, (early 1990’s) at the beginning of every semester I had my students take pictures of each other using my polaroid camera. By then I was using a Spectra. I did this because it was a nice ice breaker for them, and also because I can’t remember names (I had them write their names on their pictures).

After they’d take the picture they would always shake them. This was such a universal gesture it was in OutKast’s song Hey Ya, “shake it, shake it like a Polaroid Picture.” But when I asked them why they were shaking the pictures they never knew why.

For those of you who didn’t know why you shook your polaroid pictures, it used to be when the picture came out you had to wipe them down with a fixer. We shook them to make them dry faster. I loved that people continued to shake them longer after there was any need.

This is me and my mom in my apartment on 11th Street after I got home from Paris (which she and my step-father paid for). While I was gone she decorated my apartment for me as a surprise. I had recently separated from my husband and had moved into my own apartment with almost no furniture. Look at all the flowers. I learned about the joy of filling a place with flowers from her. Look at the red phone! And ashtrays! I’m an ex-smoker. (More below.)

What an awful haircut. What was I thinking? I still have the coffee table, and the vase, and that rug although it’s really seen better days, and that cow painting, which was painted by my former mother-in-law (who I adored) Jean Zaleski.

I shot this yesterday afternoon on Perry Street. The signs said it was a shoot for “Tommy.” They’d been setting this up for a couple of days. They installed this … rail? along Perry Street so the camera could follow these boys as they played hockey down the street. Doesn’t that look fun? I could see this being a great scene in a movie, kids playing hockey down the streets of NYC.

I want to learn how to skate, but I’m such a fall-er.

So. I’m going to drink my coffee and answer email. I am WAY behind. If I haven’t answered your email I’m sorry. It got away from me.

Movies I’ve seen recently: District 9 (good, but upsetting, hard to watch for me, but I’m a wuss) and 500 Days of Summer (very sweet).

TV shows I’m watching: I can’t stop watching Warehouse 13 because the leads are so charming, but it’s never been as good as the premiere. They need better scripts.

Project Runway!! Tim Gunn is back in our lives!! YAY!! Oh Tim. We’ve missed you so.

The Empire State Building from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You can kinda tell how hot it was, can’t you? The Empire State Building looks positively steamy. (More below.)

On the train down to DC yesterday I read the first of the Robert Nathan books I bought recently. Nathan is the author of Portrait of Jennie and The Bishop’s Wife, which were made into movies. The one I read yesterday was But Gently Day. It was a sweet, quick read. It’s about an Army guy who is heading home after serving in the South Pacific and he finds himself back in time, meeting his great-grandparents just after the Civil War. I wouldn’t say it was a great book, but it made me feel … good. And I loved the barely there character of the chaplain, who wasn’t so chaplain-y, he was more thoughtful. Here’s one exchange, when the local reverend, Dr. Gilpin, pays a call, and he and the chaplain have a talk.

“Shall we forgive the Democrats for their slanderous attack upon the Administration?”
“It will soon be forgotten,” said the chaplain.
“Never,” said Dr. Gilpin stoutly.

And of course it was and this will always be true. I get so disheartened by the relentless poisonousness from the Republicans, but I guess politics was and always will be like this. Then there was this exchange.

Dr. Gilpin cleared his throat. “At least,” he said drily, “you do not ask us to love the Mormons, or the Jews.”
“You will need to do that, also,” said the chaplain.

This was written in 1943.  That seems off to me. Shouldn’t there have been more sensitivity then? Also, I think I might be representing the book as being more simple than it is. It really did make me feel somewhat at peace reading it. He achieves that sense of enchantment that I just love, and it makes me feel transported.

There are some things that were referred to that I want to look up. For instance, he talks about something called the Pattenburg Massacare. A quick google search only turned up one reference, from an old New York State newspaper. “Two more white prisoners have been identified in the Pattenburg Massacre investigation as having firearms in their hands.” Okay, the New York Times referred to it as the Pattenburg Riot. On Sept. 21, 1872, in Pattenburg, NJ, a mob of Irish men went after a bunch of black laborers and murdered three of them. This looks like an interesting story to research.

I worked on a number of things this week that were difficult to do so I’m calling today Reward Day. I still have to do some work, but only fun work, like updating my Unbelievable blog, which I love. So, I’m off to celebrate Reward Day! Bye!