Stacy Horn

It was “Clear the Shelters” day (animal shelters) on Saturday. This is the line outside the ASPCA where I work. More cats were adopted than dogs. I love both equally, but just saying. Cats. Number one pet in America. It was a great day, seeing so many animals get homes.

I can’t remember the last time I saw someone working with a view camera, let alone an 8 x 10 one! This was across the street from my apartment. Once again, I had a wave of nostalgia, about the days when I worked with a 4 x 5. I don’t want to go back, I love the ease of a small camera, but still. The level of attention required to work in this format was probably good for my brain and my artwork.

When I was very young, maybe toddler-aged, I had a nightmare about floating speakers in the sky. I remember it all these decades later. Not why the speakers were so terrifying, or what was coming out of them, maybe voices saying scary things? I only remember that the speakers were in the sky and they scared the hell out of me.

But every day when I go into the subcellar of the ASPCA, I see this speaker outside of the elevator, the same kind of speaker that frightened me so, and today I feel only affectionate nostalgia for it. I kinda want to steal it and hang it in my apartment.

Except a voice will probably come out it saying, “So we meet again.” [Evil chuckle] “Now, as I was saying …”

Don’t you miss a president who values science and scientists? (As if there weren’t a billion other reasons to miss Barack Obama.) But here is Obama with Thomas H. Haines, the co-author with Mindy Lewis, of the book, A Curious Life, which chronicles the story of how he went from an orphanage to the founder of the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, a medical school designed to bring in low-income and minority students. In other words, and I can’t believe I have to say this, someone who find solutions that elevate people instead of calling them less than human, and that address other problems of the world and life at the same time.

“A remarkable story of one man’s epic rise from humble roots to the highest echelons of science and academia. Not just a beautifully told tale of perseverance, courage, and altruism, but a love letter to the city that gave the author his shot and the fascinating artists, activists, and scientists in his circle.” — Ed Boland, Author of the New York Times Bestseller The Battle for Room 314

You can buy it here.

In my book Damnation Island I have a quote from a paper titled, “The Social Waste of a Great City,” by Louis L. Seaman. I’ve been meaning to research Louis Seaman to learn more about him. He seems like such a decent man. What he wrote about the criminal justice system in the 19th century is equally true today.

This is what kills me about the inequality and how unfair it is: We have always known. Here’s the section where Seaman appears in my book:

In 1886, Louis L. Seaman, the former Chief of Staff of Blackwell’s Island hospitals, called the affiliation between crime and poverty a “diabolic Malaprop,” insisting that “The relation between crime and poverty is no more essential than between crime and wealth.” Where were the standing armies of police to monitor the crimes of the elite? Worse, the poor were not corrected on Blackwell’s Island; they were destroyed. “No man or woman who is ‘sent up’ to these colonies ever returns to the city scot-free,” Seaman railed. “There is a lien, visible or hidden, upon his or her present or future, which too often proves stronger than the best purposes and fairest opportunities of social rehabilitation.”

But the system is designed, financed, shored up, and defended from reform by the very criminals who benefit from it. This is why Elizabeth Warren must become president. She understands this better than any other candidate and understands the system enough to begin to untangle the web that protects the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class.