Stacy Horn

It’s not in great shape, but when I walked by I thought, “I’d like to live in the top two floors.”

My cat Bleeck. He’s a good cat. He likes to curl up with me, but almost every time he does either Bodhi or Bali will come flying up to take that spot, even though they don’t really want it and they will jump down seconds after they’ve replaced him. Bastards.

I haven’t put up a “Dress I Can’t Possess” post in a while. Quick backstory: I live in a neighborhood with very expensive clothing shops. I frequently pass by windows with lovely things I can’t afford. Mostly it’s fine because I’m not really very acquisitive, but I like this dress! What makes it okay is I’d really have no place to wear this.

Twenty-five years ago yesterday, we all watched OJ in the white Bronco. People on Echo watched and commented on it live, as the drama unfolded.

It begins (edited down a little) …

Item 550 17-JUN-94 22:31 Jonathan Hayes
That’s Life in the Inferno of Postmodernity!

550:1) Jonathan Hayes 17-JUN-94 22:32

This is incredible.

550:2) Ann 17-JUN-94 22:33

It’s very sad.

550:3) doktor dorje 17-JUN-94 22:33

They are reading his letter, psychoanalyzing him, and following him in a copter on 1010 WINS.

550:4) Ann 17-JUN-94 22:34

Don’t you think they’ll run out of gas soon?

550:7) Jonathan Hayes 17-JUN-94 22:36

I think it fascinating that this banal image, a white car moving down an empty road, should be so riveting.

550:8) Twang 17-JUN-94 22:36

You’re right Jaze — this is the I of PM at its most bizarre and fascinating…This hero is self-destructing live on CNN…

I keep thinking of Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot on Sunday morning tv.

550:9) Jonathan Hayes 17-JUN-94 22:36

It’s like foreplay.

550:10) Twang 17-JUN-94 22:37

Great shot right now on CNN — you can almost see into the car…
Just heard they have a hostage negotiator standing by.

550:12) Jonathan Hayes 17-JUN-94 22:38

The radio is now nothing but a series of highway numbers and off ramps and intersections.

550:13) Twang 17-JUN-94 22:38

Interesting tidbit: they traced him via a call he made on the car phone.

550:15) Ann 17-JUN-94 22:40

I think he’s sort of heroic now, in a sad way. I mean most people watching will be so pleased if he gets to his mothers house and it will seem a heroic act. I haven’t expressed myself right. this is so bizarre. I wish he had email in the car.

550:17) Jonathan Hayes 17-JUN-94 22:41

No, Ann, most people are wanting him to:

A) Shoot himself
B) Die in a fiery crash like in a movie
C) Be shot by the Police.

If he’s shot by the Police, THEN he’ll be a hero.

———————

You can read the whole thing here. It’s a snapshot of history. Remember, this was 1994.

This chapter was originally supposed to be the beginning of my book Damnation Island, but my publisher thought it was too grim. Full disclosure, it is grim. The two people executed were young, and the woman, like most women who ended up executed at the time, was African American.

Quick backstory: Shortly after buying Blackwell’s Island in order to build humane institutions for the poor, sick and criminal, the City of New York scheduled a double hanging.

Everyone wanted to avoid the gridlock conditions that choked the City that crisp spring day in 1824, when roughly a third of the entire population of Manhattan crammed into Peter Stuyvesant’s farm at Second Avenue and 13th Street. Even those who would have described themselves as good, or charitable, swarmed the field to see John Johnson hang. Johnson knew what he was in for. It could take him up to twenty minutes to die, and he was only too aware that he was likely going to feel every second of it. The doctor he’d begged for something to ease his suffering had been pitiless, refusing to provide any form of medicinal comfort. The last thing Johnson saw before his four foot drop into eternity, with clear eyes and nothing to mute the terror or the pain, was the “solid mass of living flesh—men, women and children, of all colors and descriptions” who’d come to watch.

Afterwards, Stuyvesant demanded compensation for the damages to his property. The following year, only five days before sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with their families, the masses came together again. Once more a wave of humanity surged towards the sight of one man violently squirming as the weight of his own body was used against him, and not even the 7th Regiment of the New York Militia, who’d been called in to preserve order, could quiet the viewing frenzy.

To read the whole chapter you can download a pdf: Blackwell’s Island Hanging

A lighthouse was later built on the site of the hanging.