Stacy Horn

Last night my friend Molly and I were walking around after dinner when we passed by a Barnes & Noble and saw a sign for a reading and signing with Candace Bushnell, the author of Sex and the City. 

We went in, and the reading was over but Candace was still there signing books.

We stood and stared.  She looked great, by the way, I thought. The hair, the clothes.  After a few minutes I noticed that one woman had lined up behind us to get her book signed.  I stepped aside and explained that we weren’t online and she should move up.

Molly said, “Yeah, we’re just gawking.”

I’m enjoying HBO’s new show True Blood, mostly because of these two (and the actress who plays her grandmother).  I really believe the chemistry. But I also love a show that introduces me to new music, new to me that is.

I’ve already bought two songs because of this show: Bad Things by Jace Everett and Good Times by Charlie Robison.

Which reminds me, only because their last names are similar, I want to read Gilead and Home by Marilynne Robinson.  I have to add them to my “To Read” list.  Other books on my To Read list, which include a bunch of re-reads:

– Count of Monte Cristo.
– Alchemist.
– A Tale of Two Cities.
– Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
– The Master and Margarita.
– Under the Banner of Heaven.
– Blindness.
– The Life of Pi.
– Ender’s Game.
– Ararat.
– Grapes of Wrath.
– A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
– Altered Carbon, Spin.

One last picture from my trip to Governor’s Island yesterday.  So, The Emmys.  

Best moments:  Laura Linney’s comment calling the founding fathers community organizers. Tommy Smothers’s speech.  Paul Giamatti’s flusteredness.  Oh and Ricky Gervais, Ricky Gervais, Ricky Gervais.  As many people have already suggested, he should host next year.  And forever

Not so good moments:  Cutting off the director (writer?) of John Adams.  The opening. Danny Strong not winning for writing.  A certain actresses arms (I feel catty enough saying it, I can’t say who, but if you were watching you know who I’m talking about).  Josh Groban.

I’m back from Governor’s Island.  Such a pretty island, for something which has been limited to serving as a military facility for over 200 years!  I’ve always known it as a place which housed the Coast Guard, but different branches of the military have used it going all the way back to the Revolution. 

It wasn’t easy getting the pictures I wanted. And while I struggled to get this shot my battery died.

The door to this area was padlocked, but there was a small opening, just a few inches, so I did my best to balance my camera inside that small opening. I couldn’t really see enough to focus and there simply wasn’t a lot of room to position the camera the way I would have liked.

That said, this will do very nicely.

This was inside Castle William, which was also at one time a prison.

“Not a bad prison, as prisons go,” I heard a tour guide say in the distance.  

But maybe the Confederate prisoners during the Civil War would have disagreed.

This lovely paint-crumbling porch was the location of a 1988 summit between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President Ronald Reagan, and President-elect George Bush (the dad, who doesn’t seem so bad now after the son).

It was strange standing there imagining it.  I live in such a place of such history, such big history.  And my life is so comparatively small.  I’m not putting myself or my life down, it is what it is.  I am not deciding the fate of nations. But people who do are all around me.

It wasn’t hard to imagine the former elegance of this building or this island, the whole place is beautiful.  

But I wonder why this building and all those in this particular row were allowed to waste away like this.

I looked inside for hints of its former splendor, and again, it wasn’t all that hard to imagine. I loved the understated beauty of the building.

Of the whole place.

Like this building,

so graceful and refined.

It was one of the few

we were allowed in

that has been maintained.

The forgotten library.

I wish I had stood back further.

And waited for the people

to leave the porch.

But my days of waiting hours

for the perfect shot, however,

are over.

Besides, there were other things

I wanted to see.

And then,

soon enough,

I was ready …
 
To go home! My fabulous home!

Now what do I do?  I was trying to practice my choir pieces.  But Finney managed to not only cover my music, he got part of him on my keyboard as well.  Clearly this is a sign to get up and out of the house on this lovely day.  I was thinking of going to Governor’s Island.