Stacy Horn

Well, the few modest plans I had for today just did not work out.

First. My pampering thing (I always do a pampering thing) was to get my hair washed and blown dry, but the girl who washed my hair couldn’t get me out of the chair fast enough and the girl who blew it dry was actually quite nice, but distracted, chatting with others, took a phone call, stopped to sign for a package and took a couple of minutes, and the whole thing just did not have the right feel. I know, hardly the end of the world. I swear I moved on!

Second. People kept bashing into me on the street. I really can’t get over the rudeness of New Yorkers. We really suck sometimes. But since it kept happening to me I must be doing something to invite this. I think I might have had an emotional “kick me” sign on today.

Honestly, I forget what else went wrong, but I decided to pack it in and go to City Bakery and stock up on their great food and go home and watch movies. But City Bakery had nothing left when I got there, and the movies I downloaded aren’t any good. I am doing this post, for instance, instead of watching Jumper, which didn’t grab me. Oh, I was going to watch The Amazing Colossal Man for a nice nostalgia rush, but the download didn’t work.

I’m going to go look for a nice Denzel Washington movie to watch. What can go wrong with watching Denzel for a while?

The one good thing from today are all the nice birthday messages I got (loved the ecard Karen and family). I got lots of birthday email and calls and posts on my Facebook page and Echo. And these new tops from Anthropologie. This second one is much cuter than it looks in this shot, and I prefer it without the belt.

I took the Fung Wah bus to Cambridge and back yesterday, and took pictures of the two places where I lived. Here is my former apartment on Chatham Street … and my apartment on Harvard Street follows below.

I couldn’t remember with certainty which floor I lived on. BECAUSE I’M OLD.

Something called the World Science Festival is going on in New York. It started last night and I went to one of their events. This one began with a screening of a movie that was made by indie musician Mark Oliver Everett about his father, physicist Hugh Everett, who came up with the theory of parallel worlds. The film was titled Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives. Afterwards there was a talk with Mark and physicists Michio Kaku, Max Tegmark, and another physicist who acted as moderator, Brian Cox.

Before I forget, this movie is going to be on PBS in the Fall. See it. It’s funny, I mean really funny, and sweet, and you will learn about physics in a completely painless way. I finally got one thing I have been trying to get for years.

Anyway, I’m so excited now. Loved this subject. The main room filled up and so they put some of us (me, alas) in a room upstairs and we watched via closed circuit TV. I didn’t get a chance to ask a question and I was DYING to. I’m going to try emailing Max Tegmark and hope that he doesn’t ignore me. I know he won’t be thrilled by my question, but I’m going to give it a shot. I want to ask if parallel worlds could explain the effects the Duke guys found. The answers Tegmark and Kaku gave to other questions seemed to indicate it was possible. “No matter how big something is it can be in two places,” is something Tegmark said. He seems to be saying that what they were talking about doesn’t only occur sub-atomically. When asked about communication between universes the answer from Kaku gave seemed to be: maybe someday, by very advanced civilizations.

I just worry that Tegmark will put me in the same category as this woman who asked about talking to dead people. She may have been a very nice person, and maybe she was just nervous, but she asked an ill-formed, not at all thought-out question in a crazy person way and no one wanted to respond to her. Kaku actually gave her a great answer. He seems like a nice man. He answered her using an example from the beginning of the Q&A, where he had said in another universe Elvis is alive. (Meaning, in another universe, Elvis made healthier choices with his life, didn’t OD, etc.) If it were possible to communicate with the Elvis in another universe, he pointed out, you wouldn’t be talking to the ghost of Elvis, you’d be talking to a live Elvis. In other words, forget about communicating with your dead mother, see if you can find your live mother in a parallel world. (Except you may not exist in that parallel world so she wouldn’t know you!) Not that he was encouraging her. Except, as crazy as that sounds, based on their previous answers, it could be possible.

So next week is my birthday!

And this haunts me. When longing for peace I tell myself that in order to have it I have to accept that as I check off things from my to-do list, I will always be adding things, and that won’t end until I’m dead. That said, I love checking things off my to-do list.

I’m meeting with a lawyer at my publisher today. I enjoy discussing legal issues, they’re like fun puzzles, but I’m sure that I will walk out of that meeting with a longer list of things to do. And the list of things to do with this book is already rather large. You’re not done when you finish the book.

Next comes: getting people to buy it. I don’t enjoy this part. It feels unseemly at times, although it does have its good moments. I’ve started a marketing plan. Here are some of the items from that to-do list:

– Get pitches ready for monthly mags by September. “Is God a Ghost?” (Maybe use that theme, or one like it, for a panel or presentation.)
– Put together list of fun events, ie, seances, EVP recording at a haunted house, etc.
– Write pitch for a local haunted house story.
– Come up with a couple of lectures/presentations.
– Put together a list of possible colleges (and other organizations, societies, etc.) who might be interested in a lecture or panel.
– Create Unbelievable blog.
– Come up with ideas for YouTube video.
– Explore how to use Facebook to promote book. And Twitter.
– Look into Adsense.

The picture is of J.B. Rhine, the head of the Duke Parapsychology Lab. He was a handsome, alternately intense/sweet man.

I’ve reached that time of life. I have friends who have sons in rock bands. Steven Levy and Teresa Carpenter’s son Andrew is a singer and the bass guitarist for a band called Great Jones Street and they played at Don Hill’s this past weekend. Andrew is the one in the middle in a tie. They were so great and it was a lot of fun. The rest of the band members are Daniel Bernstein, lead guitar, Alex Lundberg, guitar and vocals, and Jareb Gleckel on the drums. All very talented. And cute.

My next door neighbor Beth and her son Malique were nice enough to join me, and since we were already out and about we went to a late show of the new Indiana Jones movie. Kind of a perfect holiday weekend night. I took a great picture of Teresa, and Holly, the mother of the guitarist on the right, but I didn’t think to ask them if I could post it here and generally I like to err on the side of caution with this blog, so my friends and I can live together in cyberspace in peace and harmony!

[Video removed because the link no longer works.]