Stacy Horn

I have been just so plain miserable lately I hardly recognize myself. I went to the library today, because I love going to the library and I thought it would cheer me up. But I got motion sickness from the microfilm machines. It happens sometimes. I had to go home.

So, I’m back at home on a rainy day, trying to amuse myself. This is the tiny piano I bought to help find the trickier notes in the more difficult pieces my choir performs. It’s too small to play like a piano and there aren’t enough keys, but here is a tiny part of the piece that was always my favorite to play, Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique. Normally, it should be played like a bat out of hell, but I haven’t played in many, many, MANY years so my bat-out-of-hell tempo playing abilities are rusty.

Someone posted in an Amazon review of my book, Waiting for My Cats to Die, that by the time they got to the end of the book they wanted me to die. Okay, okay. DON’T RUSH ME. Meanwhile, here is yet another short video of Finney, who is trying to help the process along. (Sorry. I keep meaning to make videos of something other than my cats.)

Someone I know married a military guy and wrote, “I can identify a Blackhawk, Apache or Chinook helicopter by the sound of the blades slicing the air overhead.” (Lily Burana, great writer, that was in an op-ed she wrote.)

I’m so jealous! I want to be able to do that. What a cool skill. No fair. In the circles I travel, it’s very unusual for someone to marry into the military, so everything is very exotic to me. Especially being able to do stuff like that. Except now I’m remembering that New Yorker piece I read, about all the research since WWI into the effects of war upon soldiers. I wish I had saved that. Our soliders are paying a steep price. We need to be taking better care of them when they come home. Damnit. I have to get a hold of that piece so people know what I’m talking about.

We were talking on Echo about empire waists and I told the story of picking a wedding dress, which I didn’t like, but I got married in the days when all wedding dresses were ugly so I had no expectations, really. Except they made an ugly dress ever worse by changing it to an empire waist! At the fitting the waist was at my waist, where I wanted it. It was too late to change it, so I went down the aisle feeling unattractive, and that was that. Actually, it was not the end of the world. I had a good time as you can see from this picture of me and Adrienne, already pretty well toasted.

But now that I look at it, it’s not at the waist OR an empire waist. It’s just completely botched and uneven. I want my money back. Is it too late to sue?

Here’s another view of the worst wedding dress of all time, after Princess Diana’s, of course. This is me and my mother.

I went uptown yesterday to interview the daughter and granddaughter of Eileen Garrett, a medium I’m writing about. I came across this tableau at Abercrombie & Fitch on Fifth Avenue. This guy is store decoration. They are paying him to stand there with his shirt off.

I like Fifth Avenue in the 50’s and above. The stately feel of the buildings, even if what’s going on inside is not quite so elegant. I’ve worked at Tiffany’s twice (Tiffany’s is at 57th and 5th). Once when I first moved back to New York, and again a little after starting Echo, (an online service I created in 1989). I was out of money and I needed a job that didn’t carry a lot of responsiblity. I used to call the modems from the Elsa Peretti counter where I worked to make sure they were all still answering. If they didn’t, I’d say “excuse me, I have to use the ladies room,” then run downtown, fix the problem, and come back up. Needless to say, it didn’t work out between Tiffany’s and me, although they were very polite about it.

I think I told that story in Waiting for My Cats to Die. Great. I’ve become one of those people who tells stories over and over again.