Stacy Horn

I’m back home and someone is shooting a movie or a TV show in my neighborhood. This happens on a fairly regular basis. Sometimes the crews are rude, and I fantasize about ruining their shot, but never do. Sometimes they are nice. The Sex and the City people were always nice.

But this gives you an idea
of what it looks like.
Trucks of equipment up
and down the street,
then stands, lights, and
cables up and down
the sidewalk. There’s
always a table of crappy
looking food called the crafts
table. I think that’s
what they call it.
My mind is going.

These are my grandparents, Peter and Midge. I never ever, EVER saw this side of them. My grandfather was a judge, who was mostly stern, although not unkind, and my grandmother was a sweet, but very proper lady, and I certainly never saw her up in the air with her hair down.

Where did this couple go by the time I came along??

I had a great time, and met some really wonderful people last night. I have the best family! I left my camera up in my room, but hopefully someone else took pictures and will send me copies. For now, here is a poem by Shelley about the passage of time. It’s called Ozymandias.

It’s a warning. Hoist your loved ones into the sky while you can!!

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

I’m going to a big family reunion in Connecticut tomorrow. It’s happening because I saw my cousins at my cousin Debbie’s birthday party, but didn’t have a chance to talk to everyone. I said we should get together for lunch or something and it became this big weekend thing, with all these relatives I didn’t even know existed! Which is great, it will be fun, but I bet I don’t get a chance to talk to all my cousins again.

That’s Debbie
on the
bottom left.

There are pet shops all over the place where I live and everyday I torture myself by going to look at the puppies. I would love to have a dog. But I live on the top floor of a walk-up and between that and the cats, I don’t think it would be a good idea. So, instead I make myself miserable by looking at all the cuteness that I can never possess. This is a window full of puggles on 6th Avenue.

Sigh. Well, today I’m going out to Long Island to do one of my most favorite things in the world. I’m going to visit a police warehouse to see what they’ve been storing since 1925.

We’ve started rehearsals for the holiday concert. Among other pieces we’re doing this lovely one I’ve never heard before called Totus Tuus by Henryk Mikolaj Goreckil. It was written for Pope John Paul II, who said this prayer after he was shot:

Totus tuus sum, Maria, (I am completely yours, Mary)
Mater nostri Redemptoris, (Mother of our Redeemer)
Virgo Dei, Virgo pia, (Virgin Mother of God, blessed virgin)
Mater mundi Salvatoris, (Mother of the world’s Savior)
Totus tuus sum, Maria! (I am completely yours, Mary!)

Awww. The gorgeous guy in this photograph is Robert Gardner, the baritone I gushed about who sang Ellijah for us last season. HE’S BACK. Well, he will be. He’s going to sing the baritone solo in a Vaughan Williams piece we’re doing called *Fantasia on Christmas Carols. Buy your tickets now. You’ll thank me, I promise. From my earlier post about him: “I don’t think I exaggerate when I say every man and woman in the choir had a crush on him — you had to have been there, you would have developed a crush on him too, trust me.”

*It’s pronounced FanTAYsia, but I hear FawnTahSEEa in my head whenever it’s said, for some reason. I’m not sure where that pronunciation came from. I’ll bet when I was 12-years-old I decided that way sounded cooler.