Stacy Horn

Whenever I walk through Fort Tryon Park I always think how lovely it would be to live here.
There’s a gatehouse which is one of only two structures which remain from when it was all Cornelius King Garrison Billings’s estate. It’s my fantasy home. Untapped Cities gives us a peek inside. The enchanting park however, was built by John D. Rockefeller Jr., who took over the property when Billings decided to move back to the city.

Doesn’t this look like a heavenly place to live?

This is a fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan, and also up at the Cloisters (which is part of the Met). These pictures were taken at the Cloisters. I wasn’t thrilled with how most of my pictures came out, but these are acceptable!

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While I didn’t love this shot, I’m including it so you can see how wonderfully they arranged this exhibit. All the mannequins and the clothes are positioned around the museum instead of all in one room. Here is one. Below it is a shot I took of the exact same spot in 2013.

Here is the same spot in 2013 when it was set up for the Forty Part Motet exhibit.

Every year the West Village Chorale puts together a season of Summer Sings (this is what choral people do when their choirs are off for the summer). Last week I went to the one conducted by John Maclay, the choral director of my own choir, the Choral Society of Grace Church. We sang the Brahms Requiem. It’s beautiful, as all requiems are. They seem to bring out the best in the composers who write them. But I always remember singing this with my choir after my cat Veets died. One section really seemed to evoke how I felt and I wrote “Veets Theme” in my score. Here it is, written 18 years ago, followed by a picture from last week’s sing.

I used to drum with this band. We’d play every weekend at S.O.B’s and at every parade. It was great fun!! But I got tired of the late nights. I could really participate in gigs like this though. Except I’m very rusty. I’d have to get back into drumming shape.

Anyone with cats will recognize the following scenario. It’s from my book Waiting For My Cats to Die, and it was written about my cats at the time, Veets and Beamers.

6:30AM. Beamers jumps up on my chest and wakes me up.
6:33AM. Veets bats my face with a paw, nails extended.
6:38AM. Beams sits behind my head and starts treadling.
6:43AM. Beamers jumps up on my chest again.
6:44AM. Beamers drools on my arm.
6:49AM. One of them digs, continuously, for five minutes straight, in the kitty litter.
6:49AM. I can smell it.
6:50AM. Beamers jumps up on the coffee table, lands on a magazine, and slides off the other
side.
6:52AM. Veets jumps on my chest from across the livingroom floor.
6:53AM. I think I slept for a minute.
6:54AM. Veets jumps on my chest, misses, digs his nails into my chest to stop from falling, falls anyway, dragging his nails down my chest.
6:55AM. Veets starts eating from the garbage. I try to remember if I threw out anything poisonous.
6:56 AM. Beamers picks up a ping pong ball and cries with the ping pong ball stuck in his mouth and I think it’s because it’s too big for his mouth and he’s crying for me to help him get it out before he chokes to death and I have to rush him to the hospital but then he drops it.
6:57AM. Veets and Beams charge up to my desk. (Pigeon in the window.)
6:57AM. I watch them because what if they get cut to ribbons crashing through the window to get the pigeon and I have to rush them to the hospital.
6:59AM. Veets starts gagging. I watch him to see if it’s just a furball or something worse and I have to rush him to the hospital but it turns out to be a furball. “Gack. Gack. Gack.” (Their furball throwing-up noise.)
6:59AM. Beams starts eating the leaves from a plant, which makes him vomit.
6:59AM. I push him away from the plant.
6:59AM. Now Veets is eating a leaf.
7:00AM. When is someone going to love me who isn’t a cat? I get up.

This is a picture of Bali when he was a kitten, sitting in a dish on my shelf. To his left is a picture of Veets and Beams, and to his right is a picture of Veets. Yes, I am insane.