Sitting on my desk, just waiting for my signature, is the contract for my next book! I'll be writing about ghosts, among other things. I can't get over the fact that I get to devote the next few years of my life to something so ridiculously interesting. I haven't had an easy life, but I can't complain about my career luck.
This is a picture of the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Harlem (at the end of the road, at the top of the hill). First, can you believe that's Manhattan?? Ghosts have been haunting this mansion since it was built in 1765, and I will tell the story of this house in my next book. Originally, I planned to make the Mansion the focus of the book, but I've changed my mind. I will include the story, it's just too good to pass up, but a better idea came up (I'll talk about that idea in a couple of months).
Since I watch TV 24 hours a day, I'm breaking down and buying an HDTV. I think. The huge, crt TVs still have the best picture quality, so I think I'm going to go for the one above. It's a Panasonic CT30WX15 (30") and it weighs 140 pounds. And it's $750, not counting what I will have to pay the delivery men to carry it up to the top floor of a five story walk-up. There will have to be some apartment re-arranging to fit it. I'll take before and after shots.
Speaking of TV, I'm trying to think if any of the news show have blown me away yet. Thinking ... thinking ... I don't think so. Not yet.
Someone recently asked me to send them snapshots of some of the things I saved from my volunteer experience down at the Trade Center. I thought I'd put them up here, too.
I saved a lot of children's drawings. This is one of my favorites.
Crosses made from the steel of the World Trade Center, and a piece of glass
from the windows.
Hats and shirts and sweatshirts -- getting dusty!
This is a box of all sorts of stuff, cards and letters and patches and CDs,
Christmas ornaments, etc. Some guy carved the "Stacy 9/11" for me.
This is a bag of letters from people I meant to write back. I still haven't worked
up the emotional energy to do it. They come from children mostly, who will
be adults by the time I get to it, it looks like.
I wasn't going to go because it was my choir night, but I decided to cut choir and I went to the party celebrating the publication of Stealing God's Thunder.
It was great! Usually book parties are so tedious, but I had FUN. I met a curator from the American Philosophical Society (founded by Franklin) and all these people from the Loser's Lounge (one of my favorite things in New York to do) were there. Ms. Cecilia Brauer of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra gave a performance on the armonica (that's spelled correctly), a glass musical instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin. And my friend Lianne (married to Phil) gave a sweet toast.
I made a wise how-should-I-spend-my-evening decision.
My friend Marianne Petit (pictured in the Halloween Parade shot earlier) wrote a graphic novel about her life and the bizarro world inside her New York City apartment building. This is why people live in New York. Or run screaming in every direction.
(Marianne's self-portrait from the 716 website.)
Although I've been subscribing to The New Yorker for years, it seems like for years there's rarely been an article I want to read all the way through. I'm trying to remember the last one. Because there have been some. And it's never a waste, they are always great.
I wish I could bring myself to read it more. I'm pretty sure I'd have a better understanding about Iraq, for instance.
There's an inviting one in the current issue (about to become last week's issue, though). The Lost City of Z: A Quest to uncover the secrets of the Amazon, by David Grann. Maybe I will do that today. Because I sure don't feel like working. I'd go to a movie but I went to a movie yesterday, and I'm meeting some friends at the movies tonight.
UPDATE. The article was great, as was another about Harold Arlen. I've been curious about the guy who wrote the lovely, but melancholy melody to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
Meet my Uncle Charlie, AKA Father Aloysius Boyle. (I get mixed up about what he was to me. A great great uncle or something?) Among other things, he served as a pastor of Our Lady of the Isle Church, Shelter Island, New York, St. Mary's Parish, Dunkirk, and St. Joseph's Parish, Baltimore, Maryland. He was also Vicar of St. Mary's Retreat, Dunkirk.
He died as the Rector of Holy Cross Preparatory College where he was elected after the 1926 Provincial Chapter. They tried to revive his health in Baltimore to no avail as he had cancer. (My cousin Debbie got all of the above, including the picture, from the church archives.)
I found so many sad stories while researching by family history. Another Boyle died in a fire, six months after his wife died following an operation. Some said it was from smoking in bed, and that he had been drinking. Lots of alcoholics in my family. We're Irish. I found two people who had been committed, and there were many early deaths for the women -- the genealogy program I use says that women in my family only live to 58 years old, on average.
Uh-oh.
This is a picture of my band at SOB's. I'm not in the picture because I always stood at the far left of the stage. I was the only left hander in the band, and invariably I would whack someone with my drumstick, so my official spot was last drummer on the left.
These days I only drum a couple of times of year, and one of those times is the Village Halloween Parade, which is coming up! This is me with my friend Marianne at one of the Halloween Parades.
When my mother died, my brothers and I divided out her possessions. I picked this lion's head. It reminded me of the doorknocker from Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. I watch that every year.
You can't really see it in this shot, because Marley's ghost is covering it.
From A Christmas Carol. "Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow
as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part or its own expression."
Poor Marley.
I was wondering, after I die, who will pick the lion's head next?
Me: What do you want to do today, Finn?
Finn:
Me: Yeah. Me, too.
Finn:
Me: You got four more hours, bub. (Until dinnertime.)