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.
First, a gratuitous cat belly shot. This is Finney resting on the couch, after trying to pull the keys off my laptop, scratch the screen, tear up my papers, eat the isight camera, kill Buddy, kill my shoes, bite my face, knock over the vase on my desk, con me into feeding him breakfast twice and finally pushing the ibook off the desk when I got up to get him a toy. Ah yes, you must be all tuckered out. Rest little devil, rest.
Onto new TV.
Kidnapped. Is that the name? It's okay. It has the actor who played Fearless in Boomtown, and I love that guy, but he got shot early on and I'm not sure if he'll be back. I don't think I'll watch it again. Oh, the son was good, too.
Shark. James Woods is so full of himself and he's good, but this is very ordinary, otherwise. Not a thing new. I don't think I'll keep watching.
Six Degrees. I don't even know why I watched it, but this premiere is the best premiere I've watched this season, totally out of the blue. I really liked it. It had something. Did anyone else watch this?
Heroes. I’m going to give this a try tonight.
PS: To everyone who mentioned Veronica Mars. I tried! I totally expected to love it and didn’t (except I did come to love the father). I don’t get it. All my friends love it. Joss Whedon loves it. It’s almost like some flaw of mine has been revealed. My failure to appreciate it proves that there is something lacking in me.
She was in the Bronx! For those of you who don't know Manhattan, that's a long, long way.
I woke up so worried. Now I can get back to work! And working out! And whatever else I like. Maybe I will take a nice walk and pull down all the lost dog flyers I put up the past two days.
Look at that face. Who could not love Bean?
My friend's dog Bean is missing since Wednesday night. I've posted pictures of Bean before -- I love this dog. She somehow got out of an apartment on 17th between 2nd and 3rd.
There's a $1,000.00 reward.
Bean is a puggle, (a mix between a pug and a beagle, she is a smallish dog). She has been missing since Wednesday night. If found please call: 917-612-8086. I wonder what else can be done? I put flyers up around her neighborhood. Maybe Gothamist would be willing to post something? But maybe not. Then they'd be deluged with requests like this.
That's George from Grey's Anatomy. Love George. I love Izzy, miss Denny (why oh why oh why). Here are my quick thoughts about the new season, from which you will get the idea that I have no life and wonder how I manage to accomplish anything besides watch TV.
Just taking up space here in order to push the rest of the text down to underneath George's picture. I could have blank space, but that wouldn't look so good. Here we go!
Grey's Anatomy. The show I think I'm most looking forward to returning.
Bones. My other favorite show.
Lost. I was getting very annoyed, but I'm still in.
Jericho. Please be good. The premiere was just okay.
American's Next Top Model. Quit making that face. Try it. It's really entertaining, I swear.
Gilmore Girls. I miss my girls.
Supernatural. I miss my boys. (And the actor who played Denny is their father!)
Studio 60. Aaron Sorkin. Sports Night. West Wing when it was good. The premiere was only just okay, but I still have great expectations. His good guys are always my kind of good guys.
Criminal Minds. For the first time in my TV life I don't hate Mandy Patinkin.
House. Love Cameron's new hairdo.
CSI. I watch the original and CSI: Miami. I don't like the NY one, but I will give it one more try.
Invasion. Is it gone or what? I really liked it.
The Office. Steve Carrell is currently my favorite person on TV, but we have a scheduling difficulty. I have to see if this repeats on another night.
Shark. James Woods seems like such a ugly human being. But he's entertaining to watch.
Smith. I don't even know what this one is about, but friends are telling me to give it a try.
This is what it sounds like in my house. Me talking babytalk to Finney and Buddy, periodically all throughout the day. "Monkey" is one of the 16 billion million katrillion nicknames I have for them.
UPDATE. Oh God, I was going to go the library today, before I remembered it was Monday and it was closed. But I just read Bush is going to be at the library today (ew ew ew) to discuss literacy (hahaha, no seriously, you've got to be kidding me, literacy? Bush??).
This is my coffee table which sits in front of my couch, all of which sits in front of the TV. I brought my work over and was sitting there thinking, I could work on my chapter, continue reading that book on the left (quite good so far, it's called Brimstone) or watch TV.
Work, TV, book, work, TV, book, work, TV, book. What did I do? What, are you kidding? I watched TV even though there was nothing on except re-runs! (That actor who plays Denny on Grey's Anatomy though. Be still my heart.)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - More people kill themselves each year than die from wars and murders combined, but most suicides could be prevented, two international experts on suicide said on Friday.
Some 20 million to 60 million try to kill themselves each year, but only about a million of them succeed, said Dr. Jose Manoel Bertolote, a mental health official at the World Health Organization in Geneva.
I cut and paste this from somewhere, I forget where, but it's from this month. In my mind, I immediately had this bird's eye view of the planet, showing millions of people furiously trying to end it all. It was just so sad. We're not on the ball about something. Or was it always like this? If you went back a hundred years would the percentage be the same, even if the numbers were smaller?
It reminds me of a very moving book, Wisconsin Death Trip. The author, Michael Lesy, found an archive of photographs taken in the 1890's of a town in Wisconsin called Black River Falls. He went through old newspapers and found that it was a particularly sad time. People kept dying, often by their own hand.
It's an incredible book. I read it in one sitting and when I was done it was like walking out of a movie. You know that feeling you have for a few seconds after a movie, like you were in a dream and have to come back to the real world?
Yesterday was intense.
New York Magazine put up the things we said on Echo on 9/11. It begins with my post about the first plane crashing into the WTC. Reading that was how I began my day.
Then I went downtown and spent about 8 hours down at St. Paul's Chapel. Saw a lot of old friends, not a single picture came out well, unfortunately. I stayed for the Interfaith Memorial Service, which was emotional and well done on so many levels. They had people from Buddhism, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh (and more) faiths reading and speaking. I loved the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr. so much I want to join his church even though I don't believe in God! I also loved the Buddhist, (not sure of her name) one of the Rabbi's (Joseph Potasnik) and Mr. Amardeep Singh, one of the Sikhs. I grabbed him afterwards to ask him about the text he read. I've only been able to find a piece of it, but just from this one piece I think you can get how amazing it was:
As out of a single fire,
Millions of spark arise;
So from God’s form emerge all creation,
Animate and inanimate.
(From the Akal Ustat, which is from the Dasam Granth.)
Barbara brought a copy of one of our favorite letters that came to the Chapel. It's from a young girl named Claudia. I left out her last name for privacy sake, but here is the letter.
Dear Firefighter,
There are many deaths that I can die. Cancer, heart attack, AIDS, hepatitus, sickle cell anemia, Leukemia, natural causes, choking, being strangled, shot or hanged, I could get the death penilty, or rabies or a snake bite, or a wild animal could attack me. I could get run over by a car, be in a car crash, fall, slip, get a concussion, get small pox or be stabbed, cracking my skull, get poisoned, heart disease, get stung by too many bees, and many, many, many more. But I know I will never, ever, die in a fire, because people like you great people would go into flames to save an ordinary person like me, and that’s what makes you so great, courageous, brave, terrific, wonderful, special people.
Yours truly,
Claudia
Finally, I got a little obsessed photographing the Towers of Light as I walked home. The first shot is right at the Trade Center. The last was once I hit the Village, where I live. It was just so beautiful.
This is the back of St. Paul's Chapel, where I volunteered during the recovery effort. The city put up this ramp so people could look into the hole where the towers once stood. It always struck me, watching people walk over one graveyard to look into another. This must have been taken in the Spring of 2002.
I'm heading down to St. Paul's Chapel later. I hope to see lots of old friends and have happy pictures to post tonight.
My choir director, John Maclay, sent out some very moving email about the times we live in, and making music in these times. He had a number of great quotes, but I liked this one of Robert Shaw's best. "Might not the arts be not the luxury of a few, but the last best hope of humanity to inhabit with joy this planet?"
Still experimenting with making movies. This was made with my digital camera, which has the ability to make movies, it turns out. I made this yesterday when birds started lining up on the roof across the street, just like the Hitchcock movie, "The Birds."
Hmm. The quality is not great at all, is it? It's probably more acceptable with movies shot close-up. Oh, but maybe it's because I compressed it too much, so it wouldn't take up a lot of room.
What is not communicated in this photograph was the two minutes of crying at the ceiling and me trying to figure out what was wrong.
The conversation.
Buddy: Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.
Me: What??
Buddy: Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.
Me: What??
The same conversation, translated.
Buddy: Aliens! There are aliens in the ceiling! Help me! I cannot fight them alone.
Me: What??
Buddy: What? Are you deaf?? Aliens! ALIENS. For the love of GOD. Here they come. God help us.
Me: What??
My agent read the chapters I've written so far and wrote, "This stuff is gripping, vivid, cliff-hanging. The characters are amazing. Esp. Rhine. I just love it Stacy."
Howard read it and said it was one draft away from being great (everything is first draft now, of course, and still needs polishing).
So, I'm giving myself one of my favorite treats, a trip to the beauty parlor! (No one calls them that anymore, but that's what they were called when I was growing up.)
Here's a group shot of some of the people I'm writing about. Thank you for living such amazing lives!
They found the records for the 1958 poltergiest case I want to write about!! YAY!! When a family in Seaford, Long Island experienced disturbances they couldn't explain, they called the police. Who else were they going to call? The police were skeptical, of course, but then an ash tray flew at one of the detective's heads. I'm in touch with the family of that detective, Joe Tozzi, who went on the become a police chief in Texas. Joe has, sadly, passed on. But his family tells me that while he remained skeptical, he had to admit he didn't have an explanation for that ash tray, and that always disturbed him.
Gaither Pratt came up from Durham to investigate and he and Tozzi got along well. Gaither found no evidence of fraud.
Joe Tozzi's wife Carla very kindly Fedex'ed a tape of an interview with Tozzi that aired on a show called The Armstrong Circle Theatre. I've been trying to find this. I went to the Museum of Television and Radio, but they didn't have it. And then Joe Tozzi's family came through!
Thanks to the Nassau County Police and the family of Joe Tozzi, (Carla, and their daughter Anna) this is going to be a really good part of the book, I think.
It's September. That's the beginning of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which is one of the pieces my choir will be doing this season. It translates to: Celebrate, rejoice, arise, praise these days!
MAKE ME. Just kidding. Although I basically spent yesterday curled up in a ball, and today looks like it might be shaping up the same way. I barely recognize myself these days.
The rest of the Oratorio:
Glorify what has been done by the highest, abandon fear (if only, God knows how long I've been working on that one) banish lament (working on it!) raise your voices in celebration and gladness. Serve the highest with glorious choruses, let us honor the name of the lord.
Here's what I take away from that: Abandon fear, banish lament, abandon fear, banish lament, abandon fear, banish lament, abandon fear, banish lament, abandon fear, banish lament. Admirable goals, I think. Easier said than done, I can't resist pointing out, but quit lamenting already (talking to myself).