I lit a sparkler in the kitchen. Surprisingly, the cats didn't run but watched.
In a couple of hours I'm heading out to Long Island, WAY WAY WAY out on Long Island to be there when my oldest and dearest friend Chris gets MARRIED. Charlie proposed a few days before Christmas and they decided to just do it. I have nothing decent to wear because, I just realized, for years all my dressy occasions have been during warm weather. Thank God it doesn't really matter what I wear. The pressure is on Chris, not me! She bought an off white suit, which I should have pictures of by tomorrow.
Which reminds me. Chris asked me to take pictures. Here's the thing -- when I started out in life I was a photographer. And I didn't completely suck, but I worked with a view camera and took forever on each shot. Quick, candid shots, not so much. PLUS, most of the shots I've been taking lately have been coming out out of focus, and I don't know why. (You'll see when I post this funny picture I took of a bunch of firemen the other day. Totally out of focus, but I'm going to post it anyway, because it's just too good even with the out of focus.)
So I'm terrified that any pictures I take will suck AND be out of focus. And there's no do-overs on occasions like this.
Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!
How can you not be a cat lady with cats like this in the world, I ask you?? They look like little gremlins. I'll take the whole pack. I got a great day of writing and the gym in on Thursday and then didn't do a thing yesterday. So today it's write, write, write again.
There's actually such a thing as the cat lady action figure. Here's the cat lady, dead now, being eaten by her cats. Oh God. I need the Ghosts of TV Nights Past, Present and Future to visit me and scare me out of this possible future.
I didn't write a word yesterday. I've taken the past two days off to read really good thriller-y type books, but now I must get back to work or hate myself forever!
To do: write, write, write, write, write. Eat. Write, write, write, write, write. Gym. Back to thriller-y type books (reward). Eat.
Anyone who has cats knows that they love to sit on your work. And two cats, of course, are better able to cover all the possible work piles. Here are Finney and Buddy, limiting my access the best they can, but as you can see I've got one free area left. I have foiled their evil plans.
Today is back to work day, I think. No gym, no reading, no TV. Writing. I also want to tinker with my bio on my web page. I don't think it really says much about me. Howard wrote a bio for his new web pages and it really communicates who he is.
There are a couple of griffins flanking a door on Perry Street, and someone put very undignified Christmas bows on them. For shame, Christmas decorator! The ribbon was pretty, though, I'll give you that.
I got a bunch of great gifts this year, so yay! Thank you, everyone!
What shall I do today? It almost feels like it's too soon to work. Like we need a day to recover from all the holiday build-up. I've got a bunch of phone calls to make, but the very thought of making them feels intrusive and rude. There must be some kind of quiet work I could do. Ha. I suppose I could always ... WRITE.
Or, I could go to the movies.
I'm tv'ed out.
I've been working my way through everything Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have written together. Right now I'm reading Reliquary. Not as great as some of their others, but still good. I wish these guys were my friends so I could ask them questions.
Bottomline: The holidays are over and we can all go back to our mostly normal selves, whatever that was (I just fixed a typo -- I spelled "mostly" closer to "monsterly").
8:50 a.m. I'm going to update this entry throughout the day. I'm feeling restless, and a vague sense of disappointment. I think I will need to check in. This is Finney showing an interest in Howard. Howard and I had Veselka for Christmas Eve dinner, and started to watch the movie Bundle of Joy, but it was disappointing. So far everything has been a little.
My only other plan for the day is to go out to Long Island to visit my brothers and their families. My father and stepmother are coming down from Vermont to be there.
Maybe I just need to rethink Christmas, and come up with a new approach.
11:40 a.m. Back from brunch with Howard, about to head out to Long Island. It's Night of the Living Dead quiet out there. But it was a fun brunch and my mood is much improved. I got home and the water is shut off in my building because someone left for the holidays with their bathtub running. Thank God I already took a shower, which I might not have in time if it weren't for meeting Howard.
I forgot. Last night we watched the Buffy episode where it snows at the end. That was nice.
This is a 1950's picture of Hart Island Warden Edward Dros and Commissioner Ann Kross watching an inmate mend a doll that will be given to needy children at Christmas. Hart Island is where New York maintains a Potter’s Field. At the time there was a prison on the island, and the prisoners dug the graves. The prison is now closed and they bring inmates in from Rikers to do the digging. (They like the work. It gets them out of the prison.)
I wrote about this picture in Waiting for My Cats to Die. I know everyone meant well, but I felt bad for the old inmate, who looks as frail as the doll, and the poor children who would be receiving the second hand gifts.
"A Daily News photographer took pictures for a story they ran in the 50's. Men in suits and a woman in a nice hat pose with the inmates as they work. They're all very proud."
And then I describe that picture in particular. "... they hover over an old inmate struggling to sew a dolls dress back together. She's missing a foot and three fingers on one hand and even if that prisoner manages to fix the hole in the dress (badly) she's still going to be an old doll with no foot and missing fingers and do they really think some little girl is going to be thrilled to get her? Although I can see a child loving the doll in a misfit toy kind of way."
The picture is from the wonderful website of the New York Correction History Society, maintained by Tom McCarthy. This is their Hart Island page. There's a treasure trove of information about the history of Hart Island there, and stories of people who search for their friends and relatives buried on the island.
My plan for today: Write, work-out, then watch Christmas movies, dinner with Howard, more Christmas movies.
Alternate plan: All of the above except the writing and working out parts.
Only a few days of the holiday season left!! Here are the movies I plan to see before Christmas:
Bundle of Joy. A holiday movie with Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. I have a song from this movie on my ipod. I sing it to my cats as a lullaby.
Mr. MaGoo's Christmas Carol. You might have to be a baby boomer to get this one.
A Christmas Carol. The Alastair Sim version, which I see is not airing this year. Good thing I OWN A COPY.
My plans for today: I'm going to try try try to write. Really. I'm going to try. Must. Not. Read. Or. Watch. TV. Ah, I have Frank Sinatra singing Ave Maria in the background. He was such a thug, but what an angelic and perfect voice.
Here's the "I killed it" audio. Poor Charlie Brown. Urban Outfitters actually sells a "Charlie Brown Pathetic Tree" which looks exactly like that tree, right down to being tipped over by a christmas ornament. But it's sold out! We love that sorry little tree.
My accomplishments yesterday: I went to the gym, and back out to Brooklyn for the fire incident report, and I'm down to one last Christmas gift to get. No work on the Duke book, but that I will get to today.
It's the home stretch for the holidays. Oh! My friend Cricket sent me Paine's Balsam Fir Incense. I lit one and I swear it's like taking happy drugs, having that scent in my apartment. Thank you, Cricket!
I feel like I accomplished nothing yesterday. I went out to Brooklyn to get some fire incident reports, and they told me it would take at least an hour so I called some detective friends who work nearby and we went out to lunch. Very nice, but when I got back to the FDNY the records section was closed! God damnit to hell. I just put my head on the counter and moaned, "I must die now. I can't take it. I have to kill myself."
Neander and Jim hosted their annual Caroling Party, even though everyone is Jewish except for a few of us, which includes ME. From left to right that's Jim, Mark, Extra T aka Ellen, me and Cricket with the camera. She and Neander had a little dueling camera thing going. Lots of other people were there, but I'm afraid to name them because if I leave someone out they will be mad that I forgot them.
I have to have a productive day. Somehow I have to:
- Schlepp back out to Brooklyn to get fire reports.
- Finish Christmas shopping.
- Go to gym.
- Work on parapsychology book.
We'll see how much I get done. WE'LL JUST SEE.
My earlier posting of my grandparent's house brought a flood of memories from my father! Since they included a bunch of New York figures and some New York history, I asked him if I could post his email here (that's him on the right).
From my dad:
"The pictures really bring back memories. That was my fire truck in the picture. I still remember that gift clearly, and I was very young that Christmas, probably six or seven. If you look, you will see my folks all dressed up. In those days a lot of the neighbors would go around in a sled (if there was snow) and sing carols, and drink any grog at each house where they stopped. This was all after we were all sleeping.
When they were finished they came home and dressed the tree. You can imagine what time that was. We never saw a sign of a tree until Christmas morning. They were blessed with an excellent community spirit which still continued throughout my growing up. Jamaica Estates was a particular community. A good deal of that spirit came from your grandfather who put in many hours working as president of the association, which he was for the most years of his living there. It's amazing how the area has retained it's status to this very day. Some of the homes were much bigger than ours, and I would guess worth several million in this day's market.
Many hugely successful people lived in the Estates. King Kullen, father of the modern supermarket lived on Radnor Road, the next street. Donald Trump's father, Fred, would walk up to our house with little Donald in a carriage to gab with my father. The Conway's lived down a couple of blocks. Jim Conway worked with me when I bought the house in Centerport. His family ran the Long Island City Savings Bank, which has grown to be quite large. Neighbors ran Sulka's, a great mens store, FAO Schwartz, the toy empire, and on and on. One of the men was the first to buy the Empire State Building when it was resold. There are numerous stories there in Jamaica Estates. It would be fun to see how the history has gone.
You should look into the history of Jamaica Estates - it is very interesting. You might remember that the "great" depression was in 1929. I was born in '28. My grandfather, Peter, was, among other things, a builder. When my father got married my grandfather built two houses, side by side, on Avon Road. My father designed both. My grandfather told my father that he would get the house which did not sell first. After the house next door sold to the McKenna’s, my father got our house. The Estates was to be a clone of Tuxedo Park in Westchester. The initial homes built were quite large, even by today's standards. When the depression broke things came to a quick stop. The later homes were smaller than the earlier ones, but followed a tradition of upscale which exists even today.
When I was young, I would go into one or two of the big homes which were abandoned as a result of the depression. One beautiful big Tudor had been left so quickly that all the furniture and clothes were still there until they were finally taken by people going into the house. It was a big adventure to sneak ninto the '"haunted" house. There are many stories around the area which I remember fondly."
The house that my grandfather built in 1926, and where my father and my aunts grew up, is for sale for $1,495,000.00. It's in Jamaica Estates in Queens. When my father was born it was surrounded by mostly farmland. But in the 1930's the city (Robert Moses) installed Grand Central Parkway within spitting distance on the eastern edge. Here's a picture taken I know not when, I'm guessing in the late 1920's, early 1930's.
I just found a shot of it now. The current owners bought it for $338,500.00 in 1997. My grandfather built it for $20,000.00 in 1926, and I don't know what he sold it for it the 70's, but I know he said that he'd want at least $60,000 for it in 1969. So in exactly 80 years it went from $20,000 to just under 1.5 million. Man, I'd take most of those hedges out if I bought it. The house is far enough off the street that privacy is not an issue.
Here's a shot inside, from the 1930's, with the incredibly high ceilings (those are my grandparents).
I wanted to get a close up of the tree, their trees were always giant and magical.
And here is a close-up of what was under the tree, the best part. The only presents I can make out are the fire department cart thing, a Felix the Cat looking thing and a pillow with Santa Claus on it.
I honestly think that if I had a spare $1,495,000.00 I'd buy it. I'm getting all verklempt just looking at these shots. The closeness of Grand Central might sound like a bad thing, but when I was a child, the woosh, woosh, woosh, of cars speeding by at night, was comforting, like a lullaby, and to this day highway sounds make me feel at peace.
If there's a rich person out there with a spare 1.5 mil, please buy me this house. Thank you in advance.
I gave this image the title of "Paraboys." It's a picture of Charlie Stuart, J. B. Rhine and Gaither Pratt, the main guys on the staff of the Duke Parapsychology Lab when they began.
It was a discussion of the relative insignificance of ESP now, compared to other abilities and knowledge, that sent me into a bit of a downward spiral the other night. Who knows if we will manage to come up with any kind of significant contribution to humanity, history, the world, in the very short time we're given. We don't always get to know that in our lifetime. You do your best, but who knows if you are making the right choices at the time that you are making them?? You could find yourself at the end of your life going, "Uh-oh. It seemed like a good idea at the time." We don't know now where the work at the Parapsychology Lab might eventually lead, or if ends up being all for nothing. That's the kind of thinking that freaked me out the other night. Everything I do might end up being all for nothing. Just one bad choice after another.
I guess that's why people say love is the only thing that matters. Although it seems I am not the good choice maker in that arena, either. (There's still time, there's still time, holy mother of God, tell me there's still time.) But if you have love, it's something to point to that's very satisying, even if you manage nothing else in life.
Speaking of choices, here's a short video taken at the party I missed because I went to the Loser's Lounge. That is Anne at the end of the table. Anne is fun.
I just realized, looking at the title on this entry, that according to the Duke guys, I can influence the flip of the coins. So, I may think I'm surrenduring to chance, but maybe there's no such thing. You don't get out of the responsibility of choosing. You can't palm it off on fate.
Coffee, reading and posting on Echo, and a cat on me. This is Finney, stretching out on my lap. He waits for me to wrap myself in this fleece blanket, then jumps up. I think he just wants to curl up on the blanket and figures, "If the only way I'm going to get to be on this blanket is to sit on you, so be it."
My agent's holiday party was a lot of fun. I met Heather and Jon from www.dooce.com. I MET HEATHER AND JON. I read her blog every day, and the two of them were just so charming and attractive, and very tall, it turns out. But I think I'm in love. I want to marry them.
Then, I met the husband of one of the partners and I forget the name of his company, if he ever even told me, but he was explaining what he does, and then he was telling me about this program the military uses, which sounded scarily brilliant, in fact, it was all so utterly fascinating, I was riveted. But it gave me one of those moments where you are reminded of just how small you are in the universe. If you think about what everyone does every day, to keep the world going, to keep producing food, transportation, keeping people alive, safe, you know, as I am writing this I realize there is no way in a blog post that I am going to be able to convey what I want to convey. There is a huge, massive, amount of effort being expended each day, some of it incredibly interesting, we all have our part, but sometimes you are reminded of how small one's part is, how little the contribution. Someone comes up with ideas for programs like this, implements them, there is a war in Iraq and there are people making decisions about things like wars, who are not necessarily the same as the people who design ways to fight them. Worlds away from me important decisions are being made. Which is not to say I agree with them, by the way, Iraq war bad. I'm just saying. There is just all this massive smartness churning all over the place and I'm just this spec, a sub-atomic spec, in fact, physics is centuries away from discovering the small thing that more adequately describes my place in the universe (and in time, oh God, if you throw in the perspective of time, forget it) and I am making the future-tiny-thing-to-describe-it contribution.
And that reminded me that there are all sorts of things that motivate me and one of them is self-loathing. I was very happy to learn years ago that I'm not the only one who sometime thinks to myself, "I hate myself, I hate myself," and then, to break up the monotony, "God, I'm such an idiot." Thank the fucking lord it's not the only thing that motivates me, but man. I do hate myself sometimes. I feel better having gotten that off my chest, though.
I should pack it in today and go to a movie. Oh! But the Loser's Lounge is tonight. That should be fun.
The store with the great windows which I failed to capture changed their windows to yet another wonderful display.
I love the "party dress" arrangement of this one. I remember what it was like! Getting dressed up for my grandmother's or some holiday event, wearing my new party dress, and shiny black patent leather shoes, tights, a new purse, and a bow in my hair. I still experience the party dress thing, but it's not the same.
I'm going to my agent's office holiday party later. I will not be wearing anything like this red dress. But I think I will go get a pedicure to put myself into the partygirl mood. Yes, good idea. That is what I will do.
As I posted earlier, before working on the EVP section of my book, I re-read A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman for inspiration. Great, great, book. She has a section for each of the five senses, but the best section by far is the one about the sense of smell. It's just such a poweful thing.
And this memory popped into my head, of a toy from my childhood. Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. You'd put this gooky stuff on the end of a small, plastic tube and blow up very fragile balloon bubble things. Except I could never quite get it to work. Maybe I blew up a few delicate balloons. But the smell. It's the smell of childhood. I remember our house, our porch, the lawn, our dog, everything.
So, I bought this cheap, knock-off in a drugstore. It was very satisfying. It still doesn't really work, but the smell is exactly the same. I love smelling things from my childhood. Like playdough. They are comfort smells.
(The picture is from a website called http://www.bigredtoybox.com)
This doesn't even begin to capture the ethereal beauty of this window. It's for a children's clothes store on Bleeker between Perry and 11th Street. It's stunning in person.
That reminds me (walking around and finding things of beauty reminds me) that I also love walking around and finding the forgotten, and I am not the only one. Kevin Walsh, who does the website Forgotten New York has a book!
Oh! I just got email from a statistician saying the paragraph I wrote summing up the Duke statistical work was okay! YAY! I was feeling very nervous that I had made some stupid mistake in logic.
Some people are probably going to get sick of my Christmas shots. This is the library at 42nd Street. I was there on Saturday doing research. By the way, as I was heading up there I was thinking I was insane to go there on a Saturday, and it was insanely packed, but with people looking around, not with people doing research. I was actually in and out faster than usual. Found almost everything I needed. It was a good day.
I got email about a cat boarding place in Connecticut called Captain Kitt's. Good lord, I'm looking at their website now. If you live in Connecticut this is the place to board your cat. They have aquariums for entertainment, they give them shrimp and tuna for snacks (I'm sure if you ask them not to, they won't, I know some cats are not supposed to have fish) and catnip cocktails at night! This is kitty vacation heaven.
As you can see, Finney is foregoing ornament destroyage and going straight for the branches. Here he is, chomping on a branch. Chomp, chomp, chomp. Well, you can't kill it evil little fur-dude, because IT NEVER LIVED.
I was going to write this morning, but Howard so nicely downloaded some music for me (which I love) but the CD got stuck in my Powerbook (I think because of spilled orange juice a few days ago) and I have to go to the Apple Store to get it fixed.
Then caroling in gorgeous, gorgeous Brooklyn Heights with some friends. So, ah, no work today, I don't think!
The streets all around my block (but not MY block) have been decorated. It looks really pretty. Who did this?? This is Waverly something. (I've lived here 30 years and I still don't have the streets straight.)
Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky (every once in a while I must chant to show the universe that I recognize my luck in living here and having a rent stabilized apartment that supports my writing, blogging, cat-loving life-style).
I've just started working on one of the chapters I've been looking forward to writing most. It's going to focus on EVP (electronic voice phenomena, audio recordings of the dead). The Duke guys didn't actually work on EVP, in fact they disdained it, but it fits in the story and I don't want to say how or why. It's a surprise! Anyway, I just can't get enough of EVP. I'm not convinced these are actual recordings of the dead, (sorry). I'm one of those people who believes this is it, but if those voices are not dead people, what are they? Those answers could be even more interesting, no? I just re-read the chapter about sound in Diane Ackerman's book, A Natural History of the Senses, which is so good by the way I must BEG you to read it. Please read it. I BEG YOU.
Weirdly, my beliefs don't make the recordings any less scary. And I could be wrong, is the thing. Speak to me, Jacob Marley! I need to find the best audio experts in the country and see if they will help me understand the issues.
Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, (that I get to write this chapter).
I put up my little, desk-sized Christmas tree. We'll see how long those ornaments last. The cats broke their first within seconds. There was a little kitty high-fiving action, but they stopped when they saw me looking.
Meanwhile, I've been splurging somewhat lately in the beauty area. I have to recommend this new place I went to to get my brows done. Christine Chin. Christine read me the riot act about my brows, then went to work and I love the results. I have to go back in a month, because she's changed the line and I need to grow out certain spots. She also made promises about what she could do for me with a facial and I believe her. So when I go back to get my brows done I'm going for the facial, too. Yes, this is why the terrorists hate us, I know. And, I just realized that with this paragraph I probably lost any male readers I might have had left.
Had a lovely dinner out last night with Hadley, Angus and Jonathan. They are the people who help Echo out with technical stuff. I almost never get to see them in person. Our exchanges are mostly like this:
ME: [X] is BROKEN. Help!!
Hadley or Jonathan or Angus: Oh yes, I see what's wrong. No problem, we'll fix it!!
ME: My heroes!! (Okay, I don't say that but I think it.)
I just noticed that you can see the book, "Life After Death" on my shelf. I just finished "Phone Calls From the Dead," yesterday. Death, death, death. (It's research for my book!) And, speaking of terrorists, there was a time when you would have seen the World Trade Center in the distance in this view from my window. Oh God. Remember the smell? I just remembered that you could smell the fires burning downtown for months. Months. I had forgotten that.
The roses crashed, and I didn't have the heart to just throw them away so I put the petals in a bowl. I just realized that this picture, next to ones I took when I first got them, is like this sad cycle of life and death. Isn't this bowl of petals urn-like?
Yesterday I had one of those days. One thing after another went wrong, among them, Echo's web server crashing. I had to go down to where we have the server co-located to manually fsck (showing off one of the few unix commands I remember after all these years). I get there and can't get the keyboard to work. I don't know what to do. There's a couple of guys working there on their servers so I go over and ask them if they have a keyboard I can borrow. One guy says "yes," before I even finish asking the question. He finds a keyboard, brings it over and plugs it in for me, then he gives me a bunch of cables that will make my life easier in the future, tells me what they are for and how to use them, and finally he tells me to keep the keyboard. Because of him I was able to bring the web server that this blog runs on (among other things) back up.
The guy's name is George Sukkarieh. A happy ending thanks to George Sukkarieh. Thank you, George!! That was way beyond nice of you.
I own this painting by my friend Jonathan Herbert. I want to take it out of the frame I spent a fortune on, because it cuts it off on the left a little, and as you can see, there is no room for any cut-off there.
My undergraduate degree is in fine arts. I wonder what happened to many of my fellow Museum School graduates. Too many years have gone by to remember most of their names, alas. At least one became famous--Nan Goldin. Her work was stunning even then. My one-time roommate Linda Dennis did a painting of a purse I would love to own. I wish it had occurred to me to buy it.
I always wanted to be a writer more, and holy shit, here I am, writing for a living. Who says the universe hates me??
I'm so sad that our performances are over! That's it. Done. That pleasure is no more. Until next year. Thank GOD for next year. That's me in my new top. I also bought a new necklace and earrings to go with it. Pretty, no? I love the whole outfit.
I still haven't decorated for the holidays. The cats are bugging me. "It's like toys grow on trees during the holidays," they say. Then, "Wait a minute. Toys do grow on trees during the holidays!"
Flowers and sunlight and ...
... a tasty beverage!
My brother Douglas and his wife Robin came to my concert last night and brought me these perfect roses. I'm not sure if the picture really conveys their color, which is this lovely peachy red that I've never seen before.
Our director graded our performance, and weirdly, he gave us an "A" for the one piece I thought we completely destroyed (the Gorecki Totus Tuus). Maybe it was just me and the people around me? It was so horribly flat I wanted to die. (Not a comment on me or the people around me, by the way. We are fabulous. It just happens sometimes.) The lowest mark we got was a B+ for the opening Bach piece. I agree with him there. There was something lackluster about it. Our hearts weren't in it or something. We'll do better today.
"Might not the arts be not the luxury of a few, but the last best hope of humanity to inhabit with joy this planet?" (Robert Shaw) Our choir director emailed us this quote. He sent it to us last year, too. I love this quote. The answer is yes.
I'm going to be in the front row for our concerts tonight and tomorrow, which means I will actually be SEEN. Of course, I have nothing to wear. The requirements: all black, and demure. I bought two possiblities, a dress and a top, decided I couldn't afford both, and returned the dress. This is a picture of the dress I returned to Anthropologie yesterday. I couldn't find a picture of the top I decided to go with. It's actually almost exactly like this dress, but the sleeves are longer, which I decided was demure-er.