vip in the city

All these words

After powering through the final week of 7 train detours, I stopped by the Strand Bookstore for a quick hello with the Deadline Club boys who were browsing through the shop’s much touted “18 miles of books.” The bookstore, one of the city’s few remaining independent booksellers, opened in 1927, and although my memory doesn’t extend quite that far back, I do recall when the store lay claim to 8, and not 18, miles of books. The number refers presumably not to floor space but to all the new, used, rare and out-of-print books laid end-to-end.

Since opening the 4,000 square foot shop on New York’s once-fertile Book Row five decades ago, the owners have expanded their stock to encompass five floors (of the eleven-story building they now own), and an annex on Fulton Street in the financial district.

Downtown, The Poets House in SoHo was hosting the opening reception of their impressive showcase exhibit featuring all of the poetry published in the United States over the last year. (On view through April 30, 2007.) Several of the writers were in attendance that evening to mingle in the packed house among like-minded literary types (and fellow YoCos.)

All of which seems to rebut the assertion made in an infamous opinion piece that appeared in Newsweek in May 2003: “Poetry Is Dead, Does Anybody Really Care?” According to the author, Bruce Wexler, “[p]oetry is designed for an era when people valued the written word and had the time and inclination to possess it in its highest form.” The passion of the responses that appeared after that essay was published would indicate otherwise… as would the countless MFA programs and weekly poetry slams that proliferate through the towns across America like Starbucks. (And I mean that in a good way.) Is poetry “the only art form where the number of people creating it is far greater than the number of people appreciating it,” as Wexler asserts? Poetry may be far from dead, but is it relevant in the Internet age of fast-paced media?

I hope so. The Academy of American Poets declared April National Poetry Month in 1996 to encourage more people to acknowledge and appreciate poetry — one of the world’s richest literary traditions.

To end my night: a series of one-act plays at the New School. Bite-sized pieces of drama, none longer than the average sitcom, including one by Obie-award winning, Tony-nominated and 2006 Pulitzer finalist Christopher Durang: an absurdist take-off of A Streetcar Named Desire, with some Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Iceman Cometh thrown into the mix.

Breathing uneasy

Back at the castle-like Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library for a book club discussion of Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice.

Julie Sze’s book studies how racial minority and low-income communities often disproportionately suffer the adverse effects of urban environmental problems. The Environmental Justice Movement, rooted in both the civil rights and environmental movements, endeavors to bring and sustain environmental quality to these neighborhoods, which often lack the political clout to effect change on their own.

Cecil Corbin-Mark, the first and current Program Director of the West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT) led the talk. In addition to his work with WE ACT, Corbin-Mark is an active board member of a number of environmental justice, parks and planning organizations. WE ACT is dedicated to protecting environmental quality, improving environmental health and combatting “environmental racism.” The organization was founded in March 1988 to address ongoing community struggles around the poor management of the North River Sewer (or “Wastewater”) Treatment Plant and the Manhattanville Bus Depot in Harlem.

According to WE ACT, the 7.5 mile area that comprises Harlem is densely populated by half a million residents, yet carries a disproportionate number of the city’s environmental burdens. Above 96th Street (which shares what’s known as an “air corridor” with the South Bronx), there are six of the seven bus depots in Manhattan, the city’s largest sewage treatment plant, and miles of truck-trafficked expressways. Each of these sites is a source of diesel fuel combustion; the toxic emissions are a known health hazard: possibly carcinogenic, according to a 2002 Environmental Protection Agency report, and an asthma irritant.

The diesel particulates have long contributed to increased rates of respiratory illness among neighborhood children, degrading the public health and quality of life in that area. According to Corbin-Mark, Harlem is in the midst of an asthma epidemic; a study conducted in 2003 cited that one in four children in central Harlem has tested positive for asthma — four times the national average of one in sixteen children. The air pollution has also been linked to lower birth weights in Upper Manhattan and South Bronx.

Author Sze, who received her doctorate in American Studies from NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Science, will talk about her new book at the school on Wednesday evening April 11 in an event co-presented by Transportation Alternatives and UPROSE.

The Jefferson Market Garden, to the south of the library:

Let’s Get Comfortable launch

Another beautiful almost-Spring day. Union Square was filled with New Yorkers, and the musicians were out in full force, entertaining the crowds and making new fans in the park.

Passing through the dog run, I spied AC and M sitting on a bench, keeping watch over AC’s frolicking dogs, and exuding cozy contentment. What a sweet scene! I called out to her, and said a brief hello, before continuing on my way up Broadway.

Tonight, a launch party for Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams’ first book, Let’s Get Comfortable: How to Furnish and Decorate a Welcoming Home.

Gold and Williams founded the Taylorsville, North Carolina-based home furnishings design company Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams in 1989. The $100-million-a-year company supplies chains like the troubled Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, Williams Sonoma Home and Restoration Hardware, and has 13 and Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Signature stores (with 5 more to come, including a New York City location at Andre Balazs’ undulating glass-and-brick Kenmare Square.)

The book, written with Mindy Drucker and published by Meredith Books, promotes the MG+BW “relaxed design” aesthetic, based on mixing, not matching – with comfort and livability as chief considerations. The design philosophy is reflected in the authors’ homes; photos of their residences are included in the 216-page book.

The duo was in New York City to kick off their book tour with an appearance on NBC’s “Today Show” that morning.

Inc. magazine named the team among their list of 26 most fascinating entrepreneurs. The openly gay business partners are well known for their active philanthropic efforts, on behalf of such organizations as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Empire State Pride Agenda, The National Black Justice Coalition, the Design Industries Foundation for AIDS (DIFFA), and Gold-founded Faith In America, which fights religion-based bigotry. Other causes include the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Related: Tips on charitable giving from the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance.