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A big thank you from Hudson Park to the BBC for its $500 donation to support the library.

The Bedford Barrow Commerce Block Association celebrated 35 years of giving September 21st with a party hosted, gratis, by the Caliente Cab Company. During the event over $17,000 was given to neighborhood non-profits and institutions, including Hudson Park. Over the years over $300,000 has been given by this Village mainstay.

The BBC raises money with its popular Ye Olde Village Fair every May.

The BBC is a model for NYC block associations. Thanks again.

When I was a kid I learned a very important lesson about singing in public:

Don't do it!

Occasionally, my mother, overcome with some George Harrison vibe, would spontaneously break out in "Here Comes the Sun". Us kids (there were seven of us) would break out in sarcasm, ridicule and derision. We were merciless, as only children can be. I was young and impressionable and that was my first introduction to singing in public. I got the message -- Singing is for professionals only!

But at Hudson Park a tradition of singing during our children's programs dates back several years to Walter Minkel's ukulele-playing days. The tradition was continued more recently by Warren Truitt. These two children's librarians think that song is the best way to interest the very young children who frequent our library and get them started in language and books. The problem is, I think they're right.

The bigger problem is that neither of them are here any longer to lead the programs.

You would think I'd never dare to try leading the programs myself, but somehow, the show must go on. Cue "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and let it rip. We're singin' songs!.

What have I learned?

Singing for the kids isn't so bad.

It can even be fun!

And if you get them early enough, they won't even realize that you're singing off key. And, really, it is a great way to connect with young kids.

But many people are afraid to sing for an audience, so here are some things I've learned in the past few months that I'd like to share with you singing-phobic parents:  read more »

View Literary Pride March in a larger map
It's no wonder that the riot that started the worldwide gay revolution started in Hudson Park's neighborhood.

By 1969, the Village had long been a mecca for artist types -- writers, painters, actors and performers -- and for gays and lesbians. These were people who's worth was defined by their talent and creativity, not by who they found sexual attractive. They had pride, and pride is the key.

Pride is what calls people to demand dignity. Pride demands respect. Pride has led directly to the marriage equity fights of today. And pride said no to police harrassment 40 years ago.

And, really, who can live without pride? To do so is to have a miserable existence.

So a Literary Pride March is in order -- around the Village visiting the sites of the homes of gay and lesbian writers. This March includes a great beginning and ending (Jefferson Market and Hudson Park), a stroll through Washington Square, a swing by the location of the Stonewall Inn, and some of the prettiest streets in the Village (West Fourth, Bleecker, Grove, Bedford, and, of course, St. Luke's Place).

It includes some heartbreak too. Check the map for that.

And be sure to check out a book by your favorite LGBT writer at either end of your journey!

Last weekend I found myself in a truck stop in central PA with a fiendish problem. What to choose?

Louis L'Amour? A volume in an endless fantasy series? Or a grit-filled true-life testosterone-fueled story by a marine or a special-op or a terrorist fighter? Which book could I take to bed? What book could I count on to get me through the night when I found myself awake at 3 am?

This was my biggest book disaster in years. Love's has a bigger selection of ready-to-eat franks, wieners, hot dogs, cheddar wursts, brats, kielbasy, and smoked snausages, than books.

How could I have left home without something to read?!?

Then, behind Sand and Blood: Fighting for America's Freedom in a Godless Country*, I saw it. My salvation. Something I could read -- Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August. Okay, sure, it was about war. Not my favorite subject. But at least it didn't glorify war. I could read it. I could. The clerk at the counter said, "Great book!" I was set.

That night I hardly got through the opening materials (preface, foreword) but I was pleased to read this in the Author's Note:

"I should like to express my appreciation of the unsurpassed resources of the New York Public Library and, at the same time, a hope that somehow, someday in my native city a way will be found to make the Library's facilities for scholars match its incomparable material."

Thanks, Barbara. We're still working on it.

This story has a happy ending, but please, for your sake, visit the library before you travel and take out something good to read.

*Don't try to find this. Title made up.

This is Fleet Week -- When the Navy drops anchor and unleashes thousands of sailors on the streets of New York City so I thought it appropriate to write about a famous neighborhood artist Paul Cadmus. Cadmus lived at 5 St. Lukes Place for about 25 years from the Thirties through the Fifties. He painted The Fleet's In soon after moving to St. Lukes Place, depicting sailors in Central Park enjoying themselves. The Navy was not amused.

An interesting history of the painting can be found here.

Art and literature often intersect and so it did at Number 5. Cadmus became great friends with E. M. Forster and when Forster would visit the States he would stay with Cadmus. By that time Forster's greatest books were behind him, but he may have become a happier and more self-accepting man. The Village offered a sanctuary for gay men in the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, and Cadmus' life and art were OUT, even back then, twenty to thirty years before Stonewall.

1969: The Year of Gay Liberation will be on view during the month of June in the Stephen A Schwarzman Building (the library with the Lions out front). Stonewall happened just a few blocks from Hudson Park, so after visiting that historic place, be sure to stop by.

People are surprised that the Hudson Park Library is not landmarked nor is it in a historic district.

The line of townhouses just across the street are most definitely landmarked. Afterall, one of New York's most famous mayors lived there.

But, no, Hudson Park has not been so designated.

True, the building is 103 years old and was designed by Carrere and Hastings, the architects of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (aka the library with the Lions out front). It is a Carnegie Library, one of dozens in the city, so called because it was funded by Andrew Carnegie. Shouldn't it be landmarked? Or, at least, in a historic district?

Well, now, progress is being made in designating Hudson Park's neighborhood a historic district -- The South Village Historic District. Check out this map and send in your comments. Do you ever use "South Village" as a name for this neighborhood? What do you call it? I've heard West Soho.

View South Village Historic District in a larger map
(Personally, I say that Hudson Park is in the Village or the West Village but this historic district goes well south of the West Village.)

In 1963 and 1964 two landmark children's books were published -- In 1963 Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day and in 1964 Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Both won the Caldecott Medal and both changed children's publishing forever.

The books could hardly be more different -- from the colors used, the artistic techniques, the style, the themes -- and the two protagonists -- Max and Peter.

Who's your favorite? Are you a Max person or a Peter person? It says a lot about your personality. Read the books and decide, then compare your results with your friends and family.

I'll tell. I love them both, but I'm partial to Peter.

The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation has sponsored a bookmaking contest for New York City school children for the past 23 years and this year the winners are on display at Hudson Park in our second floor children's room. The artistry and variety are amazing.

Come by Hudson Park's sunny and lively children's room and take a look at the work of book designers of the future! The books will be on display until May 15th.

Who are these people?

From Adela Lintelmann paintings

The work of Adela Smith Lintelmann (1902 - 1996) is currently on display in the Hudson Park Reference Room Gallery. Adela Smith Lintelmann's art career spanned nearly seventy years and she was a role model for both artists and feminists.

In her native British Columbia, she established herself as a mathematician and then, on attending a lecture by an established Canadian artist, she was inspired to paint. With her characteristic adventurous spirit and armed with only her degree, a teaching certificate and a course in typing, she left Vancouver for New York and the Art Students League. To support her dream she worked her way up at the New York Stock Exchange to become one of the first women stock brokers on Wall Street.

During her art career 'Linty', as she became known, studied with such luminaries as Kimon Nicolaides, Robert Brackman, Robert Phillip, Robert Beverly Hale, Xavier Gonzales, Daniel Dickerson and IIona Royce-Smithkin. She became a trustee of the American Fine Arts Society, a member of Artists Equity, Artists Fellowship, National Arts Club, American Artists Professional League, Salmagundi Club and the Pen and Brush.

Linty specialized in floral and still life arrangements but on display at Hudson Park are some fine portraits. Unfortunately the subjects of the paintings are not identified, so if you are a long-time Village resident or if you knew Linty, perhaps you can help us out. Come by and identify the subjects of our portraits.

After 165 years things are bound to change, even in the Village. Maps are a great way to see that change, and fortunately The New York Public Library has one of the world's great map collections.

Here's a map of lower Manhattan when Edgar Allen Poe roamed the Village:

For fun, compare it to my Google map:

For a nice stroll around the Village, visit the locations of each of Poe's homes.

I suggest that you start at Waverly and Sixth, go down to W. 3rd Street, over to Carmine and end up at James J. Walker Park where there is just one stone monument left from when this area was St. John's Burial Ground. Poe would wander among the tombstones for a little R & R, but you can play bocce instead, and, of course, stop by and visit us.

Want to breakfast with Theodore Dreiser?

Grab a cup of coffee at Grey Dog Coffee or Out of the Kitchen and mosey on down to 16 St. Lukes Place.

Hey, you’re right across from the Hudson Park Library! And just down the street at 14 and 12 St. Lukes Place are the former homes of Marianne Moore and Sherwood Anderson. They all lived here in the 1920s.

View Greenwich Village Writers in a larger map
Use this map (I'll continue to add to it) to create your own coffee jaunt or late night crawl. You’ll be inspired by walking the streets of the literary greats. You might even write something! Or at least, stop by the Hudson Park Branch and take out one of their books, grab that coffee, and relax knowing that you’ve found yourself in the center of the world.

Poets named for hospitals is a very short list.

In fact, Edna St. Vincent Millay is probably the only major poet who would be on such a list. Frankly, I can't think of anyone else named for a hospital, let alone a poet, and if you know of one, please let us all know in a comment.

Edna's uncle's life was saved by the staff of St. Vincent Hospital shortly before Edna's birth in Rockland, Maine -- consequently, Edna's middle name. Somehow this still seems odd. What if her uncle had been saved at Mt. Sinai? Columbia-Presbyterian?

Appropriately, Edna, or Vincent, as she liked to be called, came into her own in the Village, living in the famous narrowest house of the city at 75 1/2 Bedford Street, about a three minute walk from Hudson Park. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the first woman to do so.

Hudson Park is currently hosting a display about the life of Vincent in its Reference Room Gallery. April, aka National Poetry Month, is a great time to check it out!

I suppose April is National Poetry Month because it's the cruellest month. I don't know if that's true but I've planted some seeds and hope to have flowers for summer. Am I deluded by this into believing in a spring resurrection? Perhaps, but what's the alternative? I'll take my morning glories and moon flowers and if they smell sweet I'll try not to think of funerals.

April is a great time to drop by the Hudson Park Library and take out some poetry. Take your book, walk a couple of blocks to the Hudson River and doze off in the sun between lines by such great Village poets as Marianne Moore, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Stanley Kunitz. April will not seem cruel.

Marianne Moore worked at the Hudson Park Library in the 1920s, commuting 42 steps (I counted! If she had a long stride - 39!) from her home at 14 St. Lukes Place. Great, huh? Oh, but the hazards of too short a commute - no calling out sick and going to the beach for her.

What do William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson and Kahlil Gibran have in common?

The all lived in the Village!

They may be the native sons of Mississippi, Ohio and Lebanon respectively, but for a time each of them called a piece of rarified Manhattan real estate south of 14th and north of Canal Street home.
In this blog I'll visit some of the places where Village writers hung their hats and maybe throw in some comments about their work and their lives (Of course, I'll sprinkle in some library stuff, too).
Also, more importantly, I invite you to comment on Village writers and add your own stories, observations and self promotions if you're a writer living in the Village or who has lived in the Village. Faulkner has made my list of Village writers for having lived here a couple of months before taking a postmaster gig back home in Mississippi, so if you've lived in the Village at all, it counts. You're a Village writer!
It's the desire to live here and having made that desire a reality that counts.
But really, what was Faulkner thinking when he moved here? What would have happened if he had settled in? The obstacles facing a poor family trying to bury the matriarch in Green-Wood Cemetery would be greater than those the Bundren family faced taking Addie to Jefferson. How would he have made that play? For literature's sake, it's probably best that we can only conjecture.