Mid-Manhattan Library

I hate to say it but the sports pages, I generally don’t read them. I like to watch sports but often the columns talk about sports in a way that makes it hard for me to understand. I often don’t know who they are talking about or I don’t know enough about sports so that a writer’s discussion of the minutia of a game will be completely over my head. Hence, this is the reason why I stay away from the reading the sports pages.

The writing of George Vecsey is something different. I am not sure exactly when I began reading Vecsey’s columns but I remember the first time, thinking what I had just read was a fluke. Then I began to look for his columns because I enjoyed them so much. I did not have to know all the ins and outs of the game to understand his columns; in fact I did not have to know anything about sports at all. The subject of sports for George Vecsey seems to simply be a vehicle for him to tell a greater story, the story people and human interaction. The playing of sports provides a superb stage for the examination of the human spirit.

There is no place better to find the best and worst qualities of people than on a sports field, be it on the 26 mile course of the New York City Marathon or daily grind of the Tour de France. George Vecsey eloquently reveals the human side behind the Adonis like athletes, like he did in his Sept 24 article “The ‘Other’ Armstrong is Bowing Out of Cycling in Style,” about cycling champion Kristen Amrstrong. He also brings the people behind the big names to life, like he recently did for his Oct 22 titled “Sympathy for the Umpires.” The crux of the article is we are all human and sometimes some of us have to pay more dearly for our mistakes than the rest of us. Vecsey’s seems to say love the sport for its human qualities and give a guy a break who usually does a damn good job is what I got from that wonderful article.

Please join us at the Mid-Manhattan Library on Wednesday Nov 18 at 6:30 PM on the 6th floor to listen to Mr. Vecsey talk about his work.

Then you are in luck!

The Mid-Manhattan Library has expanded its hours and we are celebrating by sharing donuts and coffee from Tim Horton's with everyone who comes by today! Also, stop in at 8 p.m. for a live music performance by the Bushwick Book Club, a group of songwriters who take their inspiration from literary works.

Mid-Manhattan's New Hours:
Monday - Thursday, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Friday, 8 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Saturday & Sunday, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Many of New York Public Library's branches are expanded their hours to keep services available for people on a variety of schedules. Check out the press release here.

Today's big news around the Library? Our newly expanded hours at a number of locations across the city, including my own home base, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, and the Mid-Manhattan Library right across the street. (Check out this announcement for all of the details.)

What does this mean for curious crafters? If your craft inclinations lean to the vintage and historic, then you are in luck, because the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, with its rich research collections of vintage knitting, sewing, and handicraft books and magazines, is expanding its hours. You'll have more time to find the perfect pattern, picture, or information to inspire you in your work.

And if you like to browse through new craft books, then head to the Mid-Manhattan Library. There, you now have hours and hours in the evenings to browse through the craft books and select the ones that you want to borrow. This location's a great source for all sorts of new handicraft titles. And today it's also a great source for free doughnuts, too! The Cover-to-Cover Cafe, a pop-up snack spot there, is giving out free and fortifying Tim Horton treats until 11:00pm tonight.

So grab a doughnut and hit the stacks, crafters!

The first time I visited Cape Cod, a city boy unaccustomed to the ways of the natural world, I encountered what seemed to me one of the primal mysteries, the secret from which so much else in life sprang. Although I have witnessed this phenomenon again and again over the past twenty or so years, it mystifies me still. During that first trip, my wife and I made an initial foray to the beach on Cape Cod Bay and looked out across the magnificent body of water held in the cup of land stretching from Bourne to Provincetown and marked by a length of watery horizon that could not be encompassed by peripheral vision alone. We waded out into that gentle ripple of surf and could see, at our feet, patches of waving sea grass, the scurrying shadows of hermit crabs hustling out of our paths, and an occasional darker-hued stripe indicating a gully in the sand and subtle deepening of the water. When we returned the next day at a different, later hour, expecting more of the same, we found the water gone, as if the whole bay had been sucked down a great central drain. What had happened? What could we do except stare, bewildered by the vast, striated plain of sand before us containing only a few attenuated channels and residual pools of water? The uncovered sand was striped with gray, green, orange, and pink, and at the horizon was a thread of blue, a shimmering dream nearly a mile away, an indication of the distance to which the water had retreated.

Those of you worldlier than I was will have recognized by now the ancient rhythm of the tides, a drama which plays out every six hours, day after day, and has done so for as close to “forever” as you’re likely to come. Now that I’ve returned from my annual jaunt to the beaches of Cape Cod and tried to return to the unnatural rhythms of the workaday life, my mind keeps going back to that great tidal clock, which continues without my having to do anything about it, without even the slightest necessity for willfulness or action on my part. I suppose it even happens when I’m not there to see it.

What, you might well ask, does any of this have to do with a blog whose main focus, so far, has been books and reading?  read more »

Our visual world is made up of many bits and pieces. It is the fragments merging together to make up a whole that really make a difference in what we see. Taken alone, these individual parts tend to go unnoticed by most people. For example in architecture, it is the color of the stone, the decoration, the lettering on the sign above the door or the carved letters on a gravestone that help define the structure and create a feeling.

Lettering is a small part of the ornamentation of an architectural structure. It is generally the colossus of the structure itself that grabs the eye first, but if you look carefully and take in the entirety of a structure, a visual reward is there waiting and it is often in the letters of the words that adorn it.

Words are as much a part of our visual landscape as the buildings, streets and trees or the people we see every day. A vibrant visual world indeed. Many of us are inured to the most vulgar visual sights, as well as the sublime. Some of us don’t even notice the first spring flowers or the glowering flashing lights of a neon sign, advertising a dingy car service business. We may take a second glance but we easily move on, letting our eyes wonder aimlessly, registering nothing. But really there is much to admire in the letters of the words that plaster our visual landscape. It is the design of the letters that make words noticeable. Most us recognize what we like in structures all over the city without really even knowing why. Buildings are adorned with incised or raised letters above entryways, signs are brightly lit and splashes of paint in cryptic words jump off building walls on dimly lit streets. These visual displays are designed as a feast for our eyes and it is impressive and purposeful.

On Sept 2. at 6:30 PM, on the 6th floor, Mid-Manhattan will host a FREE slide lecture program From Gravestones to Graffiti: 250 Years of Lettering in New York, with guest speaker Paul Shaw. Paul Shaw is a designer and design historian. His specialty is lettering, whether written, drawn, carved or typographic. He teaches at Parsons School of Design and at the School of Visual Arts. He is also the author of Looking for Letters in New York: A Tale of Surprise and Dismay. Paul Shaw is the recipient of many prestigious grants and lectures widely. Mr. Shaw is an expert on the subject of letters and can speak eloquently on the design, complexity and craftsmanship of letters that are everywhere from subway signs, to grave markers, to graffiti. Please join us for a wonderful evening.

Books on letter design and graffiti can be found at the library in both the circulating and non-circulating catalogs. Also at the Picture Collection at the Mid-Manhattan Library, there are an abundance of images on letters/alphabets/graffiti that can be viewed.

More upcoming programs at Mid-Manhattan.

An article on Paul Shaw by New York Times' Streetscapes columnist Christopher Gray.

New York Public Library is a business but a business like no other. The library’s sole purpose is to transact in materials not money. Ours is a business based on trust. We lend. The library has millions of dollars in materials and we trust that the people who borrow these materials will return what they take. We hope in as good as condition as possible. Naturally there is wear, that is expected.  read more »

I work at the Mid-Manhattan Library at 40th Street and 5th Ave. In the evening when I leave from work, I walk down 40th Street to the subway station at 6th Ave. This spring I noticed something different, something I never noticed before. The weather was beginning to warm, the days were growing longer and there was an explosion of green coming from Bryant Park. I happen to look up as I walked west on 40th Street. At that moment, I was met with a striking, yet subtle view. I stood there a few moments to take it all in, as people hurriedly passed me by. As the world rushed around me, I felt completely alone as I stood there looking out. Along the western edge of the park, buildings covered in skins of green, blue and gray glass thrust upward with enormous energy and vigor. The area is tight with tall buildings and the emphasis on height is even greater juxtaposed with the low lush green park. I looked out upon the buildings, high in the sky and what I saw was a vertical reflecting pool, like a placid pool of water that gently lifts the surrounding landscape to your eyes. But my Midtown reflecting pool is upright and it is the skin of glass that jettisons the images outward. The view is every bit as beautiful as that which is given to us by a quiet body of water in a natural landscape. However this hard surfaced pool, streaming vertically into the sky, is a man made beauty.