4.29.09: A steamy New York day | New York Social Diary

A steamy New York day

A steamy day on Fifth Avenue. 1:30 PM. Photo: JH.

April 29, 2009. Yesterday was a very warm Spring day in New York. Some of the taxicabs already had their air-conditioning running.

I went down to Michael’s to have a birthday lunch with my old friend Beth DeWoody who is just back from her tenth trip to Cuba. Talking about our mutual acquaintances, the de Lesseps of Housewives fame, Beth reminded me that Alex, the now estranged husband of Countess LuAnn has an interest in a resort hotel in Havana where the beaches are some of the most beautiful in the world.

Michael’s was its crowded self and the star in the room was Evander Holyfield, who looks more like a movie star than the world heavyweight champion that he is: handsome, very tall and impeccably turned out in what was a bespoke leisure suit. At the table next to ours was the irrepressible and (always leave em laughing) Joan Rivers, also looking like a movie star, in from the Coast for a few days before she returns to edit her new TV show. Also hosting tables were Kathy Lee Gifford, Edgar Bronfman Jr., Jonathan Tisch, Neil Sedaka.

The tulips in bloom around the Pulitzer Fountain.

After lunch it was summertime hot and I walked up Fifth Avenue to check out Bergdorf’s whose windows, always intriguing and creative, are the best in town. Most of them in this series were about Bottega Veneta and Roger Vivier.

From Bergdorf’s I continued up past the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the Plaza, accessorized by masses of ivory and red tulips in full bloom. This weather brings out a lot of the New Yorkers (and visitors) who love to just sit and take in the rays and watch the world go by. And whatta world!!

Across the avenue at the Sherry-Netherland in Doubles, Cynthia Lufkin and pals were just finishing up a birthday lunch for the plucky lady who turned 39 and blew out all the candles in one breath. JH made a rare public appearance to get some shots of our friend’s celebration.

Margaret Chace and friend

Diana Taylor and Cynthia Lufkin

Somers Farkas and Patty Raynes

Eleanora Kennedy and Evelyn Lauder

Melanie Seymour Holland and Cricket Burns

Eva Lorenzotti, Rachel Hovnanian, and Evelyn Tomkins

Heather Randall and Emily Keno

Josie Robertson and Elaine Langone

Grace Hightower, Roger Webster, and Rene Syler

Nicole Miller and Cynthia Lufkin

Allison Rockefeller, Mark Gilbertson, and Evelyn Tomkins

Mark Gilbertson, Anne Grauso, and Eric Javits

Somers Farkas, Stephanie Krieger, and Grace Hightower

Continuing up the avenue, I crossed Fifty-Ninth Street to the Strand Bookstore stalls at the southeastern most corner of Central Park, all open for business and busy with browsers and buyers.

I took a picture of the lordly Metropolitan Club where City Harvest is holding its annual On Your Plate luncheon, on May 13th, at which, as I’ve told you umpteen times already, they are honoring DPC of the New York Social Diary. He will speak and answer an interviewer’s questions about What’s It Like. And what he doesn’t know he will gladly wing. The theme, of course, is food/eating/gluttony and society (or something along those lines).

And what does “food” have to do with “Society” you might ask? Answer, to quote the late Kitty (Mrs. Gilbert) Miller who was a New York-Palm Beach-London hostess par excellence (hold the ketchup). Kitty was known for her attitude that could make hauteur seem like the milk of human kindness. And what did she think food had to do with society? Briefly, to quote the lady: “Hang out the ham and they’ll all come running!”

(Coincidentally, a great-niece of hers, Joy Ingham is one of the chairs of the City Harvest luncheon.)

The Metropolitan Club where City Harvest's annual fundraising luncheon "On Your Plate" will be held on May 13th.

The event runs from 12 to 2 on May 13th, with lunch in this exquisite clubhouse designed by Stanford White in 1893 (with the eastern annex designed by Ogden Codman (in 1912) and built by J P Morgan during the Gilded Age. Mr. Morgan formed the club to accommodate a couple of friends who had been turned down at another club.

Just sharing a meal in the grand dining salon on the first floor provides a delicious taste of the ambience of that Age, and is worth any price, no matter what’s on the menu.

If the City Harvest luncheon sounds vaguely interesting, let me add that it’s for a great great cause, a Basic Needs Cause -- City Harvest is a food rescue organization dedicated to feeding the city’s hungry men, women and children. Each week City Harvest helps over 260,000 hungry New Yorkers find their next meal. A very great thing, and something that is on more people’s minds more than ever.

You can find out more about the luncheon by faxing or emailing Susan Bell at Susan Bell Special Events. She knows:

Ph: 212-874-5457
Fax: 212-496-8432
Email: susanbell@bellevents.com

The Knickerbocker Club at 62nd and Fifth.

India House, built originally for Carrie Astor, aunt of Vincent Astor, and her husband Orme Wilson, a wedding present from her family.

Meanwhile, on with the show: Just a block up the avenue from the Metropolitan Club is the William Adams Delano-designed Knickerbocker Club, built in 1913. The private club itself was formed in 1871 by eighteen members of the Union Club. It’s a beautiful building, inside and out. John Jacob Astor IV was a member and so was his son Vincent. As was their cousin Franklin Roosevelt, as well as Rockefellers and Whitneys, Cadwaladers and Belmonts, and lots of people with names like Egerton Winthrop and Worthington Whitehouse, both of whom would have easily gone running when Kitty Miller hung out the ham. Need I say more? Every last one of the Knicks members rightfully have pride of place in their club as it’s an historic and aesthetic pleasure to partake of – just like Mr. Morgan’s political solution down the block.

Honorees Mario Buatta, Suzy Bales, and Thomas Balsley

Last night down at 283 Park, the Delano and Aldrich designed church that is now also an events venue created by Louis Rose, they held the 12th annual Flowers & Design Gala, “This Side of Paradise,” The Horticultural Society of New York’s annual spring fundraiser.

Flowers and design is a unique and quite spectacular showcase of some of the city’s best floral, fashion and interior designers (not all, mind you). They create original floral displays inspired by the evening’s theme. The dinner tables were extraordinary.

The Horticultural Society honored author and garden enthusiast Suzy Bales, landscape designer Thomas Balsley and interior designer Mario Buatta.

Again, JH and the Digital were there to record the towering genius of man with nature (and New York designers with a highly motivated creative gene).

Doug Blonsky, Norma Dana, and Lee Black

Elizabeth Stribling, Cece Black, and Jeanne Lawrence

Mark Gilberston

Wilbur Ross and Hilary Geary Ross

Ann Rapp

Cece Black and Sheila Stephenson

Chris and Simone Mailman with Nina and John Richter

The view from above of the 12th annual Flowers & Design Gala, “This Side of Paradise,” The Horticultural Society of New York’s annual spring fundraiser.

Last night at the American Museum of Natural History, PEN American Center held its annual gala benefit. It is one of my favorite benefits of the season. The room is filled with authors not only of note but of distinction and occasionally genius, all of whom are supporting the rights of all of us to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

The black tie evening begins in the Great Hall entrance of the museum, with cocktails around the dinosaur skeletons. For some reason their size really got to me for the first time. I found myself looking at them considering that they once roamed the planet and terrified almost all other creatures great and small, dominating wherever they might be. And now, a distant, incredible fact that precedes human memory, gone with the wind. Mother Nature and her ways.

I arrived at the museum at just about the time the were closing the bar. So after I took a couple of pictures, I followed the crowd which seemed a propensity of tuxedos punctuated by the color of the women’s clothes on the five or six minute promenade to the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life (with the great blue whale suspended from the ceiling).

The black tie evening begins in the Great Hall entrance of the museum, with cocktails around the dinosaur skeletons.

Authors’ high social occasions are stylish, but individually-so. The women dress according to their own sense of it, often with an artistic or even intellectual flair, rather than as a follower of the fashion. Although there are many of those who do that too.
Annette Tapert who was one of this year’s co-chairs with Laurence Kirshbaum and Steven Pleshette Murphy, called the dining room to order. It wasn’t easy. Several hundred writers, agents, publishers, editors, journalists, their spouses, friends, etc., can talk a blue streak.

Annette introduced Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes who was Master of Ceremonies. Steve told us he was there because he could never say no to his friend Toni Goodale who with Tina Brown are this year’s Honorary Chairs, after years of getting it all together.

He also introduced Mr. Kirschbaum who introduced K. Anthony Appiah, the London born Ghanaian philosopher, cultural theorist and novelist who is currently the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, and the new President of the PEN.

Mr. Appiah (the K stands for Kwame) is the son of a native Ghanaian father and an English mother. He recounted how he grew up in a house filled with books. His father was a Ghanaian diplomat/politician and barrister. One day Ghana’s then increasingly dictatorial leader Kwame Nkrumah’s secret police came to search the house for what they believed was evidence of sedition on Mr. Appiah’s part.

The police started looking through the Appiahs’ books, books of the greatest writers of the age and before. The evidence was impossible to establish and the number of books was so great that the investigators grew tired of looking. Mrs. Appiah, however, insisted that they continue until they had gone through every last book, leaving no residual suspicion behind. The task became so fatiguing that the secret police were anxious to get the hell out of there.

John Makinson, Chairman and CEO of the Penguin Group, spoke briefly on the future of publishing in the world and how much it is expanding. Then came the highlight of the evening. The PEN/Borders Literary Award was presented to E.L. Doctorow who also spoke on the importance of freedom to speak, to write and to think.

The first course, a vegetable salad.

The Jeri Laber International Freedom to Publish Award was presented in absentia to a Tibetan printor named Paijor Norbu, who is 81 and has worked as a printer and publisher all his adult life.

Mr. Norbu was tried by the Chinese Communists in secret (so no one can KNOW) of indeterminate charges (a secret is a secret as well as food for a lie), probably for inciting “separatism” (Article 103 of the Criminal Law) or printing “prohibited material,” presumably prayers for the Dalai Lama or copies of the Tibetan flag, both of which are banned in China. His whereabouts are unknown to his family and friends, but he is believed to be serving a seven years sentence.

Mr. Norbu, who began as an apprentice when he was eleven years old, is a renowned master printer, a descendant of a family with a long history of publishing Buddhist texts for monasteries. He preserved the use of traditional woodblock printing techniques in his workshop. Seventy years later he is tried by the Chinese.

The PEN guests last night in the Milstein Hall at the AMNH, between the serving of the main course and dessert.

The other award for the evening was the 2009 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award to Liu Xiaobo, a renowned literary critic, writer and political activist in China who severed as the President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center from 2003 to 2007.

Last December 8th, Liu Xiabo was arrested on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power.” Police arrived at his home just after 9 pm and two hours later removed him from the premises and search his home, confiscating computers and other materials. He is being held without charge under “residential surveillance” at an unknown location in Beijing. If charged, it is expected that he will stand trial on subversion charges, a favorite in China for jailing dissident voices. If convicted he could face at least three years in prison.

Barbara Goldsmith created this Award to assist and draw attention to writers who are victims of political subversion of individual freedom to write and to express. It has been a very successful tool in bringing about freedom for victims of those who would repress and detroy it.

James Goodale with Lynn Nesbit and Toni Goodale

Pepe Fanjul

Alex and Jeanette Watson Sanger with Stacey Schiff

Annette Tapert Allen, Shirley Lord Rosenthal, Olivia Hoge, and Gale Hayman

Sherri Rollins

Candace Bushnell and Charles Askegard with Toni Goodale

Jonathan Burnham

Hannah Pakula

Larry Siems, Jiang-Lin, Barbara Goldsmith, and Zheng Loi

Warren Hoge and Candace Bushnell

Calvin Trillin and E. L. Doctorow

Charles Askegard, Joe Armstrong, and Ed Rollins

Jeanette Watson Sanger and Jackie Weld Drake

Last night at the Pierre, Pamela Fiori, Editor-in-Chief of Town & Country magazine, received the “Commit to WIN” Award at the Women In Need’s annual dinner. Tory Burch presented the award.

The “Commit to WIN” Award is given annually to business leaders in recognition of their commitment to the New York City charity that helps homeless and at-risk women and their families get back on their feet.

Cocktails at WIN gala

Women In Need, a non-profit organization founded in 1983, serves homeless and disadvantaged women and their children. WIN helps homeless families through a comprehensive program, which includes shelter, supportive and permanent housing, job training and placement, domestic violence counseling and alcohol and substance abuse treatment. WIN’s children’s services include child care, after school programs, and Camp WIN, a summer day camp. This year, WIN will help over 9,500 people move out of poverty and rebuild their lives.

Lynn Sherr was the evening’s host. Event Co-Chairs were Bill and Marianne McComb, Brendan and Abby Hoffman, Karin and Steve Sadove, Susan and Jack Rudin, Karen Harvey, and Katherine Farley and Jerry Speyer. Dinner Co-chairs were Kayce Freed Jennings and Jaqui Lividini.