Literacy for All

Liz Smith, Chris Matthews, Azar Nafisi, Ann Patchett, and AJ Jacobs on stage last night at the Literacy Partners Gala reading at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center. 8:30 PM.

It was a chilly, rainy day in New York yesterday, with the winds whipping through the trees as if presaging a hurricane.

I went down to The Chinese Porcelain Company to meet JH and to look at his photographs which are going to be on exhibition from Thursday (an invitational preview) through next Monday. All proceeds from the sale are going to the Central Park Conservancy.

He started taking these pictures when we first launched the site eight years ago so we’d have something for you to look at.

It’s been interesting for a “necessity” to reveal a photographer developing, honing his talents with this assignment.

One of JH's photos in the upcoming exhibition at The Chinese Porcelain Company, 58th and Park, May 16 through May 19.

I never see the next day’s lead Diary photograph until JH sends me the layout in the wee hours of the morning Sunday through Thursday. So I am often astonished and amazed by what I see. He has an eye for beauty, the ability to show the extraordinary in the ordinary. All of this would embarrass him because he’s one of those people who just wants to get the job done and make it look good to the reader.

However, yesterday down at The Chinese Porcelain Company was a new experience because I’ve never seen the images blown up in sizes such as 16x20, 20x30, 26x36, 30x40. I was so knocked out that I started to laugh. It’s the beauty. And the New York. For me it was like looking at your kid grown up: the enlarged images took on a new, bigger grown-up life.

From the Porcelain, we went over to the Four Seasons Hotel to have a brief business meeting. The hotel has a magnificent, tall, neo-classical lobby that would have perfectly accommodated a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie musical or Il Duce in the newsreels, and now accommodates the rest of us all these years later with restaurants, tea shops, coffee bars rolled into one, two (in the front), then three and four (in the back). Comfortable sofas, a serene atmosphere.

It’s splendor has a wide appeal. JH told me certain kinds of New York guys (cheap but focused) will take their girlfriends on dates to the lobby. Just to sit there and have a cappuccino or a cucumber sandwich for an hour is a simple way to catch a moment of the good life.


	Heather Cohane

Then I hiked between the raindrops over to Michael’s where I met Heather Cohane for little reunion lunch. Heather gave me my first job here in New York, writing little social history profiles at a magazine she started called Quest. That was in the early 90s. It was she who suggested in ’94 that I write a column that is now the New York Social Diary.

Heather, who is British born, now lives in Monte Carlo where she also lived as a very young girl with her mother and her stepfather. The stepfather inherited a fortune. Every night they would go to the Casino and he would play at the tables. Eventually he lost everything and had to get a job. He later told Heather the most wonderful thing to happen to him was to lose his fortune. He became a chocolate salesman and he loved it.

This was back before the big war. Monte Carlo was a center of European glamour, fast wealth, ill-fated fortunes and unemployed royalty. “A sunny place for shady people,” Somerset Maugham wrote about it. Heather has had some life and is thinking of writing about it now. She’s going to call it “Delusions of Grandeur.” There’s a joke in there somewhere because Heather has a blithe spirit. Which is what an angel is in Monte Carlo.

Early in the evening, I put on the dinner jacket and went over to Lincoln Center where Literacy Partners were holding their 24th anniversary celebration of readings at the New York State Theater.

This is Liz Smith’s annual party. Or one of them. It’s kind of a glamorous, New York, social world get together. A lot of the guests have been coming and supporting it for years. The honored guests are always very prominent/accomplished/wealthy/famous New Yorkers. But there’s nothing stuffy about it. The “readings” bring everyone into reality as well as a good dose of the serious, the joy of words and being able to read. This is also possibly the glitziest of the New York literary galas.

Liz, Arnold Scaasi, and Parker Ladd have been raising funds for Literacy for all these years (this year they raised $1.2 million at the evening). Liz is the Mistress of Ceremonies. She's kind of a wisecracker and she doesn’t mind dotting an “i” or crossing a “t” when describing someone. It’s the journalist in her. She always ends everything with a kiss, so it doesn’t matter.

Liz et al laughing while AJ Jacobs reads from his book.

This year they honored David and Julia Koch. Mr. Koch is one of the world’s richest men. He is executive vice president and board member of Koch Industries which was started by his father. Today he and his brother own a diverse group of companies that does $90 billion in annual revenues and employs 80,000 people in 60 countries.

Mr. Koch married his wife Julia, a former high fashion model about 12 years ago after a long courtship. The couple now have three small children and live mainly in New York, Palm Beach, and Southampton. The Kochs are very active in the charitable activities department. They are major supporters of the ABT. David Koch serves on 20 non-profit boards and he’s personally pledged or given $500 million to a wide variety of institutions, groups, hospitals including a wing at the American Museum of Natural History and a research center in his name at Johns-Hopkins

The Kochs are very desirable honorees on the very competitive philanthropy circuit. It is a tribute to them, however, to be chosen by this troika who have used their power and influence to raise the millions to teach thousands of people in New York to read. 10% of all New Yorkers have no more than 5th grade reading skills. If that. They simply cannot read. The implications for this are dangerous to even our national security. Literacy Partners are actively doing something about it. The Kochs are contributing to very real needs and progress.

Parker Ladd and Arnold Scaasi

Julia and David Koch with Mary Julia

The authors last night who read were Azar Nafisi, a professor at Johns-Hopkins who wrote the national bestseller “Reading Lolita in Tehran; A Memoir in Books”; Ann Pachett, the award-winning novelist from Nashville whose latest book, “Run” was published by Harper Collins; Chris Matthews, the famous television personality, journalist, commentator who read from “The Great Gatsby” which he said he reads every couple of years, and has since he first discovered the book as a teen-ager. Mr. Matthews’ reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece defined the tone, the nature of the evening. Then AJ Jacobs read from his “The Year of Living Biblically,” now said to be on its way to becoming a movie. Mr. Jacobs, with whom I had lunch last year, is a funny man, smart and clever but really a humorist in the great tradition of the vaudevillians and the monologists. The Ivy League/NooYawk version maybe.

After the readings, We were introduced to the Student Readers – Tom Martarell and Myriam Phillips, both in their mid-thirties, both of whom were motivated by their own parenthood to learn to read. They read to the audience what they had written about the experience of learning to read as an adult. The National Award was presented to Debra Leach, and then Julia and David Koch came up on the stage with their 7-year-old daughter Mary Julia. From there it was on to the Promenade, the dinner and the dancing with the Bob Hardwick band. By ten-fifteen people are beginning to think about leaving. It’s been a very successful night and even more successful ending before eleven.

Aaron Latham and Lesley Stahl

William Secord and Bruce Bierman

Chris Matthews

Holland Taylor, Liz Smith, and Lesley Stahl

Bob Bradford

Peggy Siegal and Billy Norwich

Joni Evans, Bob Perkins, and Elizabeth Peabody

Shirley Lord Rosenthal, Inga Rennert, Arnold Scaasi, and Nina Davidson

Liz Smith and DPC

Jackie Weld Drake and Ann Ziff

Jonathan Farkas and Francesca Stanfill

Jane Friedman

Ann Patchett and Ann Ziff

Julia and David Koch with Peter Brown

Patrick McMullan

Jamee and Peter Gregory

Barbara Taylor Bradford and Bob Bradford

Barbara and Donald Tober

AJ Jacobs

Parker Ladd, Michael Selleck, and Gillis Addison ...

...

Mario Buatta, Peter Rogers, and Donna and Ben Rosen

Azar Nafisi

Ashley Schiff and Mike Ramos

Colette and Peter Harron and with Dominick Dunne

Somers Farkas, Muriel Siebert, and Emilia Fanjul ...

...

Nina and John Richter

Karen and Jesse Kornbluth with Jeff Hirsch

Jackie Rogers

Diahn McGrath

Erica Jong and friend

Ed Rollins

Bruce and Anthony Addison

Stephanie and Bill Joseph

Karen Luter and Marjorie Reed Gordon

Tina Flaherty

Sherrie Rollins

Tom Martarell

Myriam Phillips

Pat Patterson and Ted Hartley

Helen O'Hagan

Arnold Scaasi and Frances Hayward

Pepe and Emilia Fanjul

Sharon Hoge

Julia Koch and Brad Comisar

AJ Jacobs and friends

On the Promenade of the New York State Theater.

Meanwhile ten blocks south just off Broadway, same time last night, over at City Center, producer Douglas Cramer was honored with the Fiorello H. LaGuardia Award for distinguished service to New York City and New York City Center. Patti LuPone presented Mr. Cramer with his award.

The evening began with a benefit performance of Encores! and their production of the vintage American musical “No, No, Nanette” starring Sandy Duncan, Beth Leavel and Rosie O’Donnell.

The Encores! shows at City Center have given a lot of pleasure to theatre going audiences as well as having revived (and even returning them to Broadway) some of the great Broadway musicals. Doug Cramer, who’s been a board member for the past eight years, has personally made some of them possible.