Lola’s foes
To The Editor: I am quite pleased and proud of the complete coverage and balance of the reporting on Lola’s restaurant (news article, Feb. 29 – March 6, “Lola’s journey to play music is still alive”).
This is Soho in Manhattan. And not that one would or should find it more acceptable elsewhere, but the neighborhood and its locals should never seek to uphold the opinions of such a disgustingly biased and warped group of an insensitive few – based on the article – who would stoop so low as to “lie” by creating bogus names of petitioners and then not opposing live music in similar establishments in the same vicinity! It is an atrocity!
I hope the judge removes these false and blurred lenses and allows everyone to live and celebrate life in 2008 they way it should be lived – so we are not reminded of unjust conditions that existed an entire lifetime before Soho was created!
Marie Deeble
Don’t look gift books in the spine
To The Editor: Re “B.P.C. library money is overdue” (news article, Feb 29 – Mar. 6):
I was stunned to read that the proposed Battery Park City library has anticipated the need of $1 million for books and that this as-yet-unfulfilled budget item, along with others, has caused the project to be “at a standstill.”
Ms. Bonnie Birman, associate director of the N.Y.P.L. Manhattan branch system, has failed to realize that such a huge financial outlay is totally unnecessary because hundreds of thousands of books are available for free – their owners glad, delighted and relieved to find happy new homes for dearly loved tomes.
Let me be specific: As a senior citizen, I was compelled by falling finances to move from a five-room apartment to the reasonable one-bedroom flat I was extremely lucky to find. My late husband and I had collected over 5,000 books in our 38 years together, and I sadly faced the fact that I would have to de-acquisition all but a few hundred of my favorites.
Having joined the Public Library at the age of four (Tiffany St. branch in the Bronx), I immediately envisioned my books being warmly welcomed at various branches. About a dozen branch managers told me that they did not want them. I never got a response from the director of acquisition for all the libraries in the system.
My next step was the universities, and here I struck gold. I gave thousands of books of political science – some of them extremely rare – and history to the Tamiment Library at N.Y.U.; psychology and sociology volumes to Metropolitan College of CUNY; and books on writing to the Bronx Community College where my late husband had taught at one time. I gave our Jewish studies books to the Academy for Jewish Religion and to a smaller newly formed Jewish Studies department at a university in Connecticut. I gave my Women’s Studies books to Ma’yan, a Jewish feminist project and library. Finally, I donated about a hundred volumes of liberal studies and literature to the library of St. Margaret’s House.
I personally know two other widows who had, with their late husbands, amassed huge libraries that no educational institution wanted – neither the Public Library, nor public or private universities. These valuable and once beloved books sit sadly on the shelves, gathering dust. And these two women’s situation is hardly unusual.
All the B.P.C. library organizers need to do is send out a press release to local newspapers, including the Downtown Express, asking for donations of books – describing the subject area needed – and a P.S.A. for radio audiences, especially for WNYC, and offer a tax-deduction form. I am sure they will have no trouble filling the library shelves with interesting and useful books from all over the city and beyond. They will not need to spend $1 million, they will just need to spend some time and thought on this project.
Aviva Zuckoff
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Downtown Express welcomes letters to The Editor. They must include the writer’s first and last name, a phone number for confirmation purposes only, and any affiliation that relates directly to the letter’s subject matter. Letters should be less than 300 words. Downtown Express reserves the right to edit letters for space, clarity, civility or libel reasons. Letters should be e-mailed to news@DowntownExpress.com or can be mailed to 145 Sixth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. 10013.
