By Jeanne Martinet

As most savvy New York hosts know, when you throw a large cocktail party, you can expect approximately 60 percent of the invitees to attend. Of the 40 percent who don’t come, most have a scheduling conflict or illness and are truly sorry to be missing the affair.  So, what if you immediately offered these people an alternative—a kind of make-up party?
That’s exactly what my friends Ned and Donna did. They held a big cocktail party one Saturday night and invited the people who sent “regrets” to a smaller party the very next Saturday.

Now, Ned and Donna are people who do not entertain very much, so at first it sounded crazy to me that they would decide to have two parties in a row. But this nonhosting tendency on the part of this couple is in fact why the double party idea was perfect for them. Once they had managed to find the impetus to entertain, whipped their house into guest-ready shape (cleaning it from top to bottom, even rearranging the furniture) and stocked the larder with staples like soda, snacks and booze, the second, smaller party was a veritable snap for them. They even had leftover wine and supplies that the guests from the first party had brought them.

Having two parties in a row may sound exhausting, but it can be much more efficient than spreading them out. You can pay back everyone you owe an invitation in a spectacular one-two punch. Really, it’s like getting out all the painting equipment to paint a room and then deciding that, while you’re at it, you may as well paint another small room at the same time.

Also, having a second gathering is a great way for the hosts to soak up every bit of fun they can; after working hard to make a party happen, hosts can feel it is over too quickly. Most people I talk to who, for one reason or another, had dreaded hosting a party are so energized afterward they wonder why they don’t host more often. Might as well have another party while you are in the mood!

You can also employ a similar version of this kind of party clustering when you find you have more than one dinner party you need to give. Instead of hosting one dinner one month and one another month, have a dinner party weekend. Make one big pot of something hearty and fabulous—say, oxtail stew, boston butt or chili–then hold two dinner parties one after the other.

Contrary to what one might think, the second set of guests are not getting shortchanged, because by the second dinner you are probably more relaxed (having cleaned and shopped like a madwoman before the first one), and often the Italian pot roast you spent hours making is even better the second day.

Of course, in the case of back-to-back dinner parties, the guests must not know about each other at all. While a make-up cocktail party is like being offered a wonderful consolation prize, being part of a double dinner party weekend can seem more like a prize cut in half.

The one rule to follow when hosting consecutive parties is that you can never let the people at the second party get the idea that your first party was in any way more enjoyable than the one you are having with them right now. You want them to feel fortunate and much sought-after, as if you are going to extra trouble just for them—which, in a sense, you are.

The people who could not attend the primary event should feel flattered that you have gone out of your way to extend your hospitality to them. It’s as if you are saying to them, “I want to have you over so much I will even have a do-over just to get you here!” even though it is really a case of a relatively easy two-for-the-fuss-of-one for you.

Speaking of two for one, I somehow got to go to both of the lovely parties given by Ned and Donna. Not fair that they invited me to both? Hey, there’s got to be some perk to this whole Miss Mingle thing!

Jeanne Martinet, aka Miss Mingle, is the author of seven books on social interaction. Read her blog at MissMingle.com.

By Christopher Moore

Over many years, Charlie Rose spent a tremendous number of hours in my bedroom. Before discovering the life-altering advantages of the DVR, I often ended my day with Rose on public TV. So his move two weeks ago to the CBS morning program sent my routine into confusion.

Rose, an official Man About Town, did not just bring a new table and passion for run-on sentences to CBS This Morning. He also came with a couple of new cohosts: Gayle King, Oprah’s official best friend, and Erica Hill, who is not actually new—she’s a holdover from the prevous incarnation of the CBS morning show. The flaws of her new cohosts make Hill look better every day.

All of this is important to me because I’m addicted to morning TV. These days, I bounce from the media monster Today to the chatty Good Day New York and the clubby Morning Joe, but I go way back. I was a little kid who knew who David Hartman was.

As a fan of fake intimacy, I like watching morning anchors pretend to like each other. They desperately try to create a sense of community, often copying each other along the way. They sometimes insist they are a “family,” even though in these families, the members get tossed around from show to show with disconcerting speed.

Also fun: watching high-profile talents pretend to be interested in the range of topics they tackle. If there was anything more compelling on American television in the last few decades than watching Diane Sawyer appear in cooking segments during her Good Morning America days, well, I missed it.

So This Morning is right up my alley. Rose is known in Manhattan and D.C. for being an A-list party guest. Watching him in the morning, all sluggish mien and dead eyes, seems simultaneously hilarious and scary. By the end of week one, he had such a bad cold that it was painful to watch. If he were still alive, Dr. Kevorkian would be on speed dial over at CBS.

The new show opened with a thoughtful 90-second review of the news, Eye Opener. Most of the attention during the premier week, though, went to King’s interview with Michelle Obama. She insisted she was looking forward to campaigning for her husband, but failed to come up with any reason anyone would support him. As usual, the disengaged first lady took a pass on getting involved in important political matters. This is not Eleanor Roosevelt we’re talking about.

It takes two, though, to come up with an interview this bad. King was obsequious in talking to someone she described as a friend. Dismissive of Jodi Kantor’s new book, The Obamas, King did not, so far as I recall, bother to mention the extent of her support for the first family. According to a quick trip to Fundrace.HuffingtonPost.com, one of my favorite websites, King gave thousands of dollars last year to Obama Victory Fund 2012.

Obviously, it’s a new era in American journalism. We don’t even pretend to be objective any longer. Fine. Objectivity never really existed, but fairness could. So could full disclosure. Yes, I’ve wondered whether and which candidates deserve my financial support. But did CBS News really need to send King to interview her buddy the same week it ran ads about taking a fresh, hard-news approach on This Morning?

Couldn’t Rose have done this interview? Sure, sometimes he answers questions he himself has asked, but he could probably have handled the assignment.

Ah, I’m being cranky. King has a certain game presence, and I’m one of 17 people nationally who watched the show she did on OWN. She’s a TV personality; being a newswoman would be a separate matter.

King is a natural at fake intimacy. Sometimes, though, news judgment is called for—especially when the bosses are bragging that they have it.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He is available by email at ccmnj@aol.com and is on Twitter
(@cmoorenyc).

Last Sunday, we marked the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that guarantees a woman’s right to choose. Reproductive freedom is at greater risk now than at any time since Roe was handed down in 1973, and family planning is under attack. Women can no longer afford to be silent.

Last year, Republicans passed an endless parade of legislation in the House regarding reproductive rights and family planning, and this year promises to be no better. Many of the Republican efforts go far beyond choice and would impact women’s access to birth control and basic health care, including cancer screenings. The number and variety of their attacks on reproductive care is more than simply breathtaking—it’s dangerous. Meanwhile, Republicans have offered zero substantive bills to create jobs, the No. 1 issue for the American people.

Early last year, Republicans zeroed out family planning funding in the 2011 omnibus government funding bill. This wasn’t funding for abortions—federal law already prohibits that—rather, it was aid for birth control, pre-natal care and other reproductive health services.

The bill also included the Pence Amendment, which specifically bars funding for Planned Parenthood. The vast majority of services provided by Planned Parenthood are family planning, cancer screening and other non-abortion-related care. This language would have impacted basic health care for millions of women. Fortunately, the Senate defeated it.

In May, the House voted to repeal health care reform and the Republicans approved an amendment that prohibited federal funding to train doctors to perform abortions, even if an abortion would save a woman’s life. The Senate has taken no action on this bill.

In October, the House considered the most dangerous bill of all, the so-called “Protect Life Act,” which many groups are calling the “Let Women Die Act” because it would let hospitals refuse to provide lifesaving care to women who need an abortion and allow them to refuse to transfer them to another institution that would provide care. It also denies women the right to buy insurance covering full reproductive care on the health care exchanges set up under health care reform. Fortunately, the Senate hasn’t taken it up either.

It has become a time-honored tradition to point out that Roe hangs by a thread in the Supreme Court; Whoever becomes president next year will likely determine whether the Constitution guarantees women the right to choose the timing and number of children they will bear. If any of the four Republicans remaining in the race win, they have promised to select Supreme Court candidates who will overturn Roe and have pledged to sign legislation that could restrict women’s access to basic health care.

If Roe falls, the issue will be turned back to the states. NARAL has identified 69 separate anti-choice measures adopted in the states in 2011, even with Roe. Five states have gone so far as to ban abortions entirely after 20 weeks, with no exception for rape or incest or to protect the health of the mother.

Fortunately, President Obama has made it clear that he supports choice and that he believes that reproductive health care needs to be protected and funded.

Last week, his administration reaffirmed that any organization that is not solely religious will have to comply with the preventive care provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including providing access to all FDA-approved birth control medication.

This year could prove pivotal in the fight to protect reproductive rights. For those of us who support Roe, silence is no longer a viable choice.

Carolyn Maloney represents the East Side of Manhattan and parts of Queens in the House of Representatives.

By Bette Dewing

“We often need as much to be reminded as to be informed” are among the wisest words ever spoken. Thank you, Dr. Samuel Johnson.

And we must remember Martin Luther King’s dream of a nation where content of character matters, not skin color.  Surely that means not valuing “physical attractiveness” over character. Recent research shows that so-called attractive members of Congress are the ones who get the most TV coverage (“Looks Matter as TV Covers Congress,” New York Times, Jan. 6). Once, the women’s movement denounced this general attractiveness bias, and I’m seeking others concerned that the now decades of related research stored in one of my file cabinets do not go to waste.

Indeed, I recently started going to the EIS Housing Resource Center’s organizing group because of decades of research on a number of frustrating crusades about public safety. How I wish you’d heard the January meeting’s powerful talk on fire prevention by Kevin Anderson, an FDNY Safety Education member. It takes an impassioned speaker like Anderson to effectively inform and remind.

“We must remember,” he said, that fireplace embers caused the fire that killed three little sisters and their grandparents.

“It would likely not have turned deadly if smoke detectors had been working.” These foremost fire prevention tools must be placed up high and checked every month—and several are better than one.

Julie, a savvy business executive, marveled, “He said so much I didn’t know!” like the fact that carbon monoxide detectors must be replaced every five to seven years and extension cords should be used only temporarily, never for high power users like TVs and space heaters, and must be in mint condition and UL approved. I add: Make installing additional wall outlets affordable!

Power strips must be checked for capacity levels. Some lamps, too. Anderson fears screw-in-type fluorescent bulbs because their bases can dangerously overheat, another reason to support the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice bill! (A recent East End Avenue penthouse fire was reportedly lamp-related.)

“And use only battery-powered candles!” he implored.

Throw baking soda, never water, on small grease fires. Keep a large pot cover handy to smother small stove fires, but call 911 and get out with anything larger, especially in a non-fireproof building. No building is entirely fireproof, but those with steel beams and all-concrete walls and floors keep fire contained. Marble floors “crumble with heat.”

Use only fire department-approved window gates and never place anything on fire escapes.

Instructions for devising an escape plan and other vital information is found in the Fire Safety for Seniors brochure that was shared with our group.

“It’s for all ages,” said Anderson but, he stressed, “50 percent of fire victims are age 65 and over.” So let’s study and discuss this life-saving booklet, at least monthly, when we check our smoke detectors. Call 718-281-3870 for a copy.
Build we must on the unprecedented outpouring of public grief and nationwide media coverage of the deaths of Lily, Grace and Sarah Badger and their grandparents, Pauline and Lomer Johnson, to finally make fire prevention a top nationwide priority.

And now two deadly local fires: The Times’ “Fleeing a Fire, Only to Realize That One Child Was Left Behind” tragically reminds us that the family of the 7-year-old boy in Brooklyn did not have an escape plan. The death of a woman, age 38, in a fire in an abandoned Harlem building where she and a friend had reportedly taken shelter did not receive print coverage.

First we must be informed and then reminded, reminded, reminded!

dewingbetter@aol.com

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

“They have your wallet over at The Mansion [Diner],” said my doorman last Monday morning.

He was referring to my new, blue, rectangular Michael Kors wallet that holds my life and that I thought I’d never see again.

The previous Saturday I had run errands, traveling light with only what I could fit in my pockets: my iPhone and trusty MK.

Earbuds in place, I powerwalked across 86th Street to the sound of my iTunes library.  Due to technical difficulties, I needed both hands to fiddle with the iPhone. So preoccupied did I become with my music that it took me a minute to acknowledge that my purse was sliding out of my coat.

I ripped my earbuds from their sockets and turned quickly, expecting to find it on the ground. It was nowhere. This is what baffled me: How could it not be on the sidewalk? It had fallen only seconds earlier.

I retraced my steps from the 86th Street side of The Viand Diner to Second Avenue in front of The Heidelberg. I went there and back at least 10 times, then along the whole stretch of 86th Street from First to Second. Nothing.

How could it disappear so fast? I couldn’t understand, unless someone hot on my heels had seen it drop and picked it up.

“I think you got your pocket picked,” my husband, Neil, surmised. Either way, my stuff was gone.

Luckily, I’d made copies of the wallet’s contents so I knew what I was missing. I called credit card companies and the bank, as well as the credit monitors—Equifax, Experian and TransUnion—who help prevent identity theft. (FYI: Reporting to Equifax is enough, as they alert the other two.)

With this behind me, I had the rest of Saturday and Sunday to wait out so I could take care of the rest on Monday: Social Security card replacement and a new driver’s license. Plus the less crucial replacement of museum membership and library cards, et al. I suddenly went into mourning for my Duane Reade FlexRewards card.

Sunday afternoon, I took the advice of some credit card reps and reported the loss at my police precinct.

Even though I knew they wouldn’t dispatch the SWAT team in search of my possessions, it seemed like a good idea to have a record of the incident.

I’d never been inside a station house. I found two officers behind a rather tall desk. My neck started hurting from looking up to tell my tale of woe. I filled out a multipage form, then the officer had to copy what I wrote on to his own report, plus write down my story of what had happened. This took forever.

Sunday night I didn’t sleep, too anxious waiting to begin my rounds of calls, voice recordings and the dreaded trip to the DMV and Social Security office.

But the next morning, my doorman let me know a man had found my wallet. He had come by around midnight on his way to work his overnight shift. There was some mixup with the night doorman, who wasn’t sure if he should buzz up so late. The man said he’d come back before he went home at 8 a.m., but I couldn’t wait and ran over to the diner.

Everything was inside MK, except my money and MetroCard. (Note to whomever has both: Hope you are someone who truly needed them. Enjoy.  And thanks for ditching the rest.)

Of course, the big shout-out belongs to the man who returned my “life.” I always like to believe I can count on my fellow New Yorkers, and this one proved me right by working overtime.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

By Josh Rogers

Any green activist worth his weight in flowers has spent hours reading environmental impact statements (EIS). Even though the reports are typically prepared by agencies anxious to start work, they still have info that may derail or kill a project.

Some might even pity the applicant who leaves something out. Westway, the grand plan to develop the West Side on top of Hudson River landfill, was delayed fatally two decades ago because officials did not consider its effect on striped bass.
A traffic engineer I know who has prepared many environmental statements for the city and who has attacked others for neighborhood activists once told me that he could find holes in any EIS—including those he wrote.

The voluminous reports attempt to look at every possible effect of a project on the environment except one: What is the impact of printing environmental impact statements?

The final EIS for the Second Avenue Subway project is three volumes long and five and a half inches high when stacked up. Prior to the final report, there were draft versions, scoping documents and revisions to previous reports that were dutifully sent to community board offices, libraries, affected government agencies and others.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority sent out 400 copies of the final report and kept 100, said agency spokesperson Kevin Ortiz, who quite aptly calls it “one of the biggest public works project in the world.” He said putting reports online has lessened the demand for paper versions, which may mean that in the future, the MTA will take a softer line on printing so many hard copies.

Some of the previous reports are still in the Community Board 8 office, but the subway project is not even close to being the biggest one in terms of report size. That honor goes to the proposed East River waste transfer station near 91st Street. The bound volumes consume over 30 inches on one of the board’s bookcases.

“They haven’t sent anything for a year. I think they’re done,” said Latha Thompson, the board’s district manager, with hope in her voice.

The big environmental groups generally shy away from talking about the irony of killing trees as part of an effort to protect the environment.

Public policy analyst Charles Komanoff said the tree casualties are “pretty depressing” given that “gotcha moments” in environmental statements don’t come often. The original idea behind the creation of the EIS 40 years ago was to take the politics out of decisions, but the reports fail on that count, he said.

“It’s not a panacea,” said Komanoff, who works on reducing traffic. “At the end of the day, it’s only politics.”
The statements stay in the city archives long after boards and libraries get rid of them. Thompson said she has received conflicting information on how long she should hold onto an EIS, so she has settled on 10 years. That means she’ll be getting rid of the subway statements in 2014, long before the project is fully built—assuming, of course, that the day will in fact come.

Her West Side counterpart, Penny Ryan, does not have reports as long, so she’s not worried about storage space. But still, they do seem to take on lives of their own.

“You’re welcome to come visit them,” she offered.

Josh Rogers, a contributing editor at Manhattan media, is a lifelong New Yorker. Follow him on Twitter
@JoshRogersNYC.

By Jeanne Martinet

I don’t usually travel on the subway with a white plastic Venetian face mask, but that’s what I was doing last Monday night.

I wasn’t wearing the mask, I was merely holding it in my lap. And yet, almost immediately after the train left the station at 23rd Street, a cute guy with super-chic eyeglasses got up from where he was sitting across from me and approached. “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you,” he smiled, “but didn’t you just LOVE it?” He wiggled his eyebrows in a conspiratorial fashion, nodding at the mask.

The “it” he was referring to was Sleep No More, the experimental piece from London theater group Punchdrunk, which I had just had the good fortune to experience—hence the mask (every audience member must wear one during the show.) Avant-garde and utterly unique, Sleep No More is part theater, part haunted house and part art installation held in a 100,000-square-foot warehouse in Chelsea. It’s hard to get tickets. After you have seen it, you definitely feel as though you have been initiated into a special, elite club.

It was not premeditated on my part, but by carrying the mask, I was advertising the fact that I had just come from this play. The mask would mean nothing to those who were not in the know. But for anyone who had “checked in” to the McKittrick Hotel on 27th Street (the setting for Sleep No More), it was like having a secret banner, a sign that read: “I’ve just been to the coolest thing in New York.” I proceeded to have a truly fun chat with the cute guy about the show.

This kind of recognition and subsequent bonding frequently happens when you are carrying theater programs. After I saw The Normal Heart, I sought out other people who were holding the program after I got on the subway at 42nd Street; I had been so moved by the performance that I was looking for people to talk to who were in the same emotional place I was. (They were not hard to find; besides the programs, they had the same stricken looks on their faces as me.)

Whether it’s a public television tote bag, an admission sticker from the race track or an ink mark on your hand from the hottest New York nightclub, this kind of visible “prop” can identify you and attract like-minded people. It’s a sign that tells someone he probably has more in common with you than he might normally have with a stranger. That the two of you have shared an experience, whether it be an art exhibit, a concert or a political demonstration. He has found someone who is in his “club.”

Even a Mets cap, to another Mets fan, can provide an opening for conversation, though that’s not exactly a small club. A souvenir from the World Series would be better. Like the Sleep No More mask, a souvenir from the World Series illustrates that you are in an exclusive club.

It’s the exclusivity, as well as the shared experience, that engenders a great conversation. There’s nothing like that “We’ve got a secret” feeling you get when you run into a stranger who is carrying something that only a few people have or would recognize. The smaller the club, the more excited you are to run into someone who is a member.

New York is one of those places where, on any given subway car or street corner, there are probably people with your sensibility or life experiences hidden among the crowd. You can’t tell much by clothing, though if someone is wearing a nun’s habit, you might surmise they are religious, but if someone is draped with a New York City Marathon warming blanket on the day of the race, you know they have just completed a 26.2-mile run. And if you yourself have ever run a marathon, both you and the runner are going to be more than delighted to engage in conversation. You are practically meeting up with a soul mate.

For me, in the case of my Sleep No More compadre, it was like discovering a stranger who had had the same vivid, beautiful, disturbing dream I had. When my fellow theatergoer got off before me, at 50th Street, I felt almost sad. Some other people who got on to the train cast odds looks my way, as if they were expecting me to subject them all to some kind of unwelcome dramatic presentation. But I just smiled and held proudly onto the mask, my secret emblem of the evening.

Jeanne Martinet, aka Miss Mingle, is the author of seven books on social interaction. Read her blog at MissMingle.com.

By Christopher Moore

Now that we can go back to ignoring Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire for another three-plus years, let’s concentrate again on city life. Especially since the hottest thing in cold New York this January is the grid.

Yes, the grid, as in the way the streets were laid out in this city. It’s the toast of the town—and it only took 200 years.
Through April 15, Tax Day, The Museum of the City of New York is presenting a new exhibition, The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011. This amounts to one of the city’s treasures, the museum itself, paying tribute to another, our urban design scheme.

The Greatest Grid has a book, too, as so many exhibitions threaten to, and the oh-so-smart chair of the City Planning Commission, Amanda Burden, is an exhibition chairperson. All of this attention is part of a 200th birthday party for the grid, otherwise known as our way of life.

Is that an overstatement? Probably not. Just visit those city streets and see the dynamism inspired at least in part by smart design. The grid, like so many valuable things about this crazy place, is easy to take for granted. At least one published writer has admitted a certain dislike for downtown streets sans numbers. The commenter insisted years ago that he likes “living on the grid” and pretty much nowhere else.

Small-minded? Probably. But so many of us, when we stop and think about it, might agree. The grid looks especially good to a New Yorker after he makes the dire mistake of traveling somewhere else.

Go to Washington, D.C., and get lost in the excessive diagonal nonsense. Bond with Boston, yes, but get ready to navigate around the Big Dig. Head to Los Angeles and engage in the old debate about whether there’s a there there. Or just stay in town and enjoy an afternoon in Greenwich Village. The streets keep bumping into each other down there. Charm and confusion combine.

Right in the Village the numbered streets start, as does the delightful sense of knowing where you are. Say one thing about the whole of Manhattan: We’ve got a there. And the there goes on and on and on, with one neighborhood seeping into another. A thoughtful front-page New York Times piece last week by Michael Kimmelman, headlined “The Grid at 200: Lines that Shaped Manhattan,” championed how our city forefathers thought ahead.

While admitting that our borough “lacks the elegant squares, axial boulevards and civic monuments around which other cities designed their public space,” Kimmelman smartly points to the advantages: easy navigation, endless street life and an easy way to speedily assess distances. The challenge Kimmelman makes us think about is clear: Can we “live up to the grid?”

It’s a wow of a question in a wow of a column. It’s a political question too. Still, the grid is experienced personally, one pedestrian at a time. People here remain passionate about the streets they walk.

In this big city, neighbors talk with a potent mix of enthusiasm and criticism about the changing streetscape. The comings and going of local businesses. Whether and where we can fit in another needed school. How the parks are being maintained, managed and utilized. Those of us in studio apartments think of everything outside the door as our backyard. Like Americans with picket fences, we urban dwellers care about what happens in our backyard.

The grid deserves its birthday attention. Compared to so many European cultural capitals, our scheme is young. The layout we call home seems like it must have been around forever, especially since it is so entrenched in our collective consciousness, but in the grand sweep of time, the grid is in its early years. The mark, though, has been made.

To celebrate this birthday, take to the streets. There’s always some sort of party happening out there.

Christopher Moore is a writer who lives in Manhattan. He is available by email at ccmnj@aol.com and on Twitter (@cmoorenyc).

The city adminstration is aware that nearly 800 public schools in all five boroughs contain lighting ballasts that leak polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which pose serious threats to the health and safety of our children, teachers and staff. Despite the magnitude of the threat and the simple solution available, however, the best response the city can muster is a 10-year plan focusing on meeting legally mandated energy efficiency upgrades, with the peripheral effect of gradually replacing these toxic lighting ballasts.

Under the city’s plan, a child entering kindergarten today would be continually exposed to toxic PCBs throughout the school day every year for 10 years. PCBs are chemicals that were manufactured in the United States from the late 1920s through the 1970s and were commonly used as electrical insulators in buildings because of their high tolerance to heat, low burn rate and nonexplosive properties. Many New York City school buildings built during that time range still have their original lighting ballasts.

Back then, the dangers of PCBs were not known. Today, however, the dangers of PCB exposure are well-documented. PCBs are known neurotoxins and have been linked to cancer, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Prenatal PCB exposure has been linked to lowered IQ scores, behavioral and thyroid disorders, growth deficits and reduced immune function. Even short-term exposure has been shown to be detrimental. Women of child-bearing age are at increased risk, as PCBs have been shown to be detrimental to reproductive and endocrine systems.

Recognizing these risks, Congress banned their manufacture in 1977, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned their use in 1979.

The city knows full well of these risks, yet still lacks the will to act to protect our kids. What gives?

At a hearing of the Assembly Education Committee about PCBs in New York City school buildings, I questioned representatives from the New York City Department of Education (DOE) regarding the reasons for the delay. While most of their answers were unsatisfactory, the answer to my question about the DOE’s timeline was downright unsettling. “Why can’t you do it faster?” I inquired. “Because we just can’t,” stammered the DOE’s representative.

The city’s failure to provide any grounds for this 10-year timeline should outrage each and every parent with a child in or about to enter school over the next 10 years.

While this is a time of extreme financial hardship, money should not be an obstacle when it comes to the health and safety of this city’s schoolchildren and those who teach them. Energy service companies and the New York Power Authority will cover the up-front remediation costs, taking payments from the future energy savings to be realized from installing new, energy efficient lighting. In addition, replacing the old energy-guzzling fixtures with newer, efficient models, which is required by the Green Building Codes, will pay for itself in as little as three years.

The city must make PCB removal the urgent priority that it is, which is why I have introduced legislation, A 5374, to require the DOE to replace 100 percent of the toxic lighting ballasts in school buildings constructed or substantially renovated between 1950 and 1978 over the course of two to three years.

I will also be introducing legislation to require the city to publish a list of the order in which each school will be remediated. Using the DOE’s arbitrary standards, students, their parents and teachers have no idea whether their school has been prioritized for remediation. The DOE currently prioritizes schools for cleanup if they have confirmed ballast leaks. Since the city refuses to test any school building for the presence of PCBs, the only way to confirm the presence of PCBs is to identify a visible leak, which is next to impossible given that leaking PCBs can be colorless and odorless.

If we were simply talking about creating an energy efficiency retrofit program, 10 years might seem like a short time. But we’re not. We’re talking about lighting ballasts that are leaking toxic substances into our schools and potentially making children, their teachers and other school staff sick. When you think about it that way, 10 years is a luxury these kids just don’t have.

I will continue to demand immediate action until the city responds with the appropriate level of urgency. But I need all of you to join me. If we speak with one voice, the city will have no choice but to act.

Linda Rosenthal is an assembly member for the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

After reading about the Harmon family’s “plight” regarding rent-regulated tenants (“Landlord Supreme Power on Rent,” Dec. 15) and Harmon’s legal efforts to challenge rent regulations, I feel that I have to respond.

I am the president of the block association where the Harmons reside and know them as I knew Harmon’s parents when they lived here decades ago.

Harmon and his brother inherited the building in question.

Increased property taxes, water taxes, city agencies’ frivolous code enforcement, increased fuel costs and additional operating costs are the reason so many small mom and pop owners continue to sell to developers.

On our landmark block alone, we have had over seven of 40 brownstones converted by developers in the last nine years, which resulted in the loss of over 80 residents on our block.

The fact that operating costs have increased exponentially in recent years should really be the focus. Three rent-regulated tenants are not the primary cause of Harmon’s business crisis.

Incidentally, the millionaire families now residing in the converted brownstone contribute nothing to our block or our association; so much for community improvement through social assimilation.

If tenant-caused hardship was indeed the cause of Mr. Harmon’s legal drive, he could easily sell the building and rid himself of the burden called rent regulation. Properties like Harmon’s fetch handsome prices on our block.

I think that the issue here is a disdain for people who are misportrayed as self-serving parasites when, truth be told, they are hard-working individuals who are residing in Harmon’s walk-up building because it’s the only place they can afford to live. They were the pioneers of our community long before there was a demand to live here.

Two of the three rent-regulated tenants in question are over 62 years of age. Anyone who knowingly attempts to profit from creating a financial or emotional burden on a senior citizen is in a category unto him or herself.

Harmon would be doing himself, and others, much good by lobbying and focusing his legal prowess on changing the laws in our city to allow for senior residency tax credits and rent regulation tax benefits for small property owners.

Those seem like noble efforts worthy of legal judicial consideration that could effect positive change. In the long run, such efforts would be the most equitable for all parties involved.

Joseph Bolanos

President, Landmark 76

West 76th Street Park Block Association

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.