Cold in New York, but so what, we’re still lucky it’s acting like winter.

Yesterday was a running day.  I ran down to the St. Regis where the American Cancer Society – New York chapter was holding its annual Mother of the Year Luncheon honoring Sarah, Duchess of York.  This is a very successful annual affair and brings out hundreds of supporters. 

Sarah, Duchess of York holding a photo of herself and her daughters, with Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia.

The duchess, a/k/a Fergie, is mother of two girls, Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice. In other words, two kids 16 and 18.  Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia, who was a chairman of the luncheon introduced her. He spoke with affection about their first meeting a number of years ago and how much he liked her.

She’s so famous because of her marriage that it’s almost strange how down-to-earth and real she is. She’s one of those people who does not conceal where she’s at and what she’s feeling. She has a very forceful energetic personality yet at the same time there is a clear sense of vulnerability. Life is not always so easy for the duchess. Why, I cannot say because I don’t know. But it isn’t. Just like the rest of us, there are problems to be solved, issues to be dealt with. All personal, of course, as they always are.

Her royal title is a distraction that has nothing to do with the way she is, although everything to do with why we know her. She presents herself as a friend. She’s very at ease with people, at least she appears to be. There’s nothing grand or remote, which is a relief. In fact there were far grander personalities among the guests in the room yesterday. Although none of them royal duchesses, alas.

Dimitri told us about first meeting her and what she was like.  Then she told how they met in Jamaica where she’d gone with her daughters. The night of the day they’d arrived she and her daughters had been invited to a party. She was jet-lagged and not really up for getting out but the girls wanted to go and pushed it, and so she did. There she met Prince Dimitri, and a friendship was born.

Dimitri had read a message sent by Andrew, the Duke of York in which he praised his former wife for many things and most especially for the way she’d been a mother to his daughters. It was very affectionate and respectful. There was also a video made last week of the two girls talking to their mother, congratulating her on being Mother of the Year, and expressing their pride and love. Tears welled up in the duchess’ eyes.

Afterwards she talked about how much it meant to her. She also referred to the fact that although divorced, they still share the same house. You got the impression that they’d probably be better off married. Although, who knows about these things. Yet, there she is, a single woman, and very much a single, woman, with two daughters, and needing to work.

She thanked Weight-Watchers for bringing her to America, and she thanked a business partner she met here.

I brought my camera along but when I got to her table to take her picture, it slipped from hand and fell to the floor with a clumping sound. Not a good sound. I picked it up and took the picture. It was fuzzy on the camera screen. So I took another. Still fuzzy. Then it was gone. The camera died.

“I broke your camera,” the duchess said, seriously, even concerned. She hadn’t of course.

The camera was broken. Unusable. Damn. All my pictures were lost.

Although you don’t need another picture of the duchess known as Fergie. You know what she looks like. You even know what she is like. You like her. You can’t help it, and neither can she: she’s very likeable. And very much like many of us in this post-modern world: getting her act together and taking it on the road. Looking for the path and looking for the light.

Last night I stopped by the Rainbow Room where the Botanical Garden was holding its annual Orchid Dinner. Camera-less, unfortunately because the dining room tables were all decorated to the hilt, and beautiful.  It was like walking into a jungle of flora.  I had stopped by just to meet up with Cutty McGill, the photographer who was at the ACS luncheon earlier in the day. He gave me a CD of images since I didn’t have any.

Then it was over to MoMA for a preview and dinner for a new exhibition of Armando Reveron, the celebrated Venezuelan artist who is not well known in this country (although MoMA has owned some of his works since the early 1930s).

Reveron (1899-1954) is considered by many to be right up there with the great early European Modernists. John Elderfield who curated the show (which took more than 7 years to put together) has written the first catalogue in English on the painter (with Luis Perez-Oramas, and Glenn Lowry writing the Foreward) (available through Amazon).

The Show runs from 2/11 through 4/16/07 at the museum and it has all the making of a much talked about exhibition because Reveron is about to be discovered by many art lovers athough already known and revered by others.

After the preview last night, there was a dinner in the museum’s atrium for more than two hundred guests. (Glorious Food catered.) A great number of the crowd were Latin American, including some very familiar New York names—Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera, Gustavo and Patty Cisneros, Dan and Estrelita Brodsky.  So much so that at my table I was the only one who didn’t speak Spanish. And when I wasn’t speaking, all I could hear around me was Spanish.

Marie-Josee Kravis, who is the president of the museum’s board spoke about the artist and his importance in the Modernist movement.  Mrs. Kravis who has a tremulous lilt to her  soft voice is an economist by profession but also knows a great deal about the history of art. She presents her knowledge in a style (partly because of her voice) of a modest but knowledgeable teacher. She thanked all of the collectors and museum people in Venezuela who assisted in putting this together.

A subtext to everything and very much in the air last night is, of course, the current regime of Chavez who has now showed his cards and is traveling down that long and lost road of the government of Me, Myself, and I (for god and country of course). So it was quite an achievement that they were able to borrow the work of the great artist to exhibit in New York.

Backtracking. Monday night was the Citizens Committee for New York City’s New Yorker for New York Awards Gala in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf.

This was a black tie affair and there were several hundred attending including many luminaries although it is not so much a glamorous event as a celebration of what people can do for their community.  The organization was born out of crisis (see NYSD Philanthropy coverage) more than 30 years ago and it remains a powerful force of good in this enormous metropolis which many call their hometown. 

Besides the dinner and the speeches and the awards, Peter Duchin and his orchestra played and there was dancing. (Duchin played last night also at the Botanical evening at the Rainbow Room).

Honorees were Jonathan Capehart who was presented with the Jacob Javits Young Philanthropist Award. You can read about Jonathan on The List although it’s in need of serious updating because next week he moves to Washington where he’s joined the Editorial Board of the Washington Post. In 1999 when Jonathan was on the Editorial Board of the New York Daily News, he won a Pulitzer. He was just a kid then. To some of us, he still is. He has a modest, though forthright demeanor so that you can easily forget that he’s a very accomplished and influential fellow who believes in doing whatever he can to move along the process of opportunity for others.

Osborn Elliott, one of the founders of the Citizens Committee, seeing the crowd said from the podium: “You look like a million.” (They raised a million Monday night.)  He introduced Pete Hamill who was receiving the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Medal for Lifetime Public Service.

If you don’t know about Pete Hamill, you haven’t lived in New York for very long. He’s one of those characters who’s known in a variety of ways, and all interesting, no matter your interest.  Editor of both the Daily News, and the New York Post (at different times of course), reporter, novelist, memoirist, he once dated Jackie Kennedy (before she married Onassis), and is an authentic voice of New York.

When making his acceptance speech he talked about growing up in Brooklyn. He recounted the time his mother brought him and his little brother (9 and 7, they were) to Times Square on the subway. This was 1942. They were going to see the Normandie, the former luxury liner that had had a fire at its pier and was floating on its side.

Walking along the sidewalk of 42nd Street heading toward the River, they saw a homeless man, disheveled and ashambles, lying in a doorway. Amused by the sight, the boys pointed and mocked the man. To which their mother sternly grabbed their hands and reprimanded: “don’t you ever look down on someone unless you are lending them a hand to get up!”

Therein lay the forming of a consciousness that defined a life.

That, Mr. Hamill added, was the objective of the work of the Citizens Committee. And the rest of us too, if we’re paying attention.

The great Martina Arroyo of the Metropolitan Opera received the Elizabeth Chapin Award for Volunteers in the Arts.  Lisa Schiff was awarded the Brooke Russell Astor Award for Philanthropy.  Lisa is chairman of the board of Jazz @ Lincoln Center and herself a recording impresario as Managing Director and owner of After Nine Music, a label specializing in jazz, popular music, Broadway, easy listening and cabaret. She is also an active member of the board of the Animal Medical Center and president of the Youth Counseling League, a division of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, where she also serves as a member of the board. But that’s not the half of it. Lisa’s a doer and she’s out there. Her husband David, an investment banker, is also chairman of the Wildlife Conservation Society. They have three children, Ashley, who is a major fundraiser for Jazz @ Lincoln Center,  Scott, and Drew who is married to Karenna Gore, daughter of Tipper and Al Gore. 

Tipper Gore was also at the dinner. I hadn’t seen her in several months. She looks great. In fact she looked so svelte and young I didn’t recognize her at first.