Marathon Reading of Bartleby the Scrivener. So far, no reaction from Police Commissioner Ray Kelly

I wonder what Mayor Bloomberg would have to say to Bartleby the Scriviner when up against his "flute-like" tone of voice and his "I prefer not to."

Bloomberg: "Well, he has the right to his opinion, I am a strong proponent of freedom of speech, but there's a point where you just have to get moving. And Bartleby has passed that point."

As for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly who I once admired for his intelligence and education, I don't know how he'd handle Bartleby. I hope even combat veteran Kelly would balk at throwing a net over the ginger-nuts eating scriviner.  Kelly, by the way, continues to have an intelligence of sorts and his accomplishments are many. His heart, alas, is shrinking.

Yesterday's marathon reading of Bartleby the Scrivener, by Melville, sparks these questions. Just a few blocks from Zucotti Park, at 55 Wall Street, an indoors public space which generously doesn't throw nets over anyone, so far, when used for committee meetings.The event fresh in my mind, it is easy enough to imagine Kelly and/or Bloomberg confronting the text. Hmmm.

Far better to imagine was the group of well more than fifty who gathered. And efficiently, as everything connected with Occupy Wall Street is organized and mannered. The reading took around two hours.

Thanks to Occupy Language, Melville House Publishers, Housing Works Bookstore and whoever else for sponsoring the event and for my portion which offered an insight into the narrator--alternately boastful but, in the light of morning, honest at his ineffectual efforts to move Bartleby.  "He was more a man of preferences than assumptions."

You and a whole bunch of others, Bartleby.

Cathie Black, major bosom action, keep her out of our schools

Catherine "Cathie" Black should not be Chancellor of New York City Schools. Bloomberg's previous Chancellor, Joel Klein, turned students into test-taking machines and bad ones at that.

I've read and heard many reasons why Black is an odd, unwise choice. She has no direct experience and hasn't exactly shown interest in schools. Here's one more reason, and in this one, I suspect I may be alone, a tired moralist in the city.

Yes, her experience is managerial. But what has she been managing? Cosmopolitan. Esquire. Country Living. Harper's Bazaar. Marie Claire. O, the Oprah Magazine. And others. So what's wrong with those. On the one hand, nothing. The magazines entertain. I was a slave to Seventeen in high school, so I understand the pull of fantasy and impossibility. "Average" people aren't that beautiful, skinny, witty, rich. Who wants to be average?

On the other hand, there's a soft-porn aspect to many of the above magazines that has bothered me, especially since I moved to New York City, a walker's city. Here I see magazine covers and ads for the magazines on street corners, at subway bodegas, Times Square and many inevitably show major bosom action. While I have no problem with major bosom action,

I have a problem when that's made so public that infants, three-year olds, teenage boys, over-sexed males (and females either over-sex or trying to please men) are constantly exposed to and/or stimulated by the, inevitably and with design, soft porn. Maybe I'm a prude but I don't want to see the blossoming crotches of male underwear models, little sacks of joy behind white cotton, also on street corners (and billboards).

And that's the kind of environment Cathie Black has been so skillfully managing. Is there any educative element to these magazines. Well of course. Ways to apply mascara and no-fail bedroom skills for him and her. But really. Those magazines are commercial ventures shilling for advertisers.

I don't want that woman or her $40,000 bracelet in charge of New York's kids. Well, maybe the bracelet is okay.