Russia for Beginners: A Literary Course for Edward Snowden

So many of us say, “If only I had the time to read, I would read the classics.”

Anton Chekhov

Edward J. Snowden has the time, and now he has the classics. Mr. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor facing legal repercussions for the release of classified information, has been ensconced in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport waiting to find out if he will be granted asylum.

His Russian lawyer earlier this week left him a shopping bag with books by Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and Nikolai Karamzin to help him learn about Russian reality.

According to news accounts, the lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, gave his client Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” the tale of law, order and redemption, telling him, “You should know who Raskolnikov was.” He added that the Chekhov was “for dessert,” and also provided him with the writings of Karamzin, a historian, for background on the nation’s development.

One has to ask: Is Dostoevsky really the best choice? Raskolnikov could hardly be expected to cheer up Mr. Snowden. Sonya, the girl whose love saves Raskolnikov’s soul, may remind him of Lindsay Mills, the pole-dancing, exhibitionist girlfriend he left behind.

As for Karamzin, the court historian to Tzar Alexander I who began his 12-volume “History of the Russian State” in 1816, one might ask how such a work would shed light on the Russia of Vladimir Putin. The Harvard professor emeritus Richard Pipes has written that Karamzin believed his country “thrived under autocracy” and suggested Mr. Putin might be an admirer.

Welcome to Russia, Mr. Snowden!

Are there better Russian books to help Mr. Snowden get to know the Russian soul? One could do worse than to read Gogol, whose absurdist short story “The Nose” could help Mr. Snowden understand that living in Russia might not make any more sense than living in the United States. And Tolstoy - well, no matter how much time Mr. Snowden has, he may not have enough time for Tolstoy.

Gary Shteyngart, the Russian-born author whose novels deftly blend comedy and heartbreak, suggested “Oblomov” by Ivan Goncharov. This 19th-century novel has a protagonist who would be familiar to many men in their 20s and 30s today: a young fellow who has enormous privilege but can barely stir himself to move from his bed to his chair, a proto-slacker imbued with Russian gravity.

“Snowden should find himself a tatty couch somewhere deep in the Moscow suburbs and furnish it with a plate of pickles and some vodka,” Mr. Shteyngart said. “A good source of wi-fi should complement the Oblomovian lifestyle nicely.”
The protagonist of Mr. Shteyngart’s novel “Absurdistan,” Misha Vainberg, has a touch of Oblomov and a Snowdenian twist: he finds himself trapped in a Hyatt hotel in that fictional country, unable to get back to the United States and surrounded by contractors for Halliburton who seem to have a part in the country’s slide toward civil war. It could all be too close for comfort â€" but then, literature is not necessarily about comfort.

Why should Mr. Snowden confine himself to the literature of Russia? After all, Edward Everett Hale wrote a book that must absolutely resonate with Mr. Snowden and his plight: “Man Without a Country,” whose main figure is tried for treason and cries out before the judge, “I wish I may never hear of the United States again!” Walter Kirn’s “Up in the Air” would continue the travel theme. John le Carré’s George Smiley offers glimpses into Russian life that ring with gloomy authenticity.

The French, who gave us the word ennui and sharpened the concept of existentialism, produced the works that may most help Mr. Snowden adjust to his new life, especially those of Jean-Paul Sartre. What novel better describes his situation than “No Exit”?

Met Opera Cancels Staten Island Performance

The Metropolitan Opera recital scheduled for Thursday night in Staten Island’s Clove Lakes Park has been canceled because of expected bad weather, the opera announced Thursday. The recital, part of the Summer Recital Series, will not be rescheduled.

The series will continue next week with the same cast. It includes the soprano Ying Fang, the tenor Mario Chang, the bass-baritone Brandon Cedel and the pianist Bradley Moore. The final two recitals of the summer will take place on Tuesday, July 30 at 7 p.m. in Manhattan’s Jackie Robinson Park, and on Thursday, August 1, at 7 p.m. in Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City. Both performances are free.

New York Musical Theater Festival Report: ‘Icarus’

Christopher McIntosh A scene from “Icarus.”

The ragtag troupe that weaves a tale out of everyday materials is an old theatrical reliable for a reason. As “Peter and the Starcatcher,” to name just one current hit, makes clear, there’s still innocent pleasure to be found in role-switching, hat-doffing, puppet-waving performers who construct their show in plain sight.

Yet the Boston-based ensemble Liars & Believers strikes intriguingly ominous notes in its showbiz fable, “Icarus,” which sets the familiar story of a child who dreams big in a Depression-era traveling sideshow.

Conceived and directed by Jason Slavick, “Icarus” benefits from Nathan Leigh’s generally clever lyrics and tangy score â€" a little Weill, a little Mumford â€" delivered for 90 nonstop minutes by a guitar-fiddle-accordion trio.

The world-weary Minnie (Aimee Rose Ranger) runs the show, separating customers from their nickels to peek at Turbo Frog Boy or to step into the Monster’s Maze (George Courage did the flavorful midway posters).
Fiercely protective of her dreamy daughter Penny (Lauren Eicher), she comes unglued when the girl falls for Icarus (Austin Auh), the son of the tinkerer Daedalus (Jonathan Horvath).

This “king of broken things” makes automatons out of spare parts, allowing Mr. Slavick, and his puppet and prop designers Faye Dupras and Marc Ewart, to go steampunk on a budget. Kitchen utensils and a wandering umbrella find their places; so, alas, do paper butterflies and one lyric too many about heading “beyond the horizon.” (Guess who sings that?)

The show’s most inspired invention is the sideshow attraction No Bones Magee, whose big number starts funny and ends twisted in more ways than one. (Veronica Barron has the cast’s best voice in this and several other roles.) It’s here, when the comedy curdles and the aesthetic choices gel, that you can see Mr. Slavick’s sardonic aims and envision “Icarus” really taking off.

“Icarus” continues through July 28 at the Studio Theater at the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 352-3101, nymf.org.

Met to Host Conference of Museum Directors

Unlike the Louvre or the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has no plans to build an outpost in the Middle East. Yet its global reach can be glimpsed not only through its vast collections and traveling exhibitions but also in the many projects it funds around the world, including excavations in the Middle East and conservation initiatives with countries like India.

Now, in an effort to strengthen its global ties, the Met has organized what it is calling the “Global Museum Leaders Colloquium,” a two-week pilot program scheduled to take place from April 12-15. More than a dozen directors from countries including Asia, Africa and Latin America will come to the museum to discuss common challenges museum directors are facing, including conservation issues and the global economic picture. “It’s all about promoting international collaboration,” said Thomas P. Campbell, the Met’s director.

Met to Host Conference of Museum Directors

Unlike the Louvre or the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has no plans to build an outpost in the Middle East. Yet its global reach can be glimpsed not only through its vast collections and traveling exhibitions but also in the many projects it funds around the world, including excavations in the Middle East and conservation initiatives with countries like India.

Now, in an effort to strengthen its global ties, the Met has organized what it is calling the “Global Museum Leaders Colloquium,” a two-week pilot program scheduled to take place from April 12-15. More than a dozen directors from countries including Asia, Africa and Latin America will come to the museum to discuss common challenges museum directors are facing, including conservation issues and the global economic picture. “It’s all about promoting international collaboration,” said Thomas P. Campbell, the Met’s director.

Video, Music and More in the Kitchen’s Fall Season

The Kitchen, the Manhattan organization that showcases experimental work in many disciplines, announced on Thursday that its fall season would include “Tracking the Thrill,” an exhibition of Gretchen Bender’s video work; “King,” a performance piece by  Neal Medlyn that re-considers Michael Jackson’s work and persona; and Claire Chase, the flutist, performing work from her new album, “Destiny.”

The season begins Aug. 27 with Ms. Bender’s exhibition, which features a cross-section of her video work including “Total Recall,” which came to the Kitchen in 1987. Among other highlights, on Oct. 10, there will be screening of the A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner video “Community Action Center.” The screening is accompanied with a special live score for the 2010 feature-length work about gay sexuality.  The artists, including Justin Vivian Bond, Nick Hallett with Sam Miller, K8 Hardy, as well as others, will perform the soundtrack and the filmmakers will discuss their tour of the work.

On Oct. 12, in a co-presentation with ISSUE Project Room, a cast of musicians will join the X-Patsys musical trio on a double bill that features Rhys Chatham performing “Guitar Trio.”  The season ends Nov. 6-9 with the return of Maria Hassabi in “Premiere.”  It marks her first work at the Kitchen since the premiere of her dance piece “Show” in 2011.  “Premiere” is to be co-presented with Performa 13 and is described by the Kitchen as about “the moment when a performance first encounters its public â€" viewers and critics.”

Embattled President of American Academy of Arts and Sciences to Resign

Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, the embattled president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, will officially depart her post at the end of the month, the academy has announced.

Ms. Berlowitz has been on paid administrative leave since early June, following reports that she had falsely claimed, on several grant applications and other documents, to have a doctorate.

In a letter sent to members, Louis W. Cabot, the chairman of the academy’s board, said that Ms. Berlowitz would resign effective July 31, without any severance. She will receive a one-time payment of $475,000, reflecting vested retirement benefits to which she was contractually entitled, as well as unused vacation time and “other deferred compensation,” the letter noted. She will also receive supplemental health insurance for five years “at a cost not to exceed $3,500 per year.”

The election of a successor to lead the 233-year-old honorary society, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., would probably take “some months,” Mr. Cabot wrote.

The letter also announced that Mr. Cabot’s term as board chairman, which began in 2009, would end in October. He is to be replaced by Don M. Randel, a former president of the University of Chicago and of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, who will serve a three-year term.

The letter did not comment on the credentials controversy, which is subject to an ongoing independent investigation, according to an Academy spokesman. But the detailed information about the financial terms of Ms. Berlowitz’s departure seemed to be a response to anger among many of the Academy’s more than 4,000 members about her compensation, totaling more than $598,000 for the fiscal year ending March 2012, which was also noted in a Boston Globe article first reporting on the issue.

In the letter, Mr. Cabot wrote that the board had appointed a special committee “to examine the process by which the president and C.E.O.’s salary and benefits have been determined in the past, assess the reasonableness of the total compensation for that position, and to make recommendations for any changes in the compensation process going forward.”

Embattled President of American Academy of Arts and Sciences to Resign

Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, the embattled president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, will officially depart her post at the end of the month, the academy has announced.

Ms. Berlowitz has been on paid administrative leave since early June, following reports that she had falsely claimed, on several grant applications and other documents, to have a doctorate.

In a letter sent to members, Louis W. Cabot, the chairman of the academy’s board, said that Ms. Berlowitz would resign effective July 31, without any severance. She will receive a one-time payment of $475,000, reflecting vested retirement benefits to which she was contractually entitled, as well as unused vacation time and “other deferred compensation,” the letter noted. She will also receive supplemental health insurance for five years “at a cost not to exceed $3,500 per year.”

The election of a successor to lead the 233-year-old honorary society, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., would probably take “some months,” Mr. Cabot wrote.

The letter also announced that Mr. Cabot’s term as board chairman, which began in 2009, would end in October. He is to be replaced by Don M. Randel, a former president of the University of Chicago and of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, who will serve a three-year term.

The letter did not comment on the credentials controversy, which is subject to an ongoing independent investigation, according to an Academy spokesman. But the detailed information about the financial terms of Ms. Berlowitz’s departure seemed to be a response to anger among many of the Academy’s more than 4,000 members about her compensation, totaling more than $598,000 for the fiscal year ending March 2012, which was also noted in a Boston Globe article first reporting on the issue.

In the letter, Mr. Cabot wrote that the board had appointed a special committee “to examine the process by which the president and C.E.O.’s salary and benefits have been determined in the past, assess the reasonableness of the total compensation for that position, and to make recommendations for any changes in the compensation process going forward.”

Larry Kramer Is Married in Hospital Ceremony

Courtesy of David Webster David Webster, left, and Larry Kramer.

Larry Kramer, the award-winning playwright of “The Normal Heart” and longtime gay rights advocate, married his partner, David Webster, on Wednesday in the intensive care unit of NYU Langone Medical Center, where Mr. Kramer has been recovering from surgery for a bowel obstruction. Mr. Webster, in a telephone interview on Thursday, said the couple had set the wedding date a few weeks earlier, before Mr. Kramer’s health flare-up.

The original plan - to be married on the terrace of their Greenwich Village apartment with two witnesses and the officiant, Judge Eve Preminger - was scrapped in favor of the intensive care unit, where two dozen friends and relatives attended the noontime ceremony led by Judge Preminger.

“I had been traveling when Larry went into the hospital,” Mr. Webster said, “and when I was back and he was able to talk, he told me he had invited 20 people to the I.C.U. for the wedding. So it turned into a little party at his bedside.”

The two men exchanged Cartier rings they had purchased last week, Mr. Webster said. Instead of vows, they spoke from the heart.

“Why would Larry need a script?” Mr. Webster said, laughing.

Mr. Kramer was resting on Thursday morning and not available for an interview. One of the first prominent advocates in the early 1980s for government action against H.I.V. and AIDS, Mr. Kramer went on to help found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and Act Up and to write acclaimed plays about gay men and AIDS, most notably “The Normal Heart,” which won the Tony Award for best play revival on Broadway in 2011. Mr. Kramer received a special Tony in June for humanitarian service.

Mr. Kramer had held a skeptical view of state laws permitting gay marriage as long as the federal Defense of Marriage Act was in place; in 2011 he referred to such unions as “feel-good marriages” because they conveyed few tangible benefits, since the federal law restricted hundreds of government benefits to heterosexual marriages. But after the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 ruling, struck down the Defense of Marriage Act last month, Mr. Kramer decided it was time to marry, Mr. Webster said.

Mr. Kramer, 78, and Mr. Webster, an architect who is 67, dated in the 1970s and have been partners since the mid-1990s. Mr. Kramer based central characters in his 1978 novel “Faggots” on himself and Mr. Webster.

Mr. Webster said that Mr. Kramer checked himself into the hospital on Friday and had bypass surgery early Sunday morning. Mr. Kramer is feeling better, Mr. Webster added, and hopes to move to a private room soon.

“He wasn’t able to attend the wedding reception afterward at Riverpark,” Mr. Webster said, “but we’ll have a party once he’s out of the hospital.”

When New York Teetered on the Brink of Bankruptcy

Ángel Franco/The New York Times A copy of a declaration of default signed by Mayor Abraham D. Beame in October 1975, but never invoked, hangs on the wall of a Manhattan office.

One by one, guests on the multi-tiered dais of the annual white-tie Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation benefit dinner slipped away for secret negotiations to resolve the city’s fiscal crisis. Mayor Abraham D. Beame returned to Gracie Mansion early to confer with fellow formally attired city officials, then slept fitfully, knowing the grave decisions he faced the next morning.

By midday that Friday, Oct. 17, 1975, Mr. Beame had signed a formal petition attesting to municipal default. The police commandeered squad cars, poised to serve legal papers on banks that were the city’s leading creditors. A court order was pending to preserve the city government’s assets, including cash and durable goods, like garbage trucks. A judge with whom the Beames regularly played pinochle was enlisted to order Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin to pay the salaries of city workers before paying the principal and interest due that afternoon on municipal debt.

“I have been advised by the comptroller,” a two-and-a-half-page mayoral news release began, “that the City of New York has insufficient cash on hand to meet debt obligations due today. This constitutes the default that we have struggled to avoid.” New York City was about to declare bankruptcy.

But that signed petition was never invoked. Today, it hangs framed in the Fifth Avenue office of Ira P. Millstein, one of the city’s private lawyers during the fiscal crisis â€" a testament to the New Yorkers who, after meeting for hours in an Upper East Side apartment that October morning, dodged the financial fate that Detroit suffered last week.

They had come this close to declaring that New York had run out of cash and would default on about $100 million in borrowing due that afternoon. As it was, officials had to persuade the comptroller of the currency to keep Manufacturers Hanover, the city’s paying agent, open into the night so the debt payments could be processed.

New York avoided what Detroit did not because, literally at the last minute, all parties agreed to share the pain and avoid the prolonged uncertainty that bankruptcy or receivership promised.

At a key moment, everything depended on Albert Shanker, the teachers’ union leader, who, worried about his members, was wary about investing about $150 million of their pension funds in city securities. Just how volatile Mr. Shanker could be had been captured by Woody Allen in “Sleeper,” his apocalyptic film. Mr. Allen blamed the end of civilization on the fact that “a man named Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear device.”

Mr. Shanker agreed to meet privately in the apartment of Richard Ravitch, whom Gov. Hugh L. Carey had recruited to rescue the state’s overextended Urban Development Corporation. At the meeting were Mr. Ravitch; Mr. Shanker; Mr. Carey; his counsel, Judah Gribetz; former Mayor Robert F. Wagner; Sandra Feldman, Mr. Shanker’s deputy and eventual successor; and Harry Van Arsdale, head of the city’s Central Labor Council.

Among the other principals who played crucial roles in resolving the crisis: Victor Gotbaum, the municipal union leader who had already agreed to invest in city securities; Felix G. Rohatyn, whom Mr. Carey enlisted from the private sector as a financial adviser; Peter C. Goldmark Jr., the state budget director; and Stephen Berger, who would become the first director of the Emergency Financial Control Board.

“The one thing that really made a difference was the absolute commitment of a new governor not to put the city into bankruptcy,” Mr. Rohatyn recalled. “We were not willing to gamble on something that had never happened before on that scale.” (Mr. Carey, his biographer, Seymour P. Lachman, said, had been taught by his father long before that bankruptcy was a deceptively easy solution.)

Few people were advocating bankruptcy because it might abrogate agreements with organized labor and leave financial institutions liable for selling securities that were suspect or even fraudulent. New York bonds and notes were widely held by banks and individuals throughout the United States. World leaders feared the repercussions of a New York bankruptcy. And the city depended on credit, which, had bankruptcy been declared, might have been denied for decades.

“New York was broke, but it wasn’t bankrupt,” Mr. Berger recalled. “It was an enterprise that had been badly mismanaged, whose finances were uncontrolled and had no real financial systems and was basically run by a history of pushcart peddlers. However, it had a substantial core of political and business leadership, which saw the long-term danger to short-term solution.”

“Detroit has none of the inherent characteristics that New York had in its worst financial moments,” he added. “In the end, all the stuff we did was to keep the kid from drowning and three years later the economy swept him back on the shore.”

Mr. Millstein remembered: “Everyone knew that New York, unlike Detroit, was not a dead city. It just needed some mechanism to get out of the mess.”

Municipal bankruptcy was largely untested at the time - how would a judge balance the needs of city employees, poor people, vendors and other creditors? How would it affect the state’s credit?

“The fiscal crisis was misnamed,” Mr. Rohatyn later recalled. “It was a bankruptcy crisis. We had a much greater sense of potential doom if we went bankrupt.’’

Mr. Goldmark said: “Hugh Carey lashed the fate of the state to that of the city. Michigan has done nothing of the kind.”

Beyond the financial repercussions, bankruptcy, Mr. Ravitch said, would have been “a failure of democracy to solve its problems and we didn’t want to fail. But on the other hand, it was the threat of bankruptcy that got everybody to do things that in the beginning of this process they swore they wouldn’t do.”

Understudy Steps Up for Nathan Lane in ‘The Nance’

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Mr. Lane onstage in “The Nance.”

The Tony Award-winning actor Nathan Lane injured his foot and leg on Wednesday night during a performance of the Broadway play “The Nance” and had to be replaced by his understudy, Stephen DeRosa. In a telephone interview on Thursday, Mr. Lane said he was due to see a physical therapist and hoped to return to “The Nance” for Thursday night’s performance.

The injury occurred during the first act of the play, which stars Mr. Lane as a 1930s-era burlesque performer, as the actor stepped off of the production’s turntable, which revolves to allow the “Nance” sets to change from the burlesque house to the apartment of Mr. Lane’s character.

“The turntable was moving very quickly and I misjudged it, and had one foot on the stage while the other was still on the turntable, and it pulled my leg,” Mr. Lane said. “It twisted badly. I’m seeing a physical therapist today, and we’ll see. I hope to be back in the show tonight.”

A spokeswoman for the play’s producer, Lincoln Center Theater, said that Mr. Lane’s status for Thursday’s performance would be announced later. Mr. Lane, a two-time Tony winner for “The Producers” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” was nominated this year for a best actor Tony for “The Nance,” written by Douglas Carter Beane and scheduled to run through Aug. 11.

Sicilian Exhibition at Cleveland Museum Is Off Again After Talks Fail

After Sicily unexpectedly announced this month that it wanted the return of a traveling exhibition of its ancient treasures because their absence was hurting tourism, resulting in the cancellation of the show at the Cleveland Museum of Art, for a moment it seemed that a compromise was possible when the announcement was followed by another saying both sides were in talks to try to reach a settlement and allow the exhibition to go on. The show, which was scheduled to open in Cleveland in September after its current run at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, might go on, Sicilian officials suggested, if Cleveland could help soften the financial loss. As it turns out, they made an offer that Cleveland could refuse.

On Wednesday the museum said it had declined to pay additional fees for the exhibition, “Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome.” “To announce all new economic terms after the exhibition has been organized, cataloged and shipped is unprecedented and negotiations over this development have to date been unsuccessful,” the museum’s director, David Franklin, said in a statement. “We are very disappointed not to be able to share this exhibition with our visitors, but at this point we must turn our attention to developing new plans for the fall.”

Before Leaving Los Angeles Museum, Deitch Will Stay On to Help With Fundraising

The board of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, has confirmed the widely expected news that the institution’s director, Jeffrey Deitch, would step down from the job after a troubled three-year tenure.

In a statement on Wednesday the board said that Mr. Deitch, a former New York art dealer, had agreed to stay on for an unspecified time to ensure a smooth transition and the completion of one of the museum’s largest fundraising drives, which has secured pledges of more than $75 million in donations, toward a goal of $100 million by the fall.

The board formed a search committee for a new director, to be led by the board’s chairwoman, Maria Bell, and chairman, David Johnson, along with Joel Wachs, a former trustee who is now the president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

July 25: Where the Candidates Are Today

Planned events for the mayoral candidates, according to the campaigns and organizations they are affiliated with. Times are listed as scheduled but frequently change.

Joseph Burgess and Nicholas Wells contributed reporting.

Event information is listed as provided at the time of publication. Details for many of Ms. Quinn events are not released for publication.

Events by candidate

Albanese

Catsimatidis

De Blasio

Lhota

Liu

Quinn

Thompson

Weiner

Group event

John A. Catsimatidis
Republican

12 p.m.
Lunches with with the Partnership for New York City, at the Bank of America Building in Midtown.

Bill de Blasio
Democrat

1 p.m.
Holds a news conference to discuss a new report suggesting that over 250,000 Brooklyn residents would need to travel farther for medical care if Long Island College Hospital were to be closed, at the southwest corner of Hicks and Pacific Streets, outside the hospital, in Cobble Hill.

8:15 p.m.
Greets concertgoers at Celebrate Brooklyn! featuring Bebe Winans and Alicia Olatuja, at the Prospect Park Bandshell.

John C. Liu
Democrat

7 a.m.
Greets morning commuters at the Woodside-61st Street subway station on Roosevelt Avenue.

10 a.m.
Holds news conference to discuss comptroller’s continuing concerns about South Street Seaport’s management and the findings of his latest audit, near entrance to Pier 17 shops in Lower Manhattan.

11 a.m.
Attends traditional dragon-boat awakening ceremony to kick off annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival, at Father Duffy Square at 47th Street and Seventh Avenue.

11:45 a.m.
Visits with seniors at the Jefferson Houses Senior Center in East Harlem.

12:10 p.m.
Visits with seniors at Casabe Senior Housing in Harlem.

7:15 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on women’s issues hosted by Women in Action and Voces Latinas, in Queens.

8:15 p.m.
Makes brief remarks at the Fiesta Patronal de Chile de la Sal, at Santa Rita Church in Astoria, Queens.

8:45 p.m.
Attends an Iftar, the traditional evening meal that Muslims partake in to break their fasts during Ramadan, with the Bangladeshi American Advocacy Group, at King Kabob in Queens.

Joseph J. Lhota
Republican

7:45 a.m.
Greets morning commuters at the East 86th Street subway station, on Lexington Avenue.

Christine C. Quinn
Democrat

7:30 a.m.
Greets morning commuters with City Councilwoman Annabel Palma at the Parkchester subway station, at Metropolitian Avenue and Westchester Avenue in the Bronx.

9 a.m.
Greets voters with State Senator Gustavo Rivera at an Italian pastry shop, De Lillo Pasticceria, in the Little Italy section of the Bronx.

10 a.m.
Fortified perhaps by her trip to the Italian pastry shop, continues campaigning with State Senator Gustavo Rivera, at the nearby Crotona Park Tennis Center in the Bronx.

Some of Ms. Quinn’s events may not be shown because the campaign declines to release her advance schedule for publication.

William C. Thompson Jr.
Democrat

12 p.m.
Joins with uniformed E.M.T.s, paramedics and firefighters in calling for the city to digitize the floorplans of N.Y.C. schools and commerical high-rises to improve the ability of first responders to provide help quickly and accurately, at EMS Battalion 4 Station House in Lower Manhattan.

6:30 p.m.
Attends the Mt. Morris Community Improvement Association’s picnic, at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem.

Anthony D. Weiner
Democrat

10:30 a.m.
Prepares meals for distribution, alongside volunteers, at Masbia soup kitchen and food pantry in Flatbush.

11 a.m.
Continues his “Keys to the City” tour by announcing his plan to create a “Non-Profit Czar,” if elected, who would serve as a liaison between the mayor’s office and charitable organizations, at Masbia of Flatbush.

6:30 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on women’s issues hosted by Women in Action and Voces Latinas, in Queens.

Sal F. Albanese
Democrat

7:30 a.m.
Greets morning commuters with his wife, Lorraine, at the Woodside-61st Street subway station on Roosevelt Avenue.

3 p.m.
Starts off the third leg of his five-mile tour of Roosevelt Avenue, beginning with a lunch featuring a “taco al pastor,” tacos cut from the spit, at Taqueria Coatzingo in Jackson Heights.

6 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on women’s issues hosted by Women in Action and Voces Latinas, in Queens.

Adolfo Carrión Jr.
Independent

6:30 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on women’s issues hosted by Women in Action and Voces Latinas, in Queens.

Readers with information about events involving the mayoral candidates are invited to send details and suggestions for coverage to cowan@nytimes.com. You can also follow us on Twitter @cowannyt.

The Real Beauty Within

Dear Diary:

There I was on the subway and diagonally across the car was one of those women who needed to be examined.

Clearly well into her 70s, maybe 80s, but fighting it tenaciously if not graciously with a screamingly conspicuous jet-black wig restrained from complete disorder by an almost iridescent blue headband. Her face was as gray as her real hair must be, drawn in grooves of gravity and gravitas, eyes dulled to nondescript, and when she cracked a small smile to the blind (really) person next to her, her teeth bore witness to a long acquaintance with Liggett & Myers.

A casual hint of makeup just didn’t deny the sadness of her futile fight with time. I was wondering how some of us somehow keep our balance while others stumble down the slope of eventuality.

And just as I was wondering this, she looked up, caught my eye and, with a gesture, offered me her seat.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

July 20: Where the Candidates Are Today

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With Building\'s Sale, Piano Row Will Lose Another Key

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July 21: Where the Candidates Are Today

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A Central Park Balloon Man With a Heart

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New York Today: We Made It

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July 22: Where the Candidates Are Today

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Revisiting History Through Objects, and a Long-Gone Game Show

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New York Today: Royal Reaction

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A Mourning Dove Ring Tone

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July 23: Where the Candidates Are Today

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Ferry Horns, a Safety Regulation, Cause Disturbance in Battery Park City

Joshua Bright for The New York Times Kayakers on the Hudson River last week as a ferry boat passed by. Some kayakers have complained that the boats have not been sounding their horns to warn that they were leaving their docks.

Three years ago, residents of Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan complained about noisy engines of ferryboats. Now, the ferries' horns have some of them squawking and blaming letter-of-the law kayakers for their lost sleep.

The rules of navigation enforced by the Coast Guard require ferries and other powerboats to blast their horns for several seconds before departing docks. But some people who live in apartments in Battery Park City say the ferries that cross the Hudson River were not routinely following that rule â€" until some kayakers complained to the United States Coast Guard.

Now, these residents say, the ferries are sounding off from 6 a.m. until late at night, disrupting the relative peace of their oasis built on landfill. One resident, Wolfgang Gabler, has posted a video of his wife and children appearing to be roused from slumber by blasts of a ferry's horn. He even created a Facebook page titled “Stop Honking Ferries in New York City.”

Early this month, Mr. Gabler wrote an open letter to his neighbors about the honking on a Web site devoted to happenings in Lower Manhattan. The Web site's editor, Steven Greer, reported that the instigator of the cacophony was Nancy Brous, a Manhattan resident who heads the New York City Water Trail Association. He even posted a picture of Ms. Brous paddling a kayak.

Ms. Brous was none too happy about being portrayed as a whistle-blower who caused so many horns to be blown. In an interview last week, she insisted that “this isn't a battle between kayakers and ferries.”

She admitted that she had been trying for two years to persuade the Coast Guard to enforce the rule. At the urging of a Coast Guard official, she said, she had encouraged other paddlers to make note of the failure of ferries to comply. She compiled those notes â€" and even a video one kayaker shot aboard an East River ferry that did not honk - and forwarded them to the Coast Guard, she said.

Happily, Ms. Brous said, “I have heard that ferries all over have been blasting more now.” She said that she did not understand why anybody would want to vilify kayakers for seeking to have much bigger boats follow a rule that was written for the safety of everybody on the water.

Asking that ferries not blow their horns for fear of waking someone, she said, “is like saying, ‘Don't run a siren on a fire engine.'”

Charles Rowe, a spokesman for the Coast Guard, said that the Coast Guard investigated the kayakers' complaints and found that they “merited action.” The Coast Guard reminded the ferry operators” that they had to sound their horns as required,” Mr. Rowe said. “It doesn't matter if it's the Staten Island Ferry or any of these other ones.”

For its part, Billybey Ferry said through a spokesman: “We are aware that the sounding of our horns may cause a disturbance to residents in the neighborhoods near where our ferries land, including Battery Park City.” The spokesman, Damiano DeMonte, added, “We hope that our neighbors can appreciate our need to operate in strict compliance with U.S. Coast Guard rules governing the safe operation of our shared waterways.”

Eric Stiller, whose company, Manhattan Kayak, operates kayak and paddleboard tours from Pier 66 on the Hudson, said he hoped that ferries would signal their departures more regularly. He said his guides usually swung well wide of the ferry terminal at the west end of 39th Street and had managed to avoid even a close call with an outgoing ferry.

But Mr. Stiller said he had seen up close how a kayaker might fare in a collision with a boat that can hold more than 100 commuters. A few years ago, he said, his company donated a kayak that he thought was unbreakable for a safety demonstration.

The ferry “sliced it in half,” he recalled. Until that day, Mr. Stiller said, he thought that a kayaker who went “under a ferry” would have an interesting story to tell. “Not anymore,” he said.

New York Today: Impact of Weiner\'s Disclosures

Michael Appleton for The New York Times Anthony D. Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, at a news conference where he admitted engaging in sexually explicit online exchanges after he resigned from Congress.

Mayoral candidates are scheduling various events for Wednesday, but it looks as if all anyone will want to discuss are new revelations about Anthony D. Weiner's raunchy online conversations.

Bill de Blasio is speaking at a Bronx forum. William C. Thompson Jr. is campaigning at subway stops in Harlem.

The day, though, will most likely be dominated by fallout from Mr. Weiner's news conference on Tuesday, where he and his wife, Huma Abedin, acknowledged that he had continued to have sexually explicit conversations with women he met online after he resigned from Congress.

Already, some of his rivals have demanded that he drop out of the race.

What to watch for: Will other candidates, including one of the front-runners, Christine C. Quinn, join that call on Wednesday? Or will they sidestep questions about Mr. Weiner and see how the public reacts?

The editorial pages of The New York Times and The Daily News said he should abandon the race. The New York Post was also harshly critical.

And where is the candidate at the center of it all? Mr. Weiner is testifying at a hearing on public housing in Manhattan and speaking at a mayoral forum in the Bronx.

WEATHER High of 87. Slight chance of rain. The night will feel comparatively chilly, 66 degrees and cloudy. Click here for the forecast.

TRANSIT & TRAFFIC

- Roads: Click for the latest status.

- Alternate side parking is in effect.

- Mass Transit:

Subways: Click for the latest status.

COMING UP TODAY

- An anatomical specimen made of an actual human and a horse â€" preserved with plastic polymer â€" from the exhibit “Body Worlds,” will be on display in Times Square for just one day. [Free]

- People dressed in black will walk across the Brooklyn Bridge at 4 p.m. as part of a “funeral march” protesting potential hospital closings in Brooklyn.

- Dancers splash through the fountain and cavort in the courtyard outside Lincoln Center at 6 p.m. [Free]

- Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City hosts an outdoor screening of “In Another Country,” by the South Korean director Hong Sang-soo at 7 p.m. [Free]

- Watch “Argo” on Pier 63 in Hudson River Park. 8:30 p.m. [Free]

- Admission is free on Wednesday at the Bronx Zoo. Take a peek at the future home of the Komodos.

- There's a family capoeira class this evening in Inwood Hill Park from 6:30 to 7:30. [Free]

- Subway musicians perform at the third annual N.Y.C. Busker Ball at Spike Hill in Williamsburg at 7 p.m. [Free]

IN THE NEWS

- Keron Thomas, who took an A train on a joy ride as a teenager, has died. He was 37. [PIX 11]

- A Queens woman threw out a fridge, forgetting she had stashed $5,000 in it. She got the money back. [New York Daily News]

- More than 1,000 Citi Bike users had their personal information exposed because of a glitch. [Gothamist]

- An apartment fire in Hamilton Heights displaced 150 people. It was sparked by an air-conditioner, officials said. [DNA Info]

- Some people wait years for an apartment in public housing, while others jump the line. [New York Times]

- It's been nine months since Hurricane Sandy, and the storks are working overtime. [CBS]

- A tenant turned a rent-stabilized NoLIta apartment into a bed-and-breakfast, a landlord says. [PIX 11]

AND FINALLY…

A repatriation ceremony will be held on Wednesday at the United States Attorney's office in Manhattan â€" for two antique books. They are being returned to the National Library of Sweden, rediscovered after purportedly being stolen by Anders Burius, a senior librarian there. He committed suicide shortly after his arrest in 2004. The books contain early depictions of America's interior, including Mississippi, by explorers.

Michaelle Bond and Michael Barbaro contributed reporting.

We're testing New York Today, which we put together just before dawn and update until noon.

What information would you like to see here when you wake up to help you plan your day? Tell us in the comments, send suggestions to Sarah Maslin Nir or tweet them at @nytmetro using #NYToday. Thanks!

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 24, 2013

An earlier version of this post misstated the location of a screening of "Argo" in Hudson River Park. It is at Pier 63, not Pier 36.

Another Brooklyn Neighborhood Acronym

Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Dear Diary:

I was sitting the other day in the ever-growing, ever more beautiful Brooklyn Bridge Park. I was near Old Dock Street and the warehouses there, at the point of the pie-wedge-shaped area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, Dumbo to my right hand.

I wonder, as it is completed there near Jane's Carousel now, why we cannot have Bambi to sit beside Dumbo.

You know, Bambi: “Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge Interspace.”

I long for Jiminy Cricket.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

July 24: Where the Candidates Are Today

Planned events for the mayoral candidates, according to the campaigns and organizations they are affiliated with. Times are listed as scheduled but frequently change.

Joseph Burgess and Nicholas Wells contributed reporting.

Event information is listed as provided at the time of publication. Details for many of Ms. Quinn events are not released for publication.

Events by candidate

Albanese

De Blasio

Lhota

Liu

Quinn

Salgado

Thompson

Group event

John A. Catsimatidis
Republican

2:30 p.m.
Meets privately with representatives from Housing First!, an affordable housing advocacy group, at the Bank of America building in Midtown.

6 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on education, health care and affordable housing, hosted by Lehman College, Bronx Community College, the League of Women Voters of N.Y.C. and Rock the Vote, in the Gould Memorial Library Auditorum at Bronx Community College.

Bill de Blasio
Democrat

10:30 a.m.
Holds a news conference repeating his call for Anthony D. Weiner to withdraw his candidacy for mayor, on the steps of City Hall.

1:30 p.m.
Greets voters at the Bedford Avenue subway station, in Williamsburg.

7:15 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on education, health care and affordable housing, hosted by Lehman College, Bronx Community College, the League of Women Voters of N.Y.C. and Rock the Vote, in the Gould Memorial Library Auditorum at Bronx Community College.

John C. Liu
Democrat

7 a.m.
Greets morning commuters at the 181st Street subway station, on St. Nicholas Avenue.

12 p.m.
Announces in a news conference the endorsement of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, whose ranks are thought to include as many as 120,000 New York families, outside City Hall.

5 p.m.
Attends a rally for Long Island College Hospital and Interfaith Hospitals, both in danger of closing their doors, at Broadway and Park Place in Lower Manhattan.

5:30 p.m.
Four days after spending the night with a host family at the city-owned Lincoln Houses, testifies at an N.Y.C. Housing Authory plan hearing, at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University.

6 p.m.
Attends the annual picnic for Three Parks Independent Democrats, an Upper West Side club whose support has been crucial to the comptroller's mayoral race since it was first to endorse him publicly in May after a federal jury returned guilty verdicts against two of his associates for campaign improprieties, at the Pool Lawns in Central Park.

7:30 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on education, health care and affordable housing, hosted by Lehman College, Bronx Community College, the League of Women Voters of N.Y.C. and Rock the Vote, in the Gould Memorial Library Auditorum at Bronx Community College.

Joseph J. Lhota
Republican

8:15 a.m.
Much as his rival Bill de Blasio did a week ago, Mr. Lhota meets with the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, a group formed to promote business interests below Canal Street, at their offices on Broadway.

6 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on education, health care and affordable housing, hosted by Lehman College, Bronx Community College, the League of Women Voters of N.Y.C. and Rock the Vote, in the Gould Memorial Library Auditorum at Bronx Community College.

7:30 p.m.
Greets voters at the Feast of St. Theresa, on St. Theresa Avenue in the Bronx.

Christine C. Quinn
Democrat

10 a.m.
Holds a news conference to highlight proposals to improve public transit by installing countdown clocks outside of subway stations and introducing Spanish-language announcements, outside of the Brooklyn Bridge City Hall subway station.

10:45 a.m.
Attends ribbon-cutting ceremony for new Fairway Market in Chelsea, with City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, on Sixth Avenue.

12:30 p.m.
Curtainraiser with press to discuss agenda and legislation likely to move at City Council's coming regular meeting, at City Hall.

1 p.m.
Presides over the City Council's Stated Meeting, in which the Council is expected to vote on a package of nine bills aimed at preparing the city for future storms and the granting of a special permit. The much-debated permit would allow Madison Square Garden to operate for 10 more years at its current location before it may have to make way for a redeveloped Penn Station, far less time than the garden - and its list of boosters that includes Spike Lee and the former Knicks great Walt Frazier - had been hoping for when the current 50-year special permit expires. Meeting will also commemorate this week's 10th anniversary of the assasination of former City Councilman Jesse E. Davis, shot inside the City Council's own chambers by a political rival, all at City Hall.

6:30 p.m.
Four days after spending the night with a host family at the city-owned Lincoln Houses, testifies at an N.Y.C. Housing Authory plan hearing, at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University.

Some of Ms. Quinn's events may not be shown because the campaign declines to release her advance schedule for publication.

William C. Thompson Jr.
Democrat

7 a.m.
Greets morning commuters at the 110th Street subway station on Lenox Avenue.

8:30 a.m.
Joins representatives of Transit Workers Union Local 100, which endorsed him, in a rally calling for “safe, affordable, accessible and reliable transportation for all New Yorkers,” at M.T.A. headquarters on Madison Avenue.

7 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on education, health care and affordable housing, hosted by Lehman College, Bronx Community College, the League of Women Voters of N.Y.C. and Rock the Vote, in the Gould Memorial Library Auditorum at Bronx Community College.

Anthony D. Weiner
Democrat

5:30 p.m.
Four days after spending the night with a host family at the city-owned Lincoln Houses, testifies at an N.Y.C. Housing Authory plan hearing, at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University.

6:45 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on education, health care and affordable housing, hosted by Lehman College, Bronx Community College, the League of Women Voters of N.Y.C. and Rock the Vote, in the Gould Memorial Library Auditorum at Bronx Community College.

Sal F. Albanese
Democrat

7:30 a.m.
Greets morning commuters with his wife, Lorraine, at the 71st Street-Forest Hills subway station on Queens Boulevard.

1:15 p.m.
Meets privately with representatives from Housing First!, an affordable housing advocacy group, at the Bank of America building in Midtown.

5:30 p.m.
Attends an N.Y.C. Housing Authority plan hearing, at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University.

6:30 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on education, health care and affordable housing, hosted by Lehman College, Bronx Community College, the League of Women Voters of N.Y.C. and Rock the Vote, in the Gould Memorial Library Auditorum at Bronx Community College.

Adolfo Carrión Jr.
Independent

6:30 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on education, health care and affordable housing, hosted by Lehman College, Bronx Community College, the League of Women Voters of N.Y.C. and Rock the Vote, in the Gould Memorial Library Auditorum at Bronx Community College.

George T. McDonald
Republican

6:30 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on education, health care and affordable housing, hosted by Lehman College, Bronx Community College, the League of Women Voters of N.Y.C. and Rock the Vote, in the Gould Memorial Library Auditorum at Bronx Community College.

Erick J. Salgado
Democrat

4 p.m.
Attends ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly opened Vivaldi Restaurant, at a spot managed by the city's parks department that has seen three restaurants fail in four years, in Bayside, Queens.

6:30 p.m.
Participates in a mayoral forum on education, health care and affordable housing, hosted by Lehman College, Bronx Community College, the League of Women Voters of N.Y.C. and Rock the Vote, in the Gould Memorial Library Auditorum at Bronx Community College.

Readers with information about events involving the mayoral candidates are invited to send details and suggestions for coverage to cowan@nytimes.com. You can also follow us on Twitter @cowannyt.

New York Today: What Heat Wave?

Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Today you can use clouds rather than a hat to escape from the summer sun.

Updated, 8:15 a.m. | Do you remember a week ago?

When it was 99 degrees in Central Park.

On Thursday, revel in a high that is expected to be a comparatively bracing 77 degrees â€" significantly lower than the norm of 84.

A benevolent northeasterly wind is pushing air chilled by the Atlantic Ocean our way. Cloud cover will shield you from the sun.

There will be a chance of rain. Bring an umbrella â€" and maybe a sweater for the evening, when the temperature will drop into the 60s.

TRANSIT & TRAFFIC

- Roads [8:15] Traffic is mostly O.K. Click for the latest status.

- Alternate side parking is in effect.

- Mass Transit [8:15] Delays on the R, 7, 1, 2 and 3 trains. Click for the latest status.

COMING UP TODAY

- On the campaign trail, Anthony D. Weiner visits a Brooklyn soup kitchen. Joseph J. Lhota will be at the Lexington Avenue and 86th Street subway station at 7:45 a.m. Bill de Blasio will be at a concert at the Prospect Park Bandshell this evening. William C. Thompson Jr. will meet with paramedics and emergency personnel at noon on the Lower East Side.

- Take part in the 4th annual Chelsea Art Walk. Studios will be open and artists will give talks in galleries throughout Chelsea from 5 to 8 p.m. [Free]

- Smokey Robinson performs in Coney Island at 7:30 p.m. [Free]

- Pop-up fitness class for children in Seward Park on the Lower East Side at 10 a.m. [Free]

- The Nigerian guitarist and songwriter Omara Moctar, known as Bombino, (click here for a review of his recent album) plays a lunchtime set at the MetroTech Commons in Downtown Brooklyn at noon. [Free]

- BeBe Winans and Alicia Olatuja at the bandshell at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. 7:30 p.m. [Free]

- Groove at the “Motor City Revue: A Tribute to Motown” concert on Astoria Park Lawn in Queens. 7:30 p.m. [Free]

- Watch “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” on the Harbor View Lawn in Brooklyn Bridge Park at sundown, no golden ticket necessary. [Free]

- The Metropolitan Opera continues its outdoor summer-recital tour of the city. Tonight it's at Clove Lakes Park on Staten Island at 7 p.m. [Free]

- The Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival will feature My Brightest Diamond, Emily Wells and the Kronos Quartet in Damrosch Park at 7:30 p.m. [Free]

IN THE NEWS

- Ronnell Wilson, who killed two undercover detectives (and fathered a child with a corrections officer while in prison), was sentenced to death by a federal jury. [New York Times]

- Shelter Island passes a law to keep skies dark at night. Outdoor lighting must be off at sundown. [Newsday]

- The New York City Council approved a $500 million expansion of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. [Fox News]

- The City Council gave Madison Square Garden an eviction notice, of sorts. It has 10 years to find a new home. [New York Times]

- More M.T.A. fare hikes are on the way. [New York Daily News]

- A city councilman was arrested during a protest against hospital closures. [New York Post]

- A shirtless man sneaked into a secure area at Kennedy Airport. [DNA Info]

- Who you gonna call? Goats, if poison ivy is your problem, according to one New Jersey town. [CBS]

AND FINALLY…

Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn hosts, among others, the remains of William Magear Tweed, a politician who before his death in 1878 stole the equivalent of more than a billion in today's taxpayer dollars. You might know him as Boss Tweed.

For those interested in proverbially dancing on his grave (or near it), the cemetery now sponsors cocktail parties, like tonight's “Drinks to Die For,” as well as plays and other performances.

Michaelle Bond and E.C. Gogolak and contributed reporting.

We're testing New York Today, which we put together just before dawn and update until noon.

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Public Theater Looking for New Home for ‘Here Lies Love\'

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Barclays Center Tops American Ticket Sales List

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Presenting an Infant, and an Image

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National Library of Sweden to Recover Stolen Books

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Alex Gibney Documentary on Lance Armstrong Is Acquired by Sony Pictures Classics

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New York Musical Theater Festival Report: ‘Standby\'

Lynne Robinson Alex Goley and Eryn Murman in “Standby.”

Sartre said hell is other people. Somehow limbo sounds even worse: It's other people - in an airport terminal.

That is the central existential tenet of “Standby,” a heavy-handed musical about the afterlife running at the New York Musical Theater Festival.

Five recent suicide victims find themselves trapped in an interminable air terminal, where a St. Peter figure (a charismatic, if not totally necessary, Dwelvan David) reminds them that suicide is the worst of all the -cides, homi- and geno- included. The recently deceased at first appear to be strangers, only to realize their lives were actually intertwined in a sort of tortured theatrical version of Chutes and Ladders.They must decide among themselves who gets to leave supernatural “standby” and claim the two remaining boarding passes for a flight to heaven; those not chosen will of course jet somewhere a bit more tropical.

If this premise sounds overly literal, just wait: On their ballad-heavy journey to their final destination, the five must first sort through their “baggage.” And yes, by baggage I mean actual duffel bags, briefcases and purses, filled with tokens from their troubled pasts.

The show, aided by a competent cast and six-person band, badly wants to be insightful and uplifting but struggles under the weight of its own conceit. Alfred Solis wrote the book and lyrics with Mark-Eugene Garcia; Amy Baer and Keith Robinson were the composers.

Characters heave musical confession after musical confession at the audience, content to bathe us in their bathos even as they ignore the show's flimsy and often inconsistent logic.

“Standby” continues through July 28 at the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theater, 480 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 352-3101, nymf.org.

A Father\'s Wrath: Tom Kizzia Talks About ‘Pilgrim\'s Wilderness\'

Not since “The Shining” has family life off the grid seemed as terrifying as it does in “Pilgrim's Wilderness,” by Tom Kizzia, but this time the chills come from nonfiction. Mr. Kizzia tells the story of Robert Hale, a Texan who went on to call himself Papa Pilgrim as the patriarch of 15 children. Pilgrim eventually landed in Alaska on protected land, where several local allies adopted him as a heroic pioneer-antagonist of the National Park Service. Others bristled at Pilgrim's self-styled messianism, and all the while his children suffered greatly under his rule. In a recent e-mail interview, Mr. Kizzia discussed whether he ever felt in danger while reporting the book, the keys that helped him unlock the full stor y and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Q.

What do you think kick-started Hale's movement into full-blown eccentricity? Was there one moment that ordained the rest?

A.

I couldn't find an isolated “Rosebud” incident in his childhood. Hale himself said it was the suspicious death by shotgun of his teenage bride, the daughter of Texas politician John Connally, that started him on the “pilgrim” road leading finally to Alaska. But even before that, in the way he pried Kathleen Connally away from her family, you could see the charisma and narcissism that led him eventually to believe he was a messenger of God, helped along perhaps by copious amounts of LSD.

Q.

Were you reluctant to dig deeper into this story, given Hale's personality? Did you ever feel in danger?

A.

When I rode on horseback out to their wilderness homestead to spend the night, I didn't ask every in-your-face question about his family that occurred to me. Was I scared? I told myself it was because I wanted him to be relaxed and keep talking for my newspaper story. I didn't know about his violent side at that point - no one outside the family did. Later, after he got mad about my digging into his past, my wife was worried that our cabin near where the Pilgrim family lived might spontaneously combust.

Q.

When you began writing the book, did you already know about some of his darkest actions, or did you discover more along the way? And how did you approach writing some of the more graphic and disturbing scenes?

A.

I knew about the whipping and the rapes, but not in the harrowing detail I would get from the investigative files. What I didn't appreciate until later was the psychological torture - Papa Pilgrim's ability to use the wrath of God to mold his children's minds, absent any movies, books, friends or outside influences.

I believe in the power of restraint when writing emotionally difficult scenes. Also, because it was pretty much all they heard when they were growing up, the kids had this euphemistic King James Bible quality in the language they used to describe their plight, which I wanted to make use of.

Q.

What was the most unlikely source of help you got in piecing together the story for the book?

A.

Probably when Papa himself, sitting in his wilderness cabin, handed me the key to unlocking his past. He told me he didn't trust journalists because of the lies a reporter once wrote about his father. I got his father's name and went searching on the Internet when I got back to town. It turned out the reporter was Seymour Hersh, the reporting was in his book about the Kennedy years, “The Dark Side of Camelot,” and suddenly I was tumbling down a rabbit hole into Hale's Texas history.

Late in the book-writing process, Elishaba, the eldest daughter, decided to come forward and tell me her story in great detail. That changed the book - put her more toward the center, where she belonged, the tomboy hunter and guardian of her siblings, her father's main victim and adversary.

Q.

How do “inholders” come to own land inside national parks? Is that something that happens all over the country?

A.

Usually there were people on the land before the national parks came along, even across the American West. In general, the government has tried to move them out - peremptorily, in the case of many Native Americans, or gradually, with buyouts or eminent domain. In the Alaska lands act of 1980, Congress took a new approach. The rural wilderness lifestyle would be preserved along with the landscape, especially the subsistence hunting and fishing of Native Alaskans. The choice was part idealism and part political compromise.

Don Pitcher Tom Kizzia

Q.

On a purely philosophical level, do you sympathize with any of the arguments embraced by landowners who took Hale's side early on?

A.

I do. We're all inholders in nature, when you think about it. Alaska is an extreme metaphor for the idea of trying to live in balance with the world around us. But America has never been very good at harmonizing with wilderness. The frontier was always churning, advancing. So our literature is full of nostalgia for the generation that came before, when the land was a little wilder.

Q.

Have some of Hale's early, fervent defenders apologized to you personally?

A.

Heck, no. They think I should have come down even harder on the park rangers. I think some of them may have apologized to the children, for not seeing through to the reality beneath the pious pioneer facade.

Q.

Hale ranted against the government, but he also took advantage of dividends from the Alaska Permanent Fund. Did he ever try to square these things? How self-aware did he seem to you?

A.

Alaska draws huge amounts of money from a federal government that we bash constantly for being oppressive. It's not a contradiction that Alaskans in general choose to spend much time contemplating. On another level, Papa seems to have spent huge amounts of time trying to square the contradictions in his spiritual and family life. I suspect that's what the heavily underlined and annotated Bibles were all about. When he was finally dragged into court and the judge asked his occupation, he said, “I'm a father.”

Q.

Are you still in touch with any of the people in the book?

A.

Almost all of them. The Hale family are recovering but have pulled back, somewhat, with publication of the book. A few of the older siblings sense how their story of escape and resilience can be helpful to other victims of abuse. It's hard to imagine anyone being more isolated and cut off, physically and psychologically, than Elishaba and her sisters and brothers.