Week in Pictures for April 25

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A slide show of photographs of the past week in New York City and the region includes the New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, high school scuba divers in Coney Island and a chicken coop in Forest Hills, Queens.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday’s Times, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times’s Joe Nocera, Jo Becker, Josh Haner, Kate Taylor, Michael Powell, Clyde Haberman and Eleanor Randolph.

Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch.

Read current New York headlines and follow us on Twitter.

Haiku Challenge: A Poet’s Picks

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesThe Times received more than 2,800 submissions in its Haiku Challenge about New York City.

Marie Howe, the state poet of New York, reflects on writing haiku and The Times’s Haiku Challenge, which asked readers to submit a 17-syllable poem about New York City.

A traditional haiku was attentive to time and place and most often referred to a season of the year. It was rooted in observations of the natural world and demanded an accuracy that refused romantic clichés. The language might be simple, the images taken from common life, but the insistence on time and place was crucial.

Many of the poems received did not find their inspiration in nature â€" most did not hold some implicit Buddhist insight about nature â€" elements essential to the traditional haiku form. These are New York City haiku. But the best of the poems we received had a quality of the right now-ness of actual experience â€" a moment that happens! And happens again as we encounter it in reading. The freshness and wit of the images held more than we could say. Yes, we thought, New York is like that. Like what? Like that. Yes. That.
â€" Marie Howe, the state poet of New York

On the 6 to Spring
two cops help a tourist whose
map is upside down
â€" Frances Richey, 63, Manhattan

If the “F” comes now,
I could get there, right on time.
But I’m still in bed.
â€" Jill Helene, 34, Manhattan

Riding through the park
no daffodils blooming yet
â€" but unbuttoned coats.
â€" Sharon Rousseau, 50, Manhattan

“Insufficient fare!”
But, without saying a word,
stranger swipes me in.
â€" Janet Gottlieb, 59, Brooklyn

I hear them fighting
Through the thin wall between us â€"
but I don’t take sides.
â€" Nurit Israeli, 71, Manhattan

On the roof, standing,
flying his kite in the sky
the street disappears.
â€" Eugene Dunscomb, 83, Southbury, Conn.

A version of this article appears in print on 04/27/2014, on page WE8 of the Westchester edition with the headline: A Poet’s Picks.

Big Ticket | For $13.4 Million, Hitching Post Included

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times165 East 73rd Street.

A quaint brick-and-limestone carriage house at 165 East 73rd Street that spent 110 years under the ownership of one family sold for $13.4 million and was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

The two-story structure on a block between Lexington and Third Avenues that is a designated historic district was listed in January for $14.5 million; the annual property taxes are $54,696.43.

The 25-foot-wide Beaux-Arts-style carriage house was designed in 1903-04, with a twin next door at No. 167, by George L. Amoroux to shelter the armada of horses and carriages belonging to Henry Harper Benedict, the president of the Remington Typewriter Company. The property was converted to residential use after horses were eclipsed by automobiles, with hardwood flooring and crown molding installed throughout the second-floor apartment in 1939. Downstairs, vestiges of its decades as a stable are still visible in 2014: Hitching posts, blanket racks and the trap door for the hayloft enhance its character.

In recent years, the 5,058-square-foot property had an eight-room, three-bath rental unit on its upper floor, which has 10-foot ceilings. The ground floor, where the ceilings are 15 feet high, had a garage space and an in-law/owner’s apartment.

The original owner, Mr. Benedict, was the great-uncle of the seller, Antoinette Weiser, who grew up in an apartment in the carriage house but now lives in New Mexico.

Vannessa Kaufman of Sotheby’s International Realty was the listing broker, and Michele Kleier of Kleier Residential represented the buyers, who used a limited liability company, 165 East 73rd Street. According to their broker, they will turn the carriage house into a single-family residence: Its 21st-century incarnation will be that of a luxury townhouse.

Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.

Public Grooming

Dear Diary,

You know that thin, clear plastic wrapping superfluously used to shroud plastic deli cutlery?

On a recent upbeat commute home one Friday afternoon, I took a seat on a downtown subway to find a nearby passenger dutifully twisting and spinning his plastic wrapping found, for lack of any better tool, in his green carrying bag bearing an antiquated American Airlines logo. His goal? Dental floss.

At this realization, my concern shifted to any flight associated with his subsequent flossing mission, were he to be successful at dislodging his discomfort.

Herein represents the dynamic I both love and loathe about living in the city. In daily public life there is an ethos of “live and let live,” and at times, “let me live right-in-your-face.” It reminds me that the day is not just determined by me. After a number of years living here, I still reserve all my grooming to the privacy of my bathroom.

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

New York Today: Moving Verses

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesPoetry in Motion places poems in the transit systems to inspire and encourage commuters to read poetry from emerging and established poets.

Updated 8:31 a.m.

Good morning on this fair Friday. Look out for changing weather.

Grand Central is for poets.

At least this weekend, when the Poetry in Motion Springfest takes over the terminal.

Poems from the subway series will be projected on the walls, acclaimed poets will write poems for the public, and children can try their hands at various poetic forms.

Alice Quinn, the director of the Poetry Society of America, will be there.

“They roped me into wearing a long white dress and reciting Emily Dickinson,” she said.

“In Vanderbilt Hall!”

Ms. Quinn, the former longtime poetry editor for The New Yorker, selects poems for Poetry in Motion, a series that began in 1992.

Ms. Quinn described what she and the team at the M.T.A.’s Arts for Transit program look for when choosing poems for the subway.

“You want them to be diverse,” she said.

“And a range that encompasses the experience of a young person, as well as someone who has experienced the vicissitudes of city life.”

Ms. Quinn recalled an episode on a downtown train.

“Years ago, I watched a woman memorize a poem,” she said, describing “Wilderness,” by Lorine Niedecker.

“From 96th to 14th Street, she just read it over and over.”

Here’s what else you need to know for Friday and the weekend.

WEATHER

Dry, then wet: partly sunny, with humidity a very low 25 percent this afternoon and a high of 61.

Brush fires â€" like those that burned Thursday in Staten Island and in New Jersey â€" may continue.

Then clouds, and after dark, quite a bit of rain.

All in a day’s work for April â€" it’s both the second-wettest month and the peak of fire season, thanks to lots of dry air masses and fast-moving storms.

“You can have an inch of rain fall over the area,” said Joseph Pollina of the National Weather Service.

“Then maybe not the day after but the day after that, if it’s been windy, or breezy even, those fuels dry out quickly.”

Saturday’s a mixed bag, too, with some sun but maybe a sprinkle by mid-afternoon.

Sunday: plain old sunny.

COMMUTE

Subways: Delays on the 7. Check latest status.

Rails: Scattered delays on L.I.R.R. Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: No extraordinary delays. Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect.

Weekend Travel Hassles: Check subway disruptions or list of street closings.

COMING UP TODAY

- Mayor de Blasio signs some bills, including one requiring carbon monoxide detectors in certain public spaces.

- A rally outside Brooklyn borough hall in support of the district attorney’s plans to stop prosecuting minor marijuana offenses. 11 a.m.

- The Bowling Green street fair downtown is one of a bunch of street fairs around the city today and this weekend.

- The Shakespeare Sonnet Slam: readings of all 154 poems at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park. 1 p.m. [Free, standby readers wanted]

- Mets host Marlins. Angels at Yankees. Nets host Raptors. Rangers at Flyers.

IN THE NEWS

- Twenty-three Columbia students signed federal complaints charging that the school mishandles sexual assault and harassment cases. [New York Times]

- The hurricane-damaged emergency room at NYU Langone hospital reopened after 18 months. [New York Times]

- A man was arrested on charges of breaking into a Queens apartment and beating three women with a hammer. [NY1]

- Officials are going after a Brooklyn landlord accused of wrecking apartments to drive out longtime tenants. [New York Times]

- The F.B.I. is looking into claims that opponents of the horse-carriage industry committed extortion by threatening a campaign against Christine Quinn if she did not support a ban during the mayoral race. [Daily News]

- The city agreed to pay $55,000 to an Occupy Wall Street videographer who was tackled by a police chief. [Runnin' Scared]

- Someone hung 25 dead cats inside plastic bags from trees in Yonkers. [Journal News]

- An on-duty detective got drunk with a colleague and accidentally shot him in the wrist, the authorities said. [DNAinfo]

- Mayor de Blasio made his debut on the glitterati circuit at a Vanity Fair film-festival party. [New York Times]

- The Queens water wonderland Spa Castle is opening a Manhattan outpost. [Observer]

- Two gorillas were born at the Bronx Zoo. [New York Times]

- Posted to Instagram: a 1909 photo of the half-finished Manhattan Bridge.

- Scoreboard: Yankees chew up Red Sox, 14-5, as Pineda gets 10-game suspension for pine tar. Mets club Cardinals, 4-1.

THE WEEKEND

Saturday

- The Van Cortlandt Park Hike-a-Thon features walks from one to five miles. 9:45 a.m. [Free]

-The Brooklyn Zine Fest includes work from more than 75 writers, artists and small presses, at the Brookln Historical Society. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., also Sunday. [Free]

- Bring your old paint cans and other household poisons to a hazardous-waste disposal day at Cunningham Park in Queens. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. [Free]

- Feminist fireworks: the artist Judy Chicago’s pyrotechnic display “A Butterfly for Brooklyn” lights up Prospect Park. 7:30 p.m. [Free]

Sunday

- Arbor Fest at the Queens Botanical Garden includes live music, beer, and widespread tree worship. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. [$4]

- Bring stuff and take stuff at a Stop ‘n’ Swap on the Lower East Side. 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. [Free]

- Opening reception for “Combined Overflow,” a show of works about the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek, at Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn. 6 p.m. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

AND FINALLY …

An interactive show of drawings at the Bronx Museum of the Arts tonight features an unusual canvas: the audience.

The drawings on the walls are tattooed onto participating museumgoers.

Then the wall art is destroyed, so that the only remaining works are on the skin.

The show is called “Portadores,” Spanish for carriers.

The idea, say the artists, Almudena Lobera and Isabel Martínez Abascal, is that “the viewer becomes an integral part of the work.”

Indeed.

The event starts at 6:30. It is free and includes a bar, but donations are suggested.

Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.

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