Mister D: I also posted the press release in the previous article….her age is a tad off:-)
Women with Organic Style
All the parklands and waterfronts of Upper Manhattan have been transformed in just eight years: In places where hookers formerly turned tricks in burned-out cars, schoolchildren and adults now boat, bicycle, and garden. Overall, throughout New York City, 375 acres of city parkland have been reclaimed; 75,000 tons of debris have been hauled away; 114 smaller parks and co-operative gardens have been saved from development, and one person is primarily responsible for all of it: Bette Midler.
“I came back to New York City in ’94,” Midler says. “I was driving up the West Side Highway and saw that this beautiful ribbon of parkland had been trashed—plastic in the trees, tires, bottles and garbage everywhere. It just stabbed my heart.” So in 1995 the Divine Miss M founded—and began donating millions of dollars to—the New York Restoration Project, a public and private partnership that protects public resources and open spaces. At one fund-raising ball, she wore a low-cut nurse uniform to greet the well-heeled nature-loving guests, who bid on plastic-surgery consultations. Another year, she turned the staid Waldorf-Astoria ballroom into a version of Canyon Ranch crossed with a batty Betty Ford Clinic. “We called it the Hootz Spa,” she says, adding, “People need beauty in their lives, particularly if they have a hard time keeping their heads above water. It’s good to have a little flower to look at.”
Happily ensconced on the Upper East Side with her husband, artist Martin von Hasselberg, and daughter Sophie, Midler gardens on her terrace and hikes her extra compost down the street to a public bin. “Once ya start, ya can’t throw that stuff away,” she says.
“I don’t care how beautiful a building is, nothing can compare with nature in terms of the order, the complexity, the way that it works. The outdoors catches the spiritual side of me. Of course, you have to be careful. I mean, there’s lots of stuff out there that can kill you, snakes and shit.”
“My husband goes to the market every day and buys what’s fresh. Then we’re in the kitchen together. We think of eating as part of the joy of life. This is when you slow down, remember who you are.”
“The fresh-food movement is everywhere now, even in filthy old Hollywood—because people love to shop outdoors. It reminds them of Europe.”
“I love things that perfume the air. And vines. I have loads of jasmine and trumpet vines in my garden. My dream is to put vines all over the buildings of New York. There are some real woofers out there—towers of corrugated mud with big parking structures in front of them. Think how they’d look covered with nice ivies. It would be so beautiful, and I’d call it the Divining Project.”
To View Magazine and Other Winners: Organic Style Magazine
