Good morning. It's Tuesday. We'll look at a new face on library cards. We'll also see why polio poses challenges for health officials in New York. |
 | | New York Public Library |
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Hey, Patience, or maybe you, Fortitude: What is it like when you're shrunk to make room for Spider-Man? |
No, the New York Public Library is not replacing the famous lion statues outside the main branch on Fifth Avenue. But it is issuing library cards with a big image of Spider-Man and the lion relegated to just a small appearance in the corner. |
The new card will be available starting on Oct. 11 at branch libraries in the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island — but not in Queens, where, as Spider-Man fans know, Peter Parker lived. The Queens Public Library is separate from the New York Public Library, and neither system honors the other's library cards. |
"Spider-Man comics have been inspiring readers and fans alike for generations, and the card captures that spirit," said Anthony Marx, the president of the New York Public Library, which had 150,000 Spider-Man library cards printed under an arrangement with Marvel Entertainment, the publisher of the Spider-Man comic books. The library will issue them on a first-come, first-served basis to new patrons, as well as those who already have library cards but would prefer a Spider-Man card. |
Sorry, Patience — or Fortitude. But you know better than anyone that this is not the first time the library has issued limited-edition cards. It put the most checked-out book in the library's history, Ezra Jack Keats's "The Snowy Day," on one in 2020. |
The library hopes to draw in new readers, a point echoed by Sven Larson, Marvel's vice president of licensed publishing, who noted that so many of Marvel's "most iconic moments and characters" are closely linked with New York. Comics and graphic novels are among the most popular items with teenagers, the library said. |
It has been a year since the library eliminated fines on overdue materials in an effort to lower barriers to its collections. The city's two other library systems, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens system, dropped their fines at the same time. But it was the New York Public Library that was the focus of a plotline in "Amazing Spider-Man #900," released in July. |
Spoiler alert: Peter Parker has some overdue books, including "A Farewell to Arms," "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and "The Power Broker." |
"Quite a stack," the person at the counter says when he walks in. |
And, of course in the comic, Spider-Man shows up for story time in the children's section. |
The New York Public Library says that anyone who lives in New York can get one of its cards, as Peter Parker must have done, so Queens residents will not be shut out. They just cannot use it at the libraries in their borough. |
"This would be like if the Kansas City library was issuing Superman cards to people from wherever Clark Kent was from but you couldn't use the card in Smallville," said Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the Queens library. "It's a great idea. actually, and maybe it will remind people Peter Parker is from Queens and come to us to get a Queens public library card, too." |
Prepare for more showers and wind gusts, with steady temperatures in the mid-50s. Showers and wind gusts persist in the evening. |
In effect today. Suspended tomorrow (Yom Kippur). |
 | | Janice Chung for The New York Times |
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Health officials face the challenge of containing polio |
 | | Victor J. Blue for The New York Times |
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But last month Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state disaster emergency. Last week, the state health commissioner declared the polio virus an imminent threat to public health, a move that helped local health departments establish immunization clinics. |
Polio poses virtually no risk to anyone who is vaccinated. But my colleague Sharon Otterman, writing with Joseph Goldstein, says that low vaccination rates among preschoolers in some pockets of the state are a sign of the challenges officials face in trying to get more children vaccinated. If vaccination rates do not increase, experts and health officials fear that polio could continue to circulate quietly in a pool of vulnerable people, leaving a fraction of them paralyzed. |
In New York, polio partially paralyzed a young unvaccinated man in June. He lived in Monsey, N.Y., where only 37 percent of 2-year-olds were up-to-date with polio vaccines as of the beginning of August. |
Just 9 percent of young children in the Amish farmlands of Cattaraugus County were current with their polio vaccines. In nearby Steuben County and in a small hamlet in the farmlands of Tompkins County, barely a quarter of 2-year-olds were up-to-date. |
Because vaccinations are required to enroll students in public or private school in New York State, most children are caught up by age 5. Statewide, 99 percent of school-age children are vaccinated for polio. Still, roughly 100 schools in the state reported vaccination rates at or below 90 percent in the 2020-21 school year. Sixty schools did not submit any vaccination data, including some tiny rural schoolhouses that serve Amish students. |
Local health officials and community organizations have been asking parents to bring in their young children for vaccination, and since late July more than 6,400 doses have been given in Rockland County alone, where the original case was identified. |
Eli Rosenberg, a deputy director of the New York State Department of Health, said that pediatricians are "also seeing plenty of people who are questioning the seriousness of the moment. |
"We have a long road ahead of us," he said. |
It was a hot summer day. I had just left the office after a long day and was racing to Union Square to catch the L home. |
I'm the type of person who knows exactly which car to be in to make the most efficient exit wherever I'm going, and I always need to be at the front to exit closest to my street when I go home. |
On this particular day, I didn't feel like pushing through the crowds on the platform to get to get to the front, so when my train came, I got on toward the back. |
It was rush hour and the car was filled with the unmistakable energy of people who were exhausted and also on their last nerve because of the heat. |
When we got to my stop, a flood of people got off. Because I was at the back of the train, I had to walk against the crowd to get to the other end of the platform. |
As I started walking that way, I noticed a guy get off the car ahead of mine. He had a skateboard and turned in my direction. |
We made eye contact, and he dropped his board. I realized instinctively that he would need space to skate by, so I moved to the right slightly while maintaining eye contact. |
He smiled and threw up his hand for a high five as he skated by. |
I smiled, too, as my hand met his with a delightful smack. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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