“Clean Up” Campaign Has Public Support

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30918, 26 November 1965, Page 2

“Clean Up” Campaign Has Public Support

The people of New York City would get right behind Mr John Lindsay, the newly-elected mayor, in his effort to clean the city of crime, dirty streets, graft and squalor, said Mrs Ida Cowen, a writer from Greenwich Village, in Christchurch yesterday. The campaign was long overdue, she said.

“He has a big job ahead of him, full of involved problems that will take a long time to solve,” she said. “But Mr Lindsay is young, energetic and liberal-minded. He also has a personal charm that appeals to New Yorkers.”

Their faith in him was proved by his large majority at the polls—a candidate on a Republican ticket in a Democratic stronghold.

The people of New York had been very dissatisfied with the administration of the city. They needed to be given a lead in civic pride, she said. Mrs Cowen has lived in the same apartment in Greenwich Village for 32 years and prefers this district to any other.

“I like its informality, the way the little shopkeepers always have time to sit down and talk to you whether you are there to buy or not,” she said.

“It is a down-to-earth place where you can carry your vegetables and groceries up to your apartment in the elevator instead of having to send them in by the service quarters, as you do in some residential districts of New York.” ORIGINAL WORK Beatniks and their own particular way of life do not worry Ida Cowen. “There is still a tremendous amount of creative work being done there with the

hands,” she said. “You can see in the little shop windows original pictures, beautiful

handcraft and first editions of books.” There is less bustle in “The Village”; the people are more friendly and kind. She has no fears that the new luxury apartments going

up in the old Bohemian part of the city will change the character of the place in the near future.

“But many people have lost their homes when old build-

ings have been torn down. These old residents never get back into the Village because they cannot afford the higher rents,” she said. HOW MUCH ALIKE

Mrs Cowen, who is on her second world tour (apart from many visits to Europe), is gathering material about people and their customs for magazine articles. And she takes her own pictures. “My interest is in how much alike the peoples of the world are rather than how different they are,” she said. “I like to find out about their history and the reasons for their ways and customs; what brings them where they are.”

A school teacher who took early retirement to begin her second career of writing, she is also a collector. Her apartment houses pieces she has bought throughout her extensive world travels. "I bring back something from every country—paintings, sculptures or rugs. But I do not collect for the sake of collecting. I gather around me only things which appeal to me for their beauty from the hands of primitive as well as sophisticated people,” Mrs Cowen said.