When you see these walking shoes at the top of a post, it means the text concerns the blog, the blogger, or both.
IT WASN'T MY IDEA
Last February, when I was working on a Staten Island transportation story for STREETSBLOG (http://www.streetsblog.org), Editor-in-Chief Aaron Naperstek suggested I write a blog on Staten Island transportation issues, sort of a Son of Streetsblog, in content if not in name.
I pooh-poohed the idea at the time. But obviously Aaron's idea, or some variant of it, stayed with me. Walking is Transportation.com (WIT.com) began appearing online this past August, about six months later.
At first, WIT was very clearly focused, arguing for the idea behind its own name. And nary a visual image in sight. Soon enough, though, that focus began to feel like a limitation, and I admitted as much in a post dated September 30, declaring my need to widen WIT's focus a bit.
ENTER CAMERA
That was about the time I got a digital camera, enabling me to make WIT's format more airy and open, less text-heavy. The camera also allowed me to take the picture of clay and fiber artist Steve Nutt's walking shoes, shown above. [From now on, that image at the top of a post tells you that the text concerns the blog, the blogger, or both.]
But more important, what the camera did was encourage me to look at my neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods more closely, hungrily even, searching for images either as literal illustration or as symbol. I felt freed, letting the camera tell the story with minimal text. The stories were still about walking, still about transportation, but more and more, Staten Island was the setting and, in part, the subject.
NOT VERBOTEN
Up to that point, I had considered Staten Island as a subject or setting if not verboten, then certainly something to be avoided. No one was going to accuse me of being parochial, by God. But the more I thought about it, the more I became persuaded that a focus on Staten Island transportation issues might be helpful in promoting not just walking, but the whole progressive transportation agenda, on Staten Island and elsewhere in the city. And besides, the north shore of the borough, where I live, is very photogenic.
So . . . WIT.com readers can expect the same transportation focus in future, with more photos and more about my part of what St. George visual artist Cynthia von Buhler calls The Prodigal Borough (http:/www.prodigalborough.com).
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