Walking Is Transportation

THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

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On the Waterfront

I love Staten Island.

Let me try that again. Only this time, a little louder.

I love Staten Island.

Not all of Staten Island, mind you, and not all the time. But a lot of it, most of the time.

Mine is a straightforward, affectionate kind of love--not particularly deep or profound, not in any way extraordinary.

It's the sort of feeling that people develop for places they become rooted in without meaning to. The sort of love that comes to two people in a long partnership that grows stronger with every test it survives.

And some of it is the licking-wounds kind of love. The kind I feel when I've had more than a bellyful of the sneering derision of the New York Times and other print media toward the place I've called home since 1977.

Now, I'm making my allegiance manifest by changing the backdrop of the photo on WIT's masthead. Here's the change:

TRADING THE BROOKLYN FOR THE BAYONNE

 2006                                           

2009  (Photo by Steve Nutt)

I announced in WIT's April 20 issue that a change was on the way.  Yesterday, roughly a month later, my friend Steve Nutt and I took a replacement photo, one that shows me crossing the Bayonne Bridge instead of the Brooklyn.

Seventy-five years old this year, the Bayonne Bridge is in its own way no less striking than its older and considerably more celebrated predecessor on WIT's former masthead.

I'm delighted to have this updated, closer-to-home image representing WALKING IS TRANSPORTATION and me. Thanks, Steve.

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CONFESSION OF A DISLOYALIST • BLOG-MORPH

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Photo by G. Victoria

WHAT NOW?

Another copy of The Nation arrived the other day, to join the collection of unread weeklies piling up in my office--the piles that make me feel disloyal to print and newsprint because I now read mostly online.

But this particular issue, I actually opened. The reason? An article by Alexander Cockburn entitled, "Who Needs Yesterday's Papers?"

I was hoping to find a compelling reason to plunge back into the piles of print media in my office. Failing that, I hoped for some new thinking on what we do for information and news once The New York Times goes bankrupt--or changes so radically, or has to charge so much to survive, that it destroys its own franchise.

NO LOSS? REALLY?

But Cockburn was more interested in advancing a correct but unhelpful observation: that the timid U.S. press is mostly failing in its duty to oppress the comfortable and comfort the oppressed. So its loss is no loss at all. 

He's certainly right about the timidity of the press, which won't be around to keep failing in its duty much longer.

The issue of What Now? has taken on greater urgency since I've finally given up the good fight. The one where I assert, contrary to all the evidence, that I'm actually, finally going to read those newspapers and journals and lefty quarterlies gathering dust on my worktable.

I'm not. And it feels good to admit it. But not that good. I still want to know what we'll do when there's no New York Times to kick around.

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Addendum: Most of the periodicals I subscribe to are hanging on but need every subscriber in order to survive. I'm not giving up my subscriptions; I'll just switch to their online editions. That's how I now read the Times, but for how much longer?

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Granite catch-basin,
northwest corner,
St. Marks Place and
Victory Boulevard,
Tompkinsville

BLOG-MORPH

I owe Staten Island Advance reporter Tevah Platt a debt of gratitude. Two weeks ago, in a north shore section profile of Walking is Transportation, she observed what I hadn't; namely, that my blog isn't very bloggy. And after sampling a reasonable number of sites using various types of blogging software, I have to agree.

What I seem to be producing here each day is a journal of opinion grounded in a very particular place and time. Maybe 'neighborhood journal' is the most accurate descriptor. But the subject is not St. George per se; it's whatever compels my attention.

--The copy style reflects my training at a newspaper syndicate and a trade book house.

--The layout and text organization--plain and I hope readable--are influenced by the editorial style of print advertising I was trained in at Ogilvy & Mather, where I worked as a copywriter.

--The attempt to create a distinctive and harmonious personality through graphics, visuals and text I learned from my work as a writer on corporate identity and branding assignments.

The result, Walking is Transportation, feels to me like something you'd slap on a brick wall for mass consumption, but only for 24 hours. Tomorrow, that day's issue would get slapped over today's. Like this one.

Nomenclature. I think of my posts not as posts at all, but as issues. And that's the word I'll use when referring to them from now on.

RANT-O-RAMA 3

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DON'T GET ME STARTED

Photo by Mario Tomic

NO ADS, PLUGS or FREEBIES,
BUT LOTS OF OPINIONS

I used to write advertising copy for a living. So I won't shower you with holier-than-thou-isms about how noble I am 'cause I don't run ads on WALKING IS TRANSPORTATION, or plug products, whether the products are arts or armaments.

Here's the story: I'm not looking for supplementary income from this blog. I don't want to scratch anybody's back in order to get the favor returned.

WIT's operating policy boils down to this:

1. No ads. They distract from the principal text and visuals.

2. No plugs, but with a caveat: I have supported not-for-profit or cooperative ventures and events, and I'll continue to. I will even support for-profit efforts that have a strong community base or focus.

3. No freebies. If I receive a book for review and want to keep it, I'll pay for it. Otherwise I'll return it or donate it to the Every Thing Goes Book Café in Tompkinsville.

UNRESTRAINED BY COMMERCIAL BONDS

That policy isn't noble; it's practical. If I don't sell ad space or plug products, then I don't have to stop myself from warning you off a book, a restaurant, an artist or an experience I think is second rate, not worth your money or your time.

But when I encounter something beautiful, or an idea that's worth thinking about, or a book or a movie or a play or a store or even a retail product that I think merits your attention, I won't hold off from telling you about it. And you'll just have to trust that I'm stating my opinion, not earning my income or returning a favor.

Which leads me to this:

Steve Nutt, Untitled No. 4, 2008, Wool rug with linen backing, 61 1/2" long x 32" wide

BECAUSE IT'S BEAUTIFUL

Potter and fiber artist Steve Nutt, a close friend for many years, insists that Untitled No. 4, shown above, is just a rug he made by hand to be placed on the floor and used like any other rug. But in the photo above, it's hanging on the wall over the stairs that lead to Steve's basement-level studio on Ward Hill.

That's where I first saw it. Hung on a wall, where in my opinion it belongs. And when I saw it, I thought immediately of the brilliance of fine stained glass panels, in which each three-dimensional polished-glass element of the panel is chosen for its jewel-like luster.

Untitled No. 4 will probably be the star attraction of Steve's exhibit at Art by the Ferry, a visual, musical and performance art festival--all of it free, except for selected handcrafts and food vendors--scheduled for a variety of in- and outdoor venues in St. George during the weekends of June 6 and 7 and June 13 and 14. 

End rant.

KEEPING MOST OF THE PERSONAL MOSTLY PRIVATE

WALKING IS
TRANSPORTATION
"LACKS
INTROSPECTIVE PALAVER"
--Tevah Platt,
S.I. Advance,
Thursday, May 7, 2009

Writing about WALKING IS TRANSPORTATION (WIT) in last Thursday's Staten Island Advance, reporter Tevah Platt commented on this blog's un-blogginess, observing that WIT "lacks the introspective palaver that, for some, is synonymous with blogging."

Platt's comment surprised me. At first, my thin-skinned defensiveness kicked in. Was this a rebuke? A backhanded compliment? Both? Neither? Quickly, I examined the many blogs available for perusal on the homepage of Typepad®, the software I'm using to set down what you're reading.

What I saw on those blogs showed me Platt was right.  Though it seems to me my voice is quite audible in these 'pages' (when o when will I find a substitute for print-talk that feels natural?), I'm not comfortable becoming too public about what's personal.

It's not that I'm afraid to reveal the character flaws, epic blunders and dark impulses we all have. It's that, beyond the individual particulars, they're just like yours and everybody else's. Does anyone really crave another installment?

Sampling some of those Typepad® blogs, I felt uncomfortable knowing so much about people I don't know. But there's another reason I see no reason to tell all.

As a young poet, I witnessed firsthand the controversy over what was derided--in my opinion, justifiably--as the confessional fashion in poetry, which many thought had been ushered in by Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton, leading poets of the post-World War II generation.

This controversy was one that I and most poets I knew felt we had at least to consider in thinking about our own work. I think it forced us to learn how to fashion some sort of balance on the page, where what you reveal you reveal in the service of some larger idea or point. One that has a universality beyond the less than lovely impulses and behavior that are part of being human.