Blogging Is Akin To Broadcasting to Outer Space

 For some time now, humans have been broadcasting radio waves containing content of one sort or another into outer space, by means of signals strong enough to get through the ionosphere.  The idea is there might be civilizations out there somewhere that are sufficiently like ours that they can decipher the content and respond.

So far, to my knowledge, nothing particularly intelligible has come back. That's remarkably like this blog.

 I mention this because, for reasons totally unclear to me, visits to my blog, and the number of posts at least viewed, appear to be increasing in a rather notable fashion.  Not that anything has "gone viral."  Far, far, far from it and perhaps thankfully so. (That's probably not the best turn of phrase these days, anyway.)

 I say "apparently" because there is no way of knowing what to make of reported statistics on things like visits, views, clicks, impressions, etc.  For one thing, they seem to differ greatly depending upon where one goes to get measurements.  

Or maybe Google has decided to simply credit me with some favorable statistics to keep me going.  But since this blog has no ads, that doesn't make much sense. It's a mystery.

When I first started blogging -- not this one, but a blog called "The Wine Commentator" -- I received comments from readers from time to time.  And when I announced that I was closing it down, a surprising number of people who I had never heard from said they were sorry to see it go. Who knew?

But that was a while back, before Twitter (I'm not on Twitter or Facebook) became the way to go.

 Early on, when I briefly tried to promote my first novella, "Manhattan Morning," on Facebook because that was what self-publishers were supposed to do, and associated this blog with that effort, I did get a few comments from old friends. But I don't think I ever heard from anyone I didn't already know,

 A Facebook page did absolutely nothing for "Manhattan Morning," which is arguably now gaining some historical relevance, in obscurity, because of the way Manhattan and retail in general is changing as a result of the pandemic and a related accelerated shift to online shopping.  Who knows, perhaps "Manhattan Morning" will be "discovered" in that context -- before the culture from which it is in large part derived, literary Modernism, is totally "cancelled." 

"Manhattan was really like that???" 

If cancellation means I'm consigned to the same circle within some Dante-like inferno as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and especially Virginia Woolf (among many others), so be it. Unlike "Ulysses," "Manhattan Morning" is so slim and the number of copies in circulation so small that when it is burned, it's unlikely to contribute significantly to climate change so I won't be charged with an additional offense.

 Who is going to bring all this about?  It's probably best not to be too specific about that.  Those interested, however, can read publications such as the New York Times art sections to get a feel for where things are going.

 Meanwhile I will continue to episodically blog out into what amounts to the great unknown.  I've been rather inactive in recent months, but now have a couple of topics I feel like working up -- and plenty of time stuck at home in which to do it. Crank up the transmitter.

 

New York City's Fourth Dimension

In the preceeding post, with considerable help from a 1948 essay by E.B. White, I wrote about three types of New Yorkers: long-time residents, commuters and goal seekers who come from elsewhere, the third category being the most important.  But the city, and especially Manhattan, has an increasingly important fourth dimension: tourists, or very short-term visitors.

Defined as anyone who stays overnight or comes from at least 50 miles away, New York is expecting a record 67 million visitors in 2019, up from about 65 million in 2018 and only about 44 million in 2007 when former mayor Michael Bloomberg launched an effort to promote the city's attractions.

Most of these people will visit, or stay in Manhattan, which has a population of only 1.6 million people.  The population of all five of New York City's boroughs -- Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island -- totals about 8.7 million.

I mention this because, as the New York Times noted, Broadway theaters have just had another record fiscal year (it ends in May, and then come the annual Tony awards) with 14.8 million people, spending about $1.8 billion on musicals and plays that qualify as "Broadway."  There are currently 41 Broadway Theaters, located near Times Square or at Lincoln Center, all of which have 500 seats or more.

Then, beyond that, and not counted in the attendance and spending statistics mentioned above, there are "Off-Broadway" theaters (at least 99, but less than 500 seats) and "Off-Off-Broadway" venues, which have less than 99 seats.

While most tourists probably attend long-running musicals for the most part, their spending has definitely helped promote a very encouraging revival in straight plays, both new works and first-class revivals of great plays from the past.

Broadway is alive and well if increasingly expensive when it comes to ticket prices (they have in recent years soared relative to the rate of inflation). But the industry's policy is to fill up every theater every night and as such, same-day discount tickets (half off in many cases) go on sale at three locations in Manhattan every day. Thousands of people take advantage of them.

New York Then and Now, with a Little Help from E.B. White

"The normal frustrations of modern life are here multiplied and amplified -- a single run of a crosstown bus contains, for the driver, enough frustrations and annoyance to carry him over the edge of sanity: the light changes always an instant too soon, the passenger that bangs on the shut door, the truck that blocks the only opening, the coin that slips to the floor, the question asked at the wrong moment."

That quote is from E.B. White's essay "Here is New York," written in the summer of 1948 and first published in a 1949 issue of Holiday magazine. White, long a writer for The New Yorker, was then living in Maine and had been asked to re-visit New York and record his impressions.

Well, things are little better now -- for the passengers as well as the drivers.  Getting just a few blocks crosstown on a bus in Manhattan can feel like an eternity.  So, to help riders pass the time, the newest crosstown buses, one of which is depicted below, offer not just wireless, but USB ports where one can charge a phone or a laptop. 

This, when I'm living in NYC, is my crosstown bus -- the M66 -- pulled up at a stop on Broadway and W66th on a rainy afternoon. It's a new model since the last time I stayed in Manhattan, in the autumn of 2018.

How about other aspects of White's essay, now available as a small book at, among other places, the Center for Fiction in its very attractive new location in Brooklyn, beside the Mark Morris Dance Group home base and across the street from the opera house of the Brooklyn Academy of Music?

Much, has changed, of course, but that, White himself said, is what New York is all about.

But much, too has remained the same.

For instance, "the residents of Manhattan," White said, "are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere else and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail."  Whether they will succeed or fail depends in large part on luck, he said, "No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky," he said.

There are, of course, long-time residents, who White said take the city for granted. And then there are commuters that simply get devoured by the city each morning and spit out at night.

But the most important category of denizens is that mentioned first above: those who come from elsewhere in quest of something, for whom he city is a goal, White said. That group "accounts for New York's high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements."

While the long-time residents give the city stability and while commuters endow it with a tidal restlessness, the goal seekers from elsewhere give it passion, White said.

That is no less true in 2019 than was the case in 1948.  But the center of gravity as far as where such people now eat and sleep, even if they still work in Manhattan, is Brooklyn -- sometimes called "the new Paris," not because it looks much like the almost mythical French capital, but because of cultural ferment.

When I eat in Manhattan restaurants, if the occasion presents, I often ask my server the following question: "do you consider yourself a hospitality industry professional, or are you just doing this while you get your degree in aeronautical engineering?"

That always gets a laugh -- and then some fascinating stories.  There was, for instance, the young restaurant receptionist, born in Somalia, brought up in Nebraska and in Manhattan to try to make it as a writer of film scripts.  Or the waiter who was a dancer.  He had no recent successes to report but proudly said one of his colleagues at the restaurant had just made an eight-minute appearance on "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," an award-winning television series about a New York housewife who discovers she has a knack for stand-up comedy.

Of course plenty of people don't make it and eventually depart, often very quietly. In fact, they melt away as newcomers continue to arrive.

As White said: such New Yorkers have to be willing to be lucky.

Time and Distance as Devices of Literary Style

There is obviously a well-understood relationship between time and distance: it takes a certain amount of time to go a certain distance, and since we understand that, the notion that these two concepts go together is a comfortable one.  A character travels and time passes.

We're also familiar with the often circular nature of travel. A character sets off for a particular destination and then returns home. The end of the trip is also the end of the story. It's a satisfying relationship -- everything neatly tied up.