As Sandy hit the east coast, many of us were watching the situation closely. This meant watching not only big media but also Facebook and Twitter, where storm-related activity was plentiful. The social media news was personal, reporting on the storm not as a large-scale atmospheric system but as the weather outside the living room window. We know whose power was out, whose wasn’t; we know who saw flooding and who just saw rain; we know who was drinking wine and who was drinking beer. We even know approximately when many went to bed. Stories in big media and even in blogspace, on the other hand, tended toward the documentary: ConEdison transformer explosion on the lower east side; flooding up to 14th Street; partial building collapse on 8th Avenue.

While the latter group may have been much more informative in the conventional sense, the former group was much more illuminating. True, the “news” version of Sandy was formally conventional, but even in the details it was macroscopic and opaque. Each detail in big media was merely a data point supporting the larger context, the bigger story. Eighth Avenue, for example, was just another dot in New York City and, more generally, the Atlantic coast, while on social media, Eighth Avenue belonged to the people living there; it became a geography all its own, rather than a mathematical point in a much larger geography. In the news, Sandy was a national meteorological event. In social media, Sandy was the particular experience of an unusual afternoon and evening by a particular community.

As someone experiencing the event from afar, the difference was stark. It was difficult to emotionally reconcile the two accounts, to see them as treating one and the same reality. It still feels as though the connective tissue linking macronews to microblogging is missing. Where is the ontological middle ground? Does our cultural metaphysics allow for it?

Of particular interest, in any case, were the Sandy photos, which comprised three genres of reporting.

News media images. The news coverage of the event provided the predictable series of disaster shots—cars floating in a parking-garage-turned-bathtub, video of a transformer explosion, a building missing a facade, and so on. These are ruthlessly documentary, but also highly selective. They didn’t show the limits of the disaster, only the disaster itself, excluding any of the terrain of non-disaster or non-damage from coverage. These lacked context. They covered the territory, but only its physical geography—completely excluded were its emotional, political, and cultural geography and context. The house without a facade becomes, at best, our own house without a facade. Whether the resulting cognitive image is just the house in question or our own house, the view is impoverished in either case in relation to the totality that is Sandy and its place in our world.

Personal social media images. On social media the expected cell-phone-out-window shots were plentiful, indirectly showing Sandy from the perspective of individual nighttime routines. These were intimate and visceral, giving a deep sense of the experience of the storm, of what the massive weather system is and feels like at the level of personal experience. There was some damage, but also a great deal of non-damage, and perhaps more importantly, much that fell in between these extremes.

Meme-style social media images. There were also, however, images on social media that operated in an entirely different way from either of the other two groups. One such image gave the satellite view of Sandy superimposed over a to-scale map of Europe, rather than the Atlantic coast. Another showed a massive storm overtaking the Statue of Liberty with help from, thanks to some Photoshop work, Godzilla, invading alien flying saucers, and monsters of various stripes from Hollywood films.

At first glance, the meme-style images are more guilty than the other two of showing Sandy out of context. But I suspect that this first glance is misleading.

Every moment is marked by a particular set of crises, and the moment of Sandy’s arrival is no different in this regard. Sandy arrives after the beginning of a new millenium beset with wars following terrorist attacks, a recent history of natural disasters and calamities with political importance, worries about and analysis of the accelerating effects of globalization, a growing worldwide public consciousness about climate change, a global economic collapse, and the resurgence of worlwide sectarian, student, and populist movements of various (and at times novel) stripes.

Other Sandy juxtapositions are to a U.S. national election with large implications for the future of many of the issues above, to ongoing handwringing about the viability of the E.U. along various axes, and ongoing instability and violence of various forms in the Middle East.

While both the highly personal social media form of reporting and the more conventional mass media news reporting of Sandy drew the circle of knowledge and understanding around the storm in geographically local ways—micro-local (“my living room”) in the case of the personal images and macro-local (“the U.S. Atlantic coast”) in the case of mainstream mass media, the meme-style images drew the circle globally.

The image of the storm over Europe pulled the two geographies into dialogue with one another and into dialogue with a global discussion on climate change and its impacts. It drew metaphorical parallels between the storms (meteorological and otherwise) currently affecting the United States and the storms of various stripes that have overtaken the E.U. and its member states. Just as importantly, it brought commenters from from around the world into policy conversation that placed Sandy properly in larger geopolitical and environmental contexts. Neither of the other genres of representation or reporting on Sandy did this. In this particular monadic image, Sandy was transformed—from a meterological event affecting the American northeast into a global event directly related to public issues, concerns, and choices shared across continents.

The image Sandy overtaking the Statue of Liberty accompanied by various monsters of film, not all of them American, situated Sandy within the global cultural imaginary, referring not just to a metaphorical understanding, but also to what Sandy portends. Once again, the event was internationalized. Here, however, it was also fictionalized (and yet, as process, nominally realized at the same time). The image drew attention to the narrativity, indeed even the restlessness of events; it laid bare the fictive, evolving, interpretive, and power-entangled natures of memory and experience. It recast Sandy as part of story that is being collectively written by humanity right now, rising action in a contested plot that begins with the industrial revolution and whose articulation and end remain unavoidably open—but always with the clear potential for—and claims about—historical, climactic, and indeed various forms of monstrous catastrophe.

The documentation of the event as I saw it inverted the conventional wisdom about news, reporting, and knowledge. The images and details in the mass media told us the least about Sandy; in them, the storm became another in a long line of archetypal storms, and the northeast of the U.S. was cast in a familiar and by now largely information-poor role: the dual-natured indomitable-American-community and community-of-victims. The storm, the locale, and the population might have been anywhere, at any time. The entirety lacked specificity, and thus historical purchase, despite itself.

The personal out-the-window photos on social media, though this genre often faces criticisms of facility and narcissism, were practically informative, giving details of the experience of this storm as separate from others, and of particular people who were not, as a result, demoted to the uninformative role of human statistics. As was not generally the case with news media coverage, using these it was possible to piece together an understanding of the specific nature and level of damage in various areas, of the degree of the emergency and the relative difficulty of recovering, as well as the general mood of this population in this storm.

But the whimsical and unashamedly constructed meme-like images of the storm told us perhaps the most, in their composition, by their circulation, and in the comments that followed them. These drew the storm into the dialogue on policy and the policy difficulties that we increasingly face as simultaneously local and global publics. They revealed as much or more about the consciousnesses and moods of these in New York, in New Jersey, but also in the U.K., in Finland, and on the Pacific Rim, than did the montage of camera phone photos. They drew our attention to the historicity of this storm, and the contingency of this historicity, placed public policy in juxtaposition to these, and reflected on the experiences and natures of present publics and constituencies that have also, after all, experienced Sandy in various ways—in fact—around the world.

This week I am proud to be a New Yorker. Our governor and our state legislature, which have not been a source of pride in recent years, distinguished themselves in noteworthy ways.

There was the normal stuff. A timely budget and new ethics law passed without much drama. And there was the extraordinary, a fundamental human rights advance. Marriage is no longer a heterosexual privilege in my home state.

I should add that there are many problems with Governors Cuomo’s approach to our economic problems, in my opinion: too easy on the wealthy, too hard on the poor and public employees. I hope that now that he has established himself as fiscally responsible, he will turn next year to more directly addressing the suffering of working people and the poor. I am not a fan of the economically conservative, socially liberal blend.

In fact, the establishment of the new marriage contract right has both advantages and disadvantages for specific gay couples, as was observed by Katherine M. Franke in a New York Times op. ed. piece. There is less openness about the inclusion of partners in insurance coverage, more restrictions. The marriage option should not become a marriage compulsion. And I am also not sure how progressive this development is. It is noteworthy that the advance of gay marriage ties people to a traditional state sanctioned relationship, something which wise conservatives have noted (including Gary Alan Fine in a private exchange we had). Gays in the military and gay marriage, seen in this light, are important conservative advances. No wonder former Vice President Cheney is a supporter of gay marriage.

Yet, marriage equality is something that is truly significant, going well beyond the details of the marriage contract and political ideology. It formalizes a fundamental advance in human rights and dignity. Another opinion piece in the Times gets at the true significance of the moment, Frank Bruni’s “To Know Us Is to Let Us Love.” He underscores how spectacular the advance is in comparison to what he had hoped for as a young gay man coming of age in the 80s, and he makes the point that once people know homosexual love, they approve. After citing the examples of some leading public figures, he tells the story of his 76 year old Republican father:

“Years ago he would quietly leave the room whenever my sexual orientation came up in a family conversation. But when he urged me to attend a Halloween party he gave for his friends last fall, he insisted I bring Tom, whom he has come to know well over the two and a half years we’ve been together. And as he introduced us to his golf partners from the country club, he said, ‘This is my son, Frank. And this is my other son, Tom. Or at least I think of him that way.’”

And then Bruni asked his father the telling question:

“‘Do you support gay marriage? I asked him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, explaining that it still seemed strange. He added: ‘But not if you know the person.’ ‘Meaning me?’ I said. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean Tom. He’s a good person. If you and he got married? I guess that would be O.K. Yeah, that would be fine.’”

The first time I read this passage, I confess, I teared up. This is true recognition of the other, and a great advance in that it is increasingly becoming the norm. The recognition is more important than the contract. The contract seals the human ideal.

There was a long cultural march leading to this victory, with more legal challenges to go. But I think it is worth noting the march as it appeared in everyday life. Hannah Arendt tells us that political power is constituted when people meet each other as equals in their differences as distinct human beings, and they speak and act in each other’s presence and they develop the capacity to act in concert.  It is the power of Tom, Frank and his father that led to the advance this week in New York, and I believe it is the continued development of this power that will extend gay rights and dignity in the coming years.

Before closing, I must pay tribute to an old friend, Joe Borgovini, who died of aids in the early 90s. We lost touch, but through the web and a Google search a few years ago, I discovered the sad news which I very much feared. We were college apartment mates. I vividly remember the day he told my then girl friend, Naomi, and me that he is gay. I think it must have been in the late winter or early spring of 1970. Coming out was just becoming a significant form of activism. We were truly shocked. Joe had another life about which we knew nothing. He, for the first time, openly told us about himself. Our friendship deepened.

There hadn’t been any open discussion about sexual orientation in our social circles, which means that such discussion was rare indeed, since we were all New Left activists, very much at the forefront of progressive politics. It now seems remarkable how limited we were. We were often demonstrating for social justice and the environment, against racism, against the war. “Gay Liberation” was a very new thing. And after our first discussion, a world that had been hidden became visible. A world, not only  individuals, came out. We talked with our friend and we proudly marched in the first Gay Pride Parade in Albany, New York, with him, along with his friends. I wish we could celebrate with him today.

Last week I went to MoMA. Since I came to New York I got more
 “culture” than ever before. It isn’t that Los Angeles had no great
 museums, but something about New York—or perhaps the fantasies of the
 city that I had—spurred me to go to museums much more. The exhibition I
 went to was Abstract Expressionist New York, which I was particularly 
excited about: New York art, shown in New York.

In other words, it is a
 bit like listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in California, only far
 more highbrow.

 As my partner and I were walking around, we were trying to make sense of
 the paintings, to decide if we like De Kooning and Motherwell, to “get a
 feel” for this kind of art. Though we both come from middle-class
 families, neither of us feels really comfortable around modern art, say, 
after early Expressionism or Cubism.

It isn’t that we don’t like it,
 it’s just that we don’t feel like we know how to evaluate it. It 
isn’t that we aren’t moved, it is almost as if we don’t know how to
 be moved. It is a strange sensation, looking at a painting and trying
 hard to be moved. Being moved, after all, shouldn’t involve trying.
 That’s the whole idea with emotion.

In fact, we do learn to be moved. More precisely, we learn ways to open 
ourselves to the possibility of being moved. Through the process known in sociology as “socialization,” we learn the knowledge, skills and preferences that will shape the choices we make, the direction we take.

This isn’t only a nice 
sociological idea, but something that we found out first hand when we were leaving
 the exhibition. At the entry to the exhibition, we saw a little work
sheet titled “Family Activity Guide.” On the side, to make sure we knew 
who it was intended to, it read “MoMA KIDS.”

In sleek paper, it had
 quotes from the artists and activities for children.  On the first page, 
there were quotes by Jackson Pollock. Kids had to look at one of the 
paintings, and see where the paint is “Dripped, Splashed, Poured,
 Splattered, Flung, and Layered.” Next came a page dedicated to sculptor 
David Smith. Here children were asked to draw an animal (there was a 
blank space for that purpose) and then re-draw it “using just five
 lines.”

But the one that really got to me was the page dedicated to Mark Rothko. 
Kids were instructed to look at the paintings, and at the big floating
 rectangles (explained in the booklet as “color fields.” Useful, that). Then, they 
were asked to choose a painting, and told to “take turns sharing words 
you think of while you are looking at it.” Below, they had a quote by
 Rothko: “I’m interested in expressing basic human emotions.”

The fourth sheet was detachable, with perforations made so you can tear
 it into 12 blank cards. The Rothko activity was to take the 12 cards,
and write “words that come to mind” as the kids are looking at the
 painting. Having written the words, children were told to scramble them,
 and voila, abstract-expressionist poetry was made.

Having done so, kids
 were suggested to look at a different Rothko painting, try to figure out
 the mood it conveys, and write another expressionist poem (on the back
side of the cards they just used).

 Sitting in the MoMA café, we were puzzling over what it felt like to be
 a kid working on this activity sheet. Looking through it children
 obviously learned several things. They learned how to name elements of modern art—color fields, for example.

They were also told what aspects of
 the paintings they should pay attention to—how the paint was being 
splattered, and later (in a page dedicated to De Kooning) how the 
painter moved as he painted. In an elegant way, they learned what was of
 essence.  It didn’t make them art experts, of course, but it made them 
conversant with the painting, a way to relate to them that my partner 
and I didn’t really have.

But this exercise provided more than instruction. Especially in the Rothko page, but in others 
as well, it taught children how they could feel. It taught them that when they looked at the pictures, they should have basic moods conveyed to them. More, 
that they should let themselves be swept up by these moods, to lose 
themselves in basic emotions. Sociologists often note that people learn
 to like different things, that this is part of being “socialized.”

Upper
middle-class children learn about abstract expressionism, working-class
 children don’t. This is part of how classes are differentiated.  As the 
activity sheet at the MoMA makes clear, it goes deeper than knowledge and skills.

It’s 
not only that children learn different things, it is that they also 
learn to enjoy them. They learn to enjoy them, by learning what kind of 
attitude they could take when looking at a painting, when sitting in a
 baseball stadium, when ordering sushi. They learn not only what to look 
for, but how they can derive pleasure—real pleasure—from it.