No longer in print
In late summer in New York, an afternoon sometimes gets black all of a sudden, and if you're in an office and look into all the other offices, not quite yellow against the night-like sky, you might think that the planet was about to do battle with the city. Everything stops for a minute, then becomes quiet. People know something, but they're not sure what it is, and they get calm and excited at the same time-giddy, really. And then it's over: the rain comes, the tin in the air disapperas, and everybody goes home-to friends or a wif or a husband or kids-and forgets to tell them what happened.
Forgets, because nothing happened-at least, nothing that would wind up in the paper ("Sudden Summer Shower: Citizens Giddy"). We hear so much about the big stories-public events, famous people-that we tend to overlook the pleasures and sadness of everyday life. We turn what's important into trivia, and trivia into news. And why? Celebrities, it's true, can be swell to read about, but as a rule their lives are no more interesting than anyone else's-only better known, and so, after a while, a lot less surprising. On the other hand, our own lives-poky, unfussed over-are surprising. THey're worth talking about. And that's what we'll be doing in Wigwag, talking about afternoon storms and giddy citizens and other stories that won't necessarily make the news.
A few additional thoughts on what we're up to:
1. "Wigwag" is an American word that means "to signal someone home." The word isn't made up, and the name's no accident. This magazine has a lot to do with home - who lives where, what it's like, what they do there. Each month Wigwag's writers report about these things in Letters from Home (from their hometown), Foreign Desk (an American abroad), A Letter from Springfield (a foreigner in the U.S.), The Workplace (life on the job), Social Studies (family politics(, and, less single-mindedly, everywhere else in the magazine.
2. The stories in Letters from Home are true, and the same places turn up from month to month.
3. The columns - politics at the front, the arts in the back - are departments, and not one-shot appearances. That means they're in the magazine every month, or every other month, or seasonally.
4. Every issue has a Bedtime Story you can read to a child.
5. A serious magazine can be fun to read, and a fun magazine can be serious about things. (This probably sounds more like a Zen riddle than it should.)
|
