Francis Morrone, January-March 2021
Happy New Year!
Some of you will recall that, years ago (early 2000s), I sent out a regular newsletter by email. It listed my schedule of tours and lectures, and included brief, miscellaneous musings. At some point, I got very busy, and stopped doing the newsletter. Ever since, and as recently as this month, people have asked me if I would start doing it again. Here you are.
Back in the day, I operated on the principle of “permission marketing,” which means that I sent the newsletter only to people who specifically asked to receive it. That’s what I’d like to do this time, too. To get the ball rolling, however, I am sending this to people who have taken part in my recent tours and lectures, and whose email addresses I happen to have. I know that not all of you will want this newsletter clogging up your in-box. You may feel you get too much of this sort of thing already. Or, even though you may have taken part in one of my recent tours or lectures, you may not have liked it, and wish never to hear from me again. If you scroll to the bottom of this email, you will see the “unsubscribe” button. You can click that, and be taken off the list. This is all done automatically, and I won’t even see that you’ve done it. It’s all very impersonal.
I think we’re all thinking that at some point in 2021 we may see each other again in person. For the next few months, however, my lectures, courses, and tours will be conducted by Zoom, with which we’ve all grown very familiar.
Zoom provokes a range of responses. Some people hate it, and find it a terrible substitute for face-to-face contact. Some people have told me they prefer it to in-person. For me, there are pluses and minuses. The minuses are that it is, for the lecturer, peculiarly exhausting. In person, the guide on a two-hour walking tour can conserve his or her energy. I find it important to rest my voice and collect my thoughts as the tour group walks from one stop to another. In a Zoom tour, there is none of that. The guide speaks non-stop the whole time. That’s really difficult. What’s also difficult is the gathering and formatting of a sufficient number of images. Normally, I use PowerPoint for classes and lectures. Walking tours were a break from that. For a two-hour tour on Zoom, I need to come up with about 150 images. Some people think that’s easy. They say “Don’t you just grab them off the internet?” It sounds easy. Let me tell you it is not easy. One has to find the right images, which involves time-consuming searching among image databases. (Only ten percent of the images come from simple Google searches.) The “right image” also means a high-resolution image, which makes the search even more time-consuming. Even when one finds a high-res image, it still may need to be processed through Photoshop. Not least, the right image may be something one has to pay for. Of course, I also use my own photographs, and I also make scans from books—which is a cumbersome procedure. If the presenter is, as I am, OCD, then a great deal of time is spent formatting the slide—getting all the images and text precisely aligned on the slide. In the end, that 150-slide, two-hour tour takes perhaps 25 hours to produce. That means I end up earning substantially less than minimum wage!
The other drawback for the Zoom presenter is that there are none of the in-person feedback cues. I don’t hear people laugh at the funny lines, I don’t get a sense of connecting with the group, I don’t get the round of applause at the end—and I don’t see the frowns and grimaces. All that may seem minor, but it’s not: It’s enervating. For someone who does a great deal of public speaking, as I do, the audience connection is very important. That’s lost with Zoom.
What about the pluses? Zoom allows a range and richness of materials. I can use old maps, old photos, interior photos, photos of details, and more, just as in a lecture or in the classroom.
The best part of Zoom, by far, is that it allows many more people to participate. As most of you know, Municipal Art Society tours, for example, are, when in person, limited, as they must be, to 30 people. My last MAS tour on Zoom had 172 people. A lecture series I did for the Institute of Classical Architecture drew 500 people—from several countries! Zoom allows everyone to join—people from out of town, people with impaired mobility, and so on. That is by far the best thing, and it makes up for all the bad things.
The next best thing is that I have been able to lead tours of cities other than New York. Scarsdale Adult School, which is an amazing operation, has let me lead tours in London, Paris, Washington, D.C., and Chicago—cities I love, and with which I am very familiar, but that I don’t often get to lead tours of. These tours have been what’s excited me most during this time.
In this time of pandemic, Zoom has allowed us to keep going. I don’t know what we’d all have done without it. When I enumerate the minuses, don’t think I’m complaining. I am very, very thankful. Indeed, I think all the organizations I work for will continue, post-pandemic, to continue to offer Zoom programs along with in-person programs, and I am all for that.
Forgive my going on about this. I have lived on Zoom since March, so I think about it all the time. I will try, from this point forward, to say nothing more on the subject. (I will try. I may not succeed.)
Here are my forthcoming programs in February and March. (I have taken January off from Zoom so that I can finish writing a book.)
For Scarsdale Adult School (founded 1938), I will be leading tours of Washington, D.C., and of London. On February 10, I will lead a tour of Georgetown, in Washington, D.C. On February 24, we will walk through Belgravia and Knightsbridge, in London. On March 10, we will be in Mayfair, in London, and on March 24, London’s South Kensington. You can find out more, and register, here: Scarsdale Adult School.
For the 92nd Street Y (on Lexington and 92nd since 1900), I will give a series of four lectures on Victorian architecture. This will be wide-ranging, not limited to New York (though with a fair amount of New York content). “Victorian” is a term that refers only to the Anglo-American world, so our focus will be on the British Isles and the United States, though we may make stops in India, Canada, and Australia. You can find out more, and register, here: 92nd Street Y.
On Sunday, March 21, I will do the first in a series of tours of Fifth Avenue from start to finish. This first tour will begin at Washington Square and move north to somewhere between 14th and 23rd Streets. The idea is to feature every building on Fifth Avenue. I am doing this one on my own, and you can register through Eventbrite.
If you have any questions about these programs, don’t hesitate to contact me at fm27@nyu.edu.
Thank you, and I very much look forward to seeing you–online or in person–in 2021.
All my best,
Francis Morrone