ABSTRACT
In the epilogue to Framing Public Life, Oscar Gandy (2001) opened with a metaphor about the horizon. “Funny thing about the horizon,” he wrote. “It never gets any closer. Indeed, as we are often reminded, if we walk toward the horizon long enough, we eventually arrive back at the point from which we began our journey” (p. 355). The horizon is an interesting frame of reference for a volume on framing. As commonly defi ned, it is the apparent intersection of the earth and sky as seen by an observer. Most relevant, perhaps, to seafaring travel, the horizon always looms far off in the distance no matter how long or far one has traveled. But the funny thing about the horizon is that one traveler can be viewed as being on it from the perspective of another traveler. What’s more, the horizon becomes less mesmerizing when the traveler spots land, particularly when the land is the traveler’s destination coming ever closer. In both cases, dedicated yet unfulfi lled pursuit of a goal that is visible on the horizon can be reframed as an arrival at a new horizon, whether this arrival concerns the sea (the other ship that’s on the horizon) or land (we’ve reached the destination that was once on the horizon).
