Here is another excerpt from my upcoming letter to politicians and community leaders in Western New York.  Think about how the upcoming eclipse is like the Pan-American Exposition or the Olympics, and please continue to do what you might from your own house, no matter how neat or chaotic it might be.

///We should not think April 8 2024 in Buffalo as possibly being an unusually busy day for tourists. The number of tourists will be extreme, a veritable torrent of tourists. The number of tourists we get that day could be ten times, maybe even three times ten times, what all the hotels and AirBnB’s of Erie County can handle.  We should thus not be thinking of that day as a “busy day for hotels.”  Rather, the coming eclipse is akin to the days of the Pan-American Exposition in 1901, or as akin to a hypothetical week when Buffalo was to host the Olympics.  World’s fairs, the Olympics, and events that attract extreme numbers of tourists require the creation of lodging that did not exist before.  Ordinary ways of lodging tourists will be inadequate. Now, I understand that it would be impractical to build dormitories just to house eclipse-tourists for the single day of the eclipse.  Fortunately, such new construction is unnecessary. There are already places for our eclipse-interested tourist to stay; they are just not ready, yet. Like any future host expecting guests, we should tidy-up and make our place neat. Western New Yorkers and our leaders might, quite practically, perceive the coming eclipse as an impetus and an opportunity to address a perennial problem we have had in Buffalo, the problem of vacant and abandoned houses and apartment complexes.///