moon traveller herald: 2008 in review

Why not blues in the basement on a New Years Eve? It's getting aulde sometimes, but hey, just saw Bob Stroger on CBS! [Kennedy Center tribute to Morgan Freeman].

I thought I'd seen it all. Famous last words. What hubris! Here comes a year and it’s a roller coaster on steroids. Knock down. Pick up. Knock down. Pickup. Repeat.

Hadn’t seen it all. Despite new lows, year had a good few moments and a great one. But I was disheartened and sorry too. Much loss. And you say, ‘me too,’ right?

In terms of blog .. didn’t put a lot into it. I tried to focus on some other projects non-bloggish, and next year will tell if that time was better spent.

Some stuff worth a second look.

A very hard year especially for Cecelia. Her mother Wes died in March. Wes left the world; her place in it was a hard working positive place. She brought her children up much by herself, working long hours, to keep the house bill met, and keep the kids on the path. Very remarkable. Very spiritual. I was travelling on business, but Jake and C took part in the services for This One Great Soul. Cecelia recorded a record with the Wolf Cry Singers. She got a new job with the NA Indian Center, and thus things continue to progress positively with effort.

Great part of year was working with Jeff Hull and just hanging out. He let me into his studio and Jake took then some pics and we talked about art as a window and I am pretty happy with the long piece I wrote for his opening. Next year we plan a mixed-media presentation of these words and I am sure his new art. Some of these wordsf.. for example....

Hull who bicycling down city alley hears the same sirens as the Edison man but to whom the pictures adhere and he goes back to the loft … Drawings and paintings. He just saw posters, sequenced, faded precisely on a wall, like old electric bulbs. He saw them – in Boston - and now, aloft. Rialto! Bijou! Telegraph! Also got to converse with Ed Sanders about his Electronic Bard System, which I hope turns into some nice stuff next year.

For Boston 2008 was an amazing sports year. Guess that caused me to think I was some kind of sports writer. I warned of hubris before the Super Bowl, and dammed if the Patriots who'd won all their regular season games and made it to the super bowl lost a lead to the hard-playing Jints in the last minute of play. I did my best: I was chanting "Defense.’ Dig it: The Red Sox won the World Series in Oct 2007; the Pats came very close to winning the Super Bowl in Feb 2008; The Celts would go on to win the NBA championship in June. Close it was to an incredible trifecta. Better than booze for getting your mind off trouble: Sports.

Was a fall of depression descended once the credit swaps came due. So I thought I was a business writer. Check out November's tomes ... Not much to recommend – I saw my duty and I done it. Scared now for the president-elect and what he must face .. feeling here is that the great monetary earthquake is the only thing that turned America’s color blinders on.

This year technology writing began as a writing managing editor for application development at TechTarget, ended up as writing site editor for SearchSOA.com. “SOA” stands for service oriented architecture, a method of application integration. Couple of things I liked .. Outgoing Bill Gates says UML on tap in Oslo SOA modeler [a keynote writeup is not a highform of technical writing, but I thought this piece was able to depict Gates on the way out and yet find a story [if you cede that UML is a story]. Did the pic of Bill at left meself! Did a four-part series I did for SearchSoftwareQuality.com on application performance:

Part 1: Problems and solutions

Part 2: Role of Java developer groups

Part 3: SOA performance management requires new strategy

Part 4: The challenges of Ajax performance testing

Not a large year for poetry, at least on the blog. Did rip off a screamer in September, about the time I started taking the train down to Hingham to see my mother. It's about how I walked into the train station, and they were filming a movie, and I gradually came to be able to pick out who were the ones that were in the movie and by elimination who weren’t. Nothing like a train ride to bring re-cognition in storm of life. This is kind of a one-note for me. I should get better at it. Might best blog less next year and take a course or something. Did a vid too..under the guise of Blind Lemon Pledge. Which sits atop this page-ola.

It is the snowy time again here. A picture in last week's Times of travellers boarding a train in snow brought back a memory of Christmas 1972, coming home to family the first time in their new Hingham home. This young balding stock broker in good spirits offered me – I declined - a slug from a flask of Southern Comfort. We took train through snow to our separate destinations. Should I use more articles of speech?

This year on trip saw Kerouac’s Orlando home and Cape Canaveral. And in Dec in an elevator at NewYorkNewYork hotel in Las Vegas, a National Championship Rodeo Cowboy told me I had shaving cream on my ear. “I am glad you are the first person I saw today, boss,” I said. And got on a plane [with the young Red Sox brass, in fact – they at baseball winter meetings] wondering if the dream life of news American was about to be extinguished; wanting to know what the new young president from ‘the other side of the tracks’ would bring to the table.

Anticipating less blogging next year. Less is more. There are ebbs low too. Stop the presses: May fold Epitome and RJ-11 blogs back into Moon Traveller. The idea was to have a more serious site with one or the other of those I guess. This reached a nadir with my report on the memistor [what to do with flux] and a low ebb with my rake of Bill Drake, even as was in his new grave. Suzy Creamcheese, what got into you?