moon traveller herald

Lotta people have blogs. And they have a unique way of chattering. They are part of a phenomenon that is being called “the long tail.” They are getting more buzz than traditional media these days. Of course they try to do traditional media things from time to time, and end of year lists is one of those things. No different am I - I have been doing a music list [The Veneberal Proud Truth Music Awards] on my blogs for a few years including last year . This is the year the music ground down to 16 rpm. Stuff was not as good. Which is not to say I didn’t hear a lot of great music, it just didn’t much of it fall into the boundaries of Jan – Dec 2005. My top pick and a lot other peoples’ – big white traditional media and long black tail media alike -- top pick comes from within the confines of the year and doesn’t. It’s the “Thelonius Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall.” Released this year, the CD comprises a 1957 concert recording for the Voice of America that was misplaced an...

From Jack, Cecelia, and Jacob Well we made it through another year. Still on the Hill. Jake involved with the busy activity associated with finishing high school and looking at colleges. Cecelia's group, The WOlf Cry singers, performed quite a bit..and C even made some road trips to Canada and Maine and rural Mass. With Jack's dad passing on, it was tough for Brother Mike and mother Mary. But she is at home and doing well. God bless us everyone. -J.V. For more: Jack's Eulogy for his father End of the year blog notes Musical picks of 2005

I try to read some history each year, usually U.S. history, often military history. This year I read Crusade in Europe . By Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower. Amazing. Maybe someone would correct me, but it is my impression that he really wrote this – it does not have the feel of the ghost writer that often comes in to provide the voice-over for the great man. The personality that comes through is quite similar to that which Eisenhower conveyed in public. Able. Able to create consensus. A listener. Casual. Hands in back pockets. Stern if need be. Analytical. Concerned for his troops. But most of all the sense emerges of Eisenhower being a modern organization man. The job for America beginning in 1940 [when Eisenhower is still a colonel] was to mobilize. Eisenhower proved adept at understanding this, and gradually - but not too gradually - bringing the forces to bear. He appreciated amphibious war, tank war, and air war. He came to appreciate all these over many years of basically boring assig...

Locust plague would have been the frosting on the horrible cake of war, tsunami and hurricanes, and failed civil engineering this year. But we are still standing. Each day is a blessing. My father died in 2005, but it was sad, not tragic - he was glad to go to better world. Here, the year was palatable one day at a time. It was the year they removed the smoke coming from the pipe in the drawings in reissues of “Goodnight Moon.” The home team won the Super Bowl. Fionna Apple created ‘Extraordinary Machine.’ I saw Mose Allison. Paul DeMark put out a record. Jeff DeMark and family actually made it here to Boston – same night Jake saw the Rolling Stones [from a rooftop near Fenway]. Jeff performed in S.F. with Gangomine in tow. Hey I am getting jazzed! No world is a failure that has friends. These were blogs of the year for me. Church Eulogy for my father King of the Chicago Feedback Super Bowl half-time dream The Atlantic sneaks out of town Memphis Minnie epic I got Google in my heart fo...

The Red Sox have quickly parted ways with shortstop Edgar Renteria . The move comes one year after he was signed with no small fanfare. A league-leading 30 errors did him in with the Fenway faithful, and all are glad he can move on, and avoid the boo birds waiting for miscues in 2006. He said the fans were more demanding than fans at his previous team, the Cardinals, but that he came to appreciate them. He seemed less enamored of the grounds’ crew. The Globe of Boston is not too available to web linking so it is hard now to read the paper’s fairly stellar sports columnists who cover such events. I thought I’d give you a fair sampling of Bob Ryan, who wrote on Edgar’s leaving for the Braves. Ryan hit on something that I had difficulty grasping when I got here 32 years ago. That is: Why are these people so uptight? Ryan explains why, in this comparison of St. Louis and Boston: “They love their baseball in St. Louis, for sure, but they love it in a far different way than we do. They are, ...

Click on pic to see original sources as long as it is available. Snow in Stockholm. The Nobelists at their session I guess no longer in their tuxedos seem to me like some kind of Universalist congress. The league of nation lives. Today for sure, as British playright Harold Pinter comes to it like Halide Silesia on the eve of deduction. The Nobel group has dynamite money to burn, and only has power over domains like physics, chemistry, literature. But there is something in the air when the awards are ceded, and the winners do their end-zone dance. In this case the chandiliers wavered like in a small earthquake. Pinter, Big Brother like, came over video conferencing satellite. This is writ on a day I think we could call Pinteresque, upon a Nobel ceremony that we can call Pinteresque, which I found out about on page 3 of the New York Times, Pinteresquely sandwiched in the vicinity of a story on the U.S. flight from responsibility for carbon dioxide emissions * and Macy’s and Lord and Ta...

Getting to my conversation with UML amigo Ivar Jacobson was not without its complications. Jacobson travels the world, and was in South Korea when I caught up with him via satellite phone. Biding time, waiting for that interview, I had a bit of fun with "Cyber Ivar," a program (Shown at Right ) he has made available on his Web site that allows one to converse with a facsimile representation of the actual Ivar Jacobson. After many years writing about computers, I finally interviewed one. And I don't hesitate in telling you, I felt like it was interviewing me. Still, an old Irish song comes to mind, and I transpose things a bit and come up with this ditty: "Ivar, we hardly knew ye." I am more glad than ever that I was actually able to talk to Jacobson through the miracle of satellite communications. One wonders if online agents such as Cyber Ivar will someday be interviewed by virtual reporters such as Cyber Vaughan. Will those conversations be more or less illum...