moon traveller herald

The printed word can have a magical quality – the right moment, the right wordsmithy, and the word can pop on off the page. There is a way of knowing, among others, a type of cognition that derives from neurons firing piston-like, causing ideas’ flowering like fireworks as the eye scans a story – say about science – say in the New York Times. But there is a way of knowing that derives from hearing the spoken word. It can equal or better the printed word, depending, firing those pretty little brain synapse thingies along another salient. Working in the Internet medium – cant call it the press, but it does have to do with the visual presentation of words, in this case in electronic form – one wonderswhere it is all going. People are farily ready to download stories and listen to them, perhaps as they jog or drive. You wonder if they just don’t like the act of reading. My son reads books, but, by and large, he scans magazines, doesn’t pick up a newspaper, and when he reads mags, he hardly...

Guidance: The Devil is a busy man, he will stay right on your trail! Sad sad day since my friend he went away Sad sad day since my friend he went away Once he woke up in a dream – said good things were coming our way.

A weird story about has to do with Joyce Hatto. She was a classical pianist of the old school, something of an invalid in later years, who, through recordings, caught a buzz on the web. Bad news was that many of her multifarious recordings were discovered to be of the school plagiarism. Like grab a tape and put your name on it. Her hubby, as described in a New Yorker story, came from something of a Wild West, though classical background. In the 50s and 60s he was involved with Bargain Bin Classical Labels that were not above usurping and dubbing the work of Euro Classicos some of who-o might have come from the Iron Curtain Side-o. Put it out, damn the royalties, laugh and chortle. [Sounds rather like some Brits approach to Blues music!] Hatto’s unmasking was odd. Let’s look on the matter as described in the New Yorker…. One fan unwraps a Hatto disk and places it in his computers secondary storage media. His consternation redoubles as he realizes that his discovery will dampen the buzz ...

Louise Story writes about the Mighty Google Midget. Google is bringing out a video widget, its first step toward banner-style advertising. As described in the Times, benefits of the Google widget are ease of development for advertisers and marketers. But it is hard to believe it is all that complicated. I admit I did not go through all the samples, but when you go through the examples posted on Google’s site, they do not look like something you haven’t seen before. Like very bit of technology news, somebody loves it and is ready to be quoted. Thus we have Dimity Ioffe of Media Banners saying “widgets are a dream for marketers.” I guess the key is that it is viral, that you make the widget available when you post it…and some folks may put them on their blogs…where they can last forever. Lasting forever is a miracle, and probably has its drawbacks too, but Google will tell you about that in V.2.sa Google Program Enlists Mini-Sites as Selling Tool for Advertisers -NYT, Sept 14, 2007 http:...

click to enlarge image WHEN Sunnyland Slim, "Mr.Blues Piano," parked his rough blue Dodge wagon in front of my house one Boston evening, 1978, it was a chance stop on a long road ...... that's how I began our book. Thinking about Sunnyland today as it is the 100th anniversary of his birthday. So I am re-posting a pic of Slim that I ran on this site earlier this year. Sad recently to learn that Slim's wife Jerri passed away in 2006. Sunnyland Slim - Mr. Blues Piano - was hard to capture for sure. One thing about him was a movement. I do have one 8mm film [60 sec] of him driving. Otherwise, its pictures in photos and words on tape - a few misc documents. And these particular picks using my old Brownie Reflex ... which sometimes caught a lot of motion. I took a series of pictures once, as he headed to hail a cab and go to Seattle. i think this was 61st St. See above. Slim had a deep sense of blues as a music, as an art. His piano style was a wonderful mix of classic blu...

Late summer and I’m on vacation. Have noticed too late August is a time when politicians show up at the yearly conventions of The American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. A few years ago Dick Cheney used such a convocation to prime the pump for the last push toward going to war in Iraq. This year’s VFW convention was held in Kansas City. The Legion was a couple of weeks later. And Pres Bush spoke to the vets, choosing this VFW occasion to prime the pump for the upcoming discussions about leaving Iraq by drawing comparisons between our Iraq occupation and our earlier occupations of Viet Nam and Japan. All summer I have been reading American Caesar, a life of Douglas MacArthur by William Manchester. As chance would have it, I am at the part where MacArthur takes over supreme command of Japan after Allied vitory. At some future point I will review the book. But, when picking up today’s paper I had to remark upon the falsity of the Iraq-Japan analogy. MacArthur spent over 20 years...

I think we will close down the playhouse for the summer. Will write but not post. Have a couple of working posts .. but will put them on RJ-11 and link from here to there if relevant. The image above is burned in my mind. It provided an image for dead air. When I was a kid it would be there when I got up on Saturday. And I'd watch it until programming began [with Farm Report or The Big Picture or Eddy Arnold Show]. Have a story: When I worked on ESD [Digital Design - which included Electronic Imaging] we did a special imaging issue, and, for the cover, sought to depict the "Test pattern Hall of Fame]. There was Betty, the girl from the fascimilie and The Girl with the Hat [ Leena . a Playboy centerfold that the gang at USC found handy when an acme of an image was required]. And there was the Test Pattern Native American Indian... My fellow editors were not familiar with this pattern but agreed we could use it. But finding it was very difficult in 1988. You can...