moon traveller herald

Paul DeMark was in touch recently with much musical news. His group’s second CD came out, and he is at work in spare time writing about his experiences in music. And the group recently opened for Willie Nelson. The new Delta Nationals’ CD takes a big step beyond the first CD. It is still a compendium of American music but it is all original material this time and it is called “All over the Map” – my fave rave on the outing is Everlasting, co-written by none other than Paul and including Joyce Hough on vocals. Check out the Delta National’s web site . Is this the same guy that I encountered sitting cross-legged on the steps of Cambridge Castle on the East Side of Milwaukee in 1971? Really serious dude who could watch the world go by waiting for the lotus in the stream? Yes! He divulges: Eddie Floyd is an influence. Who’d a thunk?! Paul on the path of dharma is a wonder. This music business can cut-cha – but Paul has stayed on the case and has much to show with All Over the Map, bro....

I am in a dance forever with the news. I try to slow down or give it up. Conflagraton brings it to fever. The stock markets are unpredictable now and sectors are melting. And there I am at the news counter. Gotta have it. And here on page A22 are the Rosenberg boys - then and now - in one of those stories that plays on and on - this is a very sad picture, the folks are about to be executed - one wearing a Dodgers shirt and riding a rocking horse like mine; other reading the Daily News; healine: SPIES GET 1 MORE DAY - and Sam Roberts' story is called "Rosenbergs' Sons Sadly Accept That Father Was a Spy" - whew! Appartenly Martin Sobell on his way to a Better Place has let the world in on some factual details of long ago. It seem pretty clear for a long time that David Greenglass was doing what he could for the World Congress of Communism Cause, and was in cahoots with Julius Rosenberg - that Klaus Fuchs was working his butt off too - that the Ruskies were capabble of...

Who are the extras? I have to ask the odd intoxicant morning of trains. The crowd streams forward - the Sparrow auto-mo-nauts in a Greek chorus blood quest between me and the local to Greenbush. They are filming a movie in Boston’s South Station. With Robert DeNiro and Jesus Mel Gibson. The extras are overdressed. It gradually occurs to us. They are wearing trench coats. Soldiering in steps. For them it’s not Saturday morning. Who are the extras? I have to ask. They are immortal and brief, practiced in unhurriedness. You go here says the director - Track 13 says my conductor. Who are the extras? I ask picking up a paper. DeNiro has left the Edge of Darkness. Says the Saturday Herald.

Reading NY Science Times this week and there was an interesting article about the replacement submersible for Alvin , the long-chugging oceanaut that discovered among many things Titanic. It has been 40 years since this counrty forged Alvin. We are only talking $50 M or $150 M here, but undersea diving bells sort of peaked back then. But they are trying again. Cause Alvin, like the old carnival ride Nautilus Jake and I rode in 1995 at Disneyland is long in the tooth and not futuristic. Very interesting to see how they are going about replacing Alvin, and hoping to better its maximum depth by about 20% [to about 3 miles] so as to be able to cover about 90% of the Earth’s ocean’s bottoms. To go where tremendous pressures press. And lo and behold but the work of the forging is going on at Ladish Works in Cudahay Wisc. I must say after all the great manufacturers that bit the dust since I left Wisconsin in 1972 I am surprised to see Ladish is still at it. So here is my Ladish story. When ...

Picked up on John Sinclair and his travels site where he recently posted his version of the Sunnyland Blues . It’s largely based on parts of the one Slim and I did. It appeared first in Fattening Frogs for Snakes , his blues poetry opus published in 2002 by the Surregional Press. John talked to me before he appropriated vast quantities of my piece. We discussed it, and jointly decided it was in the spirit of the blues to steal and borrow. It’s a premise of the blues to work with things that are out there, and adapt them with a new level of abstraction or different perspective. This is apparent in such scholarships as The Blues Line complied by Eric Sackheim [Schirmer Books, 1975] and in such rock albums as the Bob Dylan Time Out of Mind triptych, duly noted here and elsewhere. Sinclair dedicates his “Sunnyland Train” poem to me and Black Mike Henderson. Henderson played with Slim in the ‘70s as I recall. Sinclair does put his take on the original Sunnyland Blues. He matches my stuff ...

For Edward Albee. The doctor is the receptacle of the myth. The doctor found his week-dead wife In the jarred coffin On his lawn after the flood. The apples are getting heavy He said. And they are tearing down The limb. The doctor slit his wrist With an electric knife Cutting Thanksgiving turkey. In the old pylon pole South He’d let Bessie Smith To bleed on the highway Back when it rained Five days. The doctor is the receptacle Of the myth, And he is walking lazily Toward infinity. -Jack Vaughan

There I am in the Rocket Garden. Take a picture of a family taking a picture in front of a Saturn. Mailer was here 29 years ago to cover the launch to the Moon, Jules - blinded by the Sun, entranced by the alligators, stymied some as he tried to get the story from the Waspy Nasa of the day - another big anniversary is a year away, and here I am too. Mailer is dead in the last year. Here I am. Coming down here, knowing where I was going, reading Of a Fire on the Moon - [and smartly too, 2001 was showing on the Orlando TV] - thinking back to how the Moon quest was part and parcel of my youth - seeing how this Mailer piece, mere journalism at the time, for lucre at that, resonates like few tomes on tech - and seeing how the Space program had left its mark on the present day - no where more clearly than at the airport - with droning Midwest voice messages - with moving sidewalks and coolly alienated populace - with birds on tarpaulins. Red light glow of National Rental Car Pontiac dashboa...