moon traveller herald

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 travellin...

- I remember a Special Ed Christmas party long ago - ...taking it in Holding it a long time til It tastes of drowning tears the mothers clatter and hum in my camera eye mind at the Special ed party in a lobe in an alternate Charlie brown universe just seven daysbefore Christmas watching the ceil while snow is falling Kitchen band clangorous carrying abundant joy great jubilee in this nebula life akimbo... http://moontravellerherald.blogspot.com/2007/12/kenosha-kitchen-band-christmas-first.html

Have been reading U.S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs this year. Finally: Big job, won’t finish soon. But here is my book report. This book has a reputation as one of the best autobiographies by a president or general and it fully lives up to that status. Grant wrote it, in need of money, as he battled cancer. He composed it at the behest of Mark Twain, and the writing at times reaches a level like Twain’s. It deals with the Civil War, Grant didn’t live to write about his presidency, which was a debacle, anyway. Grant was known to be somewhat taciturn – and with a bit of a dour countenance. Yet he was known for brilliant simplicity in his war making – in the way he wrote memos, as one example. His quietness belied a deep thinker; his writing style makes for great literature. Grant’s fame lies in the fact that he brought the Civil War to an end. Many would argue that he spilled too much blood in the process. His perspective was probably that shorter war equaled less blood. That, itself a bloo...

It is coming, a book on the Bomb that discloses all A-bombs can be traced from Oppenheimer's Abomb ... But that is not the reason I am rehosting a bit of a homage or review [it focuses on his Cambridge life] of a great book on Oppenheimer and the bomb... Reposted from RJ 11 - It is weird to think that the leader of the U.S. teams that created the first A-bomb was a delicate mesh of scientist and poet, in the end, a tragic figure, done in by his lethal invention and his soft-spot for arty friends who, in the style of their times, promoted liberal and communist causes. Robert Oppenheimer is a truly haunting figure, well depicted in “American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin. [2005] Doctorow is quoted in the book saying “The Great golem we have made against our enemies is our culture, our bomb culture-its logic, its faith, its vision.” Sensitive, Oppenheimer tried to put the killer genie back in the bottle after creating it. This proved another reason he was marked as haun...

I am ready to quick now get out of the Depression journalism business. It's funny, I was reading Galbraith's book Halloween and it was near fun - now my endowment is down as much [percentage wise] as Harvard's ... and it aint funny. Pop a top! Do you like the blues? So one more depression post for now to make the triad. What we have here is a comment I put on Floyd Norris' blog - before the election. In those dark days when we - well me anyway - were -was- worrying about chads that would disrupt the Merican democratic swell back against Bush and forward to FDR II. It's a look back at my youth where, if someone scraped some beans off the plate into the garbage dad would say 'you'll spend time in Purgatory for that.' Ahh, the days old good! Here goes... October 31, 2008 1:57 pm Link It seems to me that recent events do bear similarity to aspects of the StockMarket Crash of 1929, if not yet to the Great Depression. Other folks have said this too. I am a so...

At some point the process became apparent. The sky is falling, so if you are in the know and have the pull, you help yourself and your friends. Don’t plan too far ahead. Keep the green churning. People were getting thrown out of work left and right at a significant rate on all strata. The folks reading the Times knew this. But capital - that was the animal that had to be fed. The Treasury Dept now struggled to accomplish the task of hiring people to oversee the TARP. A bridge too far - because it lived and breathed. The breadth of the TARP plan had been continually narrowed. Why? It became much more a case of give the bankers some money and call that relief. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the injections of the capital would be the best bet for stabilizing the financial sector - better than direct government purchases of distressed assets. And, anyway that would be hassle... A story in the Wall Street Journal suggested that buying and moderating assets is just too much trouble. Y...

No one, wise or unwise, knew or now knows when depressions are due or overdue. –JKG, The Great Crash 1929 September 2008 – Who knew? Not the masters of the Economic Universe who lord it over the consumers. When the early waters of economic tsunami began to rise, the Secretary of Treasury proved no more prescient than the telemarketing mortgage hucksterer. And why should it be otherwise? Tweak down the interest rates. Wall Street will applaud and the banks will demur. That’s the formula. It was a familiar pattern. The waves were barely lapping the first steps of the pillared Treasury building –right next to the White House – and more impressive. It all seemed manageable - just work with Ben ‘I wrote a book about the Great Depression’ Bernake, have some trust in the masters of Wall Street - which Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson in his mind had not yet left - and their government shadow organization, which Ben had come to run. Hadn’t they got us out of the Russian-Asian spiral of 199...