moon traveller herald

Dispatch was a mental state. Our fathers were most of them from the army, and the navy, and they insisted we handle things with dispatch. Even if they’d manned the home front, they were into assembly, time-and-motion - dispatch. It had different names. Telegraph, bulletin, flash. It had different names, but one beat: staccato. But dispatch was the concept. Dispatch, thy name was news in Molina.  Each day around 4pm a Chevrolet delivery truck would drop off bundled papers next door for Jimmy Tegan, the neighborhood's Moon Traveller Herald newsboy. I could go out and sit with Jimmy on his steps as he would roll out the news. We would talk. He'd try to teach me to roll the newspapers. Like the news, the craft was mysterious to me. I was all thumbs and no brain. The papers were rolled to become missiles, they would go in his orange canvas bag.  He’d go off on his bike, and they lobbed like grenades on the door steps. Over long years, the Derby morning line...

One Thursday night, he went. The news came by email Sunday. Knew it was coming - then it happened what can anyone say? Oh he was a trooper He was a kick! One in a million unforgettable forever son of the prairie Rob Halle. Things he said I will always remember. Told me once: Never unpack. We'd come down to New York over the years and he would constantly amaze me. He's telling me once about his salesman travels and says: Jack always be ready. Never unpack. So there I am travelling a lot and in a hotel rooms over many years since, and I think of him. Say it people Never unpack. Guy from little town in Wisconsin just waltzed into New York and made it his own town. When we did the 39 cent poetry reading on State St. in 1976 in Madison it was a big thing for me. It was Jeff's idea. With Charlie Deming, with Dana Poissin, With Jim Haas, With Natawa. Rob helped with the sound. It was the last time I saw him for a few years. But somehow we were always in touch. He was i...

MY BABY ALWAYS GOES OUT/SOMETIMES COMES BACK/I ASKED HER WHERE SHE WAS BUT SHE'S TIGHT LIKE THAT...

Different characters vie in different circles for newsmaker of the year. My money for 2013 is on Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who systematically unmasked the great big eye growing out of central hub of the US Gov's Intelligence community more than 10 years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. When Snowden's disclosures first appeared, there was more than a little amusement in the high tech newsrooms. After all, Google has been tracking us right along, haven’t they? But Snowden's well-placed dispatches - had an cumulative effect, to highlight major changes in the technology scape in the years since 2001. Those scape shifts take the form of growth of the Internet and cell phone communications, distributed computing. Why wouldn't the powers that be take it as an opportunity for massive eavesdropping? The Patriot Act that resides behind all this activity was an antiterrorist act pure and simple – it is fair to say people don't feel the...

E very year, well most years, the blog does a musical rundown. This year I am pulling all the samples from YouTube. Which limits things on one level but is clearly more accessible to more Moon Travellers. Stay tuned for our chronicle of this year's storms of the century. This one is dedicated to Milwaukee's late great Dr Bop.   Number 1 - Her Tenere - The most inspiring music makes you wonder 'where this comes from.' it is such with Bombino. If jimi hendrix, john lee hooker and dick dale had travelled like 3 kings through north africa in the 1960s, and set up on a flatbed truck, and played off the truck generator, and broadcast a jam over some celestial coffee grinder apparatus, that music might become a legend in a nomad camp, and spawn the dessert blues music of Bombino. Her Tenere - The desert/ I am in the desert/Full of nostalgia/ In the desert/Without water I was sitting, meditating/On the problems facing the desert.. Number 2 - Crazy in Lo...

When I was a managing editor on a monthly in the 1980s I had folders for every month. I embellished this one for Christmas. It shows the advent month coming full speed from off stage and emblematic train going round the tree [or tries to show said]. That train is coming! Happy Christmas, happy world! - J.V. Just a panthering train cross the swells of the carpet Through oriental valleys and their piled paisley sockets Through skyscraper wrappings the apple spanked harlotty papers and things to returnto your feet. - Christmas Locomotive , 1967 Note: Traveller visitors will notice a few broken links.  I thought the Web was forever. Have back up for those pics and stories, but good luck finding them, Jack.