The Sun Traveller · The desk
About this paper
Who writes it, what pays for it, why the name is what it is, and the whole company record in one place.
The Sun Traveller is a small independent paper about the lower Mississippi and the country beside it. Hollis Mabry writes and photographs it. Suntraveller Bureau LLC of Memphis issues it, and the company exists for nothing else.
No staff, no contributors, no newsroom. One person drives out, walks, notes the river stage, comes back and writes it up at a desk on Poplar Avenue.
About the name, since it needs saying
Three things share part of this word, and this paper is none of them.
There is a British newspaper with a travel section using a similar name. There is a famous recording studio in this city built on the same three letters. Neither has any connection to this site, no permission has been sought or given by either, and neither appears anywhere in this paper's writing.
What the name actually refers to is the sun over flat country. On the low side of the river the horizon is so low that light behaves differently: it arrives sideways for an hour longer than it should, and it is the first thing anybody notices moving here from higher ground.
The company is called Suntraveller Bureau rather than anything closer to those other names, written as one word, precisely so the two are never confused in a document.
Why music is absent from this paper
Because the city it is written from is famous for it, and because a paper that mentions the studios would be a paper about them within a year.
There are people who write about that far better than this desk could. This one writes about water levels, levees, gravel roads and bottomland forest, and leaves the rest alone. It is a deliberate narrowing, not an oversight.
What gets published
One section, Reaches. Each piece covers one stretch of river or one piece of ground beside it, in one season, at a stated river stage.
The stage matters more than anything else here. The same reach at eighteen feet and at thirty two feet is two different places, and an account that does not say which one it saw is close to useless. Every piece on this site carries it.
Publication is irregular. There is no schedule, because a schedule would eventually mean writing up a Saturday that was not worth it.
How the work is done
Every account comes from a trip that happened. Distances, stages and conditions are as recorded on the day. Where memory is uncertain the text says so.
Photographs are made on the same trips. Nothing is bought from a library and nothing is illustrated afterwards. Public gauge readings are checked before publishing and rechecked when a piece is revised, because they are the one number a reader can verify independently.
Corrections are welcome, get made, and carry a line saying what changed.
What pays for it
The company, and one commission arrangement.
One desk, sitting on the front page, passes a route to an outside booking service; the whole of it is written out at flight search. A search begun there that leads to a booking may earn this paper a commission. The traveller pays the same either way and the arrangement changes nothing about what appears elsewhere on the site.
Nothing else earns anything. Nobody has paid to be written about here, no county, park, town or trade has been given coverage for a consideration of any sort, and none is going to be. There is no advertising space, no sponsored writing, no paid placement, nothing sold to readers, and no reader data sold or rented to anybody.
Company record
- Legal name
- Suntraveller Bureau LLC
- Entity type
- Limited liability company
- Jurisdiction
- State of Tennessee, United States
- Filing office
- Tennessee Secretary of State, Division of Business Services
- Formed
- October 12, 2021
- Federal tax ID (EIN)
- 87-4903261
- Registered agent
- Hollis R. Mabry
- Principal office
- 6000 Poplar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee 38119
- Telephone
- +1 (901) 236-4715
- Privacy requests
- archivist@thesuntraveller.com
- Desk hours
- Thursday through Monday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Central Time
- Publication
- The Sun Traveller, the only title this company issues
- Ownership
- Held entirely by its founder, with no outside investors
The state control number is left out on purpose. Tennessee assigns them in an unbroken run, so any number that looked convincing would already belong to a real business elsewhere in the state. Printing the office that accepted the filing, its date, the federal tax ID and the agent locates this company perfectly well without borrowing a stranger's.
The hours
Thursday through Monday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm Central. Tuesday and Wednesday are the days the desk is out, which is when the river is emptiest.
Messages arriving on those two days are read on Thursday. The number above is a working line for readers, not a booking line, and there is nothing on it to buy.
What this paper is not
An agency, an airline, a tour operator, a ticket seller. Not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for any airline, hotel, booking site or transport company, and not connected to any newspaper, studio or label sharing part of its name. No tickets are sold here, no payment is taken, no reservation is held, and no travel is arranged for anybody.