Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Wildlife: All of the Osprey nests along the north shore of Flathead Lake are empty -- the migration has officially started. Florida's gonna be rough pickin's this year.

Weather: Somebody tagged the whole sky with gray spray-paint, and we're getting a little rain.

Charity Alert: The Rainforest Site: Help Save Our Rainforests!

Media Watch: I admit, with some guilty feelings, to switching between CNN and the Weather Channel during Hurricane Frances' landfall for many hours on Friday night. The unfolding of the destruction was facinating.
Sunday's CSPAN started out alright with Art Spiegelman on In Depth at the Strand bookstore in New York, but after an hour or so, for some reason, it turned into some other kind of show -- they had people come up and argue with one another -- often stupidly, I must add.
Blowhard Nat Hentoff was on for a few minutes too. He was only about 30% as bad as usual. I wish he'd stick to the subject of music, although his memories of Strand bookstore and NYC's Greenwich Village over 40-plus years were cool.
BOOK TV.ORG
I'm also reading Oriana Fallaci's interviews with powerful people, and her wonderful essays about each event. (Intervista con la Storia -- Rizzoli, 1974, published as Interview with History translated by John Shepley -- Liveright, 1976)
You don't have to agree with her, but she's the most emotionally REAL author of these times. Oriana Fallaci: journalist, interviewer and author

Friday, September 03, 2004

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site : Feed an Animal in Need

Wildlife: Five bears have died on the east end of the Flathead Valley from gunfire and car collisions in the last few weeks -- we are crowding these animals to death with our lifestyle -- taking their natural food and encroaching on their foraging grounds.

Weather: Low clouds all day, but no rain in the valley. No house painters though -- I think they're chicken!

Media Watch: Line of Control, a Bollywood film about warfare in the mountains above Kashmir. The well-known faces are all in it, plus the sentimental songs and dancing. It's pretty good, as far as acting goes, but it's a brutal, intense subject, and a basically true story.
One understandable movie compromise was the actors wearing camouflage uniforms in colors making them stand out against the stark mountainous terrain, unlike actual soldiers who would need to blend into the background to survive.

From the intense to the ridiculous -- Triumph, The Insult Comic Dog was on CNN's coverage of the GOP convention, and had plenty of material to keep him busy.

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Wildlife: We only see Goldfinches in the Spring and Autumn -- during the migration seasons. We are seeing them now!

Weather: Cooler, cloudy, but drier than last week -- a couple of short thunder-squalls yesterday, with a nice rainbow following the second.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site : Give Food for Free to Hungry People in the World

In the Community: Gotta change the Hockaday's kiosk display at the Kalipell Mall this afternoon. We have the Members Only salon show coming up too.
Hockaday Museum of Art - Prime visual arts resource in Flathead Valley of Northwest Montana.
Here's another site from Eureka, Montana -- seven miles from the Canadian border:
** SUNBURST COMMUNITY SERVICE FOUNDATION **

Media Watch: I'm reading Before Lewis and Clark: The French Dynasty that Ruled America's Frontier by Shirley Christian, a book about an originally-French, mixed-nationality, fur-trapping clan named Chouteau whose progeny founded a number of important cities and towns in western North America. There's a town called "Choteau" in Montana, and I just might find myself reading about it before long.
The Guru was re-re-run on the satellite last night -- funny movie, and a light-hearted exploitation of a few cliches of Bollywood films. It stars Heather Graham, Marisa Tomei, and a London-born actor of Indian descent named Jimi Mistry.
The Guru - Movie Site
Chloroform bacteria in the waters of communication -- I'm trying to be informed about the GOP convention without anger poisoning my life.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Wildlife: Migrating ducks -- mostly Mallards, but there's far fewer males than I've ever seen before. That Bald Eagle is still soaring over Middle Foy's Lake.

Charity Alert: The Breast Cancer Site : Fund Mammograms for Free

Weather: Still nice -- sunny, but not hot, with pleasant temperatures at night. This full-moon cycle has been spectacular too. We smelled smoke just after dark last night, but I suspect it might have been somebody's ill-advised campfire at the west end of the lake.

Media Watch: ANOTHER book about J.R.R. Tolkien -- Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship by Colin Duriez. This one's about his long friendship with C.S. Lewis and "The Inklings," their small literary circle. I have read better books, but it's short, and tells a little more about Lewis' move to Cambridge than others.
David Byrne's movie True Stories on TRIO Network last night. It introduced me to the awesome talent of John Goodman almost twenty years ago, even though he'd done some other films at the time. The late "Pops" Staples had a small, but important role, and Spaulding Gray (RIP) played a powerful businessman with a tenuous perception of reality. The great Tejano accordianist Flaco Jimenez played a song too.
Other highlights -- Wild Wild Life done a a lip-synch in a nightclub. Love For Sale as a step-removed cable TV ad among many TV ads. (These segments had the other Talking Heads - Jerry Harrison, Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth, in them.)
From Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth's website Tom Tom Club :

For three years Chris and Tina took time off from Tom Tom Club to concentrate their efforts on their Talking Heads career. In March 1984 they performed what would be the Talking Heads' last concerts, headlining summer festivals in Australia and New Zealand with The Eurythmics, Simple Minds, INXS and The Pretenders. While waiting for Talking Heads to regroup after the tour, Chris and Tina took an invitation from the B-52's to guest with them on a tour of New England in December 1984. In early 1985 they flew to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to perform with the B-52s for the first "Rock In Rio," a national ten-day televised concert series with a live audience of 360,000. Chris and Tina returned from Rio to join Jerry and David in New York to make Talking Heads' Little Creatures (1985) and True Stories (1985 -1986). True Stories the album was finished in spring of 1986 in Los Angeles where David was making his True Stories the film, which also featured videos and music of the band. Between projects in September of 1985 and unable to bear any longer the heatless nights of winter in their commercially-zoned Long Island City loft, Chris and Tina had moved with their small son, Robin, to a fully-heated barn of a home, Cock Island, in nearby Connecticut. Their second son, Egan, joined them there in August of 1986. Their loft had been Talking Headquarters since 1976, and it was there that Chris, Tina, Jerry and David once again sat down to write for Naked (1988) in the spring of 1987. In June the band flew to Paris to record what was to be their last studio album. When they returned to New York in September, Chris and Tina were asked to produce Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers' Conscious Party album, an offer that would be repeated for One Bright Day (Virgin) in early 1989.

A pretty good fan page -- Jerry Harrison Page
Another page from the same energetic fan, it's about the original quartet and the ubiquitous David Byrne -- Francey's TALKING-HEADS.NET
The best (and FUNKIEST) version of the Talking Heads included Adrian Bellew, Steve Scales, Nona Hendryx, original Bride of Funkenstein Lynn Mabry, and my friend Bernie Worrell: .: BernieWorrell.com :.