Wildlife: The Red Tailed Hawk was minding it's own business, flying over Bibler Gardens, when a couple of Cowbirds harrassed it for straying into their airspace.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: The clouds are low and racing, gray and unsettled, but very little rain has fallen.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Simply click to donate -- eyeballs are worth money to these charities' sponsors!

Media Watch: I got a package of ALL THREE Flash Gordon Serials on DVD. A Tale of Two Movies is about to get company! Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering are going to join Flash, Dale, Zarkov, Aura, and Ming for a look back to the 30's with Ship O Rama, Spitfires of the Spaceways (Beauty Is What Beauty Does), and later on Raymond, Calkins, & Cartoons Come to Life.

In The Blogosphere: I posted my first diary on DailyKos:
My Town on the Tube!
While our country still has a Public Broadcasting System, I am recommending a film called "The Fire Next Time." The program P.O.V. is premiering it on Tuesday, July 12, 2005. I have alluded to this film in a couple of previous comments, but everyone who owns a TV will be able to check out some of the issues affecting MY neighborhood.

The reason I am so enthusiastic about this project is that it showed me a way out of simply resigning myself to sick feelings of disgust after some really nasty events came to a head around here. One local radio station acted like a particularly infected boil, but the disease of factional intimidation and ugly-talk was raging in the body politic already.

What does "Montana" mean in your mind?

Do you think of Yellowstone? Glacier National Park? Grizzlies under the Big Sky? Cowboys? Indians? Rednecks? (Do you consider beer one of the primary food groups? Well, you may be ... ) Homesteaders? Retirees?
Perhaps you might think of the Unabomber, the Montana Militia, or armed cultists shooting it out with Federal agents on the Great Plains as well?
We have tourist industries based on natural wonders, and extraction industries based on 'harvesting' them. The state has a history of economic colonization, and is dotted with abandoned farms and towns, polluted Superfund sites, and one whole community -- Libby, Montana, where a significant percentage of the population suffers from Asbestosis, caused by the W.R. Grace vermiculite works, an ailment which repeatedly cuts the sacs of their lungs as they suffocate on their feet. (not to mention related cancers.)
These facts may explain why there is a whole lot of tension in a population just shy of a million people, spread over an area so vast that only California and Texas exceed it in the lower forty-eight states.
Our little corner of Montana, west of Glacier National Park, possesses all of this same beauty and tawdriness. Metaphorically, it is fertile soil for both flowers and weeds. I guess I'll have to equate our local fauna as flora, in this respect.
Small businesses provide most of the jobs, and average working people struggle to pay their bills. Many children leave the area once they finish school, or learn a trade, just to find out what 'making a living' might really mean. The low-paying employment they endured as teenagers won't sustain them as adults.
This verdant ground does not exist in an isolated hothouse. (One of our sub-zero winters will freeze that analogy cold.) Movies, radio, TV, and every other mass medium, saturates the human environment. Pop, Rock, and Country dominate FM radio. National Public Radio is the only source of Classical, Jazz, or other varieties of music, and it originates from Missoula, Montana over a hundred miles south. I am digressing, but thank goodness for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting!
Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy were the kings of the AM band throughout the 90's. I daresay their success propagated a lot of weeds in the metaphorical soil here. A long-time local talk-show host, George Ostrom, morphed from a commonsensical curmudgeon to a sneering sycophantic supporter of the House-That-Newt-Built, and the related Impeach-President-Clinton-And-Her-Husband crowd. Ever-smug Paul Harvey made John Birch Society cant and cliches from the 50's sound almost calm in comparison.
I can hardly speak of those days without Agnewian alliteration altering my prose, but during that time, a couple of recent Montana immigrants bought the last remaining AM music station in the Flathead Valley -- KGEZ, which pumped out Rock n' Roll oldies and half-hourly news breaks. They left it alone for a few years. I choose to leave these new owners' names out of this narrative. I also decline to write in depth about their history.
You may read about it HERE
Suffice to say they were experienced agitators, who seemed to seek disciples from the far-right wing of the Atilla The Hun Fan Club, and definitely provoked armed fringe elements to threaten county planning boards for doing their jobs, railing against "Your New World Order." Each formerly-routine school levy became a financial crisis when "anti-confiscation" radicals crowded the polls and normal citizens routinely stayed home.
When those owners stepped into the public spotlight in 2000, KGEZ changed its format to Modern Rock & Talk, and they took to the microphone. A near decade of competition for ugliest, loudest mouth in the valley had new players -- more prickly, invasive, and hurtful than the thorniest thistles in the field. Northwestern Montana had all of its same old problems, but they became harder to solve when every local issue became a shouting match, armed truce, or a fight. Boycotts and counter-boycotts dented the economy. Some salespeople tried to extort businesses by implying they'd be boycotted if they didn't buy ads on KGEZ, or by promising removal from it's boycott list. Individuals who wrote letters to the local newspaper, a popular local pastime, found themselves not only vilified over the air, but actually stalked and harassed by unknown persons if KGEZ happened to object to their opinions.
The Working Group of Oakland, California came to Kalispell after one of the targets of this bullying invited them to see what was going on. They had previously made "Not In Our Town," a film about anti-Semitic vandals in Billings, Montana, and that community's courageous response to them. Whatever they might have thought, they really paid attention when David Earl Burgert, leader of Project 7, an avowed anti-government gang, was arrested in a confrontation with armed cops.
Burgert was carrying a loaded machine gun, so the sheriff and his deputies were well within their rights to blow him away with high-powered rifles, but to their credit, he was taken in without any mishaps.
KGEZ reported that a teenager had informed on the group. They repeatedly reminded their listeners (paraphrased) "You know what happens to snitches," and other jailhouse terminology, for days after details of Burgert's conspiracy were revealed in the newspapers. (Full disclosure #1: The mother of this unnamed child was a student at the college where I work. She was sick with fear, and almost failed to complete the semester. Also, this particular infamnia is NOT in the movie.)
The Project 7 incident prompted the Working Group to go ahead and make a documentary about the Flathead Valley. The producer chose to emphasize the garden rather than the weeds, which I found surprisingly beneficial to my spirit when I saw it last year. She concentrates on certain issues, primarily natural resources and conservation, plus the people who advocate different approaches to them.
(Full disclosure #2: I set up and ran the digital projector for two of its showings, as a tech for hire, but otherwise I have had nothing to do with the movie.)
It's a pity "The Fire Next Time" had to show some weeds to be accurate, because some of KGEZ's ugly shenanigans threatened to become the center of the story. Local realtors and the Chamber of Commerce may not be happy with this project, but they didn't help much when serious violence almost errupted in their own backyard.
Perhaps with assistance from this film, KGEZ's ratings slipped below 2% of the listening public earlier this year. They currently rely on syndicated Fox commentators instead of the format that made them infamous. There may be little improvement in the factual quality of discourse, because of it's source, but it's far less personal and specific. The owners are delinquent with many of their bills, and the FCC dismissed the renewal of the station's license earlier this year.
(Dare we hope for a happy ending?)
It intrigues me to see how the area in which I live looks to locals, in-staters, and out-of-staters. Here is an opportunity! Too bad it coalesces around conflict -- and mean-spirited manipulation of the local media, which prevents people from solving their problems, but hey, semi-rural Montana is not the only place where this kind of malfeasence poisons the waters.

Congratulations to Patrice O'Neill, the producer, for her efforts in making the experience of this film a forum for discussion, rather than "Deliverance as a documentary."

A half-dozen PBS stations around the Intermountain West are presenting an additional hour-long program which discusses the issues raised by The Working Group's film -- this follow-up, "Dialogue -- The Fire Next Time" originates from Idaho Public Television, and will air on July 14 (7 PM) and 17 (5 PM) on Montana Public Television, KUED, Salt Lake City, Utah, KNME, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Idaho Public Television, Wyoming Public Television, and Rocky Mountain Public Television. (Check your local listings, of course.)
Most of the Flathead Valley sees PBS out of KSPS in Spokane, Washington, but it looks like they're showing it WEDNESDAY, July 13. (Although the local cable may carry the digital broadcast on July 12.)
Any interested Kossaks are encouraged to look at the cool interactive feedback pages on P.O.V. 's Website: POV: The Fire Next Time
They have multi-media previews, interviews, and a matrix for more discussions after the movie airs. These folks are SERIOUS about discussions! The colorful section called "Tapestry" is worth a look for all techno-debaters.
I think these kinds of things are exactly what modern technology is supposed to be.