Wildlife: Four Whitetail Deer were on the hill overlooking the junction of Foy's Lake Road and Buckboard Lane last night. I hope they were continuing to the west. There was another body about half a mile to the east on Foy's Lake Road this morning.



Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!

Weather: Wintery, but not too bad -- just above freezing, snow in the mountains, evaporation of frozen gunk on the roads.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site -- Click to help with a half a dozen projects.

Media Watch: OK -- I finished Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak. Let's see now -- Pulp-fiction entrepreneur Edward Stratemeyer came up with the concept, and wrote the first few scenarios for the series.
Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and her sister Edna took over his successful syndicate of popular fictional characters when he died suddenly in 1930.
The extremely prolific Mildred Anderson Wirt Benson was the first ghostwriter who filled out Stratemeyer's outlines under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. As the Great Depression deepened, Mildred took other work rather than take a pay cut from the Stratemeyer syndicate. A man named Walter Karig wrote three Nancy Drew books, Nancy's Mysterious Letter, The Sign Of The Twisted Candle, and The Password To Larkspur Lane. (Yeah, I read most of the original series -- coincidentally THESE are the ones I remember most.)
Mildred returned to the syndicate until after WWII, even though she became a full-time journalist in Toledo, Ohio and wrote potboilers under other pseudonyms.
Harriet Stratemeyer Adams' role in her syndicate continued to grow into the 50's and beyond. By 1960 she was not only Nancy Drew's editor, but her main writer too. She cultivated an image of being the sole creative force behind the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew in the mass media, even though it wasn't exactly true. After thirty years and more of overseeing every one of their books into print, I can understand her perspective. Before her death in 1982, Harriet faced Mildred Anderson Wirt Benson in court, as part of a lawsuit between Grosset & Dunlap and Simon & Shuster over the right to publish new Nancy Drew books. ("I thought you were dead!")
Mildred's only gain was public acknowledgement of her efforts in writing Nancy Drew's popular mysteries for almost twenty years. She never made more than a few thousand dollars for her work with Stratemeyer.
Interview with Melanie Rehak


The REAL Nancy Drew
30's illustration from
Bob Finnan's Nancy Drew Site