Wildlife: Whitetail Deer are all over the neighborhood. I think that buck that ran in front of me the other night was killed a few nights later by traffic -- there's a big body laying on the side of the road in about the same spot where I had to hit my brakes.



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

Weather: It's reasonably dry here today, but those clouds are threatening, and it's snowing on the border in Eureka, Montana.

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

Media Watch: NPR tries to give us a window on the world, but it's rarely pretty -- Cruel shortages of doctors in Africa; Unconscionable neglect of the earthquake victims in Kashmir; Abyssmal depopulation and corruption in New Orleans; A Radio Tour of Krishna's city Vrindavan in India;
Well, THAT was nice -- warts and all -- but it had very little to do with the purported subject of belief in the the afterlife. Most religions, including the Hundustani veneration of Krishna, are much more about how we LIVE than they are about mystical cosmologies. National Public Radio
Speaking of India -- We saw the late Ismail Merchant and James Ivory's The Guru from 1969, starring Michael York and Rita Tushingham. The movie's depiction of York as a Rock Star is pretty weak, but that's probably the writer's fault -- when he and Tushingham act as normal English people they are very convincing. Overall, it's a fairly good, though very slight, film.
Here's what James Ivory says about it:
The Guru seems now to be a brightly colored fairy tale, a kind of 1960s fable, in which a muddled young urchin prince is deposited, via Air India's flying carpet, in a land of broad rivers, oriental domes, and harems full of plotting ladies. In this ever-so-puzzling kingdom, ruled over by an insecure despot who can thunder one moment and summon up divine music the next, our urchin prince has many strange adventures. There are witches who cast evil spells, magic amulets, a courtesan who is strangled by her own strings of pearls, cups containing mind-altering brews, and ancient seers who deal out both encouragement and fierce rebuke.
At the end of all his trials, the young prince, now enlightened, boards his magic carpet to return to his own far off land. He is sheltering his treasure in his arms - the simple, good-hearted maiden he has set free from her imprisoning dreams, and who loves him. The Guru, the most unseen and mysterious of our movies, was Merchant Ivory's version of a sixties trip. To me anyway, it holds up as well - though some might say no better than - any of the others of the genre that have survived. -J.I.


Classic Sri Krishna
Krishna on Wikipedia