Wildlife: Between Bozeman and West Yellowstone, Montana there is a long canyon. In the very early dawn this morning I saw a flashing light ahead and thought of cops or accidents -- it was a diamond-shaped sign with the silhouette of an Elk in the middle framed by the occilating glow. I was watching carefully for wildlife anyway, so I saw a massive Elk bull plus a nearly as large Elk cow about 100 yards off the road, walking between sandbars and islands in the Madison River.
Why was the light flashing? Was it a coincidence? On the return trip in the afternoon(see below) I saw a series of battery-powered solar-recharged motion detectors set up for about a mile or so along the road near that same location. Another sign declared it was a test zone.
Other wildlife sightings today -- Red-Tailed Hawk, Rough-Legged Hawk, Vultures feeding on dead Deer. Some very broad-winged Ravens. A sapphire-like Stellar's Jay just before sunrise.



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Weather: Couldn't ask for better driving conditions -- sunny and dry all the way.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Six charities are helped by computer clicks.

In The Community: Road Trip! The last Winold Reiss picture made it home safely to Jackson Hole by 11:30 A.M. After eating and getting an espresso, I started my mad dash back to Kalispell. I had planned to drive all the way to Missoula today, but I underestimated how long it would take me to complete the round-trip between Bozeman and Jackson -- eleven hours. Tacking five to six more hours onto that driving west in the blinding late afternoon and humping unlighted side roads on a moonless night might just kill me -- literally. I'm staying in BOZEMAN.

Media Watch: In the car it was a day for JAZZ! I bought a double CD of classics from the Blue Note Records catalogue in West Yellowstone. Almost every cut was FUNK from the late 50's and early 60's -- especially Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man. On that long dark run through the canyon this morning I listened to two CDs of Taking Heads' hits. I prefer their work with my friend, Parliament/Funkadelic stalwart Bernie Worrell, but some of that stuff before and after Bernie's tenure is first-rate.
Chicago just won the first game of the World Series at home 5 to 3. Their relief pitchers did a good job in the 8th inning holding onto a one-run lead after the starter put two men on base with no outs. The White Sox scored an insurance run when it was their turn, and their closer smoked the over-eager Astros at the top of the 9th.

Wildlife: The Seeley/Swan Valley was foggy. but I drove very carefully. I only saw one scrawny blackish squirrel and one deer at the far end of Seeley Lake.



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Weather: The weather was perfect for driving once I got out of the Seeley/Swan Valley -- sunny and dry.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Click to help six charities.

In The Community: Road Trip! I got five Winold Reiss pictures home to Bozeman. There's only one left -- and it's bound for Jackson Hole in the early A.M.
After I checked into my hotel, I rested for a couple of hours. When I woke up and went to dinner, I saw B.B. King sitting in a wheelchair in the corridor outside of my room, and said "Hello, Sir."
WHAT!? B.B. KING!? That's right -- he was performing near Bozeman that night, so I scurried off to see him. I hope he returns to the hotel before I turn in -- I'd love his autograph. (Update -- no, I didn't see him again, but I had a nice talk with members of his band. Thanks for YOUR autographs, guys.)

Media Watch: Actually, I mean listen -- in the car I grooved to Beethoven's Symphony #9, with Ode to Joy, and Van Cliburn performing Tchaikovsky's Concerto #1 in a 1958 recording -- the piece that made him an international star. Rimsky-Korsakov's Concerto #2 fills the rest of Van Cliburn's CD, and it's nice -- not as thundering a piece, but that's a relief.


Riley (B.B.) King live onstage during his 80th Birthday Tour
Bozeman, Montana Oct. 21, 2005
Photo by Michael Evans, posted 10/24/05

Wildlife: We've re-identified that hungry raptor who's scaring away the birds at the feeder as a Sharp-Shinned Hawk. It's too large for a Kestral. One of the Raccoons was rocking in our rocking chair last night, looking up as I was watching him/her.



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Web Page Progress: Interlibrary loans got me a copy of Dancing in the Vortex; The Story of Ida Rubinstein (2000) by Vicki Woolf, author of Shape Up for Sex (1984) OK, I'm laughing a little, but the author is also a dancer and actor like Ms. Rubinstein.
I can fill out my chronology about her life a little better now:
1885-1908; She was raised in St. Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire, by the wealthy Horvitz family, relatives of her deceased parents. She arranges a meeting with theatrical designer and artist Leon (Lev) Baskt about staging her own version of Antigone before a private audience of her social peers. She and Baskt become lifelong friends. On a subsequent trip to France, she is declared insane by a doctor/relative in order to stop her for arranging a performance in Paris. When her family takes her back to Russia, she marries her cousin and gains control of her inheritance.
1909-1914; Paris' Belle Epoch at it's grandest. Ida Rubinstein meets Michel Folkine through Leon Baskt. She literally follows the choreographer to Switzerland, where he's on holiday with his wife, in order to convince him to create a version of Salome's legendary 'Dance of the Seven Veils' for her. In another private performane in St. Petersburg, she strips down to her naked glory for the first of many occasions over the next two decades.
Serge Diaghilev is convinced to take her to Paris with the Ballets Russes where she dances the title role of Cléopâtre. She and her beautiful nude body create a sensation, and she matches her success the next season when she dances with Nijinsky in Scheherazade. This moment is the peak of her artistic summit, and for all her trying, she'll never quite reach it again.
She parts ways with Diaghilev to become an impressario on her own with Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien in 1911 -- written by the famous decadent poet Gabrielle D'Annuncio, with music by Claude Debussy, and starring herself as the cross-dressed ill-fated S&M icon. Several spectacular productions follow, like Helene de Sparte, Salome, and others.
1914-1918; World War One destroys the society of her birth, and changes Europe forever. She turns her whole hotel into a hospital for wounded Allied troops, and takes her new responsibilites very seriously -- winning a Legion of Honor medal for her work.
1918-1924; During the war she makes friends with Sarah Bernhardt, the finest actor of her generation. She helps Bernhardt through serious health crises, and studies acting with her until her passing. The last theatrical successes Rubinstein HERSELF enjoys are presentations of dramas pioneered by this late great lady of the French Theater.
1924-1939; Rubinstein's lavish productins continue until her retirement in 1936. Her season of 1928 is particularly ambitious and important -- especially because of Ravel's Bolero. Unfortunately, she becomes the object of severe criticism, and is considered passe by theatrical powers-that-be. She also converts to Catholicism.
1939-1950; She flees the Nazi occupation into Algeria, then Casablanca, Lisbon and London. Ida Rubinstein spends World War Two administering to Free French troops in England, and helping the wounded after the war.
1950-1960; Ida moves to Vence, near Nice, on the French Riviera. She spends one month a year at a Benedictine monastery, clad in the finest white silk, until her death. Her lonely grave continues to be decorated by French veterans who remember her service to her adopted country.

Weather: A little rain last night and this morning. I'm hoping it clears up! (See below).

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Click to help six charities.

In The Community: If you didn't see it, YOU MISSED THE WINOLD REISS SHOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Hockaday Website
The good news is that we will continue to show a few of his portraits as part of our Crown of the Continent exhibit. The bad news is that such an all-encompassing retrospective of Reiss' best work probably will never happen again for another generation, if ever.
I've been taking down the pictures and packing them up. Tomorrow I'm heading off to Bozeman and Jackson Hole to return some of them to their owners.
Road Trip! Road Trip! I'll be blogging from hotels on the way.

Media Watch: Glenda Farrell and Edward Everett Horton in Confessions of a Bachelorette, a 1935 screwball comedy on TCM this morning -- great actors!


La France Croiseé by Romaine Brooks
Model: Ida Rubinstein 1914

Wildlife: I had to dodge deer twice last night going home after dark. I'm glad I've learned to look 'WAY ahead of me when I drive at night.



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Weather: The mild Autumn days continue.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Six charities need your clicks.

Media Watch: I re-installed my satellite TV wrong after we installed our new flooring. It looks like an interior wire was damaged during construction, so I eventually found a new way of setting it up -- we can change the channels on the TVs in both the kitchen and living room now. (As long as we don't misplace the remote control unit.)
The Colts were pulling away from the Rams when I finished, but I was too tired to watch any more -- the former team eventually won.
George Cloony was also on Charlie Rose talking about Edward R. Murrow.
The two mentioned his guts -- good point.
They mentioned his stature -- one result of his guts and good sense.
Then the bullshit began -- when they tried to name ONE current reporter with qualities like Murrow, they meandered about and failed. The conversation turned to some of the media mollusks at the New York Times and on Fox news, but those propagandists, bullies, and liars are hardly worthy of mention alongside Murrow.
He spent his last years battling lung cancer from all those funkin' cigarettes he inhaled. He was also head of the U.S.I.A. in the Kennedy/Johnson administrations, which is a propaganda organization by it's very charter. I hope the news programs it broadcasted told the truth, but I'm afraid that the integrity of he and fellow 50's luminary Adalai Stevenson was seriously compromised by the forces which sank our nation in the quagmire of Viet Nam.

Wildlife: We saw a small herd of five Whitetail Deer grazing on the north side of our neighborhood.



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

Weather: Even more mild Autumn days -- we had some rain on the weekend, but it wasn't bad.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Six charities -- click, click, click, click, click, click.

Media Watch: I missed seeing Einstein on PBS last week. All I had time to see was Helen of Troy. Link to Helen's Press Release
The narrator, Oxford scholar Bettany Hughes, stated her points very well, but there's still so much we don't know about the East Mediterranian Bronze Age outside of the Greek myths -- and they can be so weird and creepy (Like Helen's conception between Leda and Zeus, disguised as a swan) that those so-called gods may have really come from off-planet, as Von Daniken's gang once postulated.
Making-up a contemporary beauty according to ONE mask or sculpture seems to be a big reach too. I'll guarantee one thing -- whomever the prototype for Helen of Sparta/Troy happened to be, we have very little idea of what she really looked like, in her clothes or makeup, compared to an Egyptian woman of the same period.


Ida Rubinstein as Helene De Sparte 1913
Design by Leon Baskt