A hot wind started blowing from the south yesterday and pegged the thermometers around Flathead Valley. We are seeing fledgling Blackbirds now -- indistinct colors, traces of down, and short tailfeathers. Our cats are making bird noises when they see them, hoping to fool the babies no doubt.

DANCE at the Hole In The Wall: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
NEW! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution this Summer! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

Sitemeter Sez: Belgrade, Serbia was reading about Ida Rubinstein again; Boston, Massachusetts and Varberg, Sweden were blogging through.

In The Community: We got our show of Blackfeet artists King Kuka (deceased) and Gary Schildt (alive) set up last night. Wall text, and touching-up are next -- Hockaday Museum of Art.
From our Web site:
New Acquisitions - Works of Blackfeet Artists King Kuka and Gary Schildt (July 6 through September 2)This exhibition will display recent donations to the museum’s permanent collection of eight bronzes by Gary Schildt from his “Huck Finn” series and sixteen paintings by King Kuka (1946-2004).
Gary Schildt, who was born in 1938 on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, received his art training at the San Francisco Academy of Fine Art and the City College in San Francisco, California ...and is well known for his oil paintings and bronze sculptures of contemporary Blackfeet Indian life.
Kuka, whose Indian name was Black Wolf, attended public school in Valier and then enrolled in the Institute of American Indian Arts, in Santa Fe, NM. He later completed a military service with the US Army and then enrolled in art education courses at the University of Montana. ...His work conveys a powerful source of spiritualism. ...Today, thanks to a special gift of Nancy and John Hubble, Kuka’s paintings will endure time and be preserved in the Hockaday Museum’s permanent collection.

Media Watch; OK, I admit it -- I'm still watching So You Think You Can Dance. They have nearly as much time devoted to commercials as to the show. It makes it easy to do evening chores, however.
Man, the news just gives me the blues sometimes -- I wish that lousy Fascist Koizumi wouldn't have been on my TV this morning, much less Worst-President-Ever Bush, not to mention a necessary discussion of the futile and hideous practice of torture by my own country on National Public Radio as I drove to work. The announcer repeated a cruel right-wing talking point about torture gaining useful information 1% of the time -- you can do better than that with a %$#@! crystal ball without defiling humanity.


Logan Pass, Glacier National Park; Saturday Afternoon June 24, 2006 -- from the East Side. The Going-To-The-Sun Road had opened just 24 hours earlier, and the vehicular traffic was slow. It took quite awhile before we got to the bottom on the West Side.