Ducklings are almost half the size of their parents now. (Well maybe 40%) No Canadian Goslings yet. The Redtail Hawks don't seem to let the Cowbirds scare them, but those damn pests keep the Ospreys from snagging fish in the lake.

Funk Master Bernie Worrell at: 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 as Summer approaches! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

Sitemaster Sez: Hong Kong, China; Tamil Nadu, India; Vancouver, B.C; and Singapore all took a look yesterday. The last one was looking for Misa Uhehara, the original "Princess Leia." (Check May 2006's archives.)


First Across the Line -- a portion of the prize-winning photo I shot in 1983 at the Deseret News Marathon and 10k when I was in the Salt Lake City Track Club. The winner of the Wheelchair Division was NOT Utah's famous Curt Brinkman. (He may be Rondo Poole, but I'd have to go to SLC to find his name.) My friend, multiple winner Demetrio Cabanillas, sat this race out and did commentary in the camper. Catherine is assisting the champion through the chutes -- I can't remember her last name at the moment, but she was a club officer. Inset: Susie Scott, Playboy's Miss May of 1983. She put the Salt Lake City Track Club on the national map when she wore one of our t-shirts in her article -- she ran in our winter 50K series, just as the weather got good enough to take photographs. She's a very cool lady in other ways! Besides autographing pictures for me and Jose Volante as Miss May, she devoted most of her subsequent career to running a charity that helped the extremely beleaguered people of Haiti.

Cloudy again -- a little rain overnight. There are over a dozen Canadian Geese on the islands in Firehouse Pond, but no Goslings yet.

Funk Master Bernie Worrell at: 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 in Springtime too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

Sitemaster Sez: Italy wanted to see Natalia Kanounnikova, the ice skater. She was THERE, but that page contains a lot of previews of Spitfires of the Spaceways too.

Media Watch: Books today! I've been reading The Narnian: The Life And Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs. I read a lot of Lewis during high school and college -- I was first impressed by his championing of Science Fiction before his death, then by his excellent Out of the Silent Planet, which I read when I was 16. He had a literary voice that was loud and clear, and an engaging personality that seemed to spring off the page. When I learned of his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, I sought out Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, and was well paid by the experience. Through the prestige of Tolkien and Lewis I felt I had been "given permission" to explore children's books, fairy stories, and fantastic fiction -- my favorites were George MacDonald and William Morris, but there were other many others I enjoyed as well. I wasn't particularly fond of the rest of the Narnia series, but they led me to read the much superior efforts of E. Nesbitt.
Lewis' friend and fellow-Inkling, Charles Williams, wrote some dandy mystical thrillers -- Place of the Lion and All Hallow's Eve stand out for me. The latter book contains a further layer of interest, since a thinly-disguised Alistair Crowley shows up as the villian. Williams joined the Order of the Golden Dawn, and knew Crowley more than his Christian friends liked to admit.
C. S. Lewis' influence as a popular Christian apologist is still formidable today -- his expansive public character has outlived the real man two generations after his death, and his life is still controversial -- more so now, since almost everyone who knew him well is dead. (Christopher Tolkien was one of the Inklings after WWII, but he was at the meetings more as his father's friend than an intimate of Lewis.)
His literary executor, sad to say, claims more familiarity with the late Oxford don than is supported by facts, and has been accused of fraud by more than one scholar, but that is a whole other subject, and not part of Jacob's book. Neither are the upcoming Narnia movies.
Lewis' BEST novel is spiritual on one level, but very humanistic on another, as well as being a great fantastically heroic yarn -- Till We Have Faces; A Myth Retold, the ancient Cupid and Psyche story from the perspective of one of her sisters.


The Wedding of Psyche by late Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones -- not exactly C.S. Lewis' vision of the story (He set Till We Have Faces in Asia Minor sometime before the Hellenistic period), but a parallel take on this bleak tale of humans blighted by their contact with an all-to-real Divinity.

Ring-necked Ducks, colored gray and white, are paddling outside. There were clouds of Swallows darting around in the rainy mists of the last two days. If anyone wanted to visit Glacier National Park over this holiday weekend, I hope they brought their cold-weather gear!

Funk Master Bernie Worrell at: 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 in Springtime too! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

Sitemaster Sez: A search engine sent someone from the Phillipines here who was researching work in Holland -- can't help ya' there! A couple more USA visitors were reading about my adventures with B.B. King on the way to Jackson Hole last Fall -- look at the May archives for Tanya's topless picture, guys! Google keeps sending you to the WRONG PAGE. (Glad you stuck around to read it.)

Media Watch: There are stupid and exploitative war movies all over the tube this weekend. Sometimes the truth sneaks in to these flicks, but it's not necessarily entertaining, so we don't see it much. The real news about our own illegal, immoral, mis-handled, criminal war in Iraq, and our loused-up Afghan adventure is horrible today -- staying this misbegotten course will ruin our country.
Book TV showed a presentation by a Washington Post reporter from her college in Decatur, Illinois last March -- the book is called Tell Them I Didn't Cry, and tells about her experiences covering the Iraq war. It is also about her twin sister in the USA, communicating with her sibling from halfway around the world -- and it was a good thing Sis was on the ball! The reporter fell seriously ill, and got progressively worse, but she was too stubborn to seek proper medical attention for fear she'd be sent home. Sis sent an email to the Washington Post, and very likely saved the life of her twin.
During the Q&A, the reporter declined to state her opinion about the politics of this war. She bemoaned how the mass media have "been discredited by making themselves part of their stories." She told about being embedded with the U.S. military during the attack on Fallujah, and how she and the soldiers related to each other as they each did their work. Right after she was done, an older man came up to the microphone and said he had heard nothing from her praising our troops (!) It was hard to hate him, (he was an Iraqi immigrant to the US) but he made a thorough jackass out of himself when he ignored what was said right in front of his own face moments before.
This war seems to have turned people's brains off somehow.
MY OPINION: By the way, or actually to the point, our nation's raid on Fallujah was a war crime, pure, simple, and hideous in it's arrogance. The contractors protected by our armed forces are thieves, who have nothing but contempt for the sacrifices of our young men and women. If you want reasonable military policy over there, ask Rep. Jack Murtha. I'm done with this subject.

Now For Something Completely DIFFERENT: I called John Kilby at Footsbarn this morning EARLY! (Too early for me.) Damn if he wasn't available -- when I opened my email five hours later, he'd written to me about an hour after I hung up. I was still groggy, but managed to write back and accept his offer to call him this Friday at 7:30 A.M. my time -- I'm off work that day. Hmmmm -- there's another opening reception at the Hockaday Museum Thursday night, so I'll be recuperating from 13 hours of work -- good thing I'm EXCITED by all this stuff!


DAMN RIGHT WE REMEMBER! The Memphis Belle was a B-17 'Flying Fortress' bomber which was used for a morale-boosting campaign in World War Two, reportedly after the crew's allotment of missions was completed. I was privileged to know a WWII bomber crewman when I worked at the copper smelter in 1968. They flew over Berlin during daylight, and the Germans threw everything they had at them -- it was deadly. Two movies have been based upon the Memphis Belle story, and a B-17 with the name Memphis Belle still appears at air shows. The B&W picture shows the cast of the 40's movie, with the George Petty figurehead painting facing OUT. The color inset (from an air show) is the starboard side with the Petty Girl facing IN. The port side painting has her wearing a blue bathing suit, but it is red at starboard.