Those damn Coyotes are still prowling the neighborhood at night. Firehouse Pond is ice-free, and there are dozens of families of water birds setting up nests on the little islands there. Our lake is thawing, but it's still covered over by ice except for about 25%. A huge Bald Eagle soared overhead in the early afternoon.

Footbarn's Celebration of Theatre: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
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: Make a resolution after the Vernal Equinox to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Friday's Auction of Miniatures at the Hockaday Museum was exhausting, but fun, and the weather was excellent. We had enough helping hands, but things got a little crazy sometimes. (We sold almost 90% of the items.) There were LIVE auctions on top of the silent auctions for every piece. We gave a local politician a microphone, and he did the rest. I dragged myself back there on Saturday and helped with the cleaning-up. The walls are stripped and ready for new shows to go up starting Monday. Watch the Hockaday Museum of Art's Website for details.

Media Watch: Stoned, a movie about the short life of Brian Jones, was too shallow to be either instructive or entertaining -- shots of young flesh not withstanding. Everybody's going to die one day, but very few are going to be part of a worldwide phenomenon like the Rolling Stones. What were the things which made him successful before his fall? These Celebrity Death Flicks completely miss the point most of the time.
Real books -- Agincourt was a historical account of young Henry V and his first successful invasion of France. Thanks for extending the ruinous Hundred Years War for two more generations, Your Royal Ego-besottedness!
I can say that he was nothing like either Shakespeare's majestic hero or young wastrel. He WAS a canny Mideavel general, though -- which meant misery for all of his neighbors. I think he was relativly sane and sober, unlike many of his contemporaries in the ruling class of the time, who seemed to be psycho or sociopaths in my estimation. The heavily-armored French infanty's suicidal attempt to charge through knee-deep mud at Agincourt, and their abandonment by the equally-handicapped French cavalry demonstrated wide-ranging stupidity and perfidy amongst their captains.
Aftermath: Henry V re-invaded France, and wedded the French Princess Royal. His infant son was declared heir to the throne of France, but "King Harry" died at war soon afterwards. Henry VI grew up weak, beset by attacks of mental illness. England lost all it's holdings on the continent, despite ongoing treachery by the French nobility against each other. The sad tale of Joan of Arc illustrated how firmly the French populace rejected domination by would-be English overlords by banding together to crown the hated, corrupt, but still-legitimate Dauphin at Orleans. The Middle Ages weren't much fun, but the Dark Ages were over, and countries were forming.
Henry V's young queen was rescued from her accommodation, er -- prison, in an English castle by a dashing commoner named Owen Tudor. One of their grandsons became Henry VII at the end of the bloody family feud known as War of the Roses, and every king and queen of England since then has been a descendent of the Tudors.


Anita Pallenberg as the Black Queen in Roger Vadim's interpretation of DeForrest's Barbarella circa 1968. She was romantically involved with Brian Jones for awhile, but later had a number of children with Keith Richards. The last time I read about her, she was fond of bicycling, and performing some sort of serious social work in London.