We had some snow Friday, but it all melted Saturday -- St. Patrick's Day! It almost looked like Spring, after the fog burned off at noon. The aereation pond is expanding, ice is melting on the smaller lakes, and the sounds of Canadian Geese are in the air. Two Mallards skimmed some leftover seeds on the back lawn. We went walking with our three cats, but no skunks interrupted the neighborhood tour this time.

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 as the Equinox settles in to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Auction of Miniatures bid lists and bid forms at Hockaday Museum of Art's Website.
The real thing is this Friday!

Media Watch: A Guinness-pouring demonstration on CNN -- better than some other things they could have shown. I doubt St. Patrick would approve polluting good brown beer with lousy green food coloring, or praying to porcelain gods on a day meant to honor him. Merwyn (Bishop Patrolicus) was not the first Christian missionary in Dark Ages Ireland, but he was the most famous by far. His generation of somewhat-Romanized Britons were the first to establish a written language in the Emerald Isle between about 400 to 440 A.D. Their so-called Vulgar Latin survived just outside the neglected Northwest corner of the fast-crumbling Western Empire. When St. Columba converted the Celtic bards over a century later and started Irish monastaries offshore, an important wave of literacy began to spread over benighted Europe. By 800 A.D. Karl Der Gross (Charlemange) recruited key Irishmen in his successful efforts to re-establish literacy over his sprawling domains. Ireland itself, though, faced fearsome Viking invasions for another several hundred years. When they were done, the Normans attacked from England, and eventually took over. History has indicted the English as unworthy stewards. The EU gave that beleaguered country some hope, and perhaps bygones can truly be bygones over the whole island.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction show was presented on (edited) tape-delay. As usual, the first segment was pretty good -- The Ronettes, featuring Veronica Bennett, her sister, and cousin singing Be My Baby, with Paul Schaeffer re-creating the massive Jack Nietzche Wall of Sound behind them. Ronnie's producer and long-divorced husband Phil Spector is facing murder charges in Los Angeles, but Schaeffer read a 'congratulations' message from him. It might have been an act of artistic justice, but my guess is that it was spliced-in after Ms. Bennett was gone -- the whole world is now aware of the danger she faced living with a controlling madman like him.
Spector almost caused an ugly Hall of Fame scene in the 90's when Ike Turner was his impromptu guest -- Turner deserved his props, as did Anna Mae Bullock (Tina Turner), but some pre-arrangements would certainly have been appropriate, rather than nervous private security guards posturing against one another.
Ahmet Ertegun deserved all tributes bestowed on him -- especially from Aretha Franklin. He was responsible for recording a large percentage of the best music I ever heard during my life. Patti Smith, and her group also deserved their induction into the Hall of Fame -- she was lucky to live through her initial noteriety, but survived to fuse Rock and Literature as well as anyone else has done. She mentioned her late husband Fred "Sonic" Smith (nice guy, I met him once), and sang OK during the finale too. (People Have The Power, with nice solos by Keith Richard and Stephen Stills.) Lenny Kaye played a tasteful guitar, especially during Because the Night. I agree on the induction of R.E.M. -- time for New Wave! Van Halen (the group) reshaped Heavy Metal and deserved recognition for their successes -- including bringing Sammy Hagar up from Rock's AAA to the Major Leagues. Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five were the first major stars of Hip-Hop -- they took what The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, Scotty, Big Youth, and King Tubby had started, and brought it off of the inner city streets of Amerika to EVERYONE, whether they wanted it's truth or not.

I posted this little graphic on one of FVCC's students' MySpace sites. C.S. Lewis published a trilogy almost a decade before his good friend J.R.R. Tolkien made history with the form a decade later. It was actually three related S-F novels rather than one long book. Out of the Silent Planet began as a friendly race between Lewis and Tolkien to each write a Science Fiction novel, but the latter abandoned his project, although it evolved as the fall of Numenor in the back-story of Lord of the Rings.

The first novel is reportedly a portrayal of Tolkien's character on a fabulous journey to Planet Mars. The second amalgamates two of the Inklings' favorite fantasy novels -- David Lindsay's sexually-charged Voyage to Arcturus and E.R. Eddison's language-rich Worm Ouroboros. The third was a tribute to the Apocalyptic novels of fellow-Inkling Charles Williams who died after WWII.