Summery and nice, without a cloud in the Big Sky. I haven't seen much wildlife at the Slough, but I've been working deathly hard lately.

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!
Spitfires of the Spaceways
UPDATED! Wilma Deering & Dale Arden to the rescue; Bodacious Princess Aura I; Hapless Aura II; The fiery Emperor Ming; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!

Charity Alert: Make a resolution this Summer to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: When I'm done for the day at the college, pulling cable and installing new AV equipment, I'll be running to the Hockaday Museum of Art -- preparations for Arts In The Park is making things VERY busy there! We are hosting a reception for downtown businesses tonight -- wonder what part I'll play in it?

Media Watch: Big Media remembers Lady Bird Johnson at her passing. Like most of the so-called US "First Ladies" of the 20th Century, she was awesome in her intellect and capacity for action. The portrait of her life has both light and dark strokes, though. Her husband and political allies in the Democratic Party took our country to the peak of Popular Liberalism, but then dropped it over the cliff of Viet Nam after losing their way in a chasm of corruption. She was an integral part of the Johnson Administration, and all it's iron fist/velvet glove shenanigans, but spent the rest of her long life doing good works for the state of Texas and the nation as a whole by sponsoring wildflower projects and other unglamorous ecological endeavors that helped made her world a better place. One of the funniest satires I've seen was in Kurtzman & Elder's Little Annie Fanny, where a billboard, squeezed among a bunch of ugly roadside billboards, sported charactures of LBJ and Lady Bird saying "Remove Those Ugly Billboards!"
The dark side of her family business continued with the career of her son-in-law Charles Robb, a spineless, money-grubbing Dem In Name Only who served the interests of well-financed lobbyists instead of his voters. Lenny Bruce made people howl with laughter at the dichotomy of political sophistication and Southern stereotype that the Johnsons showed to the public. It's too bad this courage didn't help Bruce with his legal troubles.
As the 1960's became The 60's, we witnessed this ridiculous incident:
The nation's discontent intruded into the White House itself when, on 18 January 1968, Mrs. Johnson held a luncheon for a group of white and black women who had been invited in order to discuss crime in the streets. One of the guests, Eartha Kitt, a prominent singer, rose shortly after the president had spoken briefly, to assert that young people were rebelling and smoking marijuana because of the war. "Boys I know across the nation feel it doesn't pay to be a good guy. They figure [that] with a [prison] record they don't have to go off to Vietnam." Johnson was furious over what he regarded as an affront to the presidency delivered in the White House itself and over the extensive coverage of the incident in the press and on television. (From www.presidentprofiles.com )
That so-called "coverage" was actually the Mainsteam Media piling on Eartha Kitt for reporting the truth to people who didn't want to hear it. Her career stalled in the USA as the retribution continued, but she was able to relocate to Paris, France and keep working.


Just as Earth Kitt made it to the top of LBJ's shit list, she appeared as a guest villainess on Batman. Unfortunately, the show was on it's last legs, and wasn't considered either campy or cool anymore. Kitt was also the third actress to play Catwoman, following Julie Newmar, who had been PURR-fect in the role. Kitt did her best with the lousy script, and actually gave her portrayal a special flair, but it wasn't until after decades of re-runs that she got recognition for her winsome work in this losing cause. Since she was effectivly banned from US television for a number of years, it was also the last thing the American public saw of her for quite awhile. Eartha Kitt's bread and butter had been nightclubs, but it was a dying scene at the time, except for Las Vegas. She was actually more fortunate than many other entertainers, in that she had fans and contacts abroad so she could keep her career intact. (L to R) Adam West, Eartha Kitt, Burt Ward, and Yvonne Craig. (Julie Newmar's looking out from an inset at the back of the room.)