No rain yesterday, despite those weather predictions ...
Yes, it was smokey again, but there were occasional winds to stir things up a little.

Remembering my friend Georgio at: 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; The Orson Welles Rumor Debunked; and BOTH incarnations of Jean Rogers!
Read my latest Spitfires in Context essay.

Thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Lowell Jaeger's launch party/book signing for Poems Across the Big Sky -- An Anthology of Montana Poets at the Hockaday Museum of Art was excellent! The people were fun, and the works they read aloud were uniformly interesting. Cover illustrator Jeniffer Fallein even read a little poem which inspired one of her images. You can order the book for $16 US ($18 Canadian) from:
Many Voices Press
Flathead Valley Community College
777 Grandview Drive Kalispell, Montana 59901 USA
Their next book will be poems by Victor Charlo, a descendant of the famous Bitteroot Salish Chief -- he and his daughter April closed out the evening in great style! She translated one of his poems into the Salish language for the book, and us.
Here's a sample poem by Lowell's friend Irving Moen, written about Moen's niece who raced in the Special Olympics one year:
You taught me how to lead.
You were an athlete in the Olympics
that became special to me
when you dashed in the right direction
of 100 wandering yards of play

You were so far ahead
of your friends you sensed
something was missing. So ...
you stopped
in the two most important tracks
left in the grass that day.
You turned to your friends because
they were your friends
and you waved and cheered
them closer as they pumped and huffed
as fast as each was able.
And you all finished in the plenty
of time.



(L to R) Lowell Jaeger, Victor Charlo, and April Charlo at the Hockaday Museum last evening.