Boycott Dancing with the Stars! (See post from 11-06-2007) Cold temperatures (-10 C) -- Frozen ground will be with us for awhile now. Dry Bridge Slough is frozen, with a skiff of snowflakes laying on top of the surface.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Herndon, Virginia; Ulverstone, Tasmania (searching for Kipling's God of our Fathers -- you also get Quicksilver's Pride of Man in the bargain); Wausau, Wisconsin; Lugano, Ticino; Cincinnati, Ohio (Hi Patti!); Jamaica, New York; Oakdale, Illinois; Sudbury, Canada and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

REAL SLC Punk, not the movie, 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
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!





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: Make a Holiday Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: Winterizing the Hockaday Museum of Art as the temperatures drop, and the century-old building leaks heat from every seam.

Media Watch: Positives, Negatives, and WTF -- Damnedable crook Maggie Thatcher on Book TV (shudder); Marie Osmond is reportedly in the Trash A Go Go finals -- smell that Fan Factor. A PBS two-parter: Athens: The Dawn of Democracy. Good-looking presenter* Bettany Hughes, who also did Helen of Troy and The Spartans takes a little time to dally with the weirdities of ancient Greek culture, rubble amongst the foundation blocks of our modern civilization, like it or not. *Nothing wrong with good looks -- Michael Wood did excellent historical documentaries too.
From the PBS Website:
(Hughes) explores the contradictions of the "Golden Age" of ancient Athens, where democracy emerged nearly 2,500 years ago. Far from an environment of peace and tranquility, democratic Athens was a bloody, tumultuous place of both brilliant ideas and a repressive regime. While the period saw the rise of philosophy, the flourishing of the arts and the creation of a great political ideal, Athens also became a warlike state that carved out an empire to enrich itself, an empire that couldn't tolerate criticism. At the same time Athenians reached new intellectual heights, they practiced "black magic" and created a society where one in three Athenians was a slave. Women were denied the vote and rhetoricians practiced modern "spin control" as an integral part of democracy. No two years went by that Athenians didn't vote to go to war. Eventually the empire withered, to be crushed finally by Alexander the Great. It would be another 2,000 years before society was once again able to tolerate the idea of democracy - rule by the people.
The competing concept of REPUBLIC has endured, in many bizarre forms, for two millennia since Plato's book -- we often ignore the fact that it's intention is ANTI-democratic. The shotgun wedding we have in Amerika between the two is in need of serious therapy.


A later elaboration on Aphrodite of Cnidos, originally ascribed to master sculptor Praxiteles, who lived in 4th Century Athens, at the height of its glories and follies. Bettany Hughes demonstrated how the naturalism of classical Greek art required casting, measuring, and other not-so-romantic but necessary techniques during her film.