Sing along with Stevie Wonder -- Happy Birthday to Ya' Martin Luther King! His famous dream IS slowly becoming reality, but there are powerful forces fighting against his ideals, and they rule my country right now, not to mention much of our world. It is an election year, and the allies of Justice might just win some critical battles. So there is hope on a sub-zero morning. Flickers, Juncos, and Cedar Waxwings sighted at Dry Bridge Slough.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Jamaica, New York (Happy B-Day to YOU as well, Stozo!); Winsted, Connecticut; Middletown, New York; Branson, Missouri; Wake Forest, North Carolina and San Antonio, Texas.

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!
NEW --Launching NOW! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and Cellulose to Celluloid, Flash Gordon in the Saturday Matinees and Sunday Comics!





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!

All-round good guy Jim Keefe wrote me to say: Enjoyed the comparison from strip to film. Fun stuff!
Put a link on the Yahoo adventure strip group as well.
Hope you get a lot of hits. THANKS AGAIN JIM!

Charity Alert: Keep that 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: The college where I work is lucky to have Dr. David Scott on it's faculty. He was an active participant of the Selma, Alabama campaign, and personally knew Martin and Coretta King. His stories about Dr. King and the ongoing struggle for Justice in the wake of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 are mesmerizing.
Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road, The Collective Caravan, and Old West -- New Visions at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Mini-thumbnails on the agenda next for the website -- a formal design problem.

Media Watch: Montana Public Radio Morning Freeforms is celebrating Martin Luther King's legacy with spoken-word segments, and damn fine music. Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready is a favorite -- this song transcends it's overtly religious text. It has been reinterpreted by Bob Marley & The Wailers as One Love, but my favorite version remains the Chambers Brothers straight-out soul-rocker from the mid-60's. The late, great Mr. Mayfield also wrote and sang If There's A Hell Below, We're All Gonna Go! It wasn't a curse, but a call to action, and matching words with deeds. Another song playing on the radio contains the poweful refrain If we poison our children with hatred, then a hard life is all that they'll know. My point is that Idealism is not idle indulgence or romantic fantasy, but one of the duties in our lives. Accepting every crime foistered on your locality, or the wider world, as some kind of "inevitable reality" is the opposite of wisdom or even survival.

Hey! Let's celebrate the birthday of Huddie Leadbetter AKA Leadbelly too -- one of the greatest Folk Singers of all time. There are some speculations that he adapted many of his songs from popular music. If true, he wasn't the first or the last, but nobody has found the sheet music from where his greatest songs were supposedly derived.

Some send in clowns to change the tone, I choose to send in dancers:


(Click on the pic for a larger view.)
(Left) Alex Raymond's court of Emperor Ming at the dawn of his gracefully inked "middle period" circa 1935. (Right) Universal Pictures' version in 1940 -- temporarily hearkening back to the barbaric days of yesteryear, before censorship. The lady in the movie performed two dance numbers before Lady Sonja, Princess Aura II, and Dale Arden III crowded her out of Ming's throne room in the third (and final) Flash Gordon serial.