Clouding up -- the weekend might have snow or rain depending on what time of day those clouds precipitate.

Sitemeter Sez: Paris, on the Ile-de-France; Elk Grove, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Whittier, California and Lake Forest, Illinois

ROCK against Reaganomics 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 -- UPDATED!





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. Also check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site.

In The Community: All students are admitted FREE this year to the Hockaday Museum of Art, thanks to Pacific Steel & Recycling. I'm STILL adding images to the Auction of Miniatures page.
Check out Fall for Glacier too -- a fundraiser for several programs that make Glacier National Park even better!

Real Books: J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for maybe the three dozenth time -- I lost count years ago. I'll always remember the winter day I bought the book and started reading it -- the introduction and map of Middle Earth intrigued me greatly while waiting for the bus on a revolving stool inside the old-fashioned soda fountain in long-gone Walgreen's Drugstore at Second South & Main Streets in Salt Lake City, Utah. I finished it as the summer began -- just before my attention was diverted by buying an electric bass and making loud terrible noises with other enthusiastic teenagers on the local garage band circuit. A year later, Lord of the Rings was a phenomenal hit, and I was proud to have been at the leading edge of it's popularity.
The first adventure is still my favorite, where Tolkien introduces Middle Earth from the Hobbits' point of view. The pursuit of Frodo and the Ring by the Black Riders is thrilling because there are mysterious limitations on their powers. Gandalf alludes to magic which is resident in places like Rivendale and the Shire (not to mention Tom Bombadill's domains). A fantastic spell like this required a certain amount of literary dazzle, but the Oxford Professor of Language, with a hobby of translating ancient legends, was up to the task.


Black Rider and the Gaffer
(From a color painting by Stephen Hickman)
This Ringwraith is much more animated than the book described him. His menace resided in looming mystery rather than rodeo-like histrionics like these. Old Gamgee was frightened enough to tell the whole truth as he knew it anyway. Tolkien suggested the Black Riders sensed the world of living beings very imperfectly, to the salvation of Frodo and his friends.