Cold and dry again. Single-digit temps in the morning, tolerable in the afternoon. There's a Lunar Eclipse tonight and it looks like we'll be able to see it for a change. (See below)

Sitemeter Sez: Midlothian, Texas; Louth, Ireland (Ya' doing OK Eavan?); Naperville, Illinois and San Sebastian, Spain.

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: We had about 400 high school students doing College for a Day at FVCC. It was a good time -- we showed them some things that really broadened their horizons. My personal favorites were new professor Jesse Culp capping the Theatre presentation, and charismatic Hillary Ginepra in Culinary Arts. Speaking of which, all students are admitted FREE this year to the Hockaday Museum of Art, thanks to Pacific Steel & Recycling.
Check out Fall for Glacier too -- a fundraiser for several programs that make Glacier National Park even better!

Media Watch: I saw Step Up 2 The Streets in a movie theater over the weekend, and enjoyed almost every minute of it. The plot was ridiculous, of course, but it was insignificant compared to the break-dancing which is at the center of the whole thing. The 410 Crew AKA "Bad Guys," did the best dancing of all. I'm pretty sure that stunt dancers did most of the awe-inspiring stuff for the "Good Guys," along with some frame manipulation by the FX techs. That masked Jabberwockeez bunch I've seen on MTV performed a short number too. There were about four or five tunes with P-Funk samples -- most notably Digital Underground's Humpty Dance from 1990. I laughed out loud during that sequence -- very LOW comedy.

Look Up In The Sky!


Singer Sarah Brightman in a Le Lune reverie, along with the fully-eclipsed Moon. She does a beautiful version of Claude Debussy's Clair De Lune and based a whole tour on this aethereal personna.
(Click to see a slightly a larger image.)

CLAIR DE LUNE (Moonlight)
Paul Verlaine (Translation by W. Thorley)

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Your soul's a happy pastoral where trimly
The lawns are kept and merry dancers go
To melody of lutes, still wondering dimly
Behind their masks if they are happy so.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

And happy life that hath sweet love for guerdon
They praise in sad notes of the minor scale,
But with wry faces that belie the burden
That melts away into the moonlight pale.

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

And the calm moonbeams fill the birds a-sleeping
With silver dreams, and the tall fountains spear
The dusk with silver jets that fall a-weeping
On marble basins for a bliss too dear.