Pearl Harbor Day is followed by the anniversary of John Lennon's murder nowadays. World War Two was the defining event of my parent's generation. Viet Nam and Korea were important, but not near as definitive, since they shared the world with their children then. I'd like to think that Music was a significant component of my own generation's definition. It may sound shallow -- except that it was a major cultural indicator in the long fight for social and racial justice which actually made gains overall, despite bitter reversals. Lennon's assassination was just a sick, stupid crime when compared to the impact of King's and the Kennedys' murders, but it diminished us nevertheless.
I have noted before how Pearl Harbor was the opening salvo in a concerted attack by the Japanese Empire on the Ameican/European imperial powers in Asia that was hideously successful on land and sea until it stumbled in the inconclusive Battle of the Coral Sea, retiring in good order to fight again. Without the unlooked-for luck the U.S. experienced at Midway, where four irreplaceable Japanese carriers went to the bottom, I dread the thought of what might have happened.
After their defeat, Japan became a major economic partner of the U.S -- I grew up in a world where a certain percentage of my local population went to Japan due to the draft, and came back with SOMETHING. Our popular culture also benefitted from inexpensive electronics (see my musings on music above), and even silly-assed monster movies, not to mention the cinematic masterpieces of Kurosawa. I chose to study Japanese Art History as a minor when I went to college, and got a great education in the process. I collected and advocated Manga from the late 60's onward, and I'm happy they are an international success. I've even driven Toyotas for twenty-five years, after driving Volkwagens for twenty years before that -- which leads to:
World War Two was a catastrophe that also involved Nazi Germany, and alliances between the United States, China, and the Soviet Union which shifted, changed, and set the political shape of the planet for the rest of the 20th Century. Pearl Harbor meant that the US also went to war across the Atlantic too. Without the huge forces of the U.S.S.R. brought to bear against the Third Reich, I also dread what might have happened there -- my father's friends and peers had their hands full fighting their own portions of Hitler's Wehrmacht. When he served in Germany after V-E Day, he was in the Military Police, who maintained order, and tried to keep the population from starving to death.
I became an internationalist of a sort, despite growing up in the white-bread suburbs of Post War America -- I had company in the generation I grew up with, who inherited contacts abroad due to World War Two.

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Artist Kano Tanyu decorated the interior of the ultra-fancy Nikko Toshu-Gu with sober near-monochrome ink paintings to honor the memory of Shogun Tokugawa Ieasu, who founded a dynasty that ruled Japan in relative peace for 250 years. In return, the country sacrificed most foriegn trade, and contact with the world beyond its borders, though. Emperor Meiji moved the imperial capitol to Tokyo (Edo) from Kyoto in 1860 when the Tokugawa samurai gave up their hereditary power in order to form a modern government. By the end of World War One, Japan owned an international empire which was destroyed by their own aggression during World War Two.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Vancouver, British Columbia; Langley, British Columbia; Unna, Germany; Bellingham, Washington; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Aston, Pennsylvania; Plainfield, New Jersey; Brentwood, New York; El Paso, Texas; Aston, Pennsylvania; Sorrento, Maine; Fayetteville, Arkansas; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (looking for Wanda Day); Santa Cruz, California (looking for Crimson Rose); Cape Neddick, Maine; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Cedar Falls, Iowa; Gteborg, Sweden, and Columbia, Missouri.

New revisions 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.





Many 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 including my efforts on his Flash Gordon Resources Page -- along with actual creators like Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, and others!

Charity Alert: Play the FreeRice Game -- improve your vocabulary, and donate food to the United Nations. Check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site. Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day. BTW -- AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a bit simpler than FreeRice Game.

In The Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art's Autumn Salon, with 116 pieces on display. We also have Crown of the Continent and Ace of Diamonds gracing our walls. Looks like the art run to Eastern Montana in December was revised again.
I'm still gathering CDs together for my lecture next week on Black Music in the U.S.A. -- a half hour of basics, and an hour of FUNK!, mixing all the elements together.

Media Watch: Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner live from The Met on Montana Public Radio for about five hours. Wagner's long, lush melodies are always pleasant, but this story of fatal adulterous love is as over-the-top as anything can be from the so-called Age of Chivalry -- some versions even include King Arthur, or his horny old man Uther Pendragon. Who knows? The long-lost seed of the original tale might be at the root for ALL the others. Supposedly, Wagner wrote much of this music for his mistress. Oh well, the lovers are still doomed and hopeless because of those dastarly magical potions -- Brunhilde lost Siegfried to one of those brews in another Wagner opera, and she made EVERYBODY pay. I remember seeing a Jean Cocteau movie retelling Tristan & Isolde too. Footsbarn Theatre toured Cornwall itself with their own version before I worked with them. It may seem declasse, but I always think of the Doo-Wop classic Love Potion Number Nine when this tale comes up.

Happy Birthday, Sagittarius!

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A tribute of my own to Japanese Art and the Kano style -- digital ink with selected color, featuring my Sagittarian friend Ruth on one of our many walks in the western woods.