Those thunderheads have been dropping rain since I told you about them -- short localized bursts of intense showers. A firefighting crew was hit by lightning while training in the woods. Two men were hurt, but not badly, I'm glad to say.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Louth, Ireland; Marion, Ohio (Hiya Tari DeWille!); Seattle, Washington; Orlando, Florida; Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Port Lavaca, Texas and Boulder, Colorado.

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.





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 his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: 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.

Elections: Y'know? It's great when your vote counts -- maybe not for much, but mine WILL count this year, because the Montana primary election will help decide the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, for a change. I doubt I'll make this 3+ hour trip, but here's some info:
Rally with Barack Obama
Four Seasons Arena
Montana ExpoPark
400 3rd Street, NW
Great Falls, MT
Friday, May 30th
Doors Open: 4:00 p.m. Program Begins: 5:45 p.m.


The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required, but an RSVP is strongly encouraged. Admission is on a first-come, first-served basis.
For security reasons, do not bring bags. Please limit personal belongings. No signs or banners permitted.

On the opposite side of decency:


It's alright with John McCain if our beleaguered troops occupy Iraq for 100 years for the sake of corrupt no-bid war profiteers and trigger-happy mercenaries -- unlike Japan, South Korea, or Germany after WWII, our forces are NOT welcome, wanted, or needed there.
Support the troops -- bring them home!

Blue Big Skies, but thunderstorms are literally on the horizon. A Great Blue Heron swooped next to the house at Dry Bridge Slough, pursued by pesky Cowbirds -- leave him alone!

The muddy, runoff-swollen Flathead River flowing between abandoned bridge abutments at Holt Landing, near its confluence with Flathead Lake. Photo by ME -- Sunday, May 25, 2008.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Engelskirchen, Germany; Jamaica, New York; El Cajon, California; West Chicago, Illinois; Tacoma, Washington and Winthrop, Massachusetts

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.





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 his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: 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.

In The Community: At the Hockaday Museum of Art we have Frank Tetrault's sculptures, and Greg Siple's playful photography A.K.A. Bicycle Eclectic. There's an opening tomorrow, and I have a lot of work to do there later today.
Check out Fall for Glacier -- a fundraiser for several programs that make Glacier National Park even better!

Media Watch: The Science Channel had a number of shows about Mars and it's checkered past of triumphs and disasters for exploratory spacecraft. I taped their coverage of Phoenix's successful landing near the north pole of Mars Sunday night.
The new Phoenix lander on Planet Mars, photographed by the Martian Orbiter:


Click to enlarge this NASA/JPL/University of Arizona image.
(Quotes from Bad Astronomy) The Phoenix lander is bluish and sits at the top of the field. You can see dust disturbed around it, no doubt from the exhaust of the landing thrusters as it descended. At the bottom is the bright parachute, and just above it is the back shell; the part of the apparatus that connected the parachute to the lander. To the right center is the heat shield, blackened by its fiery descent. It must have bounced when it hit, making the blurry splotch to the left of the better-defined shield itself.
For a sense of scale, the solar panels are about 5.5 meters (roughly 18 feet) tip to tip across the lander. That’s about 22 pixels in this image. That puts the (approximate) distances of the parts from the lander as 130 meters to the heat shield, 250 meters to the parachute, and 230 meters to the back shell...basically everything you’re seeing here would fit comfortably inside a couple of football stadiums.

Same mix of gray and blue Big Skies. The rivers are high, and snow still falls at higher altitudes, but the runoff hasn't been too bad.

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Washington, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Norristown, Pennsylvania; Geneva, Switzerland; Oslo, Norway; Houston, Texas; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Brandon, Florida; Hayward, California; Wallingford, Connecticut; Howe, Oklahoma and the City of London, UK.

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.





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 his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: 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.

In The Community: Expanding Your Horizons was fun this year, as it was last year -- a special program demonstrating the career possibilities open for women, even in NW Montana. The audience was school girls from 12 to 16. I'm sorry, but TV, movies, and magazines don't get the job done. We filled almost two dozen classrooms with various workshops given by local doctors and other professionals, guiding their future peers.
At the Hockaday Museum of Art we have Frank Tetrault's sculptures, and Greg Siple's playful photography A.K.A. Bicycle Eclectic. There's an opening this Thursday.
Check out Fall for Glacier -- a fundraiser for several programs that make Glacier National Park even better!

Media Watch: Four hours of Bob Dylan's own music on Montana PBS to honor his 67th birthday -- one great song after another with some of the best studio musicians on the planet: Al Kooper; Mike Bloomfield; Robbie Robertson; Mark Knoffler; Charlie McCoy; Wayne Moss; Joe South; Mick Ronson; Emmylou Harris; Scarlett Rivera and too many others to name. Dylan's written so many good songs that someone could run several four-hour blocks without repeating tunes. In August of 1965, 17 of the Billboard Hot 100 hits were songs by Bob Dylan. I doubt that anybody else will match that in my lifetime. He's had his ups and downs since then, but he's also been more truthful and open about those things in the last few years -- keep buying his books and recordings!


The Rolling Thunder Revue circa 1975: (L to R) Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.
(From a fellow blogger)