Big clouds, cool wind, no rain, but FLOCKS of Magpies!

Sitemeter Sez: Little Rock, Arkansas (Hey there, Tari DeWille!); Vxj, near Kronobergs, Sweden; Wroclaw, Poland; Chelmsford, UK; Jamaica, New York (Bindlesiffs!); Granger, Indiana; Hamilton, Ontario, and Yerevan, Armenia.

MORE New Mime Troupe History 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

Many thanks to Toni -- she sent me an autographed copy of Winter Season; A Dancer's Journal (1982) for making a video of her presentation at Harvard University about Ida!




Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
MORE UPDATES! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and especially Cellulose to Celluloid, Even more Flash Gordon comparisons from 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: Mark Ogle's remarkable retrospective is still up at the Hockaday Museum of Art, plus Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon's show is on the first level -- about the vanishing glaciers of Glacier National Park, it is a true labor of love by scientists from the USGS. Here's another website comparing glacier photos from the early 20th Century and recent decades.
The Hockaday Museum of Art's Face Book Site (There's a link to the conventional website there.)

I was running the tech for guest speaker Joseph Lisle Williams when he presented a lecture at my college about surviving a bear attack in Glacier National Park 50 years ago. Don Dayton, the ranger who shot the bear and saved the young man's life was at the event too. If you want to read more about it, his sister wrote a blog about her brother and the lecture HERE.

The other month, I ran sound for Carol Buchanan's public discussion of her historical novel God's Thunderbolt -- The Vigilantes of Montana at the community college. Here's the link to a live-blog of the event.

A statewide "town meeting" style videoconference about the USA's health care crisis. There were many advocates from different political views, and a few ignoramuses, but the consensus was clear: No more bankruptcies or losing homes because of injury or illness!
Speaking of health care:

Dear Mr. President by Hunter Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 02:20:04 PM PDT from Daily Kos

Dear Mr. President: I am writing you today because I am outraged at the notion of involving government in healthcare decisions like they do in other countries. I believe healthcare decisions should be between myself and my doctor.
Well, that is not strictly true. I believe healthcare decisions should be between myself, my doctor, and my insurance company, which provides me a list of which doctors I can see, which specialists I can see, and has a strict policy outlining when I can and can't see those specialists, for what symptoms, and what tests my doctors can or cannot perform for a given set of symptoms. That seems fair, because the insurance company needs to make a profit; they're not in the business of just keeping people alive for free.
Oh, and also my employer. My employer decides what health insurance company and plans will be available to me in the first place. If I quit that job and find another, my heath insurance will be different, and I may or may not be able to see the same doctor as I had been seeing before, or receive the same treatments, or obtain the same medicines. So I believe my healthcare decisions should be between myself, the company I work for, my insurance company, and my doctor. Assuming I'm employed, which is a tough go in the current economy...Hmm, but that's still a little simplistic. I suppose we should clarify.

More Tears and Laughter HERE

Real Books: Toni Bentley's Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal from 1982 was a true delight. The introduction was especially interesting, being written 20 years after the original manuscript.
I have this silly habit of "hearing" an author's "voice" as I read -- I'm well aware that it is a subjective game at best and projection at worst. I was surprised to "hear" a deferential voice from the normally fearless Toni Bentley as she approached George Balanchine, but it made complete sense once I read the journal itself. I "heard" that steady, familiar note of bravery, however, in the descriptions of Balanchine's partner Leon Kirstein, and lead dancer Suzanne Farrell, even though Bentley wrote about other emotions she felt at the time. Winter Season is a beautiful love letter to Mr. Balanchine, and the art of Ballet, even though there is so much more to the book.

Media Watch: F****! Sometimes I just hate television. I think I'll shoot some video for Katie Duck and make my OWN mistakes.

Ida Rubinstein's biographer, author Toni Bentley, also an emBEDded reporter from the World of Ballet, and valued cyber-pal of mine. Her shoes are off in this engaging, elegant picture. Among the many interesting things she wrote in Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal was (paraphrased) "Ballet dancers spend a lot of time apologizing to their feet."