Summer is here, and I have to mow the African Veldt, uh -- my lawn today after leaving it alone for two weeks while I was on vacation. Thank goodness for timely rains while I was away.

Sitemeter Sez: Berlin, Germany; Columbia Falls, Montana; Belle Plaine, Minnesota; Kalundborg, Denmark; Austin, Texas; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Folsom, California ('zat you, Catherine?) Rexburg, Idaho; Kirkland, Washington (Day-um! I used to live there.) San Ramon, California; Birmingham, Alabama; Salt Lake City, Utah (Are they after me?) Madras, India; Monroe, Michigan; Encino, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Louisville, Kentucky; Provo, Utah (Hi, Ruth!) Livonia, Michigan; Louth, Ireland (My most constant reader, comment whydoncha -- let me know who you are!) and Manchester, UK.

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

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 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.) Oh yes -- don't miss Arts In The Park next weekend!

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!

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.

Media Watch: Before we start looking back, the L.A. Opera is doing Wagner's Die Walkure -- Magic! Incest! Murder! Curses! Betrayal! Passion! Lust! Rebellion! Not to mention TEN woman singers in the famous Ride of the Valkyries sequence. Me and Robert Duval will have the radio turned 'way up for that one. I can't see the Avant Garde sets or costumes through the radio, though. Let's try a photo from the production:

Hapless heroine Sieglinde and Valkyrie Brünnhilde are surrounded by Valkyries Gerhilde, Ortlinde, Waltraute, Schwertleite, Helmwige, Siegrune, Grimgerde, and Rossweisse. Siegfried is present in utero, and dreaded All-Father Wotan will soon put a stop to all the fun.
Photo by Monika Ritterhaus, from the L.A. Opera's Website

Ch-ch-changes: 40 years ago, the crewmen of Apollo 11 went to the moon. Leading the TV coverage on CBS were trusted newsman Walter Cronkite and transcendent Science-Fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, the latter renowned for his contibutions to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a new film at the time. The world lost Mr. Clarke a few years back, but Mr. Cronkite passed away just yesterday, as NASA was celebrating the Apollo 11 mission. S-F does not have to look back for greatness, there are giants, old and young, living today, and NASA is doing great work with its barely-funded unmanned interplanetary probes.
The news industry, though, has lost what once made it special -- namely trust. The callow propaganda and shallow infotainment that pollutes our airwaves may even be fatally poisoning our newspapers. Even in retirement, Walter Cronkite was called the most trusted man in America. If people are correct in saying that we will never see another like him, it will be very depressing, and a symptom of societial rot.

Recent NASA photo of the Apollo 11 landing site, with our Earth-junk still littering the place. Taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera -- see the link HERE.