Wildlife: We still see Hummingbirds at our feeders at Middle Foy's Lake. The brightly-colored annuals in our planters attract a lot of attention from them too.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: It continued to rain through Sunday night, but it's warming up again. The air conditioning is running here at the Hockaday Museum. (see below)

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Six worthy charities are helped by your clicks!

In The Community: I'm sitting behind the desk at the Hockaday Museum today. We've had a steady stream of visitors since we opened at 10 A.M. Mother Murphy was laying in wait for me by the credit card machine.
Hockaday Museum of Art

Garage Sale Booty: A yellow formica kitchen set from the 50's, hauled up from Missoula for the lady who helps us clean twice a month; The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, a photo-illustrated paperback version of the Harryhausen movie, with Tom (Dr. Who) Baker playing an evil magician; A pair of poweful, small birding binoculars.

Media Watch: I took a look at the discussion board for The Fire Next Time at POV's website. I even wrote a comment, which drew a personal attack against me. The subject was NOT me, and I have an infinite number of better things to do than fight with a person who doesn't want to listen, so that was the last time I chose to contribute there. The board was dominated by about a half-dozen posters, three of whom spent a lot of their time haranguing against the film.
POV: The Fire Next Time
I added a note to the "Tapestry," though: This film rose like a glass float above the raging waves.

Book TV -- As If We Were Grownups: A Collection of 'Suicidal' Political Speeches That Aren't by Jeff Golden.
Golden urged politicians to start dealing with the American public as if they were adults. In his latest book, "As if We Were Grownups," the author writes a number of speeches that he wishes politicians would deliver. Mr. Golden asserts that the American public can handle facts and candidates should stop filling their political speeches with idealism and fiction. This event was hosted by the Ashland Public Library in Oregon. Golden is the founding president of the Oregon Guides Association and a former Jackson County, Oregon Commissioner. He is the host of a public radio talk show, The Jefferson Exchange, and the author of "Forest Blood," a novel of the Northwest timber wars.

New CD Purchase -- True Love by Toots Hibbert, the man who created Reggae, or maybe used the term first. It's a collecton of his most famous songs with The Maytals, sung with guest artists like Bootsy Collins (Yay!) -- Some singers are more appropriate than others.

Wildlife: Ospreys, Eagles, Hawks, and other birds flying around the waterways along the roads to Missoula, Montana, about two and a half hours south of here.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: It was HOT on Friday -- 98 degrees(F), but clouded over, cooled down and rained on Saturday as we drove back to Kalispell.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Simply click to donate to six charities in all!

In The Community: We were outside for almost three and a half hours shooting video for the college's Current Events show last Thursday. I was wearing shorts, but no sunscreen, and broiled my hide by the time we finished.
The Hockaday Museum's big outdoor show, Arts In The Park, is next weekend.
Hockaday Museum's Website
I'll be around the place more than usual -- there will be hard work and good fun, but there's one thing I wish I didn't have to do -- we got tagged with grafitti, along with over a dozen other buildings downtown, and I'm helping our beleagured director paint over it. (Some people's kids!)
Sing along -- ...Rollin', rollin', rollin' -- concrete sealer rollin' Down-TOWN...

Media Watch: Queer Eye For The Straight Guy was outrageous and funny -- Their client James, the nudist, gave Carson quite a challenge. Thom was acting fairly nonplussed when he watched the nudists' party at the end of the show. It really, truly wasn't pretty -- BUT (see outrageous and funny, above)

The Fire Next Time played on national television this week. It was on Public Television's POV. I'm proud of my part in helping the Working Group show their film in this community. So proud, that I spent most of my cyber-time asking people to watch it this week, and neglected Blogger.
There's a second preview diary of mine, plus comments, on DailyKos:
MT Spaces Page
You can look at POV's website and read many comments from here and elsewhere:
Interactive Discussions and MORE
You can get the dope about those dopes in the radio booth too:
About Facts

Wildlife: The Red Tailed Hawk was minding it's own business, flying over Bibler Gardens, when a couple of Cowbirds harrassed it for straying into their airspace.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: The clouds are low and racing, gray and unsettled, but very little rain has fallen.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Simply click to donate -- eyeballs are worth money to these charities' sponsors!

Media Watch: I got a package of ALL THREE Flash Gordon Serials on DVD. A Tale of Two Movies is about to get company! Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering are going to join Flash, Dale, Zarkov, Aura, and Ming for a look back to the 30's with Ship O Rama, Spitfires of the Spaceways (Beauty Is What Beauty Does), and later on Raymond, Calkins, & Cartoons Come to Life.

In The Blogosphere: I posted my first diary on DailyKos:
My Town on the Tube!
While our country still has a Public Broadcasting System, I am recommending a film called "The Fire Next Time." The program P.O.V. is premiering it on Tuesday, July 12, 2005. I have alluded to this film in a couple of previous comments, but everyone who owns a TV will be able to check out some of the issues affecting MY neighborhood.

The reason I am so enthusiastic about this project is that it showed me a way out of simply resigning myself to sick feelings of disgust after some really nasty events came to a head around here. One local radio station acted like a particularly infected boil, but the disease of factional intimidation and ugly-talk was raging in the body politic already.

What does "Montana" mean in your mind?

Do you think of Yellowstone? Glacier National Park? Grizzlies under the Big Sky? Cowboys? Indians? Rednecks? (Do you consider beer one of the primary food groups? Well, you may be ... ) Homesteaders? Retirees?
Perhaps you might think of the Unabomber, the Montana Militia, or armed cultists shooting it out with Federal agents on the Great Plains as well?
We have tourist industries based on natural wonders, and extraction industries based on 'harvesting' them. The state has a history of economic colonization, and is dotted with abandoned farms and towns, polluted Superfund sites, and one whole community -- Libby, Montana, where a significant percentage of the population suffers from Asbestosis, caused by the W.R. Grace vermiculite works, an ailment which repeatedly cuts the sacs of their lungs as they suffocate on their feet. (not to mention related cancers.)
These facts may explain why there is a whole lot of tension in a population just shy of a million people, spread over an area so vast that only California and Texas exceed it in the lower forty-eight states.
Our little corner of Montana, west of Glacier National Park, possesses all of this same beauty and tawdriness. Metaphorically, it is fertile soil for both flowers and weeds. I guess I'll have to equate our local fauna as flora, in this respect.
Small businesses provide most of the jobs, and average working people struggle to pay their bills. Many children leave the area once they finish school, or learn a trade, just to find out what 'making a living' might really mean. The low-paying employment they endured as teenagers won't sustain them as adults.
This verdant ground does not exist in an isolated hothouse. (One of our sub-zero winters will freeze that analogy cold.) Movies, radio, TV, and every other mass medium, saturates the human environment. Pop, Rock, and Country dominate FM radio. National Public Radio is the only source of Classical, Jazz, or other varieties of music, and it originates from Missoula, Montana over a hundred miles south. I am digressing, but thank goodness for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting!
Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy were the kings of the AM band throughout the 90's. I daresay their success propagated a lot of weeds in the metaphorical soil here. A long-time local talk-show host, George Ostrom, morphed from a commonsensical curmudgeon to a sneering sycophantic supporter of the House-That-Newt-Built, and the related Impeach-President-Clinton-And-Her-Husband crowd. Ever-smug Paul Harvey made John Birch Society cant and cliches from the 50's sound almost calm in comparison.
I can hardly speak of those days without Agnewian alliteration altering my prose, but during that time, a couple of recent Montana immigrants bought the last remaining AM music station in the Flathead Valley -- KGEZ, which pumped out Rock n' Roll oldies and half-hourly news breaks. They left it alone for a few years. I choose to leave these new owners' names out of this narrative. I also decline to write in depth about their history.
You may read about it HERE
Suffice to say they were experienced agitators, who seemed to seek disciples from the far-right wing of the Atilla The Hun Fan Club, and definitely provoked armed fringe elements to threaten county planning boards for doing their jobs, railing against "Your New World Order." Each formerly-routine school levy became a financial crisis when "anti-confiscation" radicals crowded the polls and normal citizens routinely stayed home.
When those owners stepped into the public spotlight in 2000, KGEZ changed its format to Modern Rock & Talk, and they took to the microphone. A near decade of competition for ugliest, loudest mouth in the valley had new players -- more prickly, invasive, and hurtful than the thorniest thistles in the field. Northwestern Montana had all of its same old problems, but they became harder to solve when every local issue became a shouting match, armed truce, or a fight. Boycotts and counter-boycotts dented the economy. Some salespeople tried to extort businesses by implying they'd be boycotted if they didn't buy ads on KGEZ, or by promising removal from it's boycott list. Individuals who wrote letters to the local newspaper, a popular local pastime, found themselves not only vilified over the air, but actually stalked and harassed by unknown persons if KGEZ happened to object to their opinions.
The Working Group of Oakland, California came to Kalispell after one of the targets of this bullying invited them to see what was going on. They had previously made "Not In Our Town," a film about anti-Semitic vandals in Billings, Montana, and that community's courageous response to them. Whatever they might have thought, they really paid attention when David Earl Burgert, leader of Project 7, an avowed anti-government gang, was arrested in a confrontation with armed cops.
Burgert was carrying a loaded machine gun, so the sheriff and his deputies were well within their rights to blow him away with high-powered rifles, but to their credit, he was taken in without any mishaps.
KGEZ reported that a teenager had informed on the group. They repeatedly reminded their listeners (paraphrased) "You know what happens to snitches," and other jailhouse terminology, for days after details of Burgert's conspiracy were revealed in the newspapers. (Full disclosure #1: The mother of this unnamed child was a student at the college where I work. She was sick with fear, and almost failed to complete the semester. Also, this particular infamnia is NOT in the movie.)
The Project 7 incident prompted the Working Group to go ahead and make a documentary about the Flathead Valley. The producer chose to emphasize the garden rather than the weeds, which I found surprisingly beneficial to my spirit when I saw it last year. She concentrates on certain issues, primarily natural resources and conservation, plus the people who advocate different approaches to them.
(Full disclosure #2: I set up and ran the digital projector for two of its showings, as a tech for hire, but otherwise I have had nothing to do with the movie.)
It's a pity "The Fire Next Time" had to show some weeds to be accurate, because some of KGEZ's ugly shenanigans threatened to become the center of the story. Local realtors and the Chamber of Commerce may not be happy with this project, but they didn't help much when serious violence almost errupted in their own backyard.
Perhaps with assistance from this film, KGEZ's ratings slipped below 2% of the listening public earlier this year. They currently rely on syndicated Fox commentators instead of the format that made them infamous. There may be little improvement in the factual quality of discourse, because of it's source, but it's far less personal and specific. The owners are delinquent with many of their bills, and the FCC dismissed the renewal of the station's license earlier this year.
(Dare we hope for a happy ending?)
It intrigues me to see how the area in which I live looks to locals, in-staters, and out-of-staters. Here is an opportunity! Too bad it coalesces around conflict -- and mean-spirited manipulation of the local media, which prevents people from solving their problems, but hey, semi-rural Montana is not the only place where this kind of malfeasence poisons the waters.

Congratulations to Patrice O'Neill, the producer, for her efforts in making the experience of this film a forum for discussion, rather than "Deliverance as a documentary."

A half-dozen PBS stations around the Intermountain West are presenting an additional hour-long program which discusses the issues raised by The Working Group's film -- this follow-up, "Dialogue -- The Fire Next Time" originates from Idaho Public Television, and will air on July 14 (7 PM) and 17 (5 PM) on Montana Public Television, KUED, Salt Lake City, Utah, KNME, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Idaho Public Television, Wyoming Public Television, and Rocky Mountain Public Television. (Check your local listings, of course.)
Most of the Flathead Valley sees PBS out of KSPS in Spokane, Washington, but it looks like they're showing it WEDNESDAY, July 13. (Although the local cable may carry the digital broadcast on July 12.)
Any interested Kossaks are encouraged to look at the cool interactive feedback pages on P.O.V. 's Website: POV: The Fire Next Time
They have multi-media previews, interviews, and a matrix for more discussions after the movie airs. These folks are SERIOUS about discussions! The colorful section called "Tapestry" is worth a look for all techno-debaters.
I think these kinds of things are exactly what modern technology is supposed to be.

Weather: Most of the week was clear and hot (for here). Today rain sweeps the valley from south to north from waves of turbulent black clouds. Our view of Glacier National Park is lost in a deep-gray haze, but I won't be surprised if there is white on the peaks tomorrow.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Wildlife: Maybe it's so dark the deer think its evening. I saw one grazing by the road about one o'clock in the afternoon.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Simply click to donate on this, and five other donation pages.

In The Community: Earlier this week, I shot some video for Flathead Valley Community College's regular cable infomercial up a nearby hill, on the grounds of Bibler Gardens. The flowerbeds and views of the valley are fantastic, plus there are many unusual birds and animals living there. This next Current Events segment will be special because I've recruited Marca Vogle, our Recruiting Officer to share the front of the camera with Tara Burkhalter, our Information Officer. We are getting conversations instead of press releases, and I'm happy about that. We are shooting at the school again on Thursday, so Bibler Gardens was kind of an on-the-job-training session for Marca.

Media Watch: Dancing With The Stars finished up with Kelly and Eric winning out over John and Charlotte. The latter couple was VERY consistent, as they had been throughout the series. Their two dances on the last night both scored three 9s from the judges. Kelly, the Soap Opera Lady wore the same costume that had almost fallen off two weeks before, but it was re-designed with extra straps. The trouble was, her first dance only got a score of 25 from the panel. (That damn costume's just plain jinxed!) Alec, her partner, really stepped out in the athletic dance which followed -- Kelly performed all sorts of carries, drops, and spins. It looked like there were some minor flubs because of timing and recovery, but they received three 10s in a row anyway. Along with votes from phone calls and the Internet, Soap Opera Lady beat Sitcom Actor at the end. The pollsters estimated that 16 million people watched this show. Well, we did too, and had a very good time.
I am less than overwhelmed by the new season of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. The ending of a show of any kind is so important, but they complained about the client's girlfriend in the final segment again, verbally ganging up on her. It wasn't funny the first time, wasn't funny the second time, and left a bad feeling for me, the viewer.
I watched the first part of AFI's tribute to George Lucas last night. Boot-licking is not entertainment in my opinion, so I was ready to switch the channel -- but William Shatner started the show (WHAT?!?) as a comedian. He acted as if he was at a Star Trek convention at first, then did one of his excruciatingly bad talk-songs (Paul Anka's My Way) with a chorus of Imperial Storm Troopers -- "Regrets, I've had a few, ANYBODY SEE HOWARD THE DUCK?" -- Funny! Funny! Once the tongues started wagging I went away.
My own appreciation: Lucas has done more to advance the technology of moviemaking than anyone else in the last two generations, so he surely deserves his share of praise. My favorite Lucas film is American Graffiti, although I like some segments of Star Wars too. He has weaknesses, like everybody -- remember what Jedi Master Yoda says: George Lucas writing dialogue so terrible at is.

Garage Sale Booty: I found some real highs and lows among the used books this weekend: Lows FIRST -- The Elvis Sightings inutterable nonsense by Peter Eicher; The Tarot Murders -- A Novel of Suspense by Mignon Warner; TV 80 (actually published in 1979) superficial rubbish about then-current television stars by Lisa Freeman; Higher than low -- Movie Comedy Teams (1974) by Leonard Matlin; Saturday Night Live (1977) scripts and photos from their best period, edited by Annie Beatts & John Head;
Recent Anthologies -- Kate Chopin: The Awakening and Selected Stories; Contemporary Fiction: 50 Short Stories Since 1970; Older Anthologies -- Cathedral (1984) by Raymond Carver; Great Tales of Fantasy and Imagination (Pocket Books 1954, 1st PB Edition); The Writer's Chapbook (1989 1st Edition) Interviews with famous writers from the Paris Review by the late George Plympton; Other Hardbound First Editions: Interface: The Painter and the Mask by Francoise Gilot, a fine artist, best known for her long-time liaison with Pablo Picasso; Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut; The Generous Years: Remembrances of a Frontier Boyhood by Montana's own Chet Huntley; (I bought it for about 80 cents. People ususlly want a fortune for this minor autobiography around here.) Paperback Poetry -- Leonard Cohen: Selected Poems 1956-1968 (11th printing 1977); The Energy of Slaves: Poems by Leonard Cohen (1973, First PB Edition). Reprinted Paperback Classics -- How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education (1940) by Mortimer Adler; The Dwarf (1945) by Nobel laureate Par Lagerkvist. (Author of Barabbas and The Sybil, two books about people who encounter Divinity, and suffer as a result.) The Pure and the Impure (1932 & 1941) by French literary master (or is it misteress?) Colette; Dusk of Dawn (1940) by W. E. B. Du Bois, including Honoring Dr. Du Bois (1968) by Martin Luther King, the latter's last major speech before his assassination.
Dr. Du Bois has left us but he has not died. The spirit of freedom is not buried in the grave of the valiant... Rev. Martin Luther King Feb. 23, 1968

Wildlife: I wish the Whitetail Deer ate thistles -- those damn weeds make nasty, thorny thickets that screw up everybody's habitat.
(See picture at left, when it gets there -- Photo-blogger doesn't seem to be working right now. NOTE: Picture in place 7/7/05)

Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Sunny days on July 4th, with high cumulus clouds -- perfect summer weather. The whole valley shimmered under a double layer of lights last night -- normal electric ones, and crazy flares of black powder, in multitudes of colors, shapes, and patterns.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Click on this, and the other five donation tabs.

Media Watch: MTV VULGARITY ALERT! (If you don't want to read about stupid, low-rent, adolescent humor, skip the last part of this post.)





I saw Eminem's new video, An Ass Like That, at the end of an MTV special purportedly about producing it. The whole thing was an outrageous comedy sketch, with puppets portraying various real people, and some goofy cameos by the selfsame real folks, called Making the Ass. Besides Eminem (M&M, AKA Martin Mathers), it starred Triumph, the Insult Dog.
"A white rapper? Now you can disgrace TWO races at once!"
Triumph is a sock puppet, voiced by a man named Robert Smigel: 'Triumph' webpage from Maverick Times I could say that the humor rarely rose above the poop-on-the-sidewalk level, but that wouldn't include the times in fell into the toilet, or was outright offensive.
I'll give Making credit for vitality and unabashed stupidity. The actual video was a letdown, except for the P-Funk t-shirts worn by some limo riders at the beginning. (Mathers IS a friend of George Clinton.)

Wildlife: A row of ducklings with their mama duck sat in a row on our log, with a few gaps -- they weren't really spaces, but turtles sunning themselves alongside their neighbors.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: No rain yesterday, but do late-nite fireworks count as weather?

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site I'm not through with helping them, or the other five click-to-donate sites.

Media Watch: A film version of the Wizard of Oz from 1910, followed by the 1939 MGM classic on TCM.
The 1910 Wizard looked like it might have been a "highlight reel" from the VERY successful stage play which toured the world before and after WWI. Nine year old BeBee Daniels played Dorothy Gale. (She played Dorothy Brock in 42nd Street, twenty two years later.) The Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow looked a lot like the characters in the preceding book, and later MGM musical. Toto, Cowardly Lion, and a number of unnamed farm creatures were played by people in full-body masks and costumes, crawling around on their hands and knees. The magic was made by trap doors, smoke bombs, and lifting wires -- common theatrical effects at the time, although there were a few film dissolves. The film had more than a few moments of inept, crowded blocking, and most scenes ended with some silly dance steps from the characters. There were chorus-girl guards turning a few kicks -- wearing black-leg, white-leg tights for some unusually visual photo-play for those days.
It is my understanding that many early films were made and distributed as "highlights" of famous theatrical productions -- if this is one of them, then its possible that some of the original cast were captured on film. My previous reading tells me the stage actors who played Tin Woodman and Scarecrow did so for twenty years or so, and created the template that Ray Bolger and Jack Hayley followed in the Technicolor version. (Bert Lahr had already created his own character, on the hardscrabble stages of Vaudeville, and I'm glad he was encouraged to clown away with it.)