Wildlife: We saw a full-circle rainbow over Middle Foy's Lake last evening, the bright, colorful, sometimes-doubled arc in the sky reflected by water.
(See the picture below -- there's a duck swimming, if ya' wanna quibble about wildlife.)



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Rained all night again -- June 2005 is officially the wettest month EVER here in the Flathead Valley.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- keep helping them -- I don't know if they'll reach their goal, but let's feed some critters with your clicks anyway.

Media Watch: Dancing With The Stars on ABC -- down to the semi-finals! John O'Hurley and Charlotte Jorgensen did the best dances, and got the highest scores. (Mr. Hurley was dead-on correct in saying that Ms. Jorgenson was one of the best teachers there is.) The hard-driving Soap Opera actor Kelly Monaco, and her partner Alec Mazo, out-danced Joey McIntyre and Ashly DelGrosso, but the latter couple were GOOD -- even though they came in third.
TCM showed a number of Ray Harryhausen films last night -- real obscure short numbers from the 40's and early 50's. One of them was a strange thing called Guadacanal, inspired by the pivitol invasion of the Solomon Islands during WWII. There were no people represented in this stop-animated flick -- just buildings putting themselves up, pilotless planes sinking unoccupied ships, cannons firing on their own, and driverless jeeps -- lotsa explosions though!
Afterward TCM played other Harryhausen works: Mighty Joe Young from 1949 and Mysterious Island from 1961. (Which wasn't nearly as good as 7th Voyage of Sindbad a year or two earlier.)
Here's a site with some comments about this minor Harryhausen effort: Mysterious Island
I taped Lionel Barrymore's movie from 1929 -- THE Mysterious Island -- and I'll write something after I see it.
Jules Verne's book of the same name is only notable for it's attempt to fill-in the story of Captain Nemo (AKA Prince Dakkar), before and after 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Nemo (Latin for 'nobody') is one famous example of the rich hubristic super-inventor in literature, with Utopian visions beyond the grasp of his science. Verne re-used the archetype thirty years later, in the much less compelling Robur the Conquerer/Master of the World.
The schlockmeisters at American International Pictures made a Vincent Price movie out of Verne's rehash: 1000 Misspent Hours -- 'Master of the World'...20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in a zeppelin...
Robert Osborn announced they are going to show another one of their TCM specials soon -- this time about sci-fi flicks -- called Watch The Skies! Ahhhh -- sweet vindication for the beleaguered pleasures of my youth.


Rainbow on Middle Foy's Lake -- June 29, 2005

Wildlife: The Blue Heron took a leisurely flight over Middle Foy's Lake, and curved around the shore of Big Foys Lake before coasting back home to the west of us.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Rained all night, took a break, and started raining after lunch. There was a wildfire near Walla Walla, Washington, about five hours drive away from here. I'll take rain over fires anytime!

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- keep helping them -- they were at 2.4 Million last time I checked.

Media watch: It Came From Outer Space was on TCM last night -- fairly sober for a 50's Sci-fi film, but crazy enough to be fun. Hollywood "Teen" Movies Site
Here's a hyperlinked review! 1000 Misspent Hours
I always heard the name of Ray Bradbury associated with this flick, but never knew which story it was. That's because the original was unpublished! A Matter of Taste seems to have been rejected by the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction before Bradbury wrote four treatments of it as a movie. Read about it HERE
Hmm -- it looks like it was finally printed as The Meteor.
They also showed Mars Attacks by Tim Burton (Save us, Slim Whitman, save us! Oh yeah, you -- Tom Jones -- give him a hand.) and Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot starring in The Invisible Boy.

Another Photo Update (06/30/05) The Bald Eagle from last Friday:

Wildlife: I woke up Friday to the sound of ducks quacking loudly -- uncharacteristically loudly. When I looked outside, the Bald Eagle was perched on the log right next to our bedroom. (I got a picture of it taking off.)



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Today the clouds are pouring down rain, after gathering their strength all morning. We certainly want no part of the wildfires that are flaring up over the Western USA.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- keep helping them with a click a day please -- they are at 2.1 Million as of this morning.

Garage Sale Booty: Two early paperback books by Ram Dass. A Mickey Mouse push-button telephone/lamp combination from the 70's. (Gotta figure out what kind of lamp shade it needs.) A kitty-cat tape dispenser. A flower pot that might finally be large enough for the Christmas Cactus we rescued from death at a church rummage sale. A classic chrome Osterizer blender!

In The Community: These Power Point presentations are becoming all too common! I had to scramble to set up a computer and data projector at the Hockaday Museum of Art for a meeting of Montana museum directors (MAGDA). I also set up a conventional slide projector next to it -- they were looking at potential traveling shows.
One lazy presenter sent un-optimized photos of their artwork, which made a file over 170MB in size -- I had to reset the virtual memory in the machine before the blasted thing would open.
Hockaday Museum's Website
MAGDA's Website

Media Watch: Thunderstorms interfered with my satellite TV. I watched a tape of Willis O'Brien's The Lost World from 1925. It was the FIRST time stop-action dinosaurs and people co-existed on film. It had a freshness that only comes from original ideas -- Arthur Conan Doyle's story was only 20 years old, and the filmmakers' idea of a monster rampaging through a major city was brand new. Even in silent films, Wallace (Prof. Challenger) Beery was a fabulous actor.
O'Brien refined his techniques further with the incomparible King Kong in 1932, and later introduced his apprentice, and future special-effects master, Ray Harryhausen to the movies with Mighty Joe Young.
Disney Corporation's CGI version of the later flick is a snore-generator. (Sorry Mr. Baker) Dino DiLaurentis' version of the former film is not only a horror, a horror, but only a third-rate horror movie. I have NO expectations for Peter Jackson's upcoming version, except to say that the idea of redoing Kong with CGI isn't original in the least.

Theatre/Theater: I got an email from Stephanie H. Monseu, Vice-President and Booking Coordinator of Bindlestiff Family Variety Arts / Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. She's better known in her role of Ringmistress Philomenia, and is one of the most electrifying performers in the world!
We "spoke" about the uncertain future of Coney Island -- sitting in the gunsights of unscrupulous property developers right now -- and how it would be a shame to lose over 100 years of cultural history for un-needed malls and unaffordable condos.
The Bindlestiffs have fought several losing battles to preserve theaters around over-gentrified Times Square, so I'm hoping for divine intervention in their favor around Brighton Beach.
Bindlestiff Family Cirkus Website
We also mentioned NYU's circus master Hovey Burgess, who chairs the Bindlestiff's board, and my friend, the now-named Crimson Rose, who may (or may not) be lead coordinator of the magnificent Burning Man festival. (There's more than ONE lady named Crimson Rose.)

Thanks to Blogger.com's new photo-feature, here's Motorcycle-Philomenia in motion.


She says: I'm off to Atlantic City to ride a motorcycle on a highwire as part of a thrill show operated by The Fabulous Miss Una, aerialist extraordinaire. (Added 6/30/05)

Weather: Better than yesterday -- a strong wind is blowing from the west.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Wildlife: A Bald Eagle was hunting over Middle Foy's Lake last evening -- caught a fish, landed on a dead tree stump, and ate his/her meal by the waterside!

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- keep helping them with a click a day please.

Media Watch: We saw Dancing with the Stars again. This week, Rachel Hunter and Jonathan Roberts were voted off the show -- she did well, in my opinion, but she looked unhappy and nervous most of the time. Soapie star Kelly Monaco and Alec Mazo finally won the judges' collective approval. Joey McIntyre and Ashly DelGrosso started off with a bang-up performance which kept them in the running, I think. John O'Hurley and Charlotte Jorgensen teamed up for a fine samba -- she's a good show dancer, and he did his part while she strutted her stuff.
Monaco and Hunter both suffered through "wardrobe malfunctions" -- Hunter's outfit was too heavy at the back and sometimes sagged below the crest of her gluteus maximi. She and her partner tried their best, but the "moon peeked over the horizon" occasionally, despite their pains. (Unfortunate events attract attention when a person is dressed to attract attention.)
Monaco almost lost her top several times, and she wasn't happy about having to repeatedly cup her breasts on camera to avoid disaster. Alec even had to intervene very quickly once, but he was a gentleman about it, and made no fuss. Her damn costume even kept slipping down while Kelly was speaking after the dance, and she had to tug it back into place. She kept her composure, but I'm sure she would have preferred a break in the videotaping to put it right. Neither lady signed up for a Las Vegas-style skin show.
NBA Playoffs -- There will be a Game 7 for the first time in 11 years. San Antonio is the home team against Detroit, but they're going to have to fight for every point.

Weather: An ugly hazy morning -- couldn't even see the mountains at 8AM. Where did all this dust come from after only three sunny days?



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Wildlife: The Canadian Goslings are almost 80% of their parents' size.
Another sad bear story (Condensed from the Daily Interlake):
A bear that ransacked a kitchen in a Whitefish home last week soon after was destroyed by state bear managers, but the bear's death may have renewed interest in reducing local bear conflicts. The bear raided the kitchen on Northwoods Drive on June 15, the day before a meeting had been planned to discuss bear-conflict issues in the Whitefish area.
After attending the meeting and discussing ways of reducing bear problems, state wildlife conflict specialist Eric Wenum found the bear in a culvert trap he had set in the Northwoods Drive area. The bear was immediately killed.
"Any time a bear breaks into an occupied structure, we'll put it down," said Jim Williams, the regional wildlife manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "There's a line we don't want to cross, where there's too much of a risk to human safety." Williams said Wenum was able to match the bear's paws with prints found in and around the kitchen. The 2-year-old, 65-pound female had eaten cinnamon rolls and made a mess getting into a jar of honey.
Wenum said Monday the bear clearly had experience in pursuing edibles in residential areas. "You don't go from zero to breaking into houses overnight...This was a learned behavior. She had probably been doing this type of thing her whole life."
"The lesson that folks should take away from this is that no matter how much fun it is to watch bears, especially if they are in town, is if they get fed they are dead," Williams said. "They almost always end up dead, whether it's us through a management action or if they get hit by a car."
Williams and Wenum said the incident appears to have prompted interest among citizens and city leaders to reduce bear problems in and around Whitefish. Wenum plans to meet with Whitefish Public Works Director John Wilson next week to discuss ways to reduce problems in certain neighborhoods where there has been bear trouble. "Whitefish represents a unique problem because it is surrounded by prime bear habitat, both for black bears and grizzly bears," Wenum said.
Wenum hopes to introduce bear-resistant containers, one neighborhood at a time... "When you've got 50 houses on a street and half have their bird feeders out and half have their garbage containers out, getting new garbage containers doesn't really solve the problem" of attracting bears to the neighborhood, he said.
Last year, there were instances of bears raiding one garbage container after another on certain city streets. This spring, however, has been relatively quiet in terms of bear problems throughout the Flathead, Wenum and Williams said. "It's been quiet because there's been a lot of moisture that's caused good forage production," Wenum said. "Rather than going to town for food, bears have been content to pursue forest foods such as cow parsnip, sedges, grass shoots and glacier lilies, along with deer fawns and elk calves."

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- keep helping them with a click a day please.

Media Watch: Frankly, my dear, I (shouldn't) give a damn!
I saw some of AFI's 100 Great Lines on ABC last night. I like triva as much as anybody, but that show was mostly just plain TRIVIAL. Buck Henry performed well enough as a commentator, on a show that had about as much substance as tissue paper, but Dennis Miller hogged 'way too much camera time. Miller used to be a comedian, but now he neither tells jokes, nor presents humorous outlooks on anything. If his own roles in movies count as evidence, he can't act either. He's also a miserable announcer -- his stint on Monday Night Football shot a hole in it's ratings that may yet prove fatal. I'll never forgive him for his egotistical intrusion onto one of my favorite TV shows.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- help them with a click a day please.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather and Wildlife: Monday was actually hot -- almost no clouds in the sky today, and it's warming up fast. A sudden crop of algae blooms sprung up on Middle Foy's Lake to give the baby ducks some obstacles to play with, I guess.

In The Community: The Hockaday asked me to help a patron to set up his EBay auction:
Gary Schildt -- Sculpted Bottles from 1970 & 1976

Media Watch: American Desi -- A Bollywood movie, mostly shot on the East Coast of North America. Not particularly profound, but an enjoyable light comedy about East Indian and American stereotypes, with almost all of it's dialogue in English. (I'm sure there are Indian-language versions too.)
A Summer Book by Tove Jansson (1914-2001) communicated a feeling of place, in this case the Gulf of Finland, that made me feel like I was actually looking around on my own, rather than reading. The feelings of melancholy in it's pages were more stark than they were in Moominpapa at Sea, her children's novel set on a similar island. In the latter book, her Moominmama character escapes from her busy, responsible existence by walking into pictures she has painted on her kitchen walls.
Here's one website about this remarkable artist and writer: TOVE JANSSON grew up in Helsinki as the oldest child of artist Signe Hammarsten Jansson and sculptor Viktor Jansson.
A book review from The Guardian (UK): The Summer Book is a world apart.
Here's some info about a new edition of The Summer Book: The Summer Book -- With A Foreword by Esther Freud (Who writes of her visit to those same Pellinge Islands.)
One more link to a fellow "Blogger" who quotes Jansson's memoir about life on the island: A Step At A Time Monday, May 31, 2004
As a new item in the literary presentations series, I'm publishing a short translated extract from Notes from an Island (Anteckningar från en ö, Schildts, Helsinki, 1996), one of the last books by the Finland-Swedish author Tove Jansson ... For over twenty years the small island of Klovharun, at the outermost tip of the Pellinge archipelago, about 80 kilometres east of Helsinki, the Finnish capital, and some 30 kilometres south of the town of Porvoo, was the summer home of the writer Tove Jansson and the artist Tuulikki Pietilä. This book is an account, by both women, of those years, in which they built a cottage on the island and then lived and worked there for considerable periods of time, away from “civilization” ... The book is written in the style of a memoir with diary entries, and is illustrated with tinted drawings and watercolours by Tuulikki Pietilä ... we begin to understand from within how the world of the Moomins developed, as we follow the author’s deep and intuitive relation to the place and the living creatures that inhabit and frequent it ... the evocation of this world, that is at once very real and concrete and yet also suffused with a strange, muted, almost fairytale-like radiance.
From NOTES FROM AN ISLAND
I love stone: the cliff that falls straight into the sea, the rocky hill too steep to climb, the pebble in my pocket, prising stones from the ground and heaving them up and rolling the biggest ones straight down the hill into the sea! Down they rumble, leaving behind an acrid smell of sulphur.
Searching for stones to build with, or simply stones that are beautiful, in order to make mosaics, bastions, terraces, pillars, smoke ovens, or strange, unusable contraptions made just for the sake of it; building jetties that the sea will take away next autumn; building more wisely next time, though the sea will take it all away again.
My father was a sculptor, but Tooti’s was a carpenter, and that’s why she loves working in wood, whether it’s shifting magnificent, heavy planks about or playing with feather-light balsa. In the forest we searched for juniper wood. On the shore we sometimes found strange, hardy species of trees with unfamiliar names. Tooti used them to make small objects that need time and great patience – why not make the smallest salt-spoon that has ever been made?
‘But,’ says Tooti, ‘it’s quite different when you build on a large scale, you have to be resolute and absolutely sure of your ability to measure and calculate and make it all work out to the last centimetre. Or millimetre.
‘Sometimes building is done in order to hold and make steady, and other times it’s in order to decorate: sometimes it’s both.’
Incidentally, Tooti’s engravings are done in pear-wood or beech, her woodcuts mostly in birch.
She would often discuss materials with Albert Gustafsson in his boatshed on Pellinge; they also chatted about boats. He gave her suitable pieces of teak and mahogany to play around with, and Tooti took them all home with her and thought up ideas that were totally new.
It was Albert who made the boat, in 1962, from mahogany, four metres long and clinker-built. It was the most beautiful boat that had ever been seen on that whole stretch of the coast. She was strong and supple, and positively danced on a heavy sea, her name was Victoria, as both Tooti’s father and mine were called Victor.
Gradually, as the summers went by, Victoria became more and more Tooti’s as she was the one who loved the boat most and looked after it with the utmost care.
There are many names for what we call an island: holm, skerry, haru, islet, atoll. The map of Pellinge shows an arc of uninhabited skerries west of Glosholm; they may be connected with a ridge of random formations on the sea bed. Kummelskär is the largest and most beautiful pearl in the necklace.
I was very small when I decided to be the lighthouse keeper on Kummelskär. While it is true that there’s only one lighthouse there, I planned to build a much larger one, an enormous lighthouse that would be able to survey and supervise the whole of the eastern Gulf of Finland – when I was grown-up and rich, of course.
Gradually, my dream of the unattainable changed, and turned into a game with the possible; eventually it was just a cussed obstinacy that refused to give up, until the Fishermen’s Guild made no bones about the matter and said quite simply that it would disturb the salmon, and that was that.
But about two and a half nautical miles from Kummelskär, in towards the coast, there were small islands that no one really knew anything about, and there it was possible to rent land.
Remarkable that such a major and long drawn out disappointment could so quickly be forgotten for a new infatuation, but so it was – almost as soon as we moved in, we felt that we’d discovered paradise. We prettified and ruined with the same high spirits; we had everything, if only in miniature: a little forest with a forest path and moss, a little sandy shore with safety for the boat, even a little marsh with some tufts of cotton grass – we were proud of the island!
And we wanted to be admired, to show off, we lured people there and they came, and came back, summer after summer, more and more of them. Sometimes they would bring a friend with them, or sometimes the loss of a friend, and they would talk and talk about their yearning for the simple, the primitive; and above all, their yearning for solitude.
Gradually the island became filled with people. Tooti and I began to think about moving further out to sea.
We made a half-hearted attempt with Kummelskär, but they said we would disturb the cod.
After Kummelskär come Musblötan, Käringskrevan and Bisaball, small inaccessible skerries where only fishermen and hunters can think of landing, and last in the series Klovharun, i.e. a haru (rocky island) that has split (cloven) in two. That was where we wanted to live.
The island has an area of about six or seven thousand square metres, is shaped like an atoll with a lagoon in the middle, and is surrounded by rocks; at low tide the lagoon becomes a lake.
It is said that at one time seals used the lagoon as a playground; that was before they thought the better of it and moved further out to sea.
On the map, these smaller, almost outcast islands are marked as state property, but that is not true at all.
The fact is that according to certain records, at some time in the eighteenth century, there was once a stormy committee meeting connected with the Land Reform; perhaps the conflict was put on hold because the secretary was prevented from attending the meeting by the icy conditions on the roads, but whatever the truth of the matter the islands were hastily registered as part of the community of Pellinge; ‘an indeterminate population, with no precise details.’
As time passed, the community had grown considerably, and now it seemed it was no longer possible for us to apply for permission to lease land on Haru.
However, like so many other islands with a will of their own, Pellinge had its own prophet whom one could ask for advice on difficult matters concerning the internal affairs of the group of islands. He advised us not to raise our hopes too high and above all not to depend on legal documents that sooner or later might only cause problems – no lease, therefore, but perhaps a small donation to the Fishermen’s Guild. Take it as it comes, he said, put up a list in Söderby for people to enter ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – if I put ‘yes’ everyone else will probably do likewise.
We put up the ‘yes or no’ list on the veranda door of the village shop and everyone put ‘yes’.
We sent the list to Porvoo Council and applied for building permission.
While we waited, we lived on Klovharun in a tent. It rained all the time, Tooti was reading part six of The Vicomte de Bragelonne, by Alexandre Dumas.
‘There’s nothing like the classics,’ she said. ‘Read Les Misérables, unabridged, and then you’ll understand the meaning of loyalty.’
I know that Tooti is loyal to what she trusts, even afterwards.
We had pitched our tent too close to the Great Stone, which is so great that it has become a landmark, at least for people who are finding their way more or less from hearsay. The Stone was estimated to weigh approximately fifty tons. It lies in an enormous frog pond in the only place where one could think of building beyond the reach of the sea.
It rained all week, and the frog pond overflowed and trickled past down the hill past our tent and stank horribly. We dreamt of what the cottage would look like. It would have four windows, one in each wall. In the south east we made room for the great storms that rage in across the island, in the east the moon would be able to reflect itself in the lagoon, and in the west there would be a rocky wall with moss and polyps. To the north one had to be able to keep a lookout for anything that might come along, and have time to get used to it.
We thought that if we built a cottage it ought to be quite high up the hill, but not right at the top, as that was the place for the beacon – perhaps just below the brow of the hill, so that the chimney would be visible from the sea. Against the light, in other words, and to those boats that stray past for no reason.
Late one night we heard an engine being turned off down on the shore, and someone with a flashlight came slowly up the hill. He introduced himself. Brunström from Kråkö.
Brunström was out salmon fishing and had been planning to sleep the night in his boat when he saw lights on the island. We made tea on the primus stove.
Brunström is quite small. He has a taut, weather-bitten face and blue eyes, his movements are swift but measured, and he never uses adjectives in his everyday talk. His boat has no name.
We trusted him, immediately.
Brunström had heard about the ‘yes or no’ list. ‘It will never get through, he said, not even in Porvoo where they take life rather easy, take things as they come, as it were. You’ll never get permission to build. The only thing you can do is start building immediately. It’ll take the authorities ages to agree about what they want, and that’s where you have to watch out. The law says that nothing can be demolished if the builder’s got the frame up to the roof-tree. Believe me, said Brunström, I know about these things. I’ve built cabins in next to no time here and there, just in order to annoy people in the neighbourhood – folk from Pernå and Pellinge, for example.’
Brunström went on to explain that he didn’t need very much time, though one never knows with the autumn weather. He’d take Sjöblom with him and perhaps Charlie and Helmer, and before anything else, the Great Stone must be blasted with dynamite.
Brunström says that blasting and basements don’t count as proper building, the house has to have a frame and the frame won’t last the winter without a roof. So there is not much time. ‘Before the snow,’ he says.
Translated by David McDuff