Wildlife: We've re-identified that hungry raptor who's scaring away the birds at the feeder as a Sharp-Shinned Hawk. It's too large for a Kestral. One of the Raccoons was rocking in our rocking chair last night, looking up as I was watching him/her.



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Web Page Progress: Interlibrary loans got me a copy of Dancing in the Vortex; The Story of Ida Rubinstein (2000) by Vicki Woolf, author of Shape Up for Sex (1984) OK, I'm laughing a little, but the author is also a dancer and actor like Ms. Rubinstein.
I can fill out my chronology about her life a little better now:
1885-1908; She was raised in St. Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire, by the wealthy Horvitz family, relatives of her deceased parents. She arranges a meeting with theatrical designer and artist Leon (Lev) Baskt about staging her own version of Antigone before a private audience of her social peers. She and Baskt become lifelong friends. On a subsequent trip to France, she is declared insane by a doctor/relative in order to stop her for arranging a performance in Paris. When her family takes her back to Russia, she marries her cousin and gains control of her inheritance.
1909-1914; Paris' Belle Epoch at it's grandest. Ida Rubinstein meets Michel Folkine through Leon Baskt. She literally follows the choreographer to Switzerland, where he's on holiday with his wife, in order to convince him to create a version of Salome's legendary 'Dance of the Seven Veils' for her. In another private performane in St. Petersburg, she strips down to her naked glory for the first of many occasions over the next two decades.
Serge Diaghilev is convinced to take her to Paris with the Ballets Russes where she dances the title role of Cléopâtre. She and her beautiful nude body create a sensation, and she matches her success the next season when she dances with Nijinsky in Scheherazade. This moment is the peak of her artistic summit, and for all her trying, she'll never quite reach it again.
She parts ways with Diaghilev to become an impressario on her own with Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien in 1911 -- written by the famous decadent poet Gabrielle D'Annuncio, with music by Claude Debussy, and starring herself as the cross-dressed ill-fated S&M icon. Several spectacular productions follow, like Helene de Sparte, Salome, and others.
1914-1918; World War One destroys the society of her birth, and changes Europe forever. She turns her whole hotel into a hospital for wounded Allied troops, and takes her new responsibilites very seriously -- winning a Legion of Honor medal for her work.
1918-1924; During the war she makes friends with Sarah Bernhardt, the finest actor of her generation. She helps Bernhardt through serious health crises, and studies acting with her until her passing. The last theatrical successes Rubinstein HERSELF enjoys are presentations of dramas pioneered by this late great lady of the French Theater.
1924-1939; Rubinstein's lavish productins continue until her retirement in 1936. Her season of 1928 is particularly ambitious and important -- especially because of Ravel's Bolero. Unfortunately, she becomes the object of severe criticism, and is considered passe by theatrical powers-that-be. She also converts to Catholicism.
1939-1950; She flees the Nazi occupation into Algeria, then Casablanca, Lisbon and London. Ida Rubinstein spends World War Two administering to Free French troops in England, and helping the wounded after the war.
1950-1960; Ida moves to Vence, near Nice, on the French Riviera. She spends one month a year at a Benedictine monastery, clad in the finest white silk, until her death. Her lonely grave continues to be decorated by French veterans who remember her service to her adopted country.

Weather: A little rain last night and this morning. I'm hoping it clears up! (See below).

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Click to help six charities.

In The Community: If you didn't see it, YOU MISSED THE WINOLD REISS SHOW at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Hockaday Website
The good news is that we will continue to show a few of his portraits as part of our Crown of the Continent exhibit. The bad news is that such an all-encompassing retrospective of Reiss' best work probably will never happen again for another generation, if ever.
I've been taking down the pictures and packing them up. Tomorrow I'm heading off to Bozeman and Jackson Hole to return some of them to their owners.
Road Trip! Road Trip! I'll be blogging from hotels on the way.

Media Watch: Glenda Farrell and Edward Everett Horton in Confessions of a Bachelorette, a 1935 screwball comedy on TCM this morning -- great actors!


La France Croiseé by Romaine Brooks
Model: Ida Rubinstein 1914