Wildlife: Sad news -- the rangers shot a black bear for nosing around West Glacier.
It was actually nosing around a couple of kids who were hiding under a car in fear.
Still sad -- but necessary in this case.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: The rain keeps falling, and the Weather Service predicts another band of moisture from the Pacific.

Charity Alert: The Literacy Site -- each click means a free book for somebody this week, so I'll leave this link alone.

Media Watch: A new documentary Double Dare on PBS's Independent Lens last night -- an excellent look at two women who earn their living performing stunts. Jeannie Epper did all the jumps, falls, and fighting for Lynda Carter on TV's Wonder Woman twenty-five years ago, and still works in Hollywood today. Young Zoë Bell worked as primary stunt-double for Lucy Lawless on Xena: Warrior Princess in New Zealand, then travelled to L.A. and China when that gig finished. She won an international award for Kill Bill, where she stood in for Uma Thurman, and deserved it! The film mentioned that she injured herself during Kill Bill -- enough to stay out of action for a year or more.
PBS' website about Double Dare
I woke up 'way too early, and watched first-rate movie villain Basil Rathbone playing a snobbish good-guy detective named Philo Vance in The Bishop Murder Case from 1930. I like seeing movies made in the days before drab formulas homogenized everything.
Illustrated Bishop Murder Case Synopsis
(A low-brow policeman makes a spoken reference to Sherlock Holmes in this flick -- many years before Rathbone placed his own indellible stamp on Doyle's character.)

Wildlife: More ducklings on Middle Foy's Lake! There's a family with about seven tiny Mallards.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Thank you Lord! The rain started again, right after Memorial Day.

Charity Alert: The Literacy Site -- each click means a free book for somebody this week.

In The Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art starts FOUR new shows this week -- Winold Reiss: Artist for the Great Northern; Splendid Was the Trail: Photographs of the National Forests by KD Swan 1911-1947; Recent Acquisitions; Crown of the Continent: Glacier National Park Permanent Exhibition featuring photographers TJ Hileman and Herman Schnitzmeyer; Exhibits at the Hockaday
I'm taking a fast road trip this weekend to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Bozeman, Montana to gather up five more Reiss paintings in time for the grand opening on June 9.
I'm off to run a combination web-seminar and conference call at Flathead Valley Community College. This remote stuff is taking a lot of time lately!

Media Watch: CSPAN had a re-run of a conference about Media Ownership, Media Bias that was rarely on topic, but it was interesting to see journalists discuss the various ways they get it wrong. William Keller (of the NY Times) had a lame excuse about their credulity towards Bush administration claims of Iraqi WMD. He said "Everyone else was fooled too." (Your paper simply cringed before the power of the White House and didn't do its job, Keller.)
I'm reading Stephen King's On Writing -- a mixture of autobiography and opinion by somebody with a track record.

Wildlife: Ducklings on Middle Foy's Lake! We saw at least two families while canoeing in the early afternoon.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Perfect Memorial Day weekend weather -- burnt the hell out of my pale (now red) skin -- gotta use sunblock.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site -- click to help someone help someone else.

(New Category) Garage Sale Booty: Treasure Island a trade edition from 1938, with all of N.C. Wyeth's illustrations; An autographed book by Ex-president Jimmy Carter; A Supercat puzzle by B. Kliban: A sculpted bird feeder -- suitable for Niger seed.

Media Watch: TV was pretty depressing -- too many war movies, which often dishonor the dead with insensitive fantasies -- making a profit from distorting the real stories of heroes we try to celebrate on Memorial Day.
Speaking of dishonor -- General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was telling some serious lies on the Sunday morning interview circuit. Many TV talking heads are paid to propagandize, and spin whoppers, but not him. He's either delusional, or dishonest, about our country's illegaly-mistreated captives, and the failing terror-war.

Here's something I'm happy about! My friend and KRCL-campadre, Barb Guy -- Ace DJ from Salt Lake City (who played a lot of Reggae on both commercial and community radio stations) published the following piece in the Salt Lake Tribune, which I picked up from www.commondreams.org:

They Also Serve Who Stand for Peace by Barb Guy
On Memorial Day, we honor people who have gone to perilous places with a strong commitment in their hearts. They risk danger and their own death because they feel passionate about a cause.
My dad, born in 1920, was the right age to fight in World War II, but he didn't go because he had a bum heart, a result of childhood rheumatic fever. My father-in-law, born in 1919, didn't go either. He was excused because his heart was too good - he was a conscientious objector. He spent the war doing "alternative service" in the states, jumping out of airplanes to fight forest fires in the West.
I would never argue that those who fight and to die for our country aren't heroes. I think very often they are. I know I'm not capable of making that level of sacrifice, and I also know I have personally benefited from the work of those who are. I am one of the legion in our country who take time on Memorial Day to consider the sacrifices that have been made by people who have fought and died to keep us safe and free.
But on Memorial Day I also honor those who work to end war - or to avert it. Our diverse country is big enough for many kinds of heroes, including people who work for peace.
My father-in-law, Hubert, quietly told his draft board that he didn't want to kill anyone and he stood bravely to face the tough consequences. When he tells me about it now, the memories are softened by the 63 years since his decision. The passion he must have felt has given way to a quiet humor. A man who reveres music, the dramatic arts and literature, he tells me that he just wasn't cut out to kill. He adds, "I'm also not good at marching in rows."
I know it was the killing that kept him home from the war, not the marching.
Guys just as sweet, just as peace-loving and artsy as Hubert made the other decision, the decision to go and fight for their country. Looking back from 2005, Hubert says that the men who went to war and those who didn't got along fine. In his college crowd there was no shame in becoming a conscientious objector.
I ask Hubert about his brothers who served in the military, the people in his town, and in the broader society - what did they say about his opting out of the war. He says only that some people were angry and some were OK, adding that introspective people, "people who worked things out in their minds were more accepting."
I honor the people who have fought righteous battles to keep me free and I also honor my father-in-law who risked his life to keep from taking another. That act of courage, of sanity, added value to my world. Those who cling to their own peaceful hearts amid pressure to do violence are heroes.
I honor Marla Ruzicka, a Californian. Bright-eyed. Blonde. Beautiful. Selfless. The day after Saddam's statue came down, Marla, then 25 years old, went door-to-door in Iraq, checking on the people, trying to determine how many innocent Iraqis the United States had mistakenly killed.
Armed only with a college degree, a charming personality and a piercing intellect, Marla hosted parties in the middle of wars. In Baghdad and Bagram, in Mosul and Kabul, she invited military advisers, aid workers, journalists and locals to come together and socialize. Using her refreshingly unorthodox means, this young woman managed to get language into a Senate appropriations bill that has ultimately provided $7.5 million in U.S. assistance to the civilians we have accidentally injured, and displaced in Afghanistan and survivors of those killed - and $10 million more for those in Iraq.
When interviewed by Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, she said, "It is a luxury for people to say war is bad . . . You can't say something is bad unless you come in with ways to fix it."
Like Hubert, who worked like a dog jumping from airplanes into forest fires to make his patriotic contribution, Marla didn't take the easy way out, she didn't stay home.
Marla died last month, giving her life in this damned Iraq war. She and Faiz Ali Salim, her Iraqi friend and colleague, were killed by a suicide bomber attacking nearby U.S. troops. Phillip Robertson of Salon.com reported, "When the bomber detonated his explosives, Marla and Faiz were among those killed, and with that terrible act, the bomber cut short the life of a tireless champion of the victims of the war."
Ironies pile up as high as the dead during wartime.
Like our brave American military veterans, Marla, and Hubert 60 years before her, went to perilous places with a strong commitment in their hearts. They risked danger and death because they felt passionate about a cause.
That cause is peace.
© 2005 Salt Lake Tribune