Wildlife: The Raccoon was splashing around the reeds by the lake last night. There's a male pheasant who jumps onto the box feeder on the deck too, for the sunflower seeds.



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Weather: No rain yet, but there's low clouds sailing overhead, threatening moisture any minute. There's still lots of blue sky in between.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Click and click some more.

Media Watch: The original Topper, from 1937, starring Constance Bennett, Cary Grant, Roland Young as "Toppy," and BILLIE (Glenda, Good Witch of the North) BURKE as Mrs. Topper. It is an extremely well-timed comedy. Arthur (Dagwood) Lake was funny too.
TCM then played the sequel, Topper Takes A Trip, with the same cast, including Cary Grant in a flashback. Too bad it was a DAWG! (It even had a canine co-star.)
I didn't like Raincoat, a Bollywood movie with the beautiful Ashwari Rai and prolific Ajay Devgan. The writer/director/lyricist seemed too full of himself. His actors were absolutely first-rate, so when things were uninteresting or stupid, I knew who NOT to blame.

Wildlife: A big black Cormorant spead its wings right outside our kitchen window in the lake. They have to do this in order to dry them between dives.



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Weather: They are predicting rain, and I hope so, because we have a layer of forest fire smoke between us and the clouds. There is no blaze close to here, so I took a look at: Steamboat News. It looks like this smoke may be blowing in from the Bitterroot Mountains, between Missoula and the Idaho border, about 140 miles south of here.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Click away to help!

In The Community: Shooting good gallery pictures is hard work! I barely got 40% of the Winold Reiss exhibit shot yesterday afternoon. I'll need at least two more hours -- the pictures are all going back to their owners in about a month's time. The Hockaday Museum's Website
Day-um! I still have to shoot our street banners too! I want to do them in a new way, somehow. (Ladders? Cherry Pickers?)

Media Watch: I'm reading a book by Norwegian archeologist Helge Ingstad, from the late 1960's, about excavations in Labrador and Newfoundland for Viking settlements. The author was fooled by the now-discredited "Vinland Map," but he wasn't the only one. I didn't know that "Vinland" most likely meant "Grassland" in Old Norse either. Transcriptions from the sagas about Bjarni Herjólfsson, Leif Ericksen, and Thorfinn Karlsefni were delightful reading. The settlement Ingstad's wife, Anne Stine, excavated at L'Anse aux Meadows seems to have stood tests of authentication for the last 45 years.
So some of my Viking ancestors DID land in North America. They didn't stay long, or accomplish a lot, or even remember much of consequence -- they didn't know map-making, for instance, until many generations after Christianity was established.
Sanjay Doot and Salman Khan starred in a pretty dismal Bollywood comedy about two brothers wooing the same young woman. Salman's short, chunky car seemed to be able to zoom between India and Austria in 15 seconds though.

Wildlife: Three Ospreys were hunting over Middle Foy's Lake , plus the Bald Eagle showed up soon afterward.



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Weather: Cool nights, warm days, a welcome rainstorm a few days ago.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Just click to help.

Garage Sale Booty: A first-edition novel signed by -- (drum roll) Spiro T. Agnew! (drum sticks fall) What the funk !?! That lousy crook!?! Oh well, they can't all be signed by Lawrence Welk.

In The Community: I'm doing another Sunday afternoon shift at the Hockaday Museum of Art. We had a fabulous opening last Thursday for our new show The Horse In Flathead Valley Collections. One of the senior staff of my former employers Semitool Inc. showed up with his wife, who had a piece in the show. He was nearly struck speechless by the quality of our museum. "I've never been in here before!" He said again and again, "It's beautiful!"
The Hockaday Museum's Website -- Reminder: Winold Reiss, Artist of the Great Northern Railway will be gone in just about a month!
Ms. Kendall Wheeler and some other lucky inholders from Glacier National Park were on-hand too, so we got to talk some history as well. Lisa Schaus showed up, and some of our other long-time friends, but there were many new and welcome faces.

Media Watch: Indian movies from the friendly stores of Toronto and Halifax!
We saw a moustached Shah Rukh Khan on a big screen in Toronto in a costume drama set in some undefined ancient time -- we also saw many posters of Aamir Khan (no relation) dressed in a colonial British uniform, with another ugly moustache, wielding various 19th Century weapons, advertising a new blockbuster named Uprising, most likely about the Sepoy Mutiny in 1858.
Sanjay Doot has been one of my favorites lately -- he's very big for an Indian actor, and a little bit ugly, but he has incredible screen presence plus magnificent timing. He was the co-star of By Hook or Crook, otherwise known as One Plus One Equals Eleven. He does a lot of action movies and caper films like this.
Akshey Khanna and Suniel Shetti were very good in a Romeo/Juliet style farce with a happy ending. They had one early scene where the two duked it out to a draw. (They were both good guys.) Only a professional fighter is capable of trading blows with Suniel Shetti -- he's built like young Roberto Duran, and even looks like him. He's very well-trained and athletic, so another actor would have to be very careful in a stage fight with him. (The very physical Sanjay Doot and Suniel were also the stars of that fantasy flick I mentioned awhile ago, Rudrakesh.)
We saw the remarkable Shah Rukh Khan yet again in Swades last night, a sentimental, but somewhat realistic Bollywood flick set in today's India. Khan played a NASA engineer who travels to the state of Uttar Pradesh, and eventually tries to take on the social problems he encounters. The film acknowledges, and criticizes, both Tradition and Modernity. In fact, the writer's point of view is the best part of the whole thing.

Wildlife: An Osprey was hunting over Middle Foy's Lake this morning. A huge Bald Eagle did the same about an hour later.



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Weather: Back into the 80 degree(F) zone -- hot for here.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Just click to help.

Garage Sale Booty: Rick O'Shay, Hipshot, and Me by Stan Lynde -- signed first editions, hardbound and paperback. My friend Bill Blackbeard helped Stan with newspaper versions of his first comic strips when a house fire destroyed the original art. Yeah, I can call Lynde by his first name too -- he's always been an accessible, easy-to-know person.
A package of Superman and Batman radio serials from the 30's and 40's on cassette tapes.

Media Watch: We finally saw ALL of Sashi Kapoor's Jab Jab Phool Khile after spending about 16 years of looking for it again -- it is a fabulous, although a touch too-traditional, Bollywood movie. (Made in 1965, but still popular forty years later!) It's locations have obviously changed -- Bombay has really built up into the skies over the decades, and sadly enough, Kashmir is no longer a mellow haven for tourists.
I'm recording Jamaica Inn on TCM tonight -- it's suposedly a cinematic textbook in over-acting on the part of the film's co-producer Charles Laughton, to the dismay of his director-for-hire Alfred Hitchcock. It also features the equally great over-acting master Robert Newton in the cast. I can't wait to see Newton and Laughton doing a scene together. These guys were GOOD, and some excess on their part might be a spectacle to enjoy. Newton's making Laurence Olivier ALMOST crack up on-camera in Henry V is well worth watching as well.
There is NO mention of Daphne DuMaurier in the credits, although she wrote a famous gothic novel by this name. (Hitchcock did at least two other movies based on her writings, though -- Rebecca, and The Birds.)
I passed by the real Jamaica Inn many times when I lived in Cornwall, and even visited it once. It is high on the edges of Bodmin Moor, north of the ancient market town of Bodmin. The moors are still wild places, with creatures, vegetation, and climates all their own, and even get snow in the winter, while palm trees flourish in the vales on the south coast. Jamaica Inn is at least ten miles from the nearest salt water, and would have served no purpose for smugglers, wreckers, or pirates. DuMaurier herself did a good turn or two for Footsbarn Theatre when they were based in Cornwall, but her aristocratic social position, and advanced age were barriers to any real involvement, or material help.

BACK FROM VACATION! (See below for summary)

Wildlife: Three Ospreys have haunted Middle Foy's Lake all day today. One caught a fish first thing this morning. We also had a visit from a Racoon about 3 AM -- his/her black-masked face was right up against the screen door. Good thing it didn't know it could cut it's way in with just a swipe of one of it's claws. (The cats were GROWLING, but they were no closer than four feet from the screen.)

Weather: Cooler than before we left. We've even had some rain, reportedly.

Charity Alert: Can't do better than The Hunger Site, unless you want to touch your wallet.

In The Community: Dunno -- Flathead Valley Community College dosen't start for two weeks; I missed Kalispell City Council last Monday; I will be taking down the K.D. Swan photography show at the Hockaday soon, and I think I still have my Arts In The Park photos on the memory disk in my camera. I will shoot some street banners and the Swan show, as gallery shots, later next week.

Media Watch: We bought almost a dozen Bollywood movies in Toronto, Ontario and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Except for weather, we didn't follow the news at all -- the Northwest Airlines strike snapped at our heels, but we got home before it started.

(New Category) Vacation 2005:
SUMMARY -- NW Airlines from Kalispell to Minneapolis to Toronto.
Rental car from Toronto to nearby Niagra Falls, on the famous border between the US and Canada.
Went back to Toronto for shopping and trading Bollywood movies in "Little India," several blocks devoted to food, clothes, and culture near downtown. Saw a new Shah Rukh Khan movie in a suburban theater devoted to subtitled Indian movies.
Canada Air to Halifax Airport in Nova Scotia. Rental car to Truro, and then another half-hour to our cottage on the Bay of Funday to see the very high and very low tides. A long drive along the beautiful Fundy Shore the next day.
Crossed the Confederation Bridge for a relaxing few days on Prince Edward Island.
Took the car ferry back to Nova Scotia on our way for a couple of days on Cape Breton Island and the Atlantic shore.
Enjoyed watching the Tidal Bore waves on rivers near Truro and Maitland, Nova Scotia.
Spent an unexpectedly wonderful evening and morning in Halifax, Nova Scotia before flying on NW Airlines to Detriot, Minneapolis, and ... getting in too late on our delayed flight to catch our connection home.
NW put us up in a hotel, bought us dinner, and flew us to Kalispell midday on Friday. My car's battery had gone dead over the two weeks parked in the lot, so we needed AAA to give us a jump. The cats were VERY happy to see us again.

Wildlife: TWO Bald eagles were perched on the log outside our bedroom window last Friday -- a mature adult with a bright white head, and an immature eaglet who was all mottled brown.



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Weather: Peter Tosh sang: I'm a-comin' in hot, hot, hot... and so are the temperatures.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site Click six times to help six ways.

In The Community: I am starting my sixth year at the Hockaday Museum of Art taking a Sunday shift -- the last one of this season. Linda Engh-Grady has been our Executive Director for almost four of them, and this institution has never been more prosperous, or presented better shows!
The Hockaday's Web Site
Anyone who lives near us, or will be visiting Kalispell owes themselves the favor of seeing our exhibit of portraits by Winold Reiss, Artist of the Great Northern Railway.

Media Watch: I happened to see several movies from the mid-30's featuring William Powell. What a fabulous actor! He seemed to have an offhand, effortless style, but I'm sure he just made his acting LOOK easy. I wonder if he was aware of Stanislavski's "Method?" It's certainly possible, since they were contemporaries. I wonder because his style seems so modern -- although he specialized in light comedy, rather that the Angst-driven roles of Brando and Dean which made "Method Acting" famous after WWII.
Fashions of 1934 (1934) Director; William Dieterle, Writing credits; Harry Collins, Warren Duff, Cast; William Powell, Bette Davis (!) as a New York debutante, Frank McHugh, and Warner Bros/Busby Berkeley stalwart Hugh Herbert. Speaking of Busby Berkeley, he choreographed a bizarre dream sequence in this movie featuring hosts of near-nude chourines waving Sally Rand fans, and harps made out of living starlets with beaded strings. (see photo below)
Star of Midnight (1935) Director; Stephen Roberts, Writing credits; Howard J. Green, Edward Kaufman. Cast; William Powell, Ginger Rogers, and Gene Lockhart as Powell's loyal butler Swayne. This is a light-hearted caper flick, very similar to 1934's The Thin Man, only with a young Ginger Rogers, on the threshold of stardom, playing an adoring fan of a hard-drinking playboy lawyer. She calls Powell "Sherlock," and he calls her "Watson." Everybody's pretty funny, including Swayne.
The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936) Director; Stephen Roberts, Writing credits; James Edward Grant, Anthony Veiller, Cast; William Powell, Jean Arthur, and Eric Blore, the great comic actor, as Powell's butler this time around. One could almost see this as a sequel, or remake, of Star of Midnight, except that the characters' names are different. Jean Arthur is drop-dead gorgeous in her youth, but she's not as as sweet or as effortlessly sexy as the young Ginger Rogers. Her well-crafted British acting style clashes with Powell's outwardly easygoing manner. The obvious difference in their ages is a bit annoying too.
Later that year, he would team up again with Montana's own Myrna Loy in After The Thin Man, with young James Stewart as the villain. The makeup artists did a better job in minimizing the generation gap between the principals, and the two lead actors made Cinema history with their chemistry.
A William Powell Filmography There are others too.
A better-than average Myrna Loy Site Her name continues on in Montana's state capitol with
The Myrna Loy Center for the Performing and Media Arts
An enthusiastic fan's shrine to Ginger Rogers Ms. Rogers DESERVES all the fans she can muster -- she corresponded with my wife and I in the early 90's. What a nice, gracious lady!
Bombshell's Bette Davis Gallery This actor was almost a force of nature, but I wouldn't want any part of her sad life.
Reel Classics -- Eric Blore He and Edward Everett Horton were two of the funniest men on the planet. I'd suggest Top Hat, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, for an example of the two English comedians together in one film.
Just so we don't forget anyone:
Reel Classics: Jean Arthur
Reel Classics: Gene Lockhart
Edward Everett Horton on TV
Reel Classics: Edward Everett Horton

Busby Berkeley's "Living Harp" vision
from Fashions of 1934