Friday, October 03, 2003

I blew off Thursday COMPLETELY!
If anyone noticed, I'll be sur--prised.
Late Wednesday I sent off an email to ESPN, telling them that, for the first time in 15 years, I'm going to give up watching them throughout the MLB and NFL seasons. The "Big, Fat Idiot" was simply too much to bear. What was worse was ESPN's stupid lies about "no racism" in Limbaugh's obviously racist comments.
I noticed that Rush "resigned" Thursday morning -- unless I hear some apologies from the pimps at ESPN who put him on their show in the first place, just to pander his hate speech for ratings -- I'm still not tuning in.
In reviewing the C-Span tape from Thursday, I can't see the "School Bus" at all!
I'm seeing plenty on Limbaugh (ughh). I've said my piece about him, and I'm unconcerned about anything else in his life.

I wonder if today's School Bus segment from Missoula will be on the recording made this morning?
As the tape unfolds in fast-forward mode, I see the Washington Journal's host going over news stories, then interviews, then phone calls, then .... there's the Bresnan Bros. who own the local cable company, doing a self-promo about it in the last 5 minutes.
Hmmm -- our scheduling info was wrong! There's the test pattern -- that's all there is -- one day LIVE from Montana on C-Span's School Bus.

Speaking of radio talk-show hosts, that's the bulk of AM broadcasting here. We have local long-timers and short-timers ranting & raving from their glass rooms. The syndicated stuff abounds as well. I'm not saying any names, because they're all over the country.
Montana, though, actually elects this sub-species to the U.S. Senate. Conrad Burns got in there promising that he'd serve two terms and leave. He's on his third term, and said he was going to Iraq when he was on C-Span two days ago.
The last time I saw him personally, he had just been in Beijing, China at the start of the SARS outbreak -- he hadn't bothered to tell us until he shook our hands and introduced himself face-to-face. I'm glad that the hotels were as empty as he said, and that he didn't visit any hospitals there!

So much for the Media -- what's going on here? A long, mild Autumn, which is scary because of the recent fires. More drought is NOT what we need, but the Winter is so long here that these sunny days are a guilty pleasure.
I'm pouring wine tonight for David Walburn's CD release party at the Hockaday Art Museum.
Check it out again:
The Hockaday Museum of Art
I proposed a fund-raising idea to the local Northwest Historical Society last night. It might lead to my doing another Web site, but those guys have even less money than the Hockaday! (Which is why I proposed that scheme.)
I've finished my day showing a student how to archive his photos on CD, and dealt with CD transfer problems computer-to-computer. An instructor is creating teaching materials as I leave. I made a master tape of Larry Len Peterson talking about his book "Laton A. Huffman -- Montana's Frontier Photographer. I'm taking my camera tonight, so overall there's going to be a little more art in the world.

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

I started this morning reviewing a C-Span segment shot in Bozeman, Montana at MSU.
(Montana State University) The C-Span School Bus will be in Montana for three more days, and my department will tape each cablecast. I work at Flathead Valley Community College here in Kalispell, Montana, and a certain percentatge of our students finish their degrees there in Bozeman, so I was interested in what they had to say.
Besides C-Span's moderator, Montana's two U.S. senators were taking questions: Conrad Burns(R) and Max Baccus(D).
One student chilled my blood when he stated that "There's no differece between Republicans and Democrats." he tried to make a point about "working together," but that boy was deficient in observation and memory skills, if he truly holds that belief in a political climate that getting more polarized every day.
The issue of Race was discussed -- Montana is overwhelmingly "White," outside of the Native American Reservations, but the students seemed to expect diversity on any college campus -- including their own.
My observation was that they expected conformity as well. I wonder if they'd recognize an actual condition of diversity if they were exposed to one?

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

This is simply a point-of-view blog.
I'm going to write about what I see and hear in this particular (peculiar) corner of the USA.
To aid me, I'm going to investigate XML and whatever tools are used in this cyber-verse.
Check out "my" website for one aspect of the local scene:
The Hockaday Museum of Art