SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED -- I was outside filling the feeders when the Sharp-Shinned Hawk chased a Finch into our cedar tree and caught it. They must have been flying over 30 MPH! The alternating snow, clouds, and sun pattern continues.

Updates later this week: Theater X-Net

Featuring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

Media Watch: Let's go for the superficial stuff first!
Dancing with the Stars -- Cheryl and Drew stayed, as did "Tina Sparkle." Master P and Ashley Del Grosso must have generated some sympathy votes like ours -- they will come back. Newscaster Giselle Fernandez, who topped George Hamilton in the comedy department on Thursday, came in last. Too bad -- we liked the Soap Opera Lady the least this time.
NFL Football -- The Denver Broncos were out-muscled by the Pittsburgh Steelers at Mile High Stadium. The Seattle Seahawks made cat skin rugs out of the Carolina Panthers in Seattle. Pittsburgh's veteran running back Jerome Bettis AKA "The Bus," is a sentimental working-class favorite with much of the nation, myself included. He's retiring from this very rough game before he's permanently crippled. For his sake, I'm rooting for the Steelers over the Seahawks, even though I once lived in Seattle. The Superbowl will be in Bettis' home town of Detroit. Sad to say, but Frank and Jillian's final diversions of the season weren't worth describing. (Barbarie will get a few mentions in the near future as I follow Skating with the Celebrities, though.)


Giselle Fernandez during her tango with Jonathan Roberts
She may be off the show, but her quick wit won't be forgotten.
Book TV -- Einstein on Race and Racism was a surprising program. The two authors not only told the story of Einstein's support for Civil Rights in his adopted country (my own), but how this information has been suppressed and censored over decades. He was friendly with then-controversial 'radicals' like W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. He joined the N.A.A.C.P. and attended their meetings in the segregated town of Princeton, New Jersey. He lobbied on behalf of anti-lynching legislation, and other life-affirming activities which got him placed on Hoover's FBI watch-list. There always seems to be more to admire about this remarkable human being.
Another program was about the book Mastermind by Daniel Charles, the subject of which was Fritz Haber, the German chemist who created and oversaw the use of poison gas in World War One. To Haber's credit, he also made large-scale nitrogen fertilizers which enabled the post WWII "Green Revolution," for good and bad. He was born a Jew and converted to Christianity. He tried to excuse his deadly weapons of mass destruction as a patriotic act, rather than the hideous corruption of science and technology that it was. When Hitler came to power Haber was forced to flee his Teutonic military masters because of his genealogy. The Nazis later used Haber's commercial insecticides on his cousins and other human beings in the death camps.
Some dense or misguided audience members tried to categorize he and Einstein together in the Q & A session, but the author made it clear that Einstein was always courageously working for peace, while Haber saw warfare as a business opportunity. Einstein DID help solve some aeronautical problems which helped the German air forces in WWI, and wrote a letter warning FDR about the certitude of the power of a Uranium bomb in 1941, but he didn't participate in weaponizing anything in either case, and always counseled against the stupidity of war. From his letters, there are reasons to believe that Einstein regretted the few interfaces he experienced with governments and their militaries.