Weather and Wildlife: The snow cleared up and the roads even melted over the last two days. The deer aren't happy about their grazing being interrupted by storms. There were several groups of them gleaning under the bird feeders during the evening hours yesterday.

Updates are underway: 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: OK -- Skating with the Celebrities wasn't a bad show. It won't win any awards for originality, though. Jillian (Warry) Barbarie admitted that she ice-skated as a kid. Nancy Kerrigan's partner plays hockey. Kristie Swanson was slapped down too hard by the judges, but Bruce Jenner was treated too kindly. The Diff'rnt Strokes guy was better than the judges said, and so was Deborah Gibson. Speaking of judges, their token Grumpy Englishman didn't really relish his part as a killjoy, and voted nicer than his remarks.

In The Community: Opening reception for Montana Impressionists, Herman Schnitzmeyer, and Flathead Valley Art Educators. We're expecting over 200 guests at the Hockaday Museum of Art tonight.

Justice Delayed: Gustav Klimt's eccentricly decorated, but famous, portrait of Viennese beauty Adele Bloch-Bauer is now officially the property of her family's heirs, sixty-plus years after it was confiscated by the Nazis. If the Austrians want the painting to stay in Vienna, they really should pay a fair price for it somehow -- something to compensate in some way, and show regret for, killing and expelling their magnificent Jewish population, who contributed so much to world culture before WWII.


Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt circa 1906
This respectable industialist's wife was the model for
Art Nouveau's own decadent version of Mona Lisa, and became a major Poster Queen of college students for the last forty years