The Bald Eagles keep visiting the pond, even when the ducks and geese are there. The latter swarm into the middle when the eagles show up. We had snow last night, and extremely slippery roads during drivetime this morning. There was an accident at the top of the hill coming down into the college from the main highway. The driver-in-motion was lucky -- her skidding right-turn collision with a car waiting for the left-turn light probably saved her life, because she would have slid off the road down a 20 plus foot embankment otherwise.

Poet Jim Soular on: 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 in March! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: Every Day Is Veteran's Day is now up in HuffPo's Contagious Festival.
Click on Veteran's Day in the list, or try this link:
Front Line Poetry
(You need FLASH 8 to see the video this month.)

Media Watch: Junque-by-the-yard TV -- The winner of Skating with Celebrities was KRISTY SWANSON and Lloyd Eisler. Jillian Barbarie and John Zimmerman were just too ambitious IMHO, and Jillian crashed again on a solo spinning jump. The judges liked Kristy's passivity too -- but learning to let her experienced partner do all the hard work was the key to their success.
Low Culture to High Culture or is it? -- I took a look at Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman by Takaishi Kitano from 2003 -- it is a bright, bold addition to the iconic Japanese film series, originally starring actor/director Shintaro Katsu, produced from 1962 to 1973. His television series ran four seasons: 1974, 1976, 1978, and 1979. Shintaro Katsu also made one more Zatoichi flick in 1989. The tap dance at the end of the 2003 movie follows a traditional-looking Bugaku festival dance, but is pure whimsy on the filmmaker's part -- there is a brief preview of tap dancing in a rice field earlier on, ending with a pratfall in the mud.
Zatoichi in Wikipedia


(L) Shintaro Katsu and (R) Takaishi Kitano as Zatoichi.
Edo-period Japan (1620 - 1860) was actually marked by near-pathological social order, replacing the chaotic warfare raging for more than a century among feudal barons (Sengoku Jidai, the age of unnumbered battles). "Samurai Movies" fancifully mix elements of the two periods.