Weather: Frost, but no pumpkins. (It's March gawdammit!) The roads and parking lots are showing their loads of sand, rocks, and dirt from the winter. My own car is showing rust spots from the salty de-icer they're starting to use here!

Wildlife: The geese and ducks are parking regularly on Middle Foy's Lake. No eagles for about a week.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site : Give Food for Free to Hungry People in the World

Media Watch: I read FRANKLIN AND WINSTON: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship by Jon Meacham. It is an interesting point of view of the complicated events known as World War II.
I watched Karmen Gei, a Senegalese version of the Carmen story -- the male victim/lead was too passive, and not tragic enough in his hard fall from policeman to criminal and murderer. The Femme Fatale was excellent, though, as was the African music. California Newsreel - KARMEN GEI
Another thing I watched was Fleetwood Mac -- Destiny Rules, an interestingly-presented documentary of the current line-up (since 2003): Stevie Nicks, Lindsay Buckingham, John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood. There were two sponsors, and no real breaks in the show -- animated updates in the corners let the audience know what they were watching, the network ID, and who was paying the bills. Good idea!
Buckingham and Nicks were two-thirds of the front line of the absolutely best version of this ever-changing band.
I missed seeing Christine McVie, but she's doing something else, and she's earned the right to come and go as she pleases! Here's a fan site with bios of MOST of the bandmembers over the years: The Fleetwood Mac Legacy

At the College: It's time to edit some video!

Weather: Another spring-like day -- Morgan, one of our students, looks very nice in shorts, but I hope she doesn't catch cold!

Wildlife: The geese "slept over" at our lake, and took off as I went to work. It's getting hard to tell where the water ends anymore -- ice breakup soon!

Charity Alert: The Breast Cancer Site : Fund Mammograms for Free

Media Watch: The "straight guy" from this week's "Queer Eye" was skating on A&E -- John Zimmerman -- mostly in group choreography.
Lou Dobbs on CNN is still poking his finger at "Exporting America," meaning job losses and outsourcing -- good. Hobbes' Leviathan will eat up the world, and then starve to death if left alone. Half-baked, discredited ideologies are never effective substitutes for public policies.
I actually spent very little time in front of Da' Tube last night -- a discussion of Jewish history attracted my attention on an email list.

Geneological Talk: No, I'm not Jewish, but I have Swiss ancestors named Silverstein and Mangold on my paternal grandmother's side -- from Great-Grandmother Bushman, who married Great-Grandfather Rhodes.
Via the Rhodes family, I'm related to George Washington, the imperialist financier Cecil Rhodes, and have thousands of polygamous cousins in Central Utah, many of whom are also named Rhoades -- after a Mormon patriarch who was associated with a legendary "lost" gold mine. (Double-great Grandma Rhoades married a man named, uh -- Rhodes.)
OK, OK -- now that THAT quarter of my family tree is online -- how about my paternal grandfather?
His mom was Janet Buchannan from Rothsea, Scotland. She walked to Salt Lake, because the railroad wasn't completed yet. His daddy was Johnathan Evans, born in Salt Lake City, Utah to Mormon immigrants from Llanelly, Wales.
Both of my maternal grandparents were from Oslo, Norway -- they immigrated to Salt Lake City during WWI, along with hordes of other Norwegian LDS converts.
Even though I'm named Evans, I resemble my Norwegian grandfather named Waring (His father was named Larsen). None of my immediate family is associated with the Mormon church, especially me!

Weather: Cold and bright -- maybe 40 degrees (F). People are risking brochitis the way they're dressed.

Wildlife: Flocks of birds migrating northwards -- checking out the pond at Middle Foy's Lake.

Charity Alert: The Child Health Site : Help a Child in Need Lead a Healthy, Active Life

Media Watch: Steven King's Kingdom Hospital again -- not bad -- 2 to 1 ratio between drama time and commercials this week. -- last time it was 1 to 1.
TV's 'Kingdom Hospital'

Weather: Early Spring weather -- cool in the mornings, and warming up in the day to almost 50 (F).

Wildlife: Those pheasants were chasing off the deer in the front yard -- they want first peck at the seeds and cracked corn!

Charity Alert: The Rainforest Site: Help Save Our Rainforests!

Media Watch: A new Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was shown last night -- Thom, the interior decorator, sure has to do a lot of work! I also bought a Sarah Brightman CD called Classics. It has "La Luna" and "Nessun Dorma" -- my favorite songs from her concert last week. Here's a general discography:
Sarah Brightman

Ain't Monday no more!

Weather: All of last week's snow has melted -- our back yard's fulla deer poop.
This morning was foggy at the college, but as the sun rose, a near-rainbow arched across the Northwestern sky. It was mostly white, with just a gimmer of the prismatic colors of a conventional rainbow, but it was impressive. I wonder what you call these things? Fog-bows?

Wildlife: The eagles are still haunting Middle Foy's Lake, and the deer are haunting our bird feeders. There are dozens of pheasants eating corn and sunflower seeds.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site : Feed an Animal in Need

Media Watch: The Concert for George on PBS was pretty darn good -- Eric Clapton led an all-star band at the Royal Abert Hall featuring the songs of George Harrison. The line-up was mostly musicians who had worked with Harrison, or were his friends. The great Ravi Shankar was there, which was only right, but I was pleased to see Dhani Harrison too. Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney both did very well -- especially when Ringo was wisecracking from the drum stool.
Great Performances . Concert for George | PBS

John Waters' Female Trouble was on TV last night -- wotta gross, wonderful flick!
A John Waters Site: Welcome to Dreamland

I read that most bloggers update every 10 days or so -- sounds like me.

Weather: Light snow -- been this way for a few days, but I've been away (see below).

Wildlife: The deer and birds sure missed us, but we are back now. We took some roadside shots of Golden Eagles and Bald Eagles near St. Regis, Montana. Our own eagles are still hanging out next to the ice-melt pond on our lake.
Speaking of wild -- our cats went nuts when we came home -- running and tussling for hours before they settled down.

Charity Alert: The Hunger Site : Give Food for Free to Hungry People in the World

Media Watch: I've been on vacation -- staying away from da' tube. However I did watch Steven King's Kingdom Hospital last night -- 5 minutes of show, 5 minutes of commercials for two hours.
Here's some reviews of the original Danish productions:
filmcritic.com Movie Review: The Kingdom (Riget)
MMI Movie Review: The Kingdom II
Steven King inserts a fictionalized version of his own near-fatal pedestrian/auto collision in his adaptation of this Danish TV miniseries -- that's alright! It means Tabitha King has a disguised part too, as the artist's wife.
Nah -- they ain't calling it All In The Addams Family.

Mini-Vacation: Drove to Spokane, Washington (about 4 1/2 hours) to see Sarah Brightman in concert. We used to live there, so we visited some friends, saw some old sights, and dodged traffic on those chaotic one-way streets. The air is loaded with dirt from the Columbia Plateau, and the exhalations of modern urbania, so we were getting sick -- thought we getting colds until we got outta town -- poor Sarah, having to sing in that Hoover-bag atmosphere! (More about this concert later -- maybe even another day.)
Sarah Brightman

Follow-ups:
At the College: I worked my tail off, preparing a presentation about Women in S-F at the end of February.
To do the subject justice, I felt it necessary to show the history of "Science Fiction," especially since the genre began with Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly. To explain why, I chose to show how the genre emerged from hero stories, travelers' tales, satires, and speculations by scientists/alchemists over the last 2400 years, and took form as a gothic novel.
By the 20th Century, it was very popular with adolescent boys of all ages, and still is. However, around 1970, the best writers in this genre were women, and they've continued to set the highest standards since then.
Considering that authors like Thomas Pynchon, William S. Burroughs, and Kurt Vonnegut visit this field, that's something indeed! (Doris Lessing, Angela Carter, and Margaret Atwood are also distinguished visitors.)
Statistics support the fact that half the writing awards go to women now, so there's a fair amount of gender integration among the creators here.
All this took over an hour to tell. I shouldn't have been surprised. Luckily the class was into it, stayed with me, and Christy Kabler, the regular teacher, had nothing else on the agenda. Thanks to everybody -- wanna see the power point? Email: mevans@fvcc.edu

Grammy Awards -- I liked Christina Aguileria's song, but didn't mention it before.