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Charity Alert: Six clicks, and you can help a lot: Animal Rescue Site

Weather: We have had snow falling every day for a week -- sometimes just a teaspoon full, but we'll take it all.

Wildlife: The snow seems to have driven the deer from the foothills. We saw a herd of over a dozen Whitetails grazing in Foy's Canyon.

In The Community: I'm going to do MY part in making sure the room is full for Sen. Conrad Burns' in-person "listening session" 10 A.M. on Saturday, April 2 at FVCC's LRC123 'quad' room. Topic: Social Security! It wll be tele-confrenced to Libby, Eureka via ITV, and possibly to Missoula and Butte, Montana too.
Another Honors Symposium lecture on Monday, March 28, this will be the only presentation at the college -- same room that Burns will use, at 7 P.M.
We started taping our Current Events show outside on Tuesday, but it was too cold to linger out of the buildings for long. We shot inside about half the time, despite all the carpet-laying and painting going on during "Spring Break."

Media Watch: I just finished a book about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and their followers, illustrated by fairly large, full-color reproductions of their paintings. Rossetti's best works still have a lot of inspirational power. Arthur Hughes and Fredrick Sandys come off well in this book: Essential Pre-Raphaelites by Lucinda Hawksley.
As an art sudent, I looked at less-colorful reproductions, and even read William Holman Hunt's book about his madcap friends, and his own artistic career. I admired this group of idealists, and felt their influences in my life. Most of all, I looked up to polymath William Morris -- superb decorative designer, popular narrarative poet, Marxist idealist, and compelling fantasist, comparable only to George MacDonald.
(He was also the husband of Rossetti's favorite model, Jane Burden Morris, whose dark haunting beauty continues to stir the hearts of everybody who studies women in art.)
I believe Morris inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to write stories and novels in the Fantasy Genre. The late professor always touted Andrew Lang's colorful Fairy Books, but his own writing possessed more of Morris' 'Northern' vigor. I'll allow a healthy dose of Brothers Grimm, and MacDonald's entrapping whimsy, but the "Well at the World's End" lies in William Morris' shadowlands.

The Terry Sciavo case is painful. TV is too shallow a medium to deal with the facts -- but the hard emotions are flowing like cheap whiskey through the boob-tube anyway, with predictable, muddle-headed results.

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Weather: Snow every day, all through the weekend.

Wildlife: Skunk sighting! Big ol' thang (15 to 20 pounds)was wandering around our front and back yards, eating sunflower seeds and drinking water off our deck. The cats watched from inside, but didn't show any alarm or raise any fuss.

In The Community: Spring Break this week -- means I have to clean the %$#@! chalk dust off of our equipment in the classrooms. I will do some videotaping tomorrow and mid-week, though -- Current Events, and a science project.

Media Watch: The hypocrisy of our thoughoughly corrupt congress and administration trying to "look good" by intervening in the Terry Schiavo case has not gone unoticed by others. I don't like the thought of a helpless human being dying from court-enforced neglect, but media coverage of this horrible event has made me very aware that I know NOTHING about the real facts of her situation, even after a year or more of steady coverage.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction show was fairly entertaining -- I like the OJays, Pretenders, Percy Sledge, and U2.
Bono's observation about the music business "if it were the same twenty years ago, as it is now. There would be no U2," was mostly ignored.
Bo Diddley and Jerry Lee Lewis were both on their game -- even Paul Schaefer's quality band sometimes forgets how laid-back old Rock N' Roll's supposed to be played.
Why was Richard Gere shown all the time though? I don't really care to see Jann Wenner or Clive Davis every 15 minutes either.

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Weather: It's SNOWING! Most of a foot in the mountains and foothills, very little in the south valley.

Wildlife: Spring is the time to make sure the bird feeders are full -- there's very little natural food left over from the winter.

Charity: Child Health Site -- you were a child once

In The Community: The Festival of Cultures at Flathead Valley Community College was a lot of fun, and a bit of work. I'm editing my video of it now.

Media Watch: I was thumbing through Leonard Matlin's 2005 Video Guide -- I'm glad he's recommending "forgotten" movies, and I'm happy about his good attitude toward Mario Bava's work.
This book, and others like it, sure helps us decide if we want to tape or watch something on the satellite.

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Weather: Forecast of SNOW by tommorrow. It looks pretty gray right now.

Charity Alert: The Literacy Site -- reading is still the key!

Wildlife: The deer trampled through the once-tall reeds next to the lake, and got some of the leftover sunflower pods.

In The Community: Multicultural Fair here at the college today and tomorrow. Fair-trade fabrics, clothing, music, and a book sale! (Last days of Eric Kaplan's photo show too.) I took some video shots of the event, and got a nice mini-interview with Dr. Gerda Reeb, our Transylvanian professor, by Tara Roth Burkhalter, FVCC's Information Officer. The two women draped beautiful Indian Saris over their clothes.

Media Watch: Queer Eye For The Straight Guy had a client who wanted to be a sportscaster. Carson Kressley chose his on-air shirt, but the client did alright in his debut anyway, and got some work on Ahmed Rashad's NBA Live program. (The other week, Jai wisely over-ruled Carson's ill-advised choice of client-wear.)

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Wildlife: Happy, chirping Redwing Blackbirds establishing their nests.

Weather: TOO Good -- we're going to blow away with the dust if this continues.

Charity Alert: Show a fellow creature some love!

In The Community: T.R. Reid's lecture on The United States of Europe was pleasant, anecdotal (stories from his own point of view),
and ended on a sobering note -- the Euro is KILLING the Dollar.
(MY THOUGHTS: Smart economists are jumping Captain Queeg's ship, mostly because of our govenment's corrupt short-sighted policies on the social and international fronts.)
The best thing about the European Union, according to Reid, was it's success as a counter-action against the ruinous intercontinental warfare that decimated every generation between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and WWII in 1945. They (and we) were ready to fight again.
(Why we didn't have a WWIII isn't completely answered by the tale of the European Union, but it is part of the story.)

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Weather: A light dusting of snow over the weekend. I'll take it, but we need MORE!

Wildlife: Middle Foy's Lake is nearly ice-free. We haven't seen any eagles for most of a week. The female Pheasants are looking big and plump, we expect they're expecting.

Charity Alert: Help pay for a small part of the rain forest. You breathe its oxygen!

In The Community: T.R. Reid tonight on The United States of Europe in the Honors Symposium. I'm going early -- the hotel set things up all wrong last Monday, and we barely started on time.
NOTE: Europe as an economic power is affecting our lives already with our shrinking dollar. As our idiotic government throws away our country's largesse, sombody else is picking it up!
From Booksellersnow.com: While the United States flexes its economic and military muscles around the world as the dominant global player, it may soon have company. According to the Washington Post's T.R. Reid, the nations of Europe are setting aside differences to form an entity that's gaining strength, all seemingly unbeknownst to the U.S. and its citizens. The new Europe, Reid says, "has more people, more wealth, and more trade than the United States of America," plus more leverage gained through membership in international organizations and generous foreign aid policies that reap political clout. Reid tells how European countries were willing to discontinue their individual centuries-old currencies and adopt the Euro, the monetary unit that is now a dominant force in world markets. This is noteworthy not just for exploring the considerable economic impact of the Euro, but also for what that spirit of cooperation means for every facet of Europe in the 21st century, where governments and citizens alike believe that the rewards of banding together are worth a loss in sovereignty. Reid's most compelling portrait of this trend is in the young Europeans known as "Generation E" who see themselves not as Spaniards or Czechs but simply as Europeans. To illustrate America's obliviousness to this trend, Reid tells of former GE CEO Jack Welch, who never bothered to factor European objections into a proposed multi-billion dollar merger with Honeywell, leading to the deal being torpedoed and Welch disgraced. But what is most striking in The United States of Europe is the contrast between the new Europe and the United States. The Europeans cannot match the raw military size of the U.S., but by mixing wealth with diplomacy and continental unity (helped along by antipathy toward George W. Bush's brand of Americanism), they are forming an innovative and powerful superpower. --John Moe
In May 2004, the European Union will add ten new member states-including Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, among others-to become a union of twenty-five nations. While this might seem a fairly innocuous and minute shift of political semantics for most Americans, the enlargement will increase the population of the EU to 450 million citizens, making it larger (in population) and richer (in GDP) than the United States-not to mention that the EU has more trade than the United States and more votes on the UN Security Council and all other international organizations. This New Europe is determined to flex its political and economic muscle on the world stage. The Continent has moved much further than most Americans realize toward the dream of a "United States of Europe," to borrow Winston Churchill's term.
T. R. Reid's The United States of Europe lays bare the ways in which the EU is positioning itself to be a global counterweight and second superpower, on equal footing with the U.S.A. Reid traces the rise of the EU from the days when Churchill and other visionaries set out in the post-World War II rubble to find a means to end war in Europe. He shows how this remarkably successful effort to "create peace" also created a global economic and political power that is often at odds with the United States. This drive toward unity has been accelerated by the powerful mood of anti-Americanism (or, at least, anti-Bushism) that has swept the Continent since the war in Iraq.
In addition to the political ramifications of the EU, The United States of Europe shows the great impact this alliance is having on the global economic market. The euro, which now has more daily users than the dollar, is fast becoming a reserve currency and a new standard for global finance, a globally recognized replacement for the once-almighty dollar. Unification has spawned a generation of European corporate managers who have led firms like Nokia, Airbus, BP, Vodafone, and Red Bull to catch and surpass their U.S. competitors in global markets.
The European Union, from its beginnings as an experiment in statecraft, has rapidly emerged as a resounding success; yet Americans have so far managed to ignore the geopolitical revolution under way across the Atlantic. Reid's book shows how quietly-and not so quietly-Europe is developing itself into an economic, political, and cultural powerhouse.
From Allbookstores.com: In THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE, T. R. Reid assesses the state of that union and its implications for the United States of America. As new nations join, the EU is becoming a formidable entity in terms of population and aggregate economic power. Its currency, the Euro, is fast-becoming a world standard. And its member nations include many new and energetic corporations that are potential rivals for markets that US corporations thought were theirs. Just what is the European Union and how does it function? Is it a partner, a rival, or just another player in the international game of the 21st century, whose rules are changing fast? And what will be its political role? Reid provides everything Americans need or want to know about the European Union in order to engage with it effectively.
Sure, we'll see.