I'm still hanging around! (thought you got rid of me, didn't ya? Bwah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhhhh!) Brief Summary: I am the lucky Mother of 4 children and Grannie of 6 grandchildren. All gorgeous and exceptionally bright. The four youngest are very precocious, but well-behaved. The two oldest are adorable, but not so well-behaved. We are a multi-cultural and racial family. A beautiful rainbow of children from various cultural backgrounds. I was born and raised in southern California - 6th generation Californian on my Mom's side. My Dad was born here in central Oklahoma - 4th Generation Okie - he retired back here. I moved here to Okie from Louisiana with my kids in 1980. Now married to the most handsome, loving, gentle man in the whole world. My kids and grands claim him as "Dad" and "Grampa". My Dad says he's the best thing that ever happened to this family. Yes, indeed-y! :) We live in rural, Central Oklahoma on a southwest-facing high ridge, of sandy, worthless, alkaline soil over layers of sandstone bedrock. We have our own water well. Weeds and Bermuda grass are my best crops. This is ranch and farm country. Cattle, horses, wheat and various kinds of hay are the main crops in this area. The locals think I'm strange. I know they are! We have chickens, dogs, cats, and a green water turtle. No cows or horses. Our neighbors all do tho'. I'm an artist and gardener - jack of all trades, master of none. Disabled. I take care of the "ranch" and herd the cats. DH is originally from West Virginia, but was raised in Holland and Scotland. Hi dad is from Illinois, and his mom from Scotland. His family moved back to the states to Tulsa when he was 13 yrs. old. He is the Environmental Quality Manager for a young & small aerospace company up in Tulsa. We rescue animals and love wildlife of all kinds. DH does not care for snakes, however. I grow flowers, trees, veggies, herbs, and work too hard at trying to recreate a Country Cottage Garden on this high & dry rock of a place. ----------------------------------------------------------- Eduarda and I are good friends. We keep in contact year round. She is just fine, but work is keeping her hopping. They just took a break from it all - a holiday to the beach. I got a beautiful postcard. Timmy, her adorable, loveable pooch, is doing great too. hey are having severe heat and dry weather too. They even had a tornado there in her town - I think it was last fall. Did some damage to the elementary school, during school hours, but not to their home. Very freaky for Portugal! Anyone hear from Lorna in NM lately? I haven't heard form her in ages. Haven't heard from Rose in a long time either. Hope they are both okay. ~Annie

And common sense goes a long way. I started thinking how most of us who post here are city dwellers with indoor jobs which are the result of established communities & urbanization. I'm comparing us to the people who immigrated here, many desperate to simply obtain land with the goal of living off the land, fur trading, lumber etc. What really makes us any less guilty? We use fossil fuels and enjoy all the luxuries and entertainments of modernization while mourning the loss of a pristine landscape. The people who settled here had a much greater understanding and bond to the land than we do, they were a part of it. The best we can hope to accomplish is awareness through education and being sensitive to the environment and land, trying to help in any small way to preserve & protect it. A lot of little guys appreciating and growing natives along with not wasting resources does add up but we have to keep things in perspective and not go radical in our attitudes spouting off like zealous warriors which only turns most people off. BBC America has been showing some very well produced nature shows every Tuesday night, they play back to back all evening long. Has anyone else been catching those? Last night the subject was "The Human Planet". Very thought provoking stuff, they showed desert people whose main concern in life has always revolved around the effort to get water & food. I checked out some Willa Cather books last week, its interesting reading about the settlers which puts things into perspective.

He doesn't seem to have much use for dogs. Maybe he never met one who is as fine a fellow as mine. But then again, he seems to love books. Maybe he has that redeeming quality.

I saw a man on a cruise once, who had the most beautiful tattoos. They all looked like they were done by the same tattoo artist, as every tattoo was done in very, very fine lines, in black ink, almost like a sketch. The lines were so fine, I can't envision his tattoos becoming blurry black blobs, over the years. They were all very detailed renditions of ancient cathedrals and universities. I recognized some of the European ones, while others appeared to be places in maybe India, Indonesia or China. I complimented him on the beauty of his tattoos and he thanked me, telling me he had drawn each sketch himself, then had an excellent tattoo artist make them permanent keepsakes. While traveling around the world, he had sketched his favorite buildings, most of which happened to be very old places of worship. I said he was quite the artist, for being able to draw such precise sketches. He laughed and said, 'I wish I could call myself an artist and could pay my bills that way, but I had to become an architect instead.' His choice of tattoos made perfect sense to me!