Cape Karen
Photo: Today's Madonna and Child.
There is a benefit to being retired and having too much time on my hands: the ability to listen and watch as events unfold around the globe, and being able to take the time to process them and research them. These days, I have the luxury of time to watch the big picture unfolding; and even though a lot of it isn't very pretty, I've decided I'm not going to look away anymore. Between skepticism (show me, and then I'll believe you) and cynicism (show me, and I still won't believe you) a lot of us have given up on our country, and on the world in general. We've become complacent, indifferent and jaded.
Recently, I have joined the concerns of many about the ongoing rape and slaughter of thousands of innocent people in Dafur - mostly the women and children. These are people who cannot speak for themselves; they are depending on us to speak up for them.
The Christian Science Monitor Staff reports:
"The indicators of genocide in Dafur are legion. People have been murdered and subjected to serious bodily and mental harm, apparently because of their ethnic and perceived racial identities. More than a million people have been forced into conditions of life that threaten their physical destruction. Tens of thousands have died already, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) estimates that 350,000 or more will die in the coming months. The time for action in Darfur is NOW."
Tomorrow, Sunday, April 29th, there will be marches in some states, and a big march and rally in Washington, D.C., to urge this administration to take bigger, bolder steps, aimed towards ending this crisis, for once and for all. I cannot join the march in Washington, or even the one in Nashville, this weekend ~ but I have sent letters to my state representatives, to members of Congress and to 'George' himself, voicing my concern and urging them to act.
If you'd like to send a virtual postcard to 'Dubya,' please use the link below to do so. You can use their pre-written statement, or you can write one of your own. (My letter asked him why we couldn't at LEAST air-drop tents, food and water into the surrounding refugee camps, located outside the conflict areas?) It will not only make you feel good to have added your voice to the million voices, but also, by doing so, you will be helping to end the suffering of your brothers and sisters across the sea.
We're still asking, regarding Hitler's lengthy reign of genocide and terror, "Why didn't we do something to stop him? We've always pleaded ignorance.
Well, we aren't ignorant of this situation, and therefore, we all have an obligation to at least try to stop this current-day genocide. Please ~ take a minute, use the link below, and send a postcard; it's so easy that a chimpanzee could do it. Then, when they ask, you can tell your children and grandchildren that you did what you could to stop the madness in Dafur.
http://www.millionvoicesfordarfur.org
(Copy and paste this link and send it to everyone you know.)
From Oprah's website comes this recent report:
George Clooney says he feels embarrassed that at one time he was not fully aware what was happening in Sudan. "I'm really slow to the Africa movement, I am ashamed to say," George says. If you're slow to it as well, George says it's not too late to help end this genocide. George and his dad, Nick, a television news veteran, went to Sudan with the International Rescue Committee to learn for themselves what was happening. George and Nick found a group of more than a thousand displaced families who had set up a village—but this was no refugee camp." There were no tents to shelter them. Most just slept under trees. No food, no water ," George says. "These people had jobs and property before the Arab Janjaweed militia burned their villages, raped their women and killed their children."
Since the government of Sudan won't allow anyone—not even U.N. officials—into Darfur, George and Nick continued on their journey to the Darfur-bordering country of Chad, which is itself in the midst of a coup. There they visited the Oure Cassoni refugee camp, home to 29,000 survivors of the genocide.
"There are scores of Oure Cassonis on both sides of the [Sudan-Chad] border. There are 2 million people away from their own homes," Nick says. "Time is running out."
To read more from George Clooney and a full report on this abominable situation, that explains it far better than I can, please go to:
http://www2.oprah.com/tows/slide/200604/20060426/slide_20060426_284_101.jhtml
I hope you will take the time to read all of the information there. I hope you will let these reports open your mind and heart, make your temper flare, and motivate you to take some action ~ however small it might be.
Photo: Waiting for rescue in Dafur.
We all need to speak up to try and bring an end to these inhuman atrocities ~ continuously, loudly and quickly. Your voice really matters!
Thank you!
If you are a television watcher, prepare to be stressed-out. It seems the producers of the latest shows are all in serious clinical depressions and they want to share their fear and anxiety with the world.
The Germans have a word for it: "Schadenfreude" - the enjoyment of the misfortunes of others.
As we click the remote looking for nightly entertainment, we are now assaulted with programs like The Discovery Channel's, "I Shouldn't Be Alive." We watch as a hiker is trapped alone on an island with a huge boulder crushing his leg, cutting off blood supply to his vital organs. Not good enough to just show the rock on the leg, the camera then zooms in to show the inner workings of his crushed leg. We get to watch, close-up, as gangrene sets in and the blood vessels begin to explode ~ and we get to see all this in living color! How gross is that? (If I wanted to see such things I would have gone to medical school.)
Recently on “Alive” we’ve seen true stories of men surviving multiple avalanches in Alaska, a father and son battling dehydration and frostbite in a cave in the mountains of Turkey, and boaters suffering from sunburn and delirium on a desert island in the Sea of Cortez.
In January the Weather Channel began airing a 30-minute weekly series, the ominously titled, “It Could Happen Tomorrow.” Using interviews, archival footage and computer generated images, it has projected a major hurricane hitting New York, catastrophic failure of the levee system in Sacramento, CA., and a scenario in which Boulder, Colo., is washed away by a massive flood. They take a relatively low-budget approach, and it serves up its 30 minutes of vengeful weather scenarios with a dash of basic showbiz, personified by Howard Parker’s melodramatic narration delivered in a breathy baritone: “The earthquake unloads with the destructive force of 400 Hiroshima atomic bombs!”
Then there is “Perfect Disaster,” whose tag line is “when conditions are right, it will all go wrong.” The show projects a series of calamities that could be just around the corner: a monster typhoon laying waste to Hong Kong, an enormous twister slamming into Dallas and a firestorm devastating part of Sidney, Australia.
I think these show producers need to get ahold of some Prozac, pronto!
And, it doesn't stop there: just last week, on the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the National Geographic Channel rebroadcast “The Great Quake,” a two-hour documentary on the subject, complete with re-enactments, CGI-assisted scientific analysis and musings and unambiguous predictions that it will happen again — "it’s not a matter of if, it's only a matter of when."
Why all this televised mayhem? Why now? It began after real life disasters like the 9-11 event and the tsunami in Indonesia. "Some viewers undoubtedly tune in out of morbid curiosity," said pop-culture expert Elizabeth Bird, chair of the anthropology department at the University of South Florida. "It satisfies a hunger that used to drive people to disaster films, horror movies and sword-and-sandal flicks," she claims. The problem is, all these 'potential' catatrophic events are just a little too close to home. For instance, the first planned program for The Weather Channel's ICHT show was going to be a category 5 hurricane devasting New Orleans with a direct hit. But then, before the show could air, it actually happened - or almost happened, (Katrina was not a direct hit) so they had to scrap that show and do another 'potential' disaster scenario instead.
We have entered a brave new age of television, I fear. The line between “educational” and “sensational” blurs more with each passing TV season. And cable television has surpassed all expectations in bringing human suffering into our dens and living rooms. Trying to locate something uplifting and entertaining that doesn't cause nightmares and bring on an anxiety attack is becoming more and more difficult. In our house, the DVD player has saved our sanity. We get to watch movies that we choose.
Now, if only someone would come up with a way we could all select just those channels we want to have access to; and we would only have to pay for our own selections as subscribers to cable television. There are at least 50 channels in our local line-up that we pay for, but don't ever watch. The channels we used to enjoy watching, like Discovery, National Geographic and even NOVA are now apt to bring on a bad case of the hives and cause nervous tics.
"Where are the shows like "I Love Lucy?" Even "The Carol Burnett Show" would be a welcome reprieve these days. Anything that would make us laugh would be nice. Where has all the laughter gone? I think we need it now more than ever; not all these depressing, frightening television productions.
Oh well, I guess I shouldn't complain ~ after all there is always "The World Poker Tour," "Deal Or No Deal, and all those creepy Friday night ghost shows, when I need to get away from reality.
It seems I have little use for Schadenfreude. . . so, thanks Bob ~ for the gift of a DVD player - it's been a godsend!
Just in time for this year's Earth Day celebration comes the news about how pollutants from airplane contrails, factory emissions, and the billions and billions of tiny carbon particles in the atmosphere have been causing a phenomena called "global dimming." Pollution's dimming of the sun's rays is now thought to have actually slowed down the effects of global warming. A careful review of this known, but misunderstood, phenomena is causing the world's leading scientists to re-evaluate what might happen if we actually continue to clean our dirty air.
(The big business lobbyists, those who have been fighting to extend the Clean Air Act timetable mandates, are jumping for joy at hearing this news!)
On the bright side, at least it has a name that will capture our President's attention: "Global Dimming? Oh! I know what that is! It's what happens to the globes in the chandelier in the Oval Office when I turn that little, white knob on the wall. Yeah, dimming. . .that's what happened the day after the keg party, when I flunked the science test. Okay, sure . . . I know all about global dimming."
The implication of this recent discovery is that the power of both particulate matter and greenhouse gases on the climate have been grossly underestimated. All of our traditional global climate models will have to be revised, and it will raise challenging new questions for our policy makers. For instance, will further reductions in particulate pollution, necessary to alleviate serious, deadly, and widespread respiratory illnesses, mean that we'll see more devastating effects of global warming in this century?
Basically, it seems that the 'dirty thermal shade' discovery has shown that if we do move forward and clean the air, removing the particles of crap that cover the earth and clog our lungs every day with invisible carcinogens, it will reduce the current 'protective' dimming effect. Then, the full strength of the sun's rays will be able to reach the earth's surface for the first time in decades. Like a bright, hot light being suddenly turned on full force, it will open the way to an even more rapid increase in surface warming than was previously predicted. The resulting climate changes will, therefore, be felt in as little as ten years ~ not hundreds of years from now.
I sure hope environmental science is a mandatory course of study in our schools, at every grade level, these days. After all, today's students will be tomorrow's adults who will inherit the mess we've made. It will be left up to them to figure out how to clean it up, or not. (It is believed that the increase of polluting smog, coming from developing countries like India and China, is what has been changing the climate over Africa during the last two decades, resulting in severe and long-lasting droughts.)
We are all connected by one sky, we all share the same sun and moon - and I think we need to remember that, at the highest level of our collective consciousness. And yet, our world leaders seem to be increasingly 'caught-up' in wars and rumors of wars. . . in how to obtain more oil profits and reduce their financial losses, in how fast can they spend our tax dollars wastefully, and in other such meaningless and utterly insane behaviors. Governmental priorities are so screwed up!
(Now, if women ruled the world. . . .)
If this recent global dimming discovery heats up as a topic of discussion, and the science is proven to be accurate, then the state of the environment will have to become THE primary political issue of the day. We really won't have a choice anymore. Just to survive, the world will have to become a friendlier neighborhood. We're all going to need to work together on this one. To continue ignoring what is happening 'out there' is not only immoral, it's just plain nuts! Dramatic climate changes are already happening, they'll continue to happen, and they'll affect all of us ~ sooner than later.
When will we wake up and smell the coffee?
For example, look at what has been happening in East Africa - millions and millions of innocent lives have been, and are being lost, due to mass starvation ~ caused by decades of severe drought, due to a drastic climate change. Suddenly, their spring monsoons with the life-giving rains just stopped coming. They no longer have any water for their lands, so they have been unable to grow any food. They are dying as we speak. On tonight's news they said that the United Nations can only provide them with 2 cups of water a day per person ~ and a minimum of 8 cups is needed for survival in the intense heat.
In two weeks . . .well. . . let's just say that in three weeks we won't have to help them anymore. That's how urgent their need is for immediate food and water. And, make no mistake about it, that same kind of climate change could also happen right here, and just as suddenly.
What have we been doing as a global community to help our starving brothers and sisters who are suffering and dying in East Africa? We've pretty much just been ignoring them for years, because their suffering doesn't directly affect or benefit our economy. Well, guess what? What goes around, comes around. We're the richest and most powerful country in the world, we have the means and the power to help them, (and much more so, if we'd get the heck out of Iraq) and yet, we continue to just turn away from this devastating humanitarian crisis? We're much more concerned with all the appointment changes on the Hill, meeting with the President of China, and other 'important political stuff.'
Yup. What goes around, will come around. . . .
April 7, 2006 - USA Today
Changing Climate Leaves Millions to Starve in East Africa:
"The warning signs have been clear, but yet again they have fallen on deaf ears. We need dramatic action now, before it is too late for thousands of east African children. Nowhere else on earth is so much at stake as in Africa, where three million people are relying on aid, aid that is not forthcoming, after a succession of failed harvests."
Imagine if that headline read: "Changing Climate Leaves Millions to Starve in the United States." Would the worldwide "humanitarian response" be any different if the tables were suddenly turned? What if climate changes began to adversely affect 'our' crops, and what if those were 'our' children, starving to death on a parched and barren landscape? Hello! They are our children, and we are partaking in a terrible neglect. We're exhibiting a sub-human indifference by ignoring our fellow human beings during this time of their desperate need ~ and I don't think the Universe will be blessing us for doing that.
Yes. . . I whole-heartedly pray that the world's educated children will be up to the many challenges that are ahead of them on this dimmed blue planet of ours. But, if we don't wake up and get our environmental act together. . . and real soon. . . then their future probably won't be a very pretty sight either.
Happy Earth Day ~ April 22, 2006
I have to go have some teeth extracted tomorrow, and I am a wreck! It's not like this is anything new ~ I've been sitting in the dentist chair since childhood. I've never had good teeth. I like to blame it on being born prematurely, but I think it is probably due to New England's unfloridated water and heredity. Whatever the cause, I have had more than the usual amount of dental work done over the years.
Back in 'the olden days' my dentist would pull any tooth that hurt, rather than try to save it. Therefore, I lost many permanent teeth while still young, and those that I have left have been filled, crowned, capped, root canaled and veneered. I could have purchased waterfront property or traveled the world with the money I've spent at the dentist.
We had an oral surgeon on the Cape who we called, "painless Parker." He pulled out our teeth under sodium pentathol, the "twilight sleep" drug that made the whole procedure almost enjoyable. You woke up sooooo relaxed that, when it started to wear off, you could actually feel every muscle in your body contracting back to its normally 'taut' state. But, I'm not going to have sodium pentathol tomorrow. Believe me, I would like to, but when I was told it would cost three times as much, per tooth, as having novacaine, I changed my mind. The cost of dental work and extractions these days is off-the-wall!
Now, the day before my appointment, I'm having a lot of second thoughts, like. . . "oh' what the hell . . . it's only money!"
The last time I had a tooth pulled with just novacaine I was pregnant with my first child, so I couldn't have the beloved "twilight sleep" drug. The dentist I saw at that time was an angry, sadistic, evil person who enjoyed pulling the wings off flies when he was a boy, and hated his mother. 
Having that tooth pulled was akin to having a limb torn off, and all these years later I can still recall the pain. (Childbirth was a piece of cake by comparison.) Crunnnnch, yaaaank, yank, pull, pull, crunnnnch, yank, pull. Painless Parker had spoiled me for sure! The worst part was the novacaine - o' yeah, the needle itself hurts like hell, but it's actually the numbing fluid, trying to seep into the soft tissue around the tooth, that causes most of the pain. And, if there is little soft tissue around the tooth, then the pain will be worse. I have no soft tissue around the four teeth that are to be pulled tomorrow!
I'm trying to bolster my courage and set the clock in my mind to "Brave." But, it isn't working. I'm trying to remember that others have gone through much, much worse pain than simply having teeth pulled, and they survived. . . but, that isn't working either. I've even tried loosening the teeth a little myself, to help things along, but the attempt at tooth-wiggling just plain hurts! Now, I have to decide if I can go through with this? The teeth do have to come out - to be replaced with some pretty porcelains - but which way to go?
I have until tomorrow morning to make up my mind; the dentist said he would refer me out to an oral surgeon, if I insisted. He tells me it isn't going to hurt that much (like I was born yesterday?)
I'll have to get back to you on this one.
But, in the meantime, while I'm deciding ~
please . . . go brush and floss your teeth!
It's been a wild couple of weeks here in the state of Tennessee. The National Weather Service reported 42 tornadoes yesterday in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana. They said that this violent weather grew out of a powerful storm system working its way across the nation.
"These were half-million-dollar homes or better," said an 81 year-old resident of Tennessee, as he sadly scanned the large debris field left by one tornado. "There's nothing left of the house. I can't even find a shingle," he said.
In Alabama, baseball-sized hail dented cars, shattered windshields, windows and headlights, and blanketed the ground like a snowstorm.
As of yesterday, an estimated 328 tornadoes have hit the United States this year, compared with an average of 70 for the same 3-month period in each of the past three years. That's almost five times the norm ~ and the tornado season isn't over for another month here in the south.
It looks like we're experiencing more weather "firsts" again. Luckily for us, the tornadoes haven't made their way this far east, where we live nestled-up to the Great Smoky Mountains. But, the way things are going, who knows what might happen? They even measured winds moving as fast as 306 mph in one of the tornadoes.
I stood in the wind during Hurricane Bob in 1991 on the Cape. The wind was blowing around 90-100 mph when Bob finally reached the Cape, and I could lean way forward into it and not fall on my face. Tree branches were snapping, sounding like loud shotgun blasts going off, all around us. My neighbors were standing out in the street, too; we were having such fun being 'nearly' blown over, and laughing as our faces got all 'flappy' and distorted by the strong winds. I don't think we'd do that again, though; nor will Floridian's be having their yearly "hurricane parties" anymore, like they once did. (Aw shucks ~ we really did enjoy a good storm back then!)
The times . . . they are a-changin' ~ but . . . 306 mph winds!? That's not fun! Winds like that could tear your whole face off!
As I saw the pictures on the news today, of a well-built brick, two-story house that was lifted and moved 20 feet off its foundation, before crumbling into a huge pile of bricks and splinters, my mind said, "Nope . . . that doesn't compute." I simply cannot imagine a wind so strong that it can toss massive tractor trailers around like children's toys, and topple big brick buildings as if they were made of Legos. Thirty-five people died during the last two storms, over 500 homes and businesses were destroyed in this state alone, and there are still people yet to be found.
These days, I even get nervous when strong thunderstorms move overhead. Kitty Smudge isn't always the only one diving under the bed! Last night, I jumped three feet, straight up, when an unexpected thunderclap "cracked" loudly, right above the house. And lightening - eeeeew- I don't like that stuff either!
If a tornado is ever forecast to come within 20 miles of here, and it seems like they are getting closer and closer all the time, you can bet we'll be well on our way outta town ~ cat-in-a-box and all! 
It's tax time again. Time to add up and deduct. Time to pay Uncle Sam his due. And just where does all that hard-earned money go that we all pay in every year? Our government is in serious debt; it has never been this bad. So, what is going on? We keep our end of the bargain, could it be that someone is stealing our money? Could it be that there are some irresponsible stewards of our dollars? Does anyone even care anymore? How many zeros are in a hundred-trillion dollars?
We've all heard about the privately-owned jets that take our elected officials to many exotic places - some of those same officials who are now under federal indictment for corruptions of one sort or another; we've heard about the thousands of started and failed 'grand ideas' that have wasted millions of our tax dollars (like those 10,000 trailers still sitting vacant in AL) and, each year, John Stossel and his 'give me a break report' nails some of the grossest abuses for us publicly.
Yup. We all know that billions and billions of American taxpayer dollars are being wasted every year on frivolous and ridiculous things. And yet we keep on keeping on ~ paying our taxes every year ~ good and faithful law-abiding citizens that we are.
Think of it this way - suppose there was a law that required you to give 30% of what you earned yearly, no matter how meager your earnings, to a neighbor named Sam. Then, suppose you saw that Sam was driving a new Mercedes every year - while you're driving a ten-year-old Chevy - and he and his family are going on lots of big vacations around the world - while you and your family can't afford to go to dinner.
Also, Sam and his family are dressed way better than you are, they've been buying expensive gifts for all their friends; they own a private jet, they've got every new electronic gadget on the market, they've invested in fifteen scams where they've lost millions and over the years they've started numerous failed businesses. Now, because they are trillions and trillions of dollars in debt, they're borrowing money from their foreign neighbors, and paying huge amounts of interest on that money. . .to the point where they're thinking about requiring you to pay more to Sam next year than ever before in history.
The question is: will we continue to give our neighbor Sam our hard-earned money every year to spend however he wishes? Do we not want to insist that he give us a dollar-by-dollar accounting of where our "contributions" are going? We know that Sam keeps meticulous records of our tax payments, and he fines us mightily if we underpay or even if we pay a day late -and god forbid the tax audit if we make a mistake or don't pay at all. So, why aren't we doing the same to him?
There are 12 million illegal aliens working in this country now, with thousands more pouring over the borders every day, and they don't pay one cent of their income to Sam. They're here doing jobs that it's said us legal American citizens consider too 'menial' to do - like picking grapes and digging ditches. (But, has anyone asked the unemployed New Orlean's displaced American if he would like to pick some grapes?) That's a whole 'nother topic - way too big to get into - but it begs more questions.
I would love to see a united U.S. strike on Uncle Sam! I would be so thrilled if a national movement began where every tax-paying American said, "No more irresponsible wasting of our money!" I would feel so good if every taxpayer just refused to pay their taxes, en masse, until a meticulous accounting of government spending was enacted.
I'd love it if we all met at the Potomac next April 1st (April Fool's!) and threw our tax bills into the river!
But, then. . . I would also like to see an alien spacecraft land on the White House lawn and whisk the entire current administration away to another galaxy ~ and the chances of that happening are about the same as seeing an American tax revolt.
So, I guess I'd better go to the Post Office now, buy a new 39¢ stamp, and mail my little 1040 ~ just so Sam can have another great year spending money like a drunken sailor.
Ahoy mates!
Since moving to this godforsaken area nine years ago, I've been wanting to go gem hunting. Right next door, the state of North Carolina is filled with all sorts of mines for finding gems in the native dirt. After perusing many different N.C. gem mining sites, I decided we'd go to the Sheffield Mine in Franklin. It would be part of Frank's up-coming birthday present. "Who knows, I thought, he might get lucky and find himself a valuable ruby, maybe a "Super Honker" as they call them, or maybe I will find a "Squeaker." O' fun!
So, over the mountains we went, on this beautiful spring day; lunches packed, rubber gloves in tow and wearing our oldest, rattiest jeans and sweatshirts.
The trip over the mountains, down into indian territory in Cherokee, N.C. was simply gorgeous. The weather couldn't have been nicer. No matter that they are widening the mountain roads, and that we had to sit in traffic for a while ~ it forced us to really look around at the scenic views at 6,000 feet. No matter that my left ear crackles, pops, and aches like a bitch, and I go deaf from the up-and-down extremes in elevation, it was worth it! The mountain views were simply incredible; layer upon layer of rolling mountaintops ~ as far as the eye could see. The sky was bright blue (not pink like in this photo) with nary a cloud in sight. A picture postcard view ~ and, of course, I forgot to bring my camera!
We wound our way through Cherokee, past the big Casino, and on through the ratty little towns along the way. How do people live out here, I wondered? What do they do? Just miles and miles of rolling hills and little falling-down shacks everywhere. It's like going back in time. Nice in a way. . . at least there are no Super Walmarts or strip malls to also mar the pretty landscape. But, where do these mountain folks grocery shop? What happens if their old trucks break down out there? What if they need an ambulance? They're just sittin' out there all by themselves, on acres and acres of beautiful, tree-dotted land. Privacy is not an issue. . . that's for sure! We should all be so lucky.
It took us about an hour out of Cherokee before we found our way to The Sheffield Mine ~ up a paved road, no less! Wow. I was impressed. I expected to travel on a little winding dirt road, and I think Frank was relieved to find we weren't bumping along through deep, muddy ruts on a nasty, rock-filled road.
Parking our car in the dirt parking lot, down to the mine we went, all ready to cash-in on the BIG one! Paying our fee and gathering two heavy buckets of dirt each, we made our way to the benches in front of the trough of water where we would scrub the rocks in screen-bottomed trays, over and over again, until we found the shiny rubies hidden in the rocks under the thick layer of sticky orange mud. Surprisingly, the place was packed; there was hardly a place to sit down ~ that is, until Gene from Georgia "found" a 420 oz. ruby in a rock, and decided to give somone else a chance. Taking his place, we sure felt lucky now!
Three hours later, covered in wet mud, our rubber-gloved hands numb from the cold water, we gave up the ghost. Not a glimmer of pink or rose; not a hint of jewels in the muddy remains; just four big piles of muddy dirt and plain old rocks lay at our feet. Had we missed one? Had we not washed them off good enough? Or, was this some kind of a joke? Maybe this is all make-believe, and we were just suckered-in? Non-believer's now, we trudged back to the car and made our mountainous way back home ~ deflated and depressed that we hadn't struck it rich ~ like "Gene from Georgia."
Will we ever go back again? Have we become 'addicted' to gem hunting? NOT even! But. . . if we had found a ruby, even a small one, I bet we'd be singing a different tune today. (And so would all those po' mountain folks! )
I guess we'll just have to buy some more lottery tickets to keep the dream of 'instant riches' alive; it costs about the same ~ and it's a whole lot less work!
Happy birthday, Frank . . . maybe next year we can try a gold mine?