Happy Birthday, Leila!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LEILA!

WE LOVE YOU!

Linda and Tim, Sweetpea and Digit

Ah, Catalina

My folks sent us a lovely anniversary card this past weekend (12 years on May 13), and Janet had written "Ah, Catalina."

As some of you know, that is the island off the southern coast of California where Tim and I were married, and where we celebrated my birthday back in February.

What you may not know was that it suffered a horrific wildfire this past weekend, and the town of Avalon (where most of the 3000 island residents live) had to be evacuated. Fortunately, only a couple homes and commercial buildings were lost: LAFD and the Coast Guard and Camp Pendleton all rushed to the rescue of our little island getaway.





The scarring to the island is dramatic, and it will take decades to fully heal. But nature works in its own way, and the fire will hopefully bring back some of the island's native plants that have been eaten or choked out by non-native animals and plants. Meanwhile, residents have been allowed back home to the island, and visitors will be allowed very shortly.





The link below offers brief coverage:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WEATHER/05/11/socal.fire.ap/index.html

Linda

Next Generation of the Clan

Welcome, Sarah Campbell Fields, daughter of John Martin and Amy Fields, granddaughter of Kathy and John Fields!

(Does that make her great-grandniece of Dub Brown? Yikes, Dad!)

Notice the beauty queen wave -- or is that the presidential wave? Yes, I think presidential.

Congrats to the happy, proud and no doubt tired parents. I'm sure they'll post pix when they can, but I thought I'd jump in with these. Enjoy!

Linda

Various Bits

Janet reports from Crete (where she's teaching English for a couple weeks as part of a project called Global Volunteers): "Had a nice day yesterday taking the bus to Agios Nikolaos. It is a beautiful small city with both a lake and the sea. John and I had lunch on the lake as it was sheltered from the wind. Then we walked around a bit, stopped to see a man who paints reproduction pottery and walked back to the lake. There was a crew who were preparing for a film shoot and we sat for about an hour and watched young Greek dancers do traditional dances in preparation for the shoot. We were told that later they would put on traditional costumes for the filming -- but I thought they looked great in blue jeans and other trendy clothing. The one in charge =-- and the trendiest -- was a young woman with long frizzy red hair, cool sunglasses, high heeled boots and very tight faded and ripped up jeans. I told John about Ben's trendy jeans and assurred him that she had on the most expensive outfit there."

Dad went to Minnesota this past weekend for Stephanie's confirmation. Am awaiting pictures and reports?

And I spent a marathon session -- 3 days, pretty much 7am to 9 or 10pm -- of hosting almost 90 authors and hundreds of customers on behalf of The Mystery Bookstore, during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.







Lots of fun, but it's 2 days later and I'm STILL tired. Hey, John, the second picture is of an author named T. Jefferson Parker -- if you haven't read his books, you should. I think you'd like them. His book last year, THE FALLEN is probably available in paperback or easily available at your library (or, of course, your local independent bookstore!) -- and I loved it!

Linda