Hi List members, Just wanted to touch base with all of you so you wouldn't think I'd fallen off the end of the earth. <grin> Here in Colorado we are still fighting the drought and it's pretty scary. Our water restrictions have been upgraded twice since we started and we expect all outdoor watering to cease within the next couple of weeks. I guess there was a Special on T.V. about the drought, but of course I didn't get to see it beings I don't have T.V. They said this winter will be warmer and drier than last winter so it looks like we're in big trouble here. Half of the nation is in drought right now. I taught Therapeutic Aquasize this summer but last Wednesday they shut our pool down. That was a good thing, a pool uses alot of water. I want to THANK all of you that wrote and were concerned about me when we had all those fires here. None of the ones you heard about were terribly close although we did get alot of smoke at that time. Yesterday the grandson and I were out in the yard and heard the fire truck sirens so we looked all around and finally spotted smoke to the east of my house. It appeared to be quite a large fire. I pulled on my levi's and boots, grabbed the shovel, dropped the little guy off at the neighbors and headed on down. The fire was about 2 miles below my place and had consumed quite a bit of area by the time I got there. I helped on the fire line for awhile then got pulled off to direct traffic. We had to get it stopped at a certain road or it would have went straight up the hill where there are alot of houses. There were actually two separate fires going on. We were lucky to get it stopped there. You just wouldn't believe the people that turned out to help, the whole community showed up. We had our own 3 fire trucks there and called in the Pueblo West fire trucks and Command Center and extra ambulances. We also had all of our District's heavy equipment come in to clear fire breaks, and all of the local contractors showed up with their heavy equipment also. I spoke with one of our local firemen and he told me this was no accident. Hope they catch the stupid jerks that pulled this crap. Alot of mad people right now. We were lucky that so many people showed up, so it didn't get too far. I really felt the community effort here. It was pretty awesome. It could have been really devastating because it was headed right for the populated area and we had some pretty high wind gusts when it started. Our firemen stayed all night out there to make sure we didn't get a flare up. WHEW! what a day! And back to business...I have taken quite a bit of time off this summer (sorry) but plan to jump right back into it this fall. My project list in taller than I am <grin>. I have been working on the obits and trying to get them all reformatted and into a master database. It's coming along nicely and a few people have offered to help. Believe me I appreciate everyone's efforts!!! I finally figured out that I can send alot of the paper obits out to volunteers in an image file. I kept trying to put them in a text file and it just wasn't working. So if any of you want to volunteer to type up some of these obits this fall PLEASE let me know. All you need is the capability on your computer to open an image file. Please keep this project in mind, I need all the help I can get. I plan to start scanning them as soon as I get the ones we already have into the database. I will let you all know when that phase of the project will start. I have not been able to film one cemetery this summer. I broke my foot in May and it just wouldn't heal. I went to a podiatrist last week and he said it has finally healed but I still have to take it easy for awhile. So I guess you all know that's set me back in the filming. I don't think I could have worked as hard as I did last summer anyway because we've had some pretty hot days here. One day last week it registered 110 degrees in Pueblo. I'm not real fond of heat stroke so I'm glad I wasn't out in it. I hope some of you have been able to go to Family Reunions this summer and if you did we'd like to hear about them. I missed two but hope to make the next one in a couple weeks. I got a real nice message from Carolyn Espinosa with a great tip in it. Carolyn said she came to Colorado in July and tried to find an obit on her grandmother. She had no luck at the Trinidad Library. I had tried to find one for her in Pueblo but didn't have any luck either. We knew Grandma had died in Pueblo but was buried in Las Animas County. Carolyn said: "I was explaining my frustration to my friend who is an administrator at Trinidad State College. She told me that the college librarian was compiling all the obits for Las Animas county back to late 1800. When we inquired, she found the grandmother for me. Her birth date was definitely wrong and she died a month later than anyone could remember. So I went home a happy person due to a chance conversation. To make a long story even longer, I just thought I would tell you of this source of information for this county AND she was very willing to help me." So if you have a need for obits out of Las Animas County keep this in mind. And THANK YOU Carolyn for sharing this information with us. As always, if any of you have any comments or suggestions or ideas for projects, for the Huerfano pages just let me know. You all take care and stay cool. Let me hear from you too!!! Karen Mitchell 2002 has been declared "The Year of "Unity". Pass it on. [email protected] US GenWeb Project County Coordinator Huerfano County Coordinator http://www.rootsweb.com/~cohuerfa/index.htm Huerfano County List Owner [email protected] Taos County Coordinator http://www.rootsweb.com/~nmtaos/index.htm Taos County List Owner [email protected] Pueblo County Coordinator http://www.rootsweb.com/~copueblo/index.html Pueblo County List Owner [email protected]