To those that have been interested in the Hamrick get together, I have been planning a surprise and found out today it will actually happen for our reunion. For the Sunday program at Detert Park, our picnic will now be visited by some actual living history re-enactors, the Gold Rush Living History Alliance is going to have 2 costumed gold miners come to the park to show their authentic clothing, tools, and even demonstrate cradle gold mining in the Park, using a real trough! All exactingly authentic too. I found the group on the internet and asked if they would come see us and they said YES! We will certainly feed them lunch after and give them cool drinks throughout the demo time. By the way, everyone should make sure we have plenty of coolers and cool drinks for this weekend. Anyway! Surprise! These folks are the real deal, they are doing demostrations all over California for the Sesquicentennial that is happening now for donations and they generously and graciously have agreed to come show us their authentic historical artifacts and so on, they are expected at 10:30 am on Sunday, for a one hour display and then we will eat lunch, if it gets too hot we should plan to leave early that day or hit the pool. I think this is going to add a nice touch to our weekend, our ancestor we all have in common is Jesse Calvert Hamrick who came to California in 1850 and was in fact a gold miner for awhile, so this demo is certainly pertinent and here is the Alliance website address so you can see for yourself, if anyone has seen them in action can you write back to me and tell me about it? Thanks. http://www.timeship.com/ then click on Gold Rush History Alliance for their websites Jill <3 ~aloha~ from jill in maui http://www.maui.net/~mauifun/genweb.htm