I am upset. Oh, not at the lists, or anything like that. But all morning, ever since I read today's Springfield paper, my innards have been uptight and I have a headache. Here's the article. http://www.springfieldnews-leader.com/webextra/ip112800.html In it, Taney county and the city of Branson's planning people talk about how there's no one theme, nothing to pull the area together as a whole. Hello...? I don't know how many of you have visited Branson. Yes, you know I'm big on the Ozarks and what makes us special, but Branson isn't necessarily a part of the Ozarks anymore. When someone can build the ugliest tower in the world on top of Inspiration Point (where Wright wrote "The Shepherd of the Hills", recommended reading for anyone who had ancestors in the White River Valley around 1900); a "chateau" (isn't that French?) multi-story pink hotel on a bluff overlooking Table Rock Lake that doesn't even pretend to be Ozarks-oriented; when these things are allowed to happen, then no, we don't have a theme. We have a lack of respect for what made Branson possible-our background, our ancestors and our culture. Well, I wrote a short and not-so-sweet letter to the editor. Because we had a theme until that stuff started happening during the boom of the early 1990s. Pioneer, rustic, hillbilly, simple, easy, blend into the surroundings, nothing too ostentatious, nothing obviously European; except possibly the Tudor style of downtown Hollister. Boy. I might get some nasty mail. I finished a book by Ernie Deane last night called "Ozarks Country". Ernie Deane was a newspaper columnist, first for the "Arkansas Traveler" then for the Springdale (AR) Daily News. This book was a collection of various columns. It must have hit me hard, for Greg hollered this morning--asking what I'd dreamed about, and that I'd kicked him half the night. He's never done that before. The book was $7 at the Ozarks Mountaineer bookshop in Kirbyville. I would recommend it to anyone interested not only in genealogy, but the White River Valley and its history. (While I can't seem to keep genealogy separate from historical stuff, like preservation, some folks can.) This getting mad stuff is causing me to go gray. <BG> Vonda ListMom for MOTaney and MO-AR-WRV http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~moarwrv/