Hi neighbors. Do you remember the 60s? I was a teenager then and had never heard of a bistro. Fine Arts was just a needed number of credits required for high school graduation. Mostly we spent our time rebelling against one thing or another.

Maybe rebellion and youth go together as readily as middle-age and an appreciation of good coffee, literature and art.

While in another city teaching one if her dance classes my daughter picked up a newspaper that I thought you might enjoy hearing about.

It consisted mainly of ads with a couple of columns, and book reviews.

The ads were all about fine arts events in driving distance of Lancing, Iowa.

There were ads for art galleries, coffeehouses, stage productions, pottery, photography, book signings, recording studios, etc.

I think it just great that a newspaper coul! d be completely devoted to books, music, and artists. The name of the newsletter is The Tapestry magazine and you can only find it in Missouri in St. Louis. It is widely available in Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa.

It is always good to get back home to Nevada. I enjoy traveling as long as I don‚t encounter too many large cities enroute.

I have e-mail friends in New Jersey and New York City who tell me of their commute problems. I have always lived in the Mid-West and can‚t imagine having to take a bus, subway, elevated train, and still walk ten blocks to get to work every morning! My New Jersey friend said that when she has to go to New York City it costs her more than eight dollars a day just to get there. When she was completing her masters, that involved several trips each week.

Another thing that seems odd about „big city‰ living is the way NYCU is set up. There is no campus for many classes. You have to go to variou! s places in town where rental space was available for the college to provide classroom areas.

It always amazes me how so much can be different in our own country. Someday I'm going to follow that Baby Boomer dream and just take out for a cross country drive. I think we Baby Boomers are all gypsies by nature anyway. Of course watching shows like „Route 66‰ and „Then Came Bronson‰ while growing up didn‚t help.

Maybe that was the real secret to Star Trek's success, "Going where no man had gone before, seeking out new life, new civilizations…" It was our parents who had traveled Europe during the second World War. It was our younger uncles who entered the Korean dispute. That ended in our brothers and cousins carrying empty rifles while they patrolled the Korean border. As my cousin explained, "We were like those ducks at the fair, we just paraded back and forth while people shot at us."They weren't allowed bullets in their rifles as one of them might shoot back at the snipers and "cause an incident." Wonder how our relationship with Korea will evolve.

It was also our brothers and cousins that waded the rice paddies of South East Asia during our teen years.

Most young people don't remember the draft. We Baby Boomers do. There was no choice about what a young man would do after high school. He would receive a letter in the mail telling him he had been selected "by his friends and neighbors" to protect his country by serving in the military .

Young men weren't asked what career or college they planned on pursing after high school, they were asked what they would do after their military commitment was met. It was one club that all had to join. Well, not all.

Girls were not drafted. Some college students didn't have to go. There were other reasons people were not selected.

Being considered a "draft dodger" was a heinous crime to most World War II parents. Some fled to Canada to avoid serving. When the Hippie protestors started draft card burnings it was considered shocking and unpatriotic.

At least in America, when something becomes unpopular, it can be legally stopped.

As I recall there were a lot of protests while I was a teen about a lot of topics. People were protesting the war in Vietnam, the draft, civil liberties, equal rights, wearing bras, legalizing LSD and marijuana, being allowed to listen to and dance to rock n‚ roll music.

Lots of topics -- actually almost EVERY topic was considered arguable.

Until the next time friends remember; protests and rebellion aren't always bad things. If the seeds didn't protest the dark, how could we have flowers in the springtime?