Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The news for polar bears is bleak -- polar bears could disappear entirely from Alaska within 50 short years due to a drastic decline in Arctic sea ice.

But Big Oil and their allies in Congress are willing to sell out our vanishing polar bears for a few barrels of oil. Well, I'm doing something to protect Arctic wildlife and our polar bear's last stand -- and I hope you will, too.

It's easy to get involved -- Just take action online at the website below:
http://action.defenders.org/arcticwilderness

Polar bears and other Arctic wildlife are facing a double-barreled threat from Congress and the Bush/Cheney Administration.

President Bush is calling for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling in his budget. And Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have introduced legislation to link drilling plans to gas prices -- despite federal estimates that such drilling would do next to nothing to reduce gas prices.

Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would, however, threaten the most important land-based habitat that America's vanishing polar bears have left.

Please urge your Senators to reject the latest Arctic Refuge drilling plans and permanently safeguard this special place by designating portions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as federally protected wilderness -- take action online now at:
http://action.defenders.org/arcticwilderness

The Balmoral Beach Collection

Well we FINALLY had our first event at the gallery this past Saturday!!! We had an art showing for Gerald Hutchings. Gerald brought his stuff by one day just to see what I thought about it and see if we would be interested in having a show. I knew right away that I didn’t care what Joe thought...I wanted to have a show!! Just the few pieces he brought that first day were awesome!! I LOVED them! Gerald & Laura (his wife) had been to Australia to visit her daughter and while they were there Gerald took extreme close-ups of the rocks along the Balmoral Beach, which was 15 minutes from their house. He brought 42 or 43 pieces and we had an artist reception for him from 4:00-8:00 on June 7th. It was a lot of fun! And I didn't get to stressed getting ready for the event other than the AC fiasco. We were getting our AC installed and the AC people knew about the event and that it had to be done by Friday. So they are going along just fine...I'm just fine...no stress..................but then the ac guy comes and tells me...."well we are ready for electricity". I just kind of looked at him and was like...."okay.....do it...." "Well our quote didn't include the electrical work....." Okay...no big deal, I'll give Doug a call and he will come get it in and installed and running for us in no time right.... WRONG!!! Turns out the AC guys installed AC units there are bigger than our breaker boxes. (Yeah....figure that one out!!) So I'm told Thursday afternoon that there is no way there will be AC on Saturday. So of course I freak out call Joe pissed off and just generally in a bad mood...as I'm sure you can imagine. Anyways....we set up a lot of fans and left the small window unit in the back of the building running and it works just fine. No one really said anything about the temperature and those who did know said it didn't seem that bad in here, so I felt better :) But other than that the week went fine and the event was a success! We haven’t sold any of his pieces yet, but you never sale anything the first night...people think about it then come back later, so I’m waiting for them. And I've got one picked out for the loft!! Judy took pictures during the reception so I'll get those posted up here later.So our first big show went off great and I'm already looking forward to our next one...hint hint Brian ;)