It's funny that so many people are struggling for the right to be married in the eyes of the state -- to me the most chilling aspect of marriage was being legally bound to another person.  The contractual elements are the only things I see as differentiating state-sanctioned marriage from saying "We're married!" or being married in a church without the state license.  It's just another horrid way in which lack of universal healthcare warps society, since I think people frequently get married for medical insurance.  Healthcare should be universal and spousal retirement benefits should be applied to any person the retiree chooses.  And the state should get its nose out of domestic arrangements, perhaps. 
 
This email from JF got mired in Google's spam box, for some reason, so I didn't see it until yesterday...
 
"For the past week, you've been on my mind.  Hope it's because positive vibes are coming my way and you are happy, healthy and having a great summer.
 
Playing catch-up would take hours (wish you lived nearby) but in essence I am doing well and though I've had my challenges these past 6 months (a 3 1/2 mo. remodel which included all new windows throughout the house!  another movie in the making!  I was impaled on a tree limb ( ala Freida Kahlo, though it was my thigh, deep in the heart of the Pecos Wilderness)...a little surgery and I'm fine!  A is back living with us and looking for work!  Went to New Zealand and Australia...did I tell you that?...do you want the written journal accounts!  Anyway, I will be spending my 55th birthday at the Santa Fe Opera listening to Beatrice and Benedict (wish I'd appreciated opera back when we could have attended in the Northwest together) and celebrating my 35th wedding anniversary in Italy!  No complaints, though it is a busy time and often I feel I'm running to keep up.
 
When you get a chance, let me know what you are doing.  We used high definition cameras this year in the competition...loaned to us by Sony...pretty incredible.  I am desirable as a script director because I work for as little as $100 a day.  If I didn't have a life, I'd work in the industry full-time.  Just can't get the writing going these days, but who knows?  maybe in the future.
 
Know you are being creative, because it's in you to be so."
 
How cool!  Back in the olden days JF was the writing consultant and I was the art consultant at Wa He Lut.  She moved to New Mexico years ago, and I visited once.  What a beautiful place!  I fell in love with a village contained within a fold in the ground, and immensely enjoyed El Rancho de las Golondrinas.  That museum was a ranch along the Santa Fe trail, and the buildings have been restored to illustrate various periods.  Anyway, we keep in touch just a little -- that little having been sabotaged by a spam filter.  Damnable spam.