Paul E. Ester's Flogger

I am off to Japan for a week tomorrow. What do people want me to get them? HELLO KITTY vibratorÊ

I had the pleasure of being chosen for the “gate” security check. This involves someone pawing through your carry-on by hand. Someone else was patting me down from head to toe. This was after they had gone over me with a handheld metal detector. Finally I had to take off my shoes and they poke through them. Reminds me of my flight out of Tangiers in 1982.

I went to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve last weekend. It was cool to see Buffalo up close. They are shorter than cows but stockier. The preserve has a great ranch house and is really worth seeing. Everywhere we went you could see Bison.

From thier web site:In 1989, The Nature Conservancy purchased the 30,000 acre Barnard Ranch north of Pawhuska, Oklahoma as the cornerstone of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve which now spans over 37,000 acres. The Conservancy’s goal is to recreate a functioning tallgrass prairie ecosystem using fire and bison. Fire has been reintroduced to the landscape by using carefully controlled, or "prescribed" burns. Burns are conducted at different times of the year to mimicthe original seasonality of presettlement fires. Fire removes dead vegetation, controls encroaching woody vegetation, and increases the vigor and flowering of many plant species.

Grazing, by bison, was also one of the primary natural forces that shaped and sustained the presettlement tallgrass prairie. In 1993, the Conservancy reintroduced a herd of 300 bison to the prairie which will grow, in time, to a herd of 3,000 or more animals freely roaming the Preserve.