Deborah Stephenson:  

First thing... This website is driving me crazy with all the daily email notifications that people have signed my guestbook or sent messages, THEN refusing to let me read them unless I pay. I know it isn't much money, and I probably should just go ahead and do it, but its sort of the principle of the thing at this point. People shouldn't be forced to pay to see what their friends are saying to them! (Voluntary contributions I could live with and would support, but this feels like blackmail, not email!) They are making me irritated so I am determined to get around them. If you want to talk to me, write to jsds77 at centurytel dot net (you will need to put in the correct symbols, of course). Now for the whole bio thing... I'm married - 2nd time - the first one was too early, (I was only 18!!!)and didn't last very long, though it was worth it for the two beautiful boys I got out of the deal! They will be 34 and 32 in September - which sure makes me feel OLD! As for my "history"... I didn't stick around Dade City for long after graduation. Left for Spain that same year and lived in Madrid for 3 years. (My first son was born there.) After that I just never managed to come back. I spent the next 5 years between Illinois, Hawaii and Oklahoma. Got my AA (Liberal Arts) in Belleville, IL then moved to Waimea, Oahu (Hawaii) for 18 months (where I studied Environmental Science at Uof H and managed to finally get the divorce I had been wanting for several years at that time. Came back to the mainland to stay with my parents for a bit until I found a place to live and got a job. (They had moved to Tulsa, OK by that time, so that is where my boys and I ended up for about 5 years. I started working as a zookeeper at the Tulsa Zoo - working with primates (great job!) and met my current husband, James there. He was also a zookeeper (Assistant Curator of Aquariums, though he had been out there since he began volunteering at 14, so had worked with all the animals by then). He quit the zoo to pursue sculpting (something he had always wanted to do and is so very good at), which made me feel rather lonely, so I only worked there for about 2 years before deciding I needed to do something else as well. I moved to Arkansas in 1988 and went back to school at the University of AR, Fayetteville for my BA in Anthropology. James, meanwhile, decided he could as easily sculpt in Fayetteville as Tulsa, so followed me there. Worked for a few years as an archaeologist (bio-archaeology is my specialty) until James and I decided that 8 years of living together was long enough to be sure we wanted to tie the knot, so we got married. At that point, I began pursuing art myself (something I had fought against for years because it was what my parents always wanted me to do - they are both artists as well). It actually kind of naturally evolved since I had been molding and casting bones and fossils for the various academic departments for a couple of years prior to making the decision to pursue art as a career. Besides, I figured life as a starving artist couldn't be any worse than life as an underpaid anthroplogist. (Not the best career choice if you like to make money!) In 1992, we were offered a job at Chase Studio in a little out of the way place called Cedarcreek, MO. At that time, they were the premier makers of natural history exhibits for museums, so we really jumped at the chance. We were not really happy about pulling up stakes and moving - David, my eldest, had just started college (he was only 16 because he had skipped a couple of years school when his teachers decided they couldn't "teach him anything more than he already knew") and we didn't like leaving him there despite it being only 2 hours away. The youngest, Jamie, was just starting his first year of high school, so wasn't thrilled either. But... we needed the job and eventually we all decided we could work it out. We went down every weekend and picked David up to come home, but after a year, he decided it was too lonely down there by himself and transferred to SMU (my parents had moved again - to Springfield this time - so he lived with them while going to university). Things were t...Expand for more