PhotoShop enhanced 35mm photograph. This is Aaron...a charming, shy 4 year old, who is half Zuni and half Hopi Indian. I had the extraordinary experience of being invited to spend a week right in the ZUNI PUEBLO, New Mexico, in the home of AARON and THELMA SHESHE, elders who's family has lived in the Pueblo proper for over 800 years continually! What a blessing! The pueblo had many levels inside...each room leading either upstairs or downstairs into the next room. The floors are all dirt...but so hard packed that you'd hardly know it and clean as a whistle! Thelma got her 3 grandchildren dressed up in their traditional regalia to model for me. Aaron, the 4th grandchild was visiting and didn't have his regalia there...but was pouting with real tears, breaking my heart, because he wanted his picture taken too! So, Thelma found a white shirt and bandana and put some jewelry on him so he could model too! He turned out to be a natural and this is just one of the many gems I got from that day! The next day at 4AM Thelma wakes me up..."Patti Jo...Patti Jo...wake up...time to bake bread! Yikes...now...4 o'clock in the morning??? OK! So, I get up and she takes me outside to the famous beehive ovens and she had already been up for hours making the loaves, about 50 of them as she bakes for the entire family! They each were different...some looked like little pueblo houses, some were braided, etc. I photdocumented her cleaning the oven..then loading the wood and lighting it and then loading the unleavened loaves into the oven. Later, I got her taking the loaves out...with a big wooden spatula...placing them into a big, old washtub...browned perfectly! I must tell you that there was probably at least 20 people in that home...grandma, grandpa, married children and their spouses, and the kids....and nobody drank or smoked...and their was absolutley NO discord!!! The children were so polite and well mannered, and I could detect no discord among them. They lived in perfect harmony! So much for the "drunken Indian" theory! Words, alone, cannot describe my experience there, but I can tell you I hated to leave! The day I had to leave, the tribe was going to hold the Summer Dances and the Sheshe's invited me to stay for the ceremonies, in spite of the fact that was going to be the first year that the tribe would put the gates up for the dances and not allow any outsiders, (white man) to attend. This was a drastic measure that they were forced to take because the white people, who were allowed to attend up till that year, would not respect the Zuni tradition of no picture taking. The Zuni's themselves don't even take pictures...it is a holy ceremony. They continually caught white people with their cameras hanging near their waist, secretly taking photographs, or hiding behind a corner or bush and taking pictures. With this special invitation, I would have been able to stay, as the guest of the Sheshe family, as they knew I would not take photos. However, unfortunatly I had other obligations and had to leave. Someday I will go back and visit them again, as it has been 14 years ago! But the memory of that week stays as fresh in my heart and mind as if it happened yesterday!