CAN WE TALK ABOUT IT? MAY 2024

We can talk about almost anything you want.... but please no political topics.

Just wanted to let everyone know that there is a new challenge on the Mystery & Suspense Extra group.

There is a Nancy Drew Mystery Convention in October in NY and I would love to go but not by myself. Maybe next time my sister will be free...

>3 genesisdiem: Nancy Drew is ageless! That was the first Mystery books that I read. My cousin was a year younger than me so she liked them also. We used to sit on my grandmother's porch and swing in her porch swing and take turns reading out latest Nancy Drew book. Hope you get to go and have a wonderful time.

Last night was really scary...not one but two huge tornados on the ground at the same time. About an hour later a third, even larger one came around following the same path as the first two. We are fine...just have a lot of limbs down, didn't even loose power, but the city of Portage (Kalamazoo), wasn't so lucky. The pictures on the news this morning looks like a bomb had been dropped in the middle of the city. Luckly no one was killed but there are literally tens of thousands without power from the Indiana/Michigan state line to about two miles from us. The only almost tragedy was that 400 people were reported trapped in a collapsed Fed-Ex building close to the Kalamazoo airport. This morning said they had all been recused and there were no major injuries. Even with all that we can consider ourselves luckier than the folks in Oklahoma, Texas & Nebraska. My heart goes out to them and the destruction they have. I'm just glad to still be here with a roof over my head, four walls still standing and my friends and neighbors safe and sound.

Oh my goodness Carol! I am also very, very glad that you are still there and safe with four walls and a roof. Weather events become so much more real when they impact us or those close to us.

I'm sure by now the power is restored, but to read about a tornado along the Indiana/Michigan area is just jaw-dropping.

>6 threadnsong: We've had a lot of strange weather for us this year. Just glad we don't live in what they call "Tornado Alley'. Even the storms in that area were "different", this year.

Freedom isn't free! To all that served and to our allies...thank you for your service. May we never forget!

I know it's actually Monday...but the thoughts remain the same!

Sam Butcher
Precious Moments Artist
1939-2024
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/sam-butcher-artist-who-created-precious-moment...
I collected several of those figurines when they were popular!

>9 Carol420: Thank you! I keep having the song "Willie McBride" going through my head, even though it's about the Battle of the Somme and thus commemorated on Armistice Day. I heard there was a ceremony this year at Arlington National Cemetery. I think it's a yearly thing, but I just happened to catch a snippet of it occurring on the radio.

>11 threadnsong:
Green Fields of France or Willie McBride - one of my favorite songs. It gives me goosebumps:)
Well how do you do young Willie McBride?
do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside
and rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun
I've been walkin' all day and I'm nearly done
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
when you joined the great fallen of 1916
Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Willie McBride was it slow and obscene?

>12 Carol420: Yes!!! That's the one. Goosebumps for sure.

This song brought me into reading/researching The Great War like nothing else ever did. We read The Price of Glory in college and at the grand ol' age of 18, I thought "Why are we reading something about war, especially one that occurred so many years ago?" Now, sadly, I understand the why from the last lines of the song:

Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh Willy McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again

>13 threadnsong: Sad...It seems humans...for being the most intelligent animal...never learns.