A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.....

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"Funny thing happened on the way to forum............"

Someone who had nothing better to do and wanted attention (and can write very nice fiction I might add) wrote a story to the forum. But alas it was not true...well, some thought so anyway. Suddenly all those nice, kind folks who are so wonderfully helpful and talk up the peace and quiet and helpfulness of country living suddenly turned into a pack of wolves that where even worst than the person who wrote the post! Go figure!

I take my part of the blame too. I was among those wolves mostly because I was disappointed and that disappointment made me angry that someone would pull at the good folks here's heart strings just for a laugh.

But I have to say that I think it all started with Ken. I think it may have all fallen by the wayside if Ken had not made his post in the initial thread. By Ken making that post it gave credibility to the fact that the ol' Gladys & Walt were not for real (something that most of us may not have figure out...thus no controversy). I think that is what started the whole thing now it is all out of hand. Gez, I hope I don't get on Ken's "hit list" for that! Ken, please don't misunderstand...I know you have a hard job and doing the best you can.

My point is.... we are all so helpful and friendly. Then someone says or does something we disagree about and we all turn into the same thing I though we left the cities for! I though country living/homesteading was about being ourselves, to have the freedom to be an orange in a bunch apples, to be have ability to think for ourselves and be good citizens and live in peace and harmony with nature. (darn, wish we had sound so I could play America the Beautiful in the background..LOL).

Anyway, we all seem to want others to value our opinion but we don't want to value someone else's opinion if it is differant from our own. I don't get it anymore. Holy shomley, someone can't even post a nice story anymore (true or not) without a bombardment of nasty posts. Ken, why not just delete the whole bunch of them and we all start fresh??

Like I say I take responsibility here too, but I have had to re-think my attitude. What if something really bad does happen in this world and we all need to depend on each other to make it through that time? Heck, if we can't even get along on a forum.....looks to me like we could be doomed!

-- Karen (db0421@yahoo.com), July 14, 2001

Answers

Delete, naaah. That would start the whole censorship thing again. Besides, I largely think it is much ado about nothing. Did some over react? In all probability.

Is the original thread factual or not. I flat out don't know. When I read it, it did strike me as too good to be true and some things didn't add up. When I was notified of the time of posting, I felt it necessary to comment it perhaps should be taken with a grain of salt.

Some have said they know it not to be factual based on what is on other off-shoot forums. I don't go there, so don't know.

As part of the site administrators function Dave and I can see the ISP (commonly called a cookie) of the PC from which a thread or reply to it is posted. Thus far it has been unique. I can verify it did not come from Sharon's home PC.

The one universal truth - this too will pass.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), July 14, 2001.


Aman.

-- Sandra Nelson (Magin@starband.net), July 14, 2001.

Please don't blame Ken, he is just doing his job as forum moderator, a thanksless, unpaid position, but someone has to do it!

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), July 14, 2001.

I read that post with great interest and didn't find anything that was impossible to believe. (And I don't consider myself at all gullible.) I think all you critics are way too skeptical. Four mile driveway for a ten acre piece? Why not? Say the ten acres is four miles from the county road and the "driveway" is a shared private road that runs through other private parcels? My mother was raised on a "farm" that consisted of only a few acres, yet her parents raised all their own food, going to the store only for staples such as flour, sugar and spices. Her mother cooked on a wood stove until her death in the mid sixties. For all the talk about tolerance, this bunch is one of the most intolerant I've seen. So what if the post was fake? If nothing else it was creatively composed, inspirational, harmless, and a fun story. Get a life!

-- Skip Walton (sundaycreek@gnrac.net), July 14, 2001.

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