THE MYSTERY OF LIFE

Sorry we didn't post our blog last month, but we were dealing with a reality we all must face one day--death.  A couple of our friends made their transition and it left us reeling.

Of course every living thing on earth must face the inevitable.  That makes the time we have on earth precious.  That time is also limited, so we shouldn’t squander it on petty foolishness, like envying others and holding grudges.  Life should be fully embraced.  It should never be taken for granted, because as the saying goes, tomorrow is not promised.  The next hour, minute or second isn’t promised.  With every blink of the eye a soul is leaving this earth..

I’m no expert on what living life to its fullest might be, but I am in my eighties which makes my days on earth more limited than most.  All I can say is that in my opinion, if a person can live with purpose, goodness and grace, they must be on the right track.  I know in my life I’ve tried to love hard, serve others, and make the world a better place for the next generation.  I may not have always succeeded, but I’ve done the best I can, and that’s probably all any of us can do.

That’s all of the wisdom that I can think of on the subject of life for now.  This is Miss Fanny signing off, and glad that I’m taking my next breath.  Hope it lasts for a while.

A CHOCOLATE A DAY DOES NOT KEEP THE POUNDS AWAY

 

Hello readers.  I’m Beatrice Bell or Bea as my friends call me.  I don’t have to tell those of you who follow our Grandmothers, Incorporated adventure series that my friends and I are detectives.  I ran across something a few weeks ago that couldn’t help but challenge me to sniff out the truth.

Like many people, I wouldn’t mind losing a few pounds.  So, when I first heard that chocolate might be good for weight loss, my ears perked up.  The story was all over the news and the internet.  Happy day!  I didn’t waste my time or taste buds on cheap chocolate.  For a week I ate the good, expensive stuff.  My reasoning was that the quality of the chocolate would probably speed up my weight loss.

My detective sense started to tingle when a little known heredity gene kicked in.  My grandmother called it ‘mother wit’; you may know it as common sense.  Eat chocolate every day and lose weight faster?  Really?  There was another clue that made me suspicious.  When I put on my favorite pair of jeans I couldn’t zip them up!  I knew it was time to investigate this eat chocolate and lose    weight claim because something wasn’t right.

I was reading the Wall Street Journal (yes, I do that every once in a while) and I ran across a story about a science journalist named John Bohannan.  It seems this Bohannan, was a sort of watch dog of other scientist.  With the help of fellow colleagues he rigged a “scientific” study, wrote a paper about chocolate being a weight-loss accelerator and sent it to science journals for publication to see if anybody would challenge the study.

The next thing you know, nearly every media outlet you can name was reporting the story without checking the facts.  According to the article I read, most reporters didn’t challenge a single word of the study.  They didn’t even Google the “German Science Institute” that supposedly did the study.  If they had they would have found that it was phony.  It doesn’t exist!

I’ve managed to lose the five pounds I gained during my week-long chocolate diet.  Like I always say:  if it sounds too good to be true...” 

Thanks Wall Street Journal for pointing out the hoax, but being the crack investigator that I am, I already had it figured out.

ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER ADVENTURE

 

Hello All,

 

Hope this year will be as good to you as the ladies of Grandmothers, Incorporated think it will be for us.  Actually, I'm really not a part of the foolishness that Bea, Hattie and Connie seem to conjure up, but I'm sure there'll be a lot of mess going on when that new book in their series comes out.

 

The name of the book is Whose Knife is it Anyway?  And I've heard that it's a doozy.  It's got murder, mystery, mayhem and of course lots of laughs.  I got a sneak peek and I'll share a bit of what I saw with you.

 

It seems that in this book my daughter-in-law, Hattie, comes up with this hare-brained idea to take a bunch of feuding church ladies out in the woods on a weekend retreat.  Can you imagine?  What is a bunch of city dwelling grandmas going to do stuck in the middle of nowhere but trash talk and gossip!  Well, of course I had to go along to see this fiasco, and that's when the fun begins.

 

Come back and visit us over the next few months, and the ladies and me might give you a taste of some of the things that's likely to happen.  Until then...

 

 

IT'S BEEN A GREAT YEAR!

Hi Folks!  Season's Greetings from all of us--Bea, Hattie, Connie and Miss Fanny.  The year 2014 has been a fantastic one for our creators, L. Barnett Evans and C.V. Rhodes.

It started with the release of our latest adventure, There's Something Wrong with Miss Zelda. Then there was the play that they wrote titled, Stake Out, that featured Hattie and Miss Fanny doing their thing.  It was produced at the 2014 Indy Fringe Theatre Festival and the play turned out to be one of the top 10 grossing plays in the festival.  Not to shabby, huh?

This year Evans and Rhodes have had the privilege of being invited to speak to numerous book clubs.  They've participated in several book festivals, all the while working on the upcoming book that will feature our next adventure.  It's called, Whose Knife Is It Anyway? 

Yes, the ladies have done well by us in 2014.  Many of our accomplishments have been chronicled right here on our blog.  You never know what we'll do next, so be sure to keep reading!

We're looking forward to new adventures and new experiences in 2015.  We hope you'll join us and continue to enjoy us!

LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU

 

            Folks, I got to tell you that as sure as my name is Miss Fanny Mae Collier, it will be a long time before I go to a movie with a teenager or young adult again.  My friend’s granddaughter, Tina, had a birthday a little while ago and I offered dinner and a movie as her present.  Of course, I let her pick the movie.  She chose something called Interstellar.

          There I sat, watching Earth turn into a giant dust bunny, while the hero flies off in a spaceship to save the world.  He’s supposed to find another planet for humans to migrate to.  So this guy flies through worms--a hole full of worms -- or whatever, nearly drowns on a planet full of water, nearly freezes on another planet and jumps into a black hole just to end up...  Hell, I don’t know!  All I can say is that by this time I was too through with this movie!  I didn’t get it and the theater had the music so loud, I couldn’t hear half of what they were saying.  Not that it would have mattered. 

          Tina is a bright girl and she’s into science and space and all that.  For my money, I’d rather have enjoyable entertainment that doesn’t require a PhD to figure it out.  My advice to you blog readers is that you would be better off going to see the play that me and my nutty daughter-in-law, Hattie were in.  It’s called Stakeout and it was funny, even if I say so myself.  Plus it had some touching moments between me and Hattie.

          If the play is not being performed near you, then buy a copy of our latest adventure, Something’s Wrong with Miss Zelda.  Soon we’ll have a new book called Whose Knife is it Anyway?   Both books are delightful--again, even if I have to say so myself-- and at the end you won’t sit scratching your head and wondering what happened.

 

WE'RE STILL HERE!

Oh, oh!  My girls and I have been so busy that we let quite a few months pass without blogging about a thing!  I'm Hattie Collier and back in August Miss Fanny and I starred in a stage play called Stakeout where I showed the world how well I could track down a no good cheating man.  Well, while Stakeout was a success.  I'm sad to say that my case went belly up, but I really don't want to talk about it.  Maybe one day the play, Stakeout, will come your way and you can attend and find out what happened for yourself.

Meanwhile, Bea is still all up on her high horse about trying to get her detective license.  She wants to have it by the time Whose Knife is it Anyway? comes out.  Whose Knife is it Anyway? is the next book in the Grandmothers, Incorporated series by Evans and Rhodes.  In the book my girls and me go on a retreat with ladies from rival churches, and I don't know what Bea plans to do with a P.I. license stuck on a retreat in the back woods with a bunch of cackling hens, but that's her problem.  I'm just praying that I survive the doggone thing.  Lord knows what will happen.  I know that Evans and Rhodes will come up with something weird.

Over the next few months, our creators will be taking our stories to a couple of book fairs.  They've already bent the ears of a few book clubs about our antics.  I tell you, being an infamous--I mean famous--sleuth is time consuming.  Hope one of the girls has time to write the blog next month.  We'll see.