It seems to me that if you TRULY became good friends with someone on line, you would have exchanged at least phone numbers... I was part of an eBay chat room some years ago, and many folks became friends with one person or another, so that someone always had a way to contact one of us should we "disappear" without warning...we also had our spouses post for us should something happen and we wound up in the hospital etc... This list is not as much of a tight knit group as that group was, and just by it's nature the same is not possible...but if you become close to someone, you should ask to exchange phone numbers...for those "what if" situations. I have noticed people on this list keep things very close to the chest, as opposed to other types of "chat" atmospheres. If you make friends with someone and exchange emails off list of a personal nature, then you should consider exchanging contact info...I know in the group I was in on eBay many folks were "elderly" and we lost folks quite often to cancer, heart attacks etc...but due to the network we set up, we always knew what was going on with who should they become ill or something. It sounds like a few of you have lost track of someone (speaking of which I have not seen Kathy around in quite a long while) and if you have not exchanged phone numbers or snail mail addresses, there is not much you can do at this point. If you know their last name, try pipl.com to try to search for them. Amazing the amount of info on that website. I was amazed how much info I found on myself there when I looked...even though all my phone numbers are unlisted, there they were for all the world to see. I hope that person turns up alive and well, and just had/has something going on that prevented them from posting. Perhaps an illness or death in the family has kept them away, or maybe even something as simple as tight finances preventing them from having computer access... A lot of folks are having to cut back on things these days--between rising prices and dwindling incomes a lot of folks in the country are having difficulty right now. So--If you have a special buddy you want to stay in touch with, by all means, exchange phone numbers off list... Joyce In a message dated 11/12/2011 11:34:26 A.M. US Mountain Standard Tim, [email protected] writes: <<Suppose you became genie friends with an older, perhaps even sickly person online, and heard from that person regularly. Then suddenly, no responses >> Barb, Hopefully if something happened to that person, someone from the family would write to let everyone know what happened. Let's hope and pray it is nothing serious, and they may soon be back on line. This is a good reminder for all of us to leave detailed instructions for family or a friend to contact all the genealogy lists, friends on line, etc. in case it is needed. Betty Noonan ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message