Kat

Love to sing, love music, love photography, love the Lord, love my family, love my friends. Does that make me a lovely person?

[Kat @songkat]

@ThrillaRilla369 Espresso (mispronounced as ex-presso)

[Kat @songkat]

@according2_taz He didn't show??!! Invictus needs to bounce him.

[Kat @songkat]

RIP Bonnie Tyler 😭

[Kat @songkat]

Snow!

[Kat @songkat]

@miles_commodore Absolutely!!

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The US Navy operates a 50,000 acre forest in Indiana whose entire job is keeping one wooden ship from 1797 afloat.

The ship is USS Constitution, still a commissioned warship with an active-duty crew. Cannonballs bounced off her in 1812 because the hull sandwiches a wall of live oak ribs between two layers of white oak planking, nearly 2 feet of solid wood so dense it barely floats. British 18-pounders hit it and dropped into the sea. A sailor yelled "her sides are made of iron" and the nickname stuck.

Here's the problem with owning a 229-year-old wooden ship: you can't buy the parts. Hull planks run up to 40 feet long and 7 inches thick, cut from single white oak trunks. A white oak takes over a century to grow that big. No lumberyard on earth stocks it.

So the Navy grows its own. Constitution Grove at Naval Support Activity Crane holds trees over 100 years old, reserved exclusively for this ship. Foresters there are managing oaks today that will become hull planking in the 2100s. The maintenance plan literally runs on tree time.

Every 20 years or so she enters dry dock and shipwrights swap out rotted timber. After two centuries of this, estimates put original 1797 wood at maybe 10 to 15 percent of the ship. The Navy keeps replacing her plank by plank because Congress mandated her preservation and because she's the only active US warship that has sunk an enemy vessel.

Every other asset in the Navy has a decommission date. This one has a tree farm.

[Kat @songkat]

@miles_commodore Play along. Someday you'll wish you had one more opportunity to hear their story for the 1000th time.

[Kat @songkat]

@Shawn_Farash I mean, it's so 2021...

[Kat @songkat]

@ThrillaRilla369 Da Doo Run Run (the remake, not the original)

[Kat @songkat]

@QLoTII Charlotte is going to be to Catherine what Anne was to HMTLQ. 🥰

[Interesting things @awkwardgoogle]

In 1942, James Cagney was told to just walk down the stairs in "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Instead, he decided to improvise a tap dance down the slick marble steps. The crew tried to stop him due to the high injury risk. He ignored them, nailed it in ONE take.

[House Republicans @HouseGOP]

REPOST if you're PROUD to be an American! 🇺🇸

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[Kat @songkat]

@sage1411 My niece is that way when the Chicago Bears play.

[Kat @songkat]

@Fascinate_Hist Chicago!

[Kat @songkat]

@LairdOfThManor Elizabeth The Great

[Kat @songkat]

@according2_taz Stunning!

[Kat @songkat]

@amazingyearT1 @SabirahLohn That green dress was stunning, and she wore it perfectly.

[Kat @songkat]

@sage1411 Why does one need PR people to help act kindly towards others?