Facebook

I have been sucked into facebook.

I still have a myspace account, but it seems to be no longer fashionable, and facebook is somehow more user friendly and immediate. Twitter is the new thing, but so far I have resisted.

I’m just having too much fun on facebook - even though I don’t fit the demographic. It’s aimed at 20 somethings, but I’m finding that it pulls in a lot of people older and even as old as I am.

[It’s kind of like my Honda Element, which was designed for young surfer dudes, but which I find easy to get in and out of if I throw my right leg into the cabin and then hop up. And it’s totally washable, not that I keep a clean car. The dogs jump into the back where the surfboard was intended to go, and we zoom over to the Indiana Dunes and they run. There’s still sand left in the car from last fall. If you park it on a hill you can hose it out because the floor mats are all rubber - or vinyl or whatever. Digression finished.]

The great thing about facebook is I can find people through people. I can check out my friends’ friends and now I have about a gazillion friends of my own. I know I’m goofy about it. One of the things I did was ask every Bill Moser listed to be my friend. Since late yesterday, there are four of us in the Bill Moser Rocks Club. As I said, I’m goofy as hell.

On the other hand, I do have serious moments. I keep in touch with a lot of people who were in the MFA-Creative Writing program at Goddard College, Plainfield, VT, with me or whom I have met at writers’conferences. And I have been able to catch up with a lot of former students and a lot of Daniel’s friends. Daniel’s friends are particularly important to me because they scattered all over the country - and abroad - but they help keep him alive.

And my former students are a real treat. As a teacher I saw results in the classroom, but they were frequently minor. Now, eight years after leaving the chalkboard, I can see that a lot of those people (the oldest are pushing 60!) are leading productive, fulfilled lives. I don’t take credit for the “results,” but I’d like to feel I had a tiny part in making their lives a little better, for helping them learn, if nothing else, how to think a little. Or introducing them to authors they can read all their lives like Steinbeck. Right, Karl? Karl and I are considering a joint writing project. That’s amazing because we hadn’t been in contact for probably 20 years. Cool, huh?

I also love the question that hits me every time I open my page: What are you doing now? I enjoy reading my friends’ comments, like Barbara’s - the poet laureate of a Baltimore Radio station who says she is “the bread and the knife, but not the sound of rain on the roof.” Or Vic, who freely admits he is “part of the problem not part of the solution.”

Even Ann, who could usually pass for a luddite, has joined facebook and seems to enjoy the contacts she has with her friends.

Facebook has sucked me in, but there are worse things I could be addicted to.

By the way, one of Daniel’s friends, my facebook friend, has several videos posted on youtube. I recommend them highly as stylish and thoughtful. Check them out at this link. They are in a series and this is number one.

As always I invite you to comment.