O.k., this blog isn’t really after world domination… I suspect I’d have to post a lot more often, for starters, and besides, I have to get ready for the Florida Library Association conference.
But on a whim I created a Facebook page for Free Range Librarian, and then posted it to my Facebook profile, and then made myself a “fan” of the page, to break the ice (since no one ever wants to be the FIRST fan of anything). Then others began making themselves fans as well. Someone even created a page for the Fans of the Fans of Free Range Librarian.
As I browse the list of people who call themselves “fans” of this blog, I hurtle down a sweet corridor of memory. I see friends from library school, California, New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere. I see friends I’ve known forever and good folks I’ve just met. I see friends who have walked with me through some tough times and friends who I’m just getting to know.
(The demographics are fun, as well. 70% of the “fans” are under 45. Take that, Father Time!)
I realize we’re supposed to qualify the notion of “friendship” on Facebook, and I do know the difference between someone who has walked with me through thick and thin and someone I met in an elevator or know through someone else. But I just revised my Facebook profile to note that Ed Wood is one of my favorite movies, and that’s because there’s a scene I consider to be the best description of friendship I know: where Ed Wood makes a terrible movie and his friends all show up at the theater and applaud him. That’s a great description of life and the people who make it survivable.
The page/fan meme will no doubt quickly exhaust itself, part of the Facebook silliness we’ll remember someday. But I hope I don’t forget the warmth I felt when I saw old faces and new “fanning” themselves for this little blog.
Posted on this day, other years:
- My Big Fat Gay Thunderhead - 2009
- Goals for the next three weeks - 2007
- Mass Media Can't Even Get Gardening Right - 2005
- Say it Loud - 2005
4 Comments
I like your site and your writer’s voice, too!
Beth Fehlbaum, author
Courage in Patience, a story of hope for those who have endured abuse
http://courageinpatience.blogspot.com
Chapter One is online!
OK, if “under 45″ is the new “young”, then I just have to become a facebook-fan, rather than just being a fan-fan.
Ed Wood rools! My favorite line is Bunny Breckenridge auditioning the Bela Lugosi stand-in.
For me, the great thing about that movie is that everyone in it loves movies. A complete lack of skill, but the love comes through.
Wings of Desire tops my list.
A fan, but not under 45.
Ed Wood is definately one of the all-time great buddie films, if only because the buddies are so amazingly unexpected. Heroin, stretched-out angora, and even a lack of talent didn’t phase them. We should all have friends like that!
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