A couple of months ago I was stunned to learn about how powerful the internet can be. I received an email from an editor of Reed Magazine asking me if I would object to their writing a short bio about me as a former student and a short synopsis of Becoming Alice, since I was considered a Reedite. I couldn’t figure out how they could have known this. Apparently, they have spiders that search the internet for this kind of information and they had gone inside my memoir and learned that I had attended Reed. Inside my book! Unbelievable!
Of course I was delighted to have them post these short pieces in their magazine. I didn’t think I was a Reedite, since I wasn’t an alumni. That did not seem to matter to them. I eventually got a copy of Reed Magazine and was most pleased with their entries.
Fast forward a couple of months and another thing happened that stunned me a second time. I received an message in Facebook from the son of one of the people I wrote about in my book. He had read about Becoming Alice in Reed Magazine, bought the book, and wondered if one of the characters was his own father. Yes, he was! He then went on to find me on Facebook. We exchanged several communications that took us back to our earliest childhood experiences as refugees in Portland, Oregon. It was a wonderful reunion of two people who had so much in common.
Which brings me to the power of Facebook. I have been on that site for quite a long time and always thought it to be most useful to my kids and grand kids who use it not only to find old friends, but to share all their current social happenings and pictures with the their friends in one easy post. I did not have much use for that although I enjoyed seeing what was going on in their lives.
Then I get an email from Facebook telling me that three people had gone to visit my Page. My Page? I had not done one thing on my page about Becoming Alice since the day I created it. I thought it to be too forward to ask all my acquaintances to become my fans. Now that others are looking in on me on my Page, perhaps I better go over there and welcome them and perhaps let them know what is going on in my life. Apparently posting where I’ll be speaking this spring on the Appearnaces page of my website will not be enough. I better run right over to Facebook and tell those three people … and perhaps some others … what is happening in my life.
