Friday Five: Social Media

I’ve been taking January off from a lot of my usual pursuits, but even though the month is not over, it’s time to resume them. So here’s this week’s Friday Five from RevGalBlogPals. Kathrynzj says:

“I had the joy of spending time with Songbird last weekend, someone I would have never met had it not been for the blogosphere. Now we keep in touch using a large variety of methods: blog (hers a lot, mine not so much lately), facebook, twitter, text messaging, chat and email. So far there has been no skype.
It got me to thinking of the pros and cons of these relatively new means of communication and interconnecting and so I ask you the following:”

1) What have been the benefits for you of social networking (blog, twitter, facebook, etc...)

I really hate making telephone calls. I don’t mind receiving them, just making them. So blogging, email, and Facebook have all enabled me to reach out to people without having to pick up the dreaded telephone! There are some people who aren’t really reachable by these media and I need to call them, but not many. The fact that my children are in different time zones from me also makes these other methods quite useful since none of us is awakening the other from a sound sleep! I’ve also made a lot of connections to distant cousins, etc. for genealogy purposes, via online forums of various kinds. My membership in DorothyL (an online discussion group for mystery readers, writers, publishers, booksellers, librarians – basically anyone interested in detective stories) has enriched my life and added to my library.

2) Which medium do you use the most? Or if you use them all, for what do you use each of them?

I’ve been using Facebook far too much! I’m going to need to set some limits for myself. I probably check my email a bit too often, but Sisterfilms sometimes emails me with urgent questions about commas and such, so maybe that’s an excuse. I’m not a fan of chatting or instant messaging online (and have no cell phone so no texting here). Chatting seems too disjointed to me. Tried Skype, had some success and then not so much, gave it up. I have a hard time sometimes deciding whether to email someone or send them a message on Facebook – wondering which they will see sooner? I’ve been bad about blogging partly because of perfectionism…Onkel Hankie Pants is similarly afflicted when it comes to email, feeling he needs to compose as carefully as if he were writing a letter to the Times of London.
3) If you could invent a networking site (with no limits on your imagination), what would it provide? What would it not provide?

Well

I can’t immediately think of anything else I’d want. I don’t care for all the applications and games on FB, but have managed to opt out of most so that’s OK. I’m afraid I’ll just wait to see what the 20-year-olds come up with next!
4) Who have you met that you would not have met if it were not for the 'miracle' of social networking?

Three RevGalBlogPals (in person that is—numbers more still in the virtual world, but that could change!) Many people on DorothyL and Goodreads who share my reading tastes and also help broaden them.
5) Who do you secretly pray does not one day try to 'friend/follow' you?

Someone I once knew who had a crush on me and in whom I was completely not interested – not quite a stalker but uncomfortably close. I did put my maiden name on my Facebook profile for ease of contacting people who knew me 40 years ago, so it’s possible. My excuse for not friending people is that I have my screen resolution and font size set so that I don’t usually see the stuff at the right side of the FB screen unless I look for it. (That’s also why I might neglect to wish someone a happy birthday…nothing personal!)
BONUS: What was the most random/weird/unsettling/wonderful connection you made that would not have happened if it were not for the ease of which we can find each other in the computer realm?

I can’t come up with just one. Would it be the descendant of my great-grandfather’s “missing” brother? Scattered friends from my high school in Germany, or the woman who had the same third-grade teacher I did a year earlier (also in Germany)? Or just one of the many people in my online communities who lead very different lives from mine, but with whom I’ve found surprising common ground? Of course, way back when we first got Internet connectivity, I found a distant cousin who told me about our family connection to Malaga Island, a big surprise that will continue to affect our family for some time to come (especially if Sisterfilms makes her documentary about it!) I expect new surprises daily.

Memories of Sartoriusstrasse

In Friday’s post I talked a little about our family’s sojourn on Sartoriusstrasse in Wiesbaden, Germany. Today I’m going to tell some more of what I remember; hoping that perhaps, through the magic of Google, someone else with memories of those days will be in touch.

We arrived, as I mentioned before, in late October or early November of 1955. The American, British and French occupation of West Germany had officially ended only in May of that year, and Germany was still rebuilding from the war. Probably because we had a large family of five children, we were assigned quarters in a requisitioned town house in the center of Wiesbaden, on Sartoriusstrasse. I did not realize until I looked at this map that we were only a few blocks from the main train station in Wiesbaden! In my researches, I’ve been hampered by not knowing the exact address where we lived; of course all our mail came to the APO address and was picked up by my father at work. A nearby hospital has been enlarged since we lived there, so it’s possible the building has been torn down; but I did find this photo of 29 Sartoriusstrasse, which looks very similar to what I remember. Our quarters, as best I recall, was the middle house of five. My parents later reminded me that the basement was common to all five houses, so that all the children could play there on rainy or cold days. The back yards had, I think, stone fences separating them, but that did not stop us either.

For the six months preceding our trip to Germany, my mother and we children had been living in our little house in Maine – four rooms and an attic, with an outdoor privy. I know that at one of the times we lived there,  we also got water from the neighbor’s well, but possibly we had some kind of running water, at least from a pump, by this time. In any case, living in this rather fancy house in Wiesbaden was a big difference. There were three floors, with a bathroom on each. At first, I had my own room on the third floor, but at 7 I was a little too young to appreciate that so I soon moved in with my 3-year-old sister on the second floor. In addition to a living room and dining room, we had a playroom, I think on the first floor, which must have saved my mother a few steps when we needed supervision.  The house came furnished with heavy, dark furniture and even china – Brother #1, I believe, has the slightly chipped gravy boat that we had to buy from the Army when we moved because we had chipped it. It’s white with a dark red stripe like some church dinnerware, but more delicate. My sister has a souvenir of the furniture – a tiny scar on her forehead where she slid under my parents’ bed during a chase.

Our previous homes had certainly had no more than three bedrooms or two stories, and there were still many Germans looking for work. So, for the first and only time in her life, my mother had household help. Our first maid was Magda, who was younger (well, under 40 anyway) and skinny. We children thought she was mean, too. I’m not sure if she quit or was fired, but then we got Hilda, who was stout and jolly. She taught my mother to make some German dishes, and was happy to help me with my school German although her dialect was not the Hochdeutsch we were being taught.

My father, who was a Master Sergeant at the time, was First Sergeant of A Battery, 63rd AAA Missile/Gun Battalion. (I’m not sure exactly when it changed from Gun to Missile.)  As a First Sergeant, he had some responsibilities for the men in his battery, beyond simply their work performance. I benefited from this responsibility when one of his men came to him for help – he had signed up to buy the Book of Knowledge for his infant child and couldn’t really afford the payments. My father bought this great children’s encyclopedia from him and I (and quite a few other family members) got years of enjoyment and education from it.  I remember too that we did a lot more entertaining of people from work than at any other time in my memory – extra people at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, for example. 

In the house two doors to the right of us lived the Larsens. Larsen Sr. was some kind of Naval officer (I don’t remember his rank but probably a Lt. Commander), who was most likely attached to the Rhine River Patrol. My memory is that he was actually from Norway, but I wasn’t then as knowledgeable about Scandinavian-Americans as I am now. His wife, however, was Swiss and was my Brownie leader. Their two elder daughters, Karen and Esther, were in the troop as well. There was one son, Larry (Lars or Lawrence?) and two smaller girls –- I think one was named Astrid.

Right next door to us were the Mellingers, an Air Force family. They had a lot of children – maybe as many as eight? More than five, anyway. The eldest, Yvonne, was about 14 and I think Butch, the oldest boy, was a couple of years older than I, but still young enough to join our play.

For some reason I can’t recall the name of the family who lived on the other side of us or really anything about them. Perhaps one of my siblings will remember. The last house was inhabited by the Toms family, and I think Mr. Toms was a civilian employee of one of the services. There were two older boys and a girl, Rae Liz, who was my age. She had a fantastic dollhouse. The other thing that I think I recall from the Toms household was that they put angel hair on their Christmas tree. Angel hair was, I think, made from fiberglass (ouch!) – it looked really pretty, though. (I’ve linked to a site where you can actually still buy it, which claims that the angel hair it sells is not like the rough, scratchy kind I remember. I still wouldn’t use it around pets or small children, though.)

For some reason we don’t seem to have any photographs of those years in Germany.  This seems odd to me, as we have photos and even slides from the years immediately preceding them. My hope is that photos were taken and sent home to Maine, and that perhaps there are some in an album or shoebox at the home of one of my relatives. Later this week, after a visit from SonShineIn’s inlaws, I’ll write a bit more about our time in Wiesbaden.

Friday Five: Friends

Jan, who I think is new at the Friday Five thing as she's not listed in the sidebar at RevGalBlogPals yet, came up with a terrific question for what may be her first outing:

"Ever since I found out I could be the hostess for the third Friday Five of each month, I have not been able to get the thought of friends out of my mind. Being an only child (all growed up) who moved around a lot in my lifetime, friends have always been very important to me. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: "The way to have a friend is to be a friend."

So today let's write about the different kinds of friends we have, like childhood friends, lost friends, tennis friends, work friends, and the list goes on. List 5 different types of friends you have had in your life and what they were/are like."

As a bonus, put a link to a new (to you) blogging friend and introduce us!

Well, first of all, I'm afraid I have no tennis friends, golf friends, running friends, or soccer friends. I have or have had friends who did all those things. but not with me. Second, a peripatetic life in my first 28 years and a tendency to procrastinate (oh heck, and I'm lazy too), means that thinking about different friends engenders a certain amount of guilt, you'll see why.
Here goes though.

1. Oldest Friends: These are the ones who form a group in my email address book, the ones I get together with each year (just last week! had a great time!), the friends who, in 8th grade which is a time generally associated with cliquishness and general nastiness where schoolgirls are concerned, showed none of that and took me in so that I could join a friendship that in some cases had begun before kindergarten. We've gone through a lot together.

2. Book Club Friends: These are the ones I miss the most from City of Lakes -- my small women's book club and my larger group from church, both of which I started meeting with over 20 years ago. We've had fascinating literary and spiritual discussions, lots of laughter, shared good food, gone on retreats together, introduced each other to books we might not otherwise have read, and also supported each other in illness, loss and other troubles. I guess I really need to find or form a new book club here.

3. School and College Friends: Since I went to three different high schools, I made some new friends in the two I attended after leaving the friends in #1. I'm still in touch with some of them through Facebook and because of moving back to the site of my third high school. I am glad to have had them in my life -- it would have been pretty bleak without them! I'm sad that I've lost touch with my first two college roommates, I hear from the third once a year or so, and Google has shown me that one of my flatmates has a gallery in southern Maine; and then there's Rick, the syndicated columnist in my Blogroll. But most of the people I knew in college I've lost touch with.

4. Friends I've Made through My Children: What a large and diverse group! Babysitting coop moms, playmates' mothers and fathers, fellow school volunteers, and later, even better, friends of my children who've become friends to me too (though not generally as close as they are to the original friend). Just another way my children have enriched and continue to enrich my life.

5. Internet Friends: I first started making Internet friends through genealogy. Of course, most of those turned out to be cousins of some degree! I'll always remember the guy who wrote, after we'd discovered the fourth or fifth family line where our ancestries intersected, " If this keeps up, we'll discover we were married twenty years ago." Heeheehee! Then came DorothyL, a listserv for readers, writers, publishers and sellers of mystery stories. RevGalBlogPals has immeasurably added to my list of friends, and Facebook is a way to find the missing friends and keep up on a daily basis with some of the other Internet friends. Goodreads is a website for posting book reviews, and although most of my Goodreads friends are people I know from some other category, where else would I have become a friend of a young woman from India with a Portuguese name who likes a lot of the same books I do? My grandmother was a great one for pen pals and writers' round robins (they would send their poems out and each recipient would comment) and my, she would have loved the Internet!

BONUS QUESTION: Well, I've got to introduce you to Kaye Barley, and not just because I'll be guest blogging at her place on June 1. I "met" Kaye through DorothyL, and hope to meet her in person some fine day. She lives in North Carolina with her husband Donald and their dog Harley Doodle Barley, the cutest Welsh Corgi you'd ever want to see. She is a sort of social facilitator for DorothyL -- even collects and publishes a photo page so we can see what each other look like -- and an insightful reader, plus she takes some great photographs. Go to http://meanderingsandmuses.blogspot.com to meet her.

And for an extra bonus, Carole King and James Taylor singing "You've Got a Friend" last year. Like me and my friends, they're older, they sing the song a little differently and maybe even stumble a little on the words or the chords, but it's still the same song of friendship.

Friday Five: Thanking God for You

Numbers three (right) and five (left) with me in the middle.
Number four, with Onkel Hankie Pants.
Number two, at Thanksgiving 1942.
Number one, with me. a long time ago.

Singing Owl at RevGalBlogPals quotes St. Paul and ruminates:

Phillipians 1:3 Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God.

I'm musing about giving thanks for people today, partly because Americans celebrated our annual Thanksgiving holiday yesterday (I try not to just make this holiday "turkey day" even though its main feature seems to be eating till one is nearly comatose) and partly because I read the above verse this morning. It started me thinking about individuals in my life for whom I give thanks. For this post-Thanksgiving Day Friday Five, share with us "Five People For Whom You Give Thanks to God" and maybe tell us why they are significant.

I have many, many people in my life for whom I'm thankful, so it's hard to choose just five. I'm writing a bit about two who are gone and three who are still with us.

1. Thank God for Mama. My mother has been gone for 21 years now. I took her for granted for a long time, until I grew up and learned that some other people's mothers were not as loving, supportive, and generally non-neurotic as the one I was blessed with. I am grateful that I had her as long as I did even though I wish she could still be here.

2. Thank God for Grammie.

I also had the good fortune to be blessed with a very special grandmother. She did all the traditional grandmotherly things like knitting mittens, making quilts, baking molasses cookies, frying doughnuts, and making popcorn balls at Christmas. She also read widely, wrote and sold poetry and free-lance essays and articles, knew all the birds and plants and was a keen observer of nature on the farm. She never wanted to stop learning and connecting with new people. If she were alive now, I'm sure she would have a blog and a lot of cyberfriends and would be emailing her grandchildren and great-grandchildren regularly. She has been a model and inspiration for me and her other grandchildren always.

3. Thank God for Sisterfilms.

I have three children, and they are all my favorites for different reasons. But the youngest, known on these pages as Sisterfilms, calls me almost every day and so she is a daily delight. It wasn't always easy for her being the baby sister to two such strong and gifted personalities as SonShineIn and Cordeliaknits. Now, at almost 24, she is really coming into her own. She has astonishing insights into people, theology, films, music, and current events. AND, she says she'll take care of me when I'm old, if I need her to.

4. Thank God for The CPA.

My friend Constance, known on this blog as The CPA because that's her profession, is one of several friends I've had since eighth grade. I've written before about how these girls (as we then were) took me in as a new friend at a time in life when girls tend to be clique-y and not so nice. So I can't ever really choose a "favorite" among these oldest friends -- each has her own endearing qualities, and with all of them I have our years of history. But The CPA is special partly because -- as we all agree -- she is so good. She's the one who always responds to emails, who thinks of the thoughtful thing to do for someone who needs it, shares her financial expertise when asked, and who always loads the dishwasher because she's so good at it -- and then manages to sneakily finish the rest of the cleanup. Lest you think she sounds like an impossible goody-goody, that's not the case. She's also a lot of fun to be with, and can make a snarky comment when it's called for. Conversations with her are always stimulating, whether humorous or intellectual. I wish she didn't live on the Left Coast, but then again it's fun to visit her there and she does get out this way now and then.

5. Thank God for Punster Pastor.

For twenty-five years I was privileged to have Bob, here referred to as Punster Pastor for a tendency to pulpit punning, as my minister and friend. For most of those years we met monthly over the church newsletter. He baptized two of my children and confirmed all three; he helped both me and OHP grieve the deaths of our parents. Of course, a lot of ministers do that. But how many would know that the perfect gift for someone flying to her father's funeral (four months after her mother's) would be a packet of gum for the plane and a book of Ole and Lena jokes? They were exactly what I needed. Thanks, Bob, and thank God for you.