LinkedIn High School Contact

Connections sometimes come out of the blue. LinkedIn is a great place for business and work colleagues as well as anyone that you may want to stay in touch with on a social media platform. Although I rarely use it, Facebook is more for friends and family whereas LinkedIn is of a less personal nature. So it was with great interest when I received a notification when a high school connection left a message. Our older sisters were really more connected than we were, but the back and forth conversation was interesting too. The goal was to reconnect the older sisters, but in the meantime share collective experiences over the last fifty years! She lives in California and I am in Virginia. She still has family in Virginia - in fact one of them owns a winery in Culpeper - where the Library of Congress has a satellite Packard campus for storing old nitrate films and all things Hollywood. Her family member also does work at a Smithsonian museum, all of which are so familiar to us having lived on Capitol Hill for thirteen years. She and her sister may visit their aunt in Virginia some time. Even though we didn’t really know each other it’s nostalgic to reminisce with people who have passed through your life. There is something to be said about social media platforms. That is one of the advantages. 

 

It's A Gift - Dr. Harriet A. Fields and W.C. Fields - An Interesting LinkedIn Connection

As we usually do, my husband and I watch and DVR Turner Classic Movies. A couple days ago, we recorded some W.C. Fields movies - It's a Gift, David Copperfield, and You Can't Cheat an Honest Man. I used to watch W.C. Fields as a child, and my parents loved him at the movies growing up. At the beginning of the movie, there was a special intro by his granddaughter Dr. Harriet A. Fields. She seemed like a really nice person, and we googled her to find out more about her. We watched It's A Gift and loved it. The next day I sent a LinkedIn invitation to Dr. Fields. I didn't think much more about it. Within a couple of hours she accepted the invitation to connect and I sent her a message saying we had a few things in common...nursing, old movies, and I work at the Library of Congress - where a lot, if not all, of W.C. Fields movies are preserved. She sent back a wonderful note about her grandfather, W.C. Fields, a link to her marvelous life and work, and said she would be speaking at the LOC's W.C. Fields Tribute on November 13 and 14 in Culpeper at the Library of Congress Packard Campus. What a treat to virtually "meet" someone who has a famous ancestor, but has also contributed so much to the nursing profession around the world. I've heard about the six degrees of separation. This is a very interesting one! We may need to take that trip to Culpeper in November to make a real live connection!

Rebel Mouse - I Need Some Help!

I'm usually pretty good about getting connected on a variety of social media applications. On my google blog I figured out how to get them all linked. On my business Facebook page - it took awhile - but I got YouTube and everything else attached. Within the last month I added Instagram and Tumblr to the mix. It's a full time job keeping these things updated. I only do it because I actually enjoy it and I like to share not only my digital art, but whatever I happen to come across daily in Washington DC. I get no help from anyone, and just work at it until I think I get it right. So when I stumbled across Rebel Mouse, it sounded like a great way to get all this junk on to one site. Since Thursday I have been trying to figure out how this thing really works because all I'm seeing now are items that are tweeted and not much else. It's not a very intuitive site for me and the frustration is building. As with all the initial set ups and transactions, an email verification is typical. But with Rebel Mouse, they keep sending frequent emails to invite friends. But I can't even get the thing to look or behave like I would like it to. I'm not inviting anyone to look at it until it at least does what it should. Maybe this is one item I will eventually dump simply because I can't figure it out. Maybe that's not such a bad idea. 

Linkedin

I had a Linkedin account when I first moved to DC from Milwaukee, but I really didn't bother with it. Then my cousin from Boston sent an invitation a couple weeks ago, and it got me thinking about all the people that I have known and worked with over the past 20-30 years. So I started searching for folks, and starting inviting folks, and started getting some really nice notes from a lot of them. What's great about living in DC is that it is not unusual for people to come this way for business or otherwise. And there is a chance I may get to see some of my friends and colleagues once again. So I'm glad I reconnected with so many of my professional friends, that may not quite fit the criteria for Facebook (whatever that is), and are definitely worth staying in touch with. And that includes a friend from Florida State that was a real surprise to hear from again, and a young man from France (the son of a friend of my husband) who stayed with us for a few weeks in Milwaukee over ten years ago. So now when I have a question that pops up at work, I can think about someone from my past that probably can answer it better than I ever could. I love technology, and I like this part of it the most.

A great way to stay in touch