Making Online Friends Who Share Your Passions
This is not an article about finding your “tribe” so you can all sit in the same silo and grouse about the annoyances you have in common. This is an article about meeting new people who know a lot of cool stuff which they are willing to share with you.
The book I’m currently working on is getting close to completion of the first draft. While it certainly will be edited and revised, it’s not a fiction manuscript, so it won’t need as much re-writing as a novel. This is a glossary of terms and habits from the early 1900s, the sort of thing that “everybody” knew back then, but which is fast disappearing from our collective memory.
The number of books, articles and websites available for exploration is beyond overwhelming. This is an amazing time to be alive if you’re a researcher! But in addition to the vast amount of recorded knowledge, there are other people who are experts on sometimes very narrow subjects and they are so fascinating to talk to about their passions.
I’ve chatted with folks who know all about train stations from 100 years ago and folks who know the history of eyeglasses. This week, I’ve had some fun email conversations with Mary, a woman who is an expert on World War I and on the English women who served during the war, in particular.
Mary’s book, Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors, is intended to help people who are working on their own family histories, but it’s also interesting to read about how the gals both back home and at the front did their part for the war effort – as well as how under-appreciated and under-compensated these women were!
In an aside from the WWI discussion we were having, she mentioned how the difference between “curlers” and “rollers,” once vitally important to a young woman in the 1960s, is being forgotten as twenty-first century continues. I barely remember it myself since I was more influenced by “hippie” than “mod” culture and wore my hair in braids rather than in a bouffant. But I do recall wearing big plastic rollers overnight at least once. Not comfortable!
Even though we are in danger of forgetting the common things everybody took for granted 100 or even 50 years ago, today’s technology makes it remarkably easy to record and share memories before it’s too late. Tech also gives us the opportunity to meet interesting people and benefit from their passions.