Facebook: my social network.

Just a few weeks ago I began to use Facebook as a means to promote my sales of baskets and vintage items. As the weeks have passed I realised that Facebook is more than a promotional site for my 0n-line venture.

First it is a means of keeping in touch with some relatives we had not had much contact with in the past. Over the last forty or so years we have kept in touch with brothers and sisters in England via the phone, snail mail, and returns to England every three years or so. We did not keep in touch in this period with nephews and nieces. Now several nephews and neices ( and spouses thereof) are regular contacts through Facebook. How else would I have regular reports on the antics of referees at Stoke City matches?

It is also a means of keeping in contact with a couple of friends from our days in 1966-8 from Montreal. The photograph above reflects a similar photograph taken in that period at the top of Mount Royal.

Facebook is also a way of learning about new friends and contacts in Ottawa, friends as neighbours as well as friends from Glen Cairn United Church. Friends who work with Adrian could also be added to this group.

Facebook also allows me to keep in touch with people I taught with at Red Lake District High School. And it is from these friends that a number of my past students at RLDHS have contacted me. My reserved English background allows me to make friends with past students if they initiate the contact.

Through this blog I have also made some Facebook friends who are basket-makers or basket lovers. And through the blog and Etsy, I have also become part of a social network of people who have interests in people with autism.

And so my social network of Facebook friends slowly grows. Its purposes have grown too so that it is much more than a means of promoting sales!

Wheelbarrow Centre Piece

I received an email today asking if I would approve the Renaissance Magazine including this picture of my Wheelbarrow Centre Piece appearing in the April edition. Of course, I approved. The Renaissance Magazine is the publication of the Retired Teachers of Ontario. Its April edition will focus on the transition to retirement. In my reply I did mention my latest adventure into the virtual world with the development of my Facebook Fan page. (JohnToftBasketry.)

I can't be that old!

I developed a Facebook Fan page for my business (JohnToftBasketry). For a week or so, I was the only fan. Now there are four in addition to me. Three of the Fans I knew. But a fourth was a puzzle. The Facebook photo showed a lovely young woman in an old fashioned hat, dress, and with a feather boa, posing in front of an upright piano with sheet music on it. Her last name, Reid, struck a cord.

In my first year of teaching in Red Lake in 1972, a young woman in one of my classes was named Maureen Beck. (Maureen will tell you that my class was the only one in her whole high school career that she was asked to leave and wait in the corridor for the teacher, me, to come and speak to her.) Maureen graduated, went on to University, and returned to teach. Somewhere along the way, she married and became Mrs Reid.

Her mother, Lois, was one of the people through the years I would go to church meetings with throughout NW Ontario. Travel to such meetings could be as long as 10 hours in length each way. Could this new Fan be the daughter of Maureen and the Grandaughter of Lois? Was I really that old?

The young lady confirmed that she was indeed Maureen's daughter, and she currently attends the University of Winnipeg. She also mentioned that her Grandmother still has a basket of mine!

My latest basket on Facebook

I began a Facebook account last week. Today I added a series of photos and captions to show, in a summary, how to get from this ....







to this. I am somewhat mystified by Facebook and its use as a marketing tool. But you can access my Facebook page and the Fan page by clicking on my smiling face.