To be or not to be (friends)

Last night I unfriended someone on Facebook. To be honest it wasn't the first time I'd done it. I unfriended my old boss when I stopped working but that was because after working for her for 5 years I didn't really want to hear from her anymore.

Last night it was different. I've done lots of work with lots of college-age students and one of the ways we stayed in contact was via facebook. The person I unfriended was one of those students. He is active in his student associated and I could have taken staying friends with him if his updates were about how much he loved his school but the majority of them were about how much he hated other schools. He was derogatory and belittling and I didn't want to read it anymore. So I unfriended him. I feel great. I had no idea it could be so empowering.

I really do like facebook. I went to college far away from home. After college I lived abroad for 2 years and then I worked with people all over the world. Facebook is a great place to stay in contact. Just this week an old friend from Ecuador sent me a message. There are a couple of friends from college that I practically cyber stalk. They're librarians, and authors, they are gentleman and gentlewomen farmers and are overall really interesting people. I love seeing their success and hearing about their lives.

Even though facebook is great and I will continue to love it I am going to start getting rid of people I don't like. You make a derogatory comment about people of different races, religions, sexual preference--unfriended! You post inappropriate pictures--unfriended!

You post interesting updates, blog updates and articles (I'm sure this is all of you)--cyberstalked.

*On an unrelated note. Guess who can wear barrettes now? Of course she's also taking everything off of every shelf she can reach but that is a barrette!



**Review of Henry's Freedom Box will be up this weekend. I'd love comments from any of you parents or librarians.