Past in the Present, or Virtues of "Googling"

Given that my own mom, even in her (so far) limited internet surfing experiences, found ample traces of me on-line by doing a name search for me (not this blog, not yet, anyways), I shouldn't be surprised at the connections that this medium engenders.

On the whole, I've seen these as really pleasant connections. Folks from elementary school, junior high, high school, and college have found me (and, I them) on friendster, facebook, and myspace. (Hopefully the trend will continue and the connections will increase because as I said in my original blog posting when I started this blog almost a year ago, I've lost contact with too many good people already.)

One recent update I wanted to share is about Felicia Luna Lemus. Felicia and I finished our undergraduate degree at the University of California, Irvine. I haven't seen her since graduation, but we've ran across each other in cyberspace before (she was doing a search for Good Vibrations and came across a link to them that I had on a webpage), I've seen an erotica short story of hers in On Our Backs, and I was ecstatic to run across her first novel, Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties years ago while randomly browsing at a nearby bookstore. Then I googled her and found her webpage.

(I wasn't surprised to see her published--Felicia is wicked smart, poetic, and artistic, and I'm sure she's only gotten better with age! She's the kind of smart that other people (me included) are often intimidated by because our own insecurities rise to the surface, though she's nothing but kind, welcoming, and sincere.)

In any case, an essay of hers has just been recently published as part of the collection, A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing edited by T Cooper and Adam Mansbach (ISBN: 1-933354-02-X) and she's currently scheduled for a number of readings and other similar events in conjunction with publicity for the book. These will be readings with other authors including T Cooper, Adam Mansbach, Kate Bornstein, Amy Bloom, Paul LaFarge, David Rees, Darin Strauss, Alexander Chee, Benjamin Weissman, Neal Pollack, Ron Kovic, and Sarah Schulman, with dates ranging from August to October in New York, California, Washington, Massachusetts, and Oregon. Definitely events to check out!

Best of all, she's scheduled to be in Baltimore, MD in the Fall (Friday & Saturday, October 6 & 7, 2006, Charm City Kitty Club, 3134 Eastern Avenue, Doors/bar open @ 7 pm, Show starts @ 8 pm (both nights), with: T Cooper, Dynasty Handbag, Pamela Means, and others), so I may just yet get to meet up with her face-to-face.