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Fred First
Bloggers on Blogging, May 2006
Fred First started
Fragments from Floyd,
as a private blog in
March 2002, going
public in April of that
year. After a two year
hiatus of "living fully at
home", in 2004 he
returned to part-time
work, teachingEnvironmental biology,
Anatomy, and
Physiology at Radford
University and doing
physical therapy with a
private practice clinic.
His first book, Slow
Road Home ~ a Blue Ridge Book of Days, "celebrates of a
year of intentional living immersed in the personal and
natural history of place."
Fred, 58, has a BS in General biology; a Masters of Science
with a major in vertebrate zoology and a minor in
botany—both from Auburn University in 1970 and 1973
respectively; and a Master of Science in Physical Therapy in
1989 from University of Alabama at Birmingham, his home
town. He lives in Floyd County, in the Blue Ridge Mountains
of Southwest Virginia—"a county with 14000 residents, and
only one traffic light". He and his wife Ann live on "80 rugged
acres on the headwaters of Goose Creek" with their Labrador
Retriever, Tsuga.
What is the first weblog you read?
I think it must have been Chris Pirillo's—and he was
promoting these blog things as a way for families to
collaborate when planning vacations and such. I tried this.
Nobody else in the family wanted to play.
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processing this directive]
search
bloggers on blogging2005: matt haughey | jessamyn
west | heather armstrong |
rashmi sinha | glenn reynolds |
adam greenfield
2006: david weinberger | megan
reardon | fred first
comments? questions? email me
Copyright © 1999-2006 Rebecca
Blood, All rights reserved
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“ I think this was my core
need—to listento others and tobe heard, andto make a
What about that blog appealed to you?
I saw in that blog the potential of the medium for the first time:
the fact that you could type like on a word processor or email,
but then instead of hitting save or send, you hit PUBLISH—and
created something permanent that instantaneously was
universally accessible.
Why did you start your weblog?
Complex answer. I knew that my job, and perhaps my second
career, was about to come to an end. I was being harassed into
a resignation and was angry and frustrated and needed to talk it
out, but there was no one to listen. In this way, the blog was
cathartic.
But then—and this marks what I consider the real START of the
blog—in early June I wrote a piece (Summer Lightning) about myambivalence, feeling sad and disappointed with how I had been
treated by "professional" peers but at the same time excited at
the possibilities of a deeper grounding in the where of my life. I
posted it to Fragments, and soon I got an email telling me how
powerfully that person had felt my words, and how it had
touched them and given them hope. I wanted and needed to
reach other people then, to build community, because we live in
a very physically isolated place and I was further isolated by my
newly-unemployed status. I think that this was my core need—to
listen to others and to be heard, and to make a difference, to be
a part of something.
What is your site about?
I have tried very hard
to make the daily
writing about whatever
was touching my mind
and heart at the
moment. It has been a
difficult 4 years toremain passive and
neutral about things I
hold dear, including
the physical health of
our people and of the
planet. But the blog
readership does exert
a kind of pressure by
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difference, tobe a part of something. ”
expectations that I will
stay true to my most
consistent and
authentic passions: the
often overlooked
beauty in small things,
small moments right
where we live. It is ablog devoted in large part to nurturing an awareness of wonder
in the everyday, or to see the humor or pathos in those days. I
do swing wide sometimes, but usually eventually come back to
focus on the here and the now: the pace, place and pleasures of
simple country living.
How has your site changed over the years?
Not much, appearance-wise. I drive this machine, I don't go
under the hood. I do change the banner images regularly, and
have posted well over 500 images on the site over the years. It
is a very seasonally-adjusted blog, and my moods and writing,
as well as the images, shift with what's in bloom, the weather,
and the birds I hear over the click of the keyboard.
There is a flow of change that is related to who's visiting and
commenting. Some cohorts of blog guests during a period of
time have stoked my inspiration and encouraged me to think and
write in new realms, other groups don't have this effect—I see
that looking back over the archives. For a while, the idea of living
in place was very prominent, and the Ecotone was conceived andflourished for a year. Then, as these things do, it became spam
infested and languished, and Fragments changed because of
that. It has changed, too, when (often because of the blog) I've
taken on new responsibilities in the community, professional and
otherwise.
There is a kind of gyroscopic correction that goes on when
visitors come to a blog with expectations. My blog became
"branded" in its first year as a quiet place free from discord, a
refuge of sorts when so many blogger voices of the day werebrash and strident. Should I veer from this quiet center—as
recent politics and environmental and public health issues have
demanded I do—I am scolded by readers to "not disappoint" in
the words of one commenter. And I feel compelled to change as
world events change, and at the same time, to hold firm to my
commitment to wonder, reflection and an eye to detail too often
missed when we become angry or fearful of things beyond our
control.
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“ Writing hasbecome
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think that would
make me mad.
Here's the exact quote from the commenter I mentioned, found
in my archives just the other day:
"Fred, I have enjoyed your fine articles about life in
Floyd...but you will lose me with political discussions,especially if the ideology is the same as Sen Byrd.Please don't disappoint."
Yes, I bristled. I had a little conversation in my head with this
commenter, and jotted it down:
Dear Disappointed,
My purpose in maintaining this weblog is neither tomollify your political itch or to avoid "losing" you as areader. If you find some opinions on this page are
contrary to your own, please give them carefulconsideration for the merit and truth they mightcontain, or failing that, you can maintain your rigidpoints of view and find many blogs that fit themnicely. Have a nice day.
Of course, I never sent it. But I thought it, and wrote it down,
and my blood pressure probably came down a notch.
Do you have a background in w riting?
I've always had some technical mastery over writing, and been a
lover of language. But until the blog, all my writing had beencold, objective record keeping. A long-time photographer, I
learned early on with the blog that one could take pictures with
words and I came to enjoy savoring compositions of texture and
light with the eye, then working to convey that mood and
emotion with language. In the blog readership, I suddenly had
an audience for the daily prose and prattle and this was like
being able to show a new friend all my photos hidden in albums
otherwise unseen. Writing to an image has been an unrealized
desire for years; the blog was the perfect medium for "images in
words and pixels" as I describe Fragments.
And I learned in June
of that first blogging
year that my words
had a power to effect
change and do good. It
blew me away the first
time a reader told me
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habitual,necessary andbeneficial, and Ican’t imagine
that I wouldhave persistedin it, had it notbeen for the weblog. ”
how much impact
something I'd written
had had for them,
turned their thinking
around, gave them
hope or courage. I
vowed to "write every
day, write from theheart, and write what
you know" because it
became important for
me, a novice writer, to
become a better word
photographer. Writing
has become habitual,
necessary and
beneficial, and I can't
imagine that I would
have persisted in it,
had it not been for the medium of the weblog and community of
support and sharing that it entails.
How often do you update?
Daily, unless I'm out of town, and twice or more each day when I
feel like it. Frequency and word count are definitely related to
the other things that are going on in my life, and I've written
fewer words and fewer posts per day since I started back
teaching in August of 2004.
How much traffic do you get?
Something like 200 visits, 300 page views, pretty consistent over
the past year—not a huge crowd, as blogs go. I get relatively few
google hits, don't know why. Have changed keywords, etc, but I
seem to be under the radar. See Technorati answer.
What is your blog's rank on Technorati?
My stock was once pretty high on Technorati—something like
1200 or so, and under 500 in the TLB ecosystem. Then, the site
was hacked, I totally disappeared from TLB never to return, and
have crept up to something like 11,600 now in Technorati. I'll
confess, in the past 18 months with life becoming busier than I'd
like it to be, I've been a poor reader and commenter of other
folks' blogs, and its no wonder the worth or influence of
Fragments measured in these ways has fallen. I don't measure
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its value to me in such ways, though, but sometimes get
discouraged that there isn't as much community and interaction
at Fragments as there once was.
Do you make money on your site? How?
I have not sought to profit from the blog in the past. In the past
month, I've used the blog as a front end pointing toward a wiki
for the book, and have a paypal button on that site.
Which tool do you use? Why?
I used NoteTabPro to create blog posts because it provides a
permanent record of each post I can search for links, phrases,
and topics. It allows customizable boilerplate html for inserting
images and the like. I use Movable Type because a few years
ago when I was having problems with my Blogger.com site, MT
was the way everybody serious about blogging seemed to be
going. As I said, I don't do much tweaking, and am a dependentparasite on the skills and knowledge of friends for fixes and
changes.
Has your weblog led to any other opportunities?
Wow. This could take pages, but I'll try to be concise.
Early on, at my wife's insistence in that early period when I was
thinking that writing might turn out to be a new force and outlet
in my life, I sent in a piece to the local NPR station that hosts aweekly essay every Friday. It was accepted, much to my
surprise, and I've just recorded my 16th essay. This gets a
regional audience, and has increased my confidence and visibility
as a writer in our county. In December, 2004, I was asked by
the local newspaper editor if I'd be interested in writing a
biweekly column on subjects of my choice. The Road Less
Traveled has been a regular feature since then (complete with
my mug) and has been well received. I've been asked to serve
on boards of directors in several places and offered other
community involvement, based on my writing "expertise".
And finally: it was at the end of the first year of writing that I
met a gentleman-scholar who read my work, believed in me as a
writer, and encouraged me to think about compiling my journal
writings and other things into a book. With some detours in 2004
because the teaching opportunity came along, Slow Road Home
is my recently published book that arises almost exclusively from
writing for the blog, radio or newspaper—all of this about the
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grandmotherdied, and Irealized I neverknew her
stories. I wanted my family to havesome of mine. ”
my story to myself, to
re-examine my roots,
in a sense. I found that
my kids had heard but
not remembered my
yarns and blarney
about my childhood,
the snake stories frommy college biology
years and so on. Just
before I began
blogging, my
grandmother died, and
I realized I never knew
her stories. I wanted
my family to have
some of mine, so there
was that motivation. I
reverted, too, in that
time to being someone who looked for beauty and deeper
meaning from nature, and so my blog readers became like field
trip students in a way, and the choices of subject matter were as
varied as what was blooming, nesting or crawling just outside my
window.
In the second year, with my stories told, I began to transition
into more of a photo-blog and blog about place. I had an
epiphany during this sabbatical in that, while I felt rootless, I
came to realize I had always lived in or near the southernmountains—I was Appalachian and was a son of the Mountain
South. Blog posts reflected my love of the mountains and nature,
as did the photography of that period.
When I started back teaching, my choices for posts came from
current events, environmental concerns and bits of interesting
natural history and ecology that I ran across in my preparation
for class.
So the short answer is: if it interests me, it's fair game for apost. I keep a little list of jots in my HTML editor with possible
subjects, URLs and clips for future posts, and I never get close to
depleting that list.
Did your class read your blog? Or rather, did you tell them
about your blog?
I didn't make a point to tell my classes about the blog, but a few
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“ It’s importantto find abalancebetween timespent blogging and time spentliving so that
times, I had a post up on Fragments that was related to our
classroom topic of the day, and pointed the "air projector"
toward that, and we discussed it on the blog, on the classroom
screen. I gave them the link if they were interested in clipping
the url of the topic, which some were, because it might appear
one day on a test.
A few realized it was a "publication" of mine, and was aboutcurrent and local events, photography, nature, and maybe even
about them. So some returned, as my visit meter showed, and a
few even stuck around for the long haul. I still get emails from a
couple of students—one, an aspiring writer in my biology class;
the other, a gal in my anatomy class who fell in love with our
dog and the photography; she still leaves comments on
Fragments from time to time. But mostly, I compartmentalized
the blog from the class. And with great effort, I resisted talking
very much about my frustrations trying to teach "the world's
most interesting subject" to largely indifferent freshman. (A few
of whom ultimately came to life.)
How long does it take you to w rite an entry?
That's all over the map and it depends on the source and
destination for the writing. If the post has come from my early
morning browse during cup-of-coffee #1, then I might cut and
paste a quote, add a comment and a link, and publish—done in
an eyeblink. If the piece is the core of what I think might go on
to become a radio essay or newspaper column, I start those in
Word, give them a file name, and come back to them over a fewdays.
I look at Sitemeter
stats and know the
average reader stays
in the page for less
time than it takes to
read 400 words, and if
I've written 800, then I
feel like my poor ol'momma used to feel
on Thanksgiving day,
sweating over a hot
stove for hours for her
family to devour her
hard work in a few
minutes. But like
momma, its not all
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there is a worldof experienceto writeabout. ”
about the eating;
there's joy in the
preparation. It's
important to find a
balance between time
spent blogging and
time spent living so
that there is a world of experience to write
about.
Do you have a formula for writing a winning entry?
Gee, I don't know that I've won anything yet. But then, I'm the
judge and I suppose I award the prizes. Formula? I'm not that
structured. I have the benefit of feedback from readers, and
measured by that outcome, a post "wins" when it says
something in a way that makes a person re-examine their own
way of seeing or thinking about the world. If, at the end of
reading a post, a reader has an AH! a HA! or a Ha-ha, then I've
succeeded. That happens only once in a while. Lots of base on
balls, not so many out of the park.
Do you ever write to deliberately provoke a reaction? Any
tips on how to do that?
I think especially if you can anticipate who your readership will
be (if you have fairly faithful return-reader base) you can press
hot buttons if you want. I generally (but not always) stay awayfrom saying something in such a way that I come down hard on
one side or another of an issue. When dealing with a topic that
will not be universally agreed upon, I try to voice my own
questions on both sides of the issue rather than seeming too
cock-sure of myself, to keep my sense of humor and not take
myself too seriously. I'm not a ranter, as a rule, and chose more
often to evoke thought or reflection rather than to provoke.
Are you fairly accurate in predicting which of your entries
will be w idely linked?
I honestly don't make those predictions, and especially lately,
don't get widely quoted or many trackbacks. I do know that the
number of comments is sort of inversely proportional to the word
count, complexity of the language and time I've spent
ruminating over the subject. Many of the pieces that pleased me
most in terms of personal satisfaction of saying something fairly
well have gotten zero comments—which at first used to sting a
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little, not so much any more.
If I want to boost comments and trackbacks, I can predict with
reasonable certainty that I can do this with a picture and a little
piece about the dog. I've had readers ask for "all Tsuga, all the
time." I think we have a winner: the all-dog-blog. (And let's just
have a little biology lesson here: our dog's name comes from the
genus of the eastern hemlock, a tree species that, to my greatdismay, is disappearing in my recent lifetime from the eastern
forest, victim of an imported aphid-like insect, the hemlock
woolly adelgid. End of lesson.)
How many hours a day do you spend online?
Putting on my physical therapist hat: too much, from an
ergonomic standpoint. I spend a couple of hours in the morning,
even if I'm going to work that day. The computer, because it is
integral to so much of what I do, holds a pretty tight command
over my time inside. For the past six months while getting thebook ready, I've been tied to the computer most of the time I'm
in the house, honestly. With spring full upon us and the book
completed, I'll have a more balanced life of mowing, gardening
and getting next year's firewood under cover.
I once set myself a goal of reading a book for an hour for every
hour writing; of exercising a fifteen minutes for every hour at the
computer; of reading other people's and interacting with other
blogs and bloggers for the same amount of time I futzed with my
own. I have failed utterly to do any of this, but it sounded lofty.
How much time each day do you spend on your site?
Hmmm. I generally have done what I'm going to do on
Fragments by 8:00 in the morning. I don't do very much
unstructured browsing; it can become an incredible time-sink,
and there are so many intentional destinations I want to go with
a particular question or interest. Again, I keep a list of things I
want to research—some for the blog, more just because I'm
curious.
When do you blog?
I'm most definitely a morning writer. (It's 5:20 a.m. right now.)
My day usually begins around 4 in the morning. If I'm not
working that day, I will try to stay focused until around 8:00. I
often have an early post (before 6) and a later one, toward 8. In
the first year, I often began ruminating about the next day's post
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“ I like thatbalance of blogging forfree, butearning from it
the evening before. I'd rough out a topic, struggle with it, hit a
brick wall, and go to bed. During the night, some kindly elves
would have spun my straw into golden threads (well, maybe
more like polyester) and I'd be able to breeze right through and
finish the post easily over coffee before the wife left for work.
How does your day job affect your weblog?
I used to blog a lot about my biology teaching topics in those
recent semesters when I was back in the classroom. I wrote
often about global warming and about the public health disaster
that is avian flu (starting back in November of 2004)—which
ruffled the feathers of nay-sayers who accused me of being a
sky-is-falling blogger. (Er, uh, I would point out that this bit of
sky is still falling, isn't it? But I shan't go there.) Where was I?
Right now, I'm back in a physical therapy clinic two days a week.
There are issues of confidentiality that make me keep those
conversations and personalities and stories compartmentalizedapart from the blog. Perhaps some day, I'll weave this
experience into a bit of writing for which I will not be sued. But
right now, other than usurping a considerable bit of my energy,
my day job is quite separate from my blog writing.
Would you like for your blog to be your job?
I considered this back when I didn't know what I was going to do
for a living, thinking I'd never go back to either teaching or PT
(and have since gone back to both!) But no, I wouldn't want tohave the pressure of appealing to an audience to make a buck.
I'd much rather just speak my peace, keep my tiny cadre of
reader-friends plus a few random google searchers, and keep the
blog the way it is. On the other hand, it would be nice to earn
some income from writing, which in a tiny way, I am.
I pay for my monthly
DSL from the tiny
check I get for the
Floyd Press column
every month; and I
may end up in the
black with the book.
We'll see. And in a
way, the blog feeds
into so many other
kinds of networking
and opportunity, it
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the intangiblesof community,self expressionand personal
growth. ”
“ I think it’simportant forus to test our
can't be separated
from "what I do." I like
that balance of
blogging for free, but
earning from it the
intangibles of
community, self
expression andpersonal growth.
That's a pretty good
income, I think.
How many weblogs do you follow?
Doh! I've quite fallen through the cracks in this category of late.
I have had about 50 blogs in my list, on average, and I used to
try to catch up with all of them at least once a week, never all of
them every day. Here again, I find it pulls me in so very many
directions to find a dozen threads I want to respond to, but not
really have time to do justice to an informed comment or email
to the blogger. I think other bloggers face the same issue when
they visit Fragments. We are all tending to become overwhelmed
by the sheer numbers of worthwhile blog sites that dilute our
attention to smaller and smaller stays, more shallow involvement
with the ones we visit. But I digress.
How do you find new w eblogs?
More by chance than by design, but usually within atopic-bloggers site—about birding, about place, about the
southern mountains. Since blogrolls are like attracting like, that's
a pretty good place to look for kindred blogs, if I'm feeling like I
need yet another dozen great folks to read. I've confessed I
haven't been guilty of very wide reading or adding blogs to my
list, but this is likely how it would happen.
In your reading, do you actively seek out differing points
of view? How?
Again, with my blog
more about place and
nature, opinion and
viewpoint don't form a
large portion of my
web log's topics as a
rule. I do have readers
from time to time that
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own opinionsagainst thestrongestarguments we
can find thatoppose us, andbe ready tochange ourminds if thepreponderanceof evidence isagainst us. ”
disagree with me and
send links that support
their points of view,
and if I have time, I
will usually follow
them. The matters of
global warming/climate
change and the "end of oil" come to mind.
Those are highly
important matters
about which I've voiced
an opinion, and I've
wanted to see the best
arguments on the
other side of the issue;
same with avian flu
and the "recent
unpleasantness" over
in those "I" countries.
It's not hard to find
voices on both sides of
any of this, and I think
it's important for us to
test our own opinions against the strongest arguments we can
find that oppose us, and be ready to change our minds if the
preponderance of evidence is against us. It's hard not to hold to
our cherished points of view with a white-knuckled grip, but it is
also dangerous.
Do you have any can't-miss sites?
If I have time to browse blogs, lately I'm more likely to do so
among the ones that have sprung up close by. Four years ago, I
was the only blogger in the county, one of a very few in this end
of the state. Now, I have a good half dozen blogger-friends here
in Floyd County: Doug Thompson at Blue Ridge Muse, David St.
Lawrence of Ripples, and poet Colleen Redman at
LooseLeafNotes to name a few. I often learn something aboutlocal events in their pages that effect me more immediately than
reading blogs from other far-off places. So I suppose I consider
them among my must-reads.
What steps have you taken to gather an audience?
I could tell you what steps I think should be taken, but then I'd
have to tell you I have mostly failed to take them in my recent
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blogging efforts. I've been more about sustaining a consistent
presence than growing a reader base. That may change now that
I'm not teaching (part time teaching is full time work!) and now
that I have some new experiences coming up in the process of
marketing and promoting the book.
What do you think makes a successful weblog?
I think a successful weblog will have at its helm an empassioned,
consistent and responsive person who has a lot of energy for his
or her topic and audience. Build it well, and they will come.
What is your advice for a new blogger?
Find your voice. Don't try to be all things to all people. Trust your
gut. And remember the old bromide: write every day; write from
the heart; write what you know. Write without hope, and without
despair. Enjoy discovering what you think by seeing what you
say. Count on the kindness of strangers to help; there is realcommunity out there. You'll be amazed. Return a kindness for
every one received. Explore new places, join conversations, learn
from every site you visit and make it part of yours. Persevere.
Take breaks from time to time—a blog free day, or week, and
come back fresh.
How has your writing changed since you started blogging?
Some of my writing has become more intentional and pragmatic.
I have the little newspaper column due every two weeks, sohave had to write to a deadline, which is an interesting pressure.
I have to say, as a brand spanking new writer four years ago, I
told myself that the way to gain writing muscle was to do some
"lifting" every day. And sure enough, I find that what used to
take me hours to say often comes much more quickly now. So I
don't anguish quite as much, type a little faster with my
thoughts, and have a better understanding of language and
communication pitfalls to avoid. I think I have a better
understanding of how reading on screen is different from reading
in a book, and parse my paragraphs and language a bit
differently than I did as a novice. I don't know if that's good or
bad, but it seems to be happening. I also am evolving beyond
the 700 word essay length, and hope in the future to begin
having more lengthy and complex thoughts on things, and have
some of that find its way to paper. I'm writing more and more to
places other than the blog, and that takes away from what ends
up there versus what goes into a future piece far longer than the
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average blogger dwells on Fragment's front page.
Before you began blogging, did you consider yourself a
writer? Do you now?
I would never have thought of myself at all as a writer before the
blog. I anguished terribly over calling myself a writer in those
early blogging months, though I knew that was where I wanted
to go. And I found some peace by telling myself this: "If a man
carries a gun into the woods looking for game, he is a hunter,
even if he comes back with nothing in his pouch. In the same
way, you are a writer. You go out into the world looking for your
quarry every morning. You may or may not find it or it may be
small with not much meat. But if you go into those woods, you
are a writer." So in this sense, yes, I'm a writer: one who
practices a certain way of framing the world in words as a way of
celebrating it, making sense of it, holding it up to the light.
How many hours do you spend on offline media?
Well let's see: television is easy: zero hours. We had satellite
service here for a while—the "Crappy Forty" package. I opted to
spend the money for DSL instead (yes, even here in the
hinterlands!) and we've not had TV since 2003. (In my
stay-at-home slipper and bathrobe year, I became quite a fan of
the Gunsmoke reruns, and commenced to tawkin' like Festus
Hagan. So it's probably a good thing we pulled the plug.)
Other offline media: I'd guess maybe 3 hours a week listeningactively to music and another three listening passively (while
driving, boxing books, etc); 2 reading magazines, and 2 reading
books—3 if you count the one in the Porcelain Library.
Does non-Web media contribute to your blogging? To your
other writing? How?
Radio has a good bit of influence. Our deep valley filters out all
radio stations except two: the local NPR station and their channel
for BBC. I often post my take on something I've heard there, and
most times, can put up a link to audio files on the NPR site so the
reader can go listen to what I've heard.
We get only a couple of magazines, as I suffer great guilt holding
a weekly that was recently part of the Northern Coniferous
Forest. Orion Magazine is a long-time regular read; and National
Geographic, a gift from a family member, that I cannot bring
myself to either cancel or throw away. We will eventually have to
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“ I blog tobetter connectme with me, with you, withthe me I’ll beten years downthe road, and with those whocome after. ”
put more support under the back room where staggering stacks
of yellow and black are stored, year after year after year....
Books: I used to read a lot, non-fiction mostly, as the real world
holds quite enough wonder, adventure and entertainment that I
haven't often ventured over into fiction. But quite honestly, since
I began writing—and even knowing it is true that to be a good
writer one must be a good reader—I've read much less sincestarting the blog. Part of that is because every time I sit down
with a book whose subject I'm passionate or curious about, I find
I can't read more than a page without rushing back to the
keyboard to jot a note, search for a new term, or begin a rant
triggered by the catalyst of the book. As I said earlier, I'm
looking for better balance. Wish me luck.
Why do you blog?
To which of the
mornings over the pastfour years do you
refer? Honestly, there
are a lot of answers to
that one, as if to
answer "why do you
speak?" The blog has
become, in a sense, a
kind of life process—a
natural extension of
my creative impulse,my social network, my
inner conversation and
outer expression, and
so it's hard to give a
single answer. I guess
the common
denominator answer
would be that blogging
has been a universal
tool to record, share and examine my life outside the bubble thatmy remote existence would be without it. I blog to better
connect me with me, with you, with the me I'll be ten years
down the road, and with those who come after.
How has your weblog changed your life?
At the most basic level, the change has come from the fact that
the weblog turned me toward writing as a way of "taking
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pictures." A blog post is a snapshot in words of a moment, a
thought, a scene, a still life or landscape. Blogging was a natural
companion to my long history of seeing the world through a
photographer's eye. Writing (other than technically) has changed
my life, and the blog was the medium that nurtured that
transformation in 2002. I've always been thankful for the way
my photographic eye has made me more aware of shadow and
light, color and texture and form. Now, writing/blogging hasmade me attend to (and try to capture) these same features
with words, so that even the little details of a mundane day take
on a larger life, become prominent, note-worthy. The blog is my
film.
Then there are the friends I've made, not a few of whom I have
met, some coming to Goose Creek for a front porch visit. There
are the opportunities I've had (doing the radio essays, writing for
the paper, writing the book and such) and the visibility the blog
has given this ordinary life in a beautiful place. The blog has
become résumé, business card and life story, accessible with a
mouse click. How could that not have changed my life?
With regard to blogging, what w as your most memorable
moment?
There have been long periods during which some new and
amazing thing happened because of the blog. I wish I'd been
keeping a list. Here's one spin-off that makes me grin: I left
Virginia and gave up teaching in 1987, a career ended forever, I
was sure. In the summer of 2004, a former teachingacquaintance heard one of my NPR radio essays (based on a blog
post) at just the time the biology department was looking for
someone to teach "environmental biology" at Radford University.
"Hey, Fred First is back in the area. I heard him on the radio this
week" my acquaintance told the division chairman. And so
because of the blog that lead to the essay that was broadcast on
the radio, I have, to my great astonishment, returned to
teaching—ta da!
What are three blogs you think deserve w ider recognition,and why?
Other than my own and yours, you mean? I'm going to be
unable to answer that one, because as I've said before, I'm
woefully out of touch with so many new blogs that have come
along in the past year and a half since I've been busy with other
things. I would hope someday there will be a better way to
connect well-written and conscientiously-updated blogs with a
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potential readership. And this is especially necessary for those
that don't move up in the ranks by talking about current events.
What are your hobbies?
Is blogging a hobby? I suppose in some sense it was, but has
become more or other than that now, I think. And tinkering with
the computer, generally, must be a hobby: I spend no small
amount of time under the hood, tweaking for efficiency, stability
and usability—a mildly-geeky greasemonkey. We have a large
garden. We heat almost entirely with wood that I cut from our
place or collect from windfall along the road or from friends, and
these are hobbies of necessity. Writing the book, in the end, will
probably turn out to be a hobby, as far as the IRS sees it. I think
the endeavor has to make money to be called a business.
What is the most telling thing about you?
Telling? Meaning a small but apparent feature in one's personalmakeup that points to a larger and deeper truth about who and
what they are all about?
One characteristic about me that is more or less evident on the
blog and the book is that I am readily amazed and often in awe
of nature, human and otherwise. This reflects a genuine and
life-long sense of wonder—an trait that has made me, at times, a
successful biology teacher and which sustains me as a
nature-and-place blogger and writer. And what this state of mind
tells about who I am on a deeper level is that, since I was veryyoung, I've had the haunting conviction that what we see, think,
hear, and "know" is a shadow world; that there are layers and
layers of reality and truth below the surface. Along with C.S.
Lewis and other Christian mystics, I hold the sense that the
physical world of nature is not accidentally laden with true
metaphor, nesting dolls of meaning or beauty to which we are
often blind or indifferent. Someone long ago said that, in wonder,
is the beginning of wisdom. To quote one of my favorite
authors....
We have so little time in the present and there is sovery much to take in and share. There are wonders allaround. From our everyday lives, these familiar thingsmay seem unremarkable to us. But in these preciousinstants in time, if we keep our eyes open and ourhearts ready to know it, there is nothing ordinary.From the Author's Note, Slow Road Home ~ A BlueRidge Book of Days, by Fred First
Mac or PC?
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PC, but I have Mac-envy.
Would you read your site?
Wait a minute. Are you messing with my head? Would I read my
site if I weren't me? Or would I read it if there were two me's:
one me to write it and another clueless me to stumble across it
at random, not be aware of the first me who had written it, and judge it objectively and decide to read or not read as if it were
any of a million other blogs? Would mini-me read it? Is this
another way of asking "What would you think of yourself if you
didn't know you?" I can't wrap my brain around this one,
Rebecca. You skunked me, true.
Previously: Megan Reardon
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