Fred First, May, 2006 __ Rebecca Blood_ Bloggers on Blogging

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First, May, 2006 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging http://www.rebeccablood.net/bloggerson/fred

0 5/20/2006

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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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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




0 5/20/2006

“ 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




0 5/20/2006

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.




0 5/20/2006

“ 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




0 5/20/2006

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




0 5/20/2006

“ 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




20 5/20/2006

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




20 5/20/2006

“ 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




20 5/20/2006

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




20 5/20/2006

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




20 5/20/2006

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




20 5/20/2006

“ 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




20 5/20/2006

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




20 5/20/2006

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?




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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Fred First, May, 2006 __ Rebecca Blood_ Bloggers on Blogging

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