Fragments: A Fresh Coat of Paint
Fools Rush In
So I had some text here and saved as draft but the text was lost. Discouraging. At every step I take one increment forward, then two backwards. There remain more than a few bottlenecks, and until I get past them, I’ll
Swarms
I’m sure you are familiar with murmurations of flocking birds. I am too. But I cannot look away. At times, up to a million birds move as one. I don’t understand the physics or the biology. But obviously, the starlings
Fragments: A Fresh Coat of Paint
Same Blogger, Different Porch Stay tuned while Elderly Dog learns New Tricks, and the dust settles on Fragments–Still from Floyd by Fred First Yes, I’m aware this is quite a bit different from what surviving Fragments readers have seen here
IF Power is Out on a Three Dog Night
The wife and I are living under the jurisdiction of a new Energy Domain: new to solar panels, new to heat pumps and new to Generac propane generators. We are not so new to power outages, and wondering about “best
Space is a Crowded Place
Space satellites may soon have to be capable of parallel parking if it gets any more crowded. And it definitely WILL!
Digital Maps to Nature Literacy
TOOLS TO MEET OUR NEEDS We create tools to work for us: to dig foundations, to hoist steel girders for bridges, to record our words and thoughts for others or capture a likeness of another in a silver emulsion of
Same Blogger, Different Porch
Stay tuned while Elderly Dog learns New Tricks,
and the dust settles on Fragments–Still from Floyd
by Fred First
Yes, I’m aware this is quite a bit different from what surviving Fragments readers have seen here since 2002.
I can’t say for certain that the life of this blog is going to extend anywhere near into the future as far as it extends into the past; same thing, with even greater certainty for the blogger.
Recent intense and repeated attempts to hijack this site from numerous countries around the world have caused immense headaches for my longsuffering blog host and friend, who has finally evicted these digital thugs. Unfortunately, you’ll have to shop elsewhere for your personal plumbing dysfunctions, guys.
This is a first post to allow me to poke around Elementor–the publishing platform interface that will–if I decide to–make a much more varied and visually appealing website. I have to keep in mind that simplicity has been a big part of the charm of maintaining a blog for almost 20 years, and that nothing more than “words and pixels” are what I offer.
In case you’ve missed it, I’ve been posting over at
Earth First: Field Note from the Southern Mountains since last October. I’ll likely cross-post there concurrently with Fragments, but sometimes, only one place or the other.
I’ll be able to do more with photographs, hopefully, and with much progress up the rather steep learning curve–just now as the yard and garden will demand more and more of my increasingly limited energy.
But we’ll see. Hopefully this new platform will be the vitamins I need to risk pouring my thoughts onto a page, with pages in bottles bobbing already in countless seas. Some are actually read! Will this one be?
Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.
Fred, I think the site is wonderful. A fresh coat of paint tempts me to write online now and then, and I hope you’ll see fit to stop back here some.
Peter, great to hear from you! I have shifted most of my off the cuff (and some a bit more polished) writing to SubStack, which is low-friction and by email subscription. I have a handful of readers’ eyes from time to time, about a 50% open rate for 70 subscribers. It’s really hard, as you know, to think you are talking only to yourself, though there is merit to that in its place.
I look forward to visiting Slow Reads (congrats on your durability) and perhaps, but not for sure, Fragments can build some kind of readership, community and conversation to make it worth my morning keystrokes and synaptic firing–if it comes.