Testing. As per recent usual.
I continue to struggle with the devil on my left shoulder that keeps insisting that I must be more productive of shared thoughts and conversation-starters and the one on my right that tells me I have become irrelevant and off in an eddy of society that no longer has anything to contribute to public dialogue.
So I’m putting this in a bottle and casting it into the sea of oblivion and hope, to see on what shores it might land.
Let me see if I can find an image to add, just for visual interest. There is a lot happening (mostly frustrations) in the cosmic world from our top of the hill and in the darkness. Perhaps more about that at some point.
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.
Always happy to visit you, Fred!
Hardly irrelevant… I wish my son (a 14 YO budding zoologist with a love for snakes, frogs, lizards and pretty much all critters) could sit and visit with you. We love your books and your way with words.
Just stumbled in from Google, searching for the local/regional “Blogroll” that Doug Thompson used to keep on Blue Ridge Muse before picking a new WordPress theme that pulled in some repetitious ad blocks. Glad to see a few rarely visited old friends in your right margin… Thank you!
Trying to get myself to cut down on the Facebook habit and do more writing in my own spaces, too… and update the old-homepage that used to link more reliably to what I was up to. (http://stepno.com — neglected for several years, and a mess even then)
Hi bob. I just wrote a somewhat lengthy reply hear, but clicked out to your site without saving the reply. Meh. Looks like we are both trying to regain lost ground and exercise our writing muscles and find readers to share with. I am doing some piddling with words via Substack but have hopes of resurrecting Fragments. See you on the other side.