The Drive from Floyd, June 2004

 Two years ago we spent a week in Watauga County, south of Valle Crucis on Nettles Knob. On of the day trips we took up to Mabry's Mill. On the drive back we took the Parkway the whole way, stopping along the way as things caught our interest. This was one of those stops. I look forward to the return trip this year. Now that I know more of the area and it citizens, the trip will mean more.

I spent most of the day yesterday hooking up our new DSL to our home network kludge we live with. Replacing the old dial-up has been on the "to-do" list for a while and ATT finally made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I wasn't able to get online till late (after a nice long session with Chris at ATT/Yahoo High Speed Internet...Thanks Chris). Today the whole family has been pushing the limits trying to stream different media at once. So far there have only been a few dropped streams...Life is good.

As I sit here, wireless and online for the first time since we found ourselves with a home network, writing my blog and listening to WNCW's "Goin' Across The Mountain", I can almost feel the mountain breeze a blowin'. From the streaming radio though it sounds like the breeze is more of a storm in southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee and western South Carolina...

I want to thank those of you who have stopped by and left comments, the kind words of encouragement are appreciated. I am still trying to get a handle on what I feel it is I am being drawn to do on this site, so bear with me if you would.

 

Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging

Thanks to Fred for the link, great articles all. I was especially atracted to what David Weinberger had to say about community among bloggers:

David Weinberger, January 2006 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging: "For me, a community is a group of people who care about one another more than they have to. I do feel part of an ever-changing community of bloggers and readers. That's not to say that everyone who ever glanced at my blog is part of that community. But there are people I've come to know over the years either through their blog or through their comments on my blog. Some of them mean a lot to me. And this is not a binary club that you're either in or out of. It's far smudgier than that, as it should be. There are blogs I read that I feel emotionally attached to written by bloggers I don't know personally but about whom I've come to care. I'm more than a reader of them but less than a community member. It's an extension of the attachment we feel to favorite printosphere writers, but the blogging world is more intimate and less guarded."

All of the interviews on Rebecca’s site were very informative. As a recent discoverer of “place blogging”, I was particularly interested in Fred’s own insights into what and why he began and then continued Fragments.

Fred First, May 2006 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging“In the first year, a good bit of my writing came from a desire to simply tell 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 from my 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 find that like Fred’s children, I listened to the stories my own Dad had to tell as I was growing up. It was only after he died that I began to really wish I had spent more time listening so I could pass “his-story” on to my kids…It was that which really started me to researching my/our family history. That researh led eventually to my discovery of the Carolina mountains I dream about, and to Fragments From Floyd and the community of bloggers that have grown up in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I think what first attracted me to Fragments, Blue Ridge blog, No Direction Home and the rest was the photos. I have a long history with photography as a hobby and loved the images of the mountains. It was only after a few visits that the words started meaning as much as the images. Now, I find myself wanting to emulate these folks with their mountain lifestyle and a whole world sitting on their front porch for the daily conversation…thanks to all of you for allowing me to hang out and enter the conversation.