Two years after Fred First began Fragments of Floyd, he describes how his sense of audience has evolved. Initially, First saw the opportunity to tap into the sense of community that blogging can create with a broad, geographically dispersed audience:
The weblog began as a personal journal, but from the beginning, there was the ultimate hope of connecting to others—to gain some sense of community, even living as isolated as we do in rural Virginia. Over the months, readers have visited Fragments from Floyd from all over the world, but just a few of them have come from my home state, fewer still from my neighborhood (“Good Neighbors”).
He marvels at how blogging has enriched his social network: “Who would have thought words from a remote and quiet place could find their way to so many homes and connect mine to so many other lives?” But he also is aware of how slow he has been to develop a local audience of readers. Though Floyd County is “technologically sophisticated as rural counties go,” the geographic statistics for First’s site have “consistently shown many more bloggers visiting Fragments from London than from all of Virginia combined,” and he’s surprised by how many local residents still seem to be unfamiliar with blogging as a genre (“Good Neighbors”).
At the same time that he begins to extend his social network beyond his geographically isolated locale, he expresses the desire to have this network include more people who live near him:
While I have not blogged as a way of trolling for work, influence or friends, I have hoped ultimately for a local purpose and local flesh-and-blood connections and involvement. The doors I want to open via contacts made through the radio, blog or newspaper are not about profit, but more about expanding our neighborhood beyond this isolated but beautiful place we live. I also am seeking new challenges and passions in this transition from what I used to do to what I will do in the future—something, I hope, that will involve writing, photography, education (outside the classroom) and community building. (“Good Neighbors”)
The emergence of a local audience for his writing comes less through blogging and more through a traditional print media—the local newspaper. In December 2004, First is asked to write a regular column in the Floyd Press, the local print newspaper, and he speculates on how this will create the possibility of running into members of his audience in his local community: “So now, I will meet my readers in the library, pass them on the street, sit at the next table at Oddfellas.” Reflecting how this will be different from his experience of audience as a blogger, he speculates:
I think there will be a different accountability, immediacy and tone, perhaps, when I get into stride with the local column. I am hoping to write myself into the column rather than have it academic, remote or as writing for its own sake. I’d like to foster exchange (via links to my email and weblog) and perhaps encourage more folks my age to read more, write more, and consider weblogs for their stories, ideas, memories and concerns about our county. (Email interview)
His instincts as a blogger make him seek to push readers from the printed page back to his blog where conversation can continue, and he hopes that connecting with reader in the paper might help those without any experience with blogging to consider trying it, both as readers and writers.
As First begins his experiment with writing for a traditional journalistic outlet, he makes it clear that he is prepared to do it by his experience as a blogger:
Your kindness and encouragement in the last two years, dear Fragments readers, gives me a certain peace in this new medium of local print. The rapport and community that has grown from our daily conversation in the weblog encourages me to trust my own best advice now: tell your story in your authentic voice; do the best job you can to make the reader hear and feel what you do; have a thick skin; and grow with the opportunity. (“Good Neighbors”)
The value of a diverse, geographically distanced audience has played a vital role in Fred’s growing confidence as writer, and now his dedication to writing about Floyd County is beginning to spill over into the local community. As he describes it, he is ready to write for a local audience now that he has spend two years writing every day about that same place for people who do not live there. This evolution in audience and exigencies demonstrates once again the fluidity of the self and the complexities of place, and it reflects how place blogging has emerged as a response to these conditions. For place bloggers, exploring the relationship between one’s audience and one’s geographic location is a necessary part of writing in the genre, a constant dialogue that will continue as long as one keeps blogging.
This chapter examines a snapshot of First’s blogging practice as way to illustrate the challenges in attempting to strike a balance between the benefits of gaining greater attention through networked interactions and the responsibility for how these interactions might be organizing readers’ attention to place. First depends on readers to motivate him to write and to foster his deeper attention to place, but he hopes that the exchange will also benefit readers by widening their experience of the world. In doing so, he constructs his audience as tourists and raises the question of what effect this might have on the reader’s attention to place and what the responsibilities of both host and visitor might be in this exchange of attention.
Ecotone bloggers recognize the benefits that can be gained from having geographically-distant audiences: they can often be much larger and more diverse, and viewing one’s place through the perspective of outsiders can have a defamiliarizing effect that can allow one to see it with fresh eyes. However, great as it may be great to have an audience of interested readers from around the world and to visit a variety of places through others’ blogs, this can also serve to attenuate and diffuse a place blogger’s attention to place. As we saw in the previous chapter, journalistic place bloggers suggest that the most efficient way to organize attention around place is to write about place and for place, to manage the infinite reach of the network by cordoning off one’s audience and creating an alignment between who one blogs for and where one lives. While there is an attractive focus to this approach, First’s experience suggests that it may be possible to create a healthy local economy of attention that still includes investments from the outside—from distant audiences—as long one as is aware of the tradeoffs involved. This chapter examines the work First does to negotiate these tradoffs as he creates space in his blogging practice for both visitors and neighbors.
Caveat Emptor. Be a Careful Tourist.
In the discussion after the Ecotone bi-weekly topic “On Coming to Write about Place,” First describes what he see as a dangers of not cultivating a sense of connection to place:
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“Now Showing” from visitnc.com
It seems to me that many see themselves merely as objects within place, places that are artificial, often ugly and energy-draining, perhaps engendering a protective blindness to the subjective state in which we see ourselves as not separate from but belonging to, changed by, part of “place.” Tourist travel can easily turn place into object, and tourists can be mere objects within it. I feel more and more than even life-residents in many places are becoming tourists there. (“Discussion June 15”)
The issue of tourism as a stance towards place had been on First’s mind since the early interactions with future Ecotone members. First and Lisa Thompson met through the listings on Rebecca’s Pocket and on May 6, 2003 they teamed up to post what they called a “duoblog” entry entitled “Now Showing: Sunset and Clouds, or Cultural Tourism in the Southern Mountains: What’s For Sale?” in which they do a close reading of an advertisement for North Carolina.
First thinks he recognizes the place represented in the ad, Bald Mountain on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee. While First earned this view by hiking up the mountain under his own power, the ad would suggest that the experience of nature is a commodity available for purchase, in the same way you would pay for a movie at the local cineplex, or more precisely, at a historic art house theater, as the 50s-style marquee suggests. But First is disappointed when he learns what he thinks is a “sacred place of natural solitude” is actually privately-held property not more than a few miles from the nearest television. Similarly, the advertisement suggests that what is on display is a pristine view of nature when it obscures the economic forces behind its appearance, that the land is being bought, sold, and developed at a rapid rate and the representation of nature is designed to sell this exchange of nature as a commodity. First objects to this attitude toward place:
But then, isn’t advertising all about seeming, illusion, and inflating expectations? I am generally resistant to the idea of being “marketed.” Call me a “reluctant tourist.” And I’m especially vigilant when it comes to buying into advertising that sells the places where things make their homes—people, plants and animals. In much of the marketing of mere mountain aesthetics, things portrayed are not as they seem, and in this perhaps lies the heart of my unrest with the Clouds and Sunset image. (“Now Showing”)
Too often, First argues, we are already predisposed to fall for the deceptive presentations of advertising because our experience of nature is so shallow, “trivialized by pith-helmeted TV Aussies mock-wrestling with ‘deadly’ reptiles.” Mobility undermines any meaningful engagement with place and when we do encounter nature we usually settle for a highly mediated version through TV and movies or a comfortably packaged one. As First puts it, “people still love ‘nature as scenery’ and come to the southern mountains in a huge wave to consume it as a rustic peep-show” (“Now Showing”).
Since our entertainment and our tourism demand little of us, First argues, the result is a deepening ignorance of place. Most people now lack the basic ecological literacy that enabled previous generations to be able to identify the plants and animals around them, much less the awareness to be able to recognize the complex environmental effects on a local place caused by distant industrial pollution. The science taught and practiced in the contemporary university is little help; instead of the holism and personal voice of the traditional naturalist, biology has been “reduced to mathematical formulae and base-pair sequences,” enabling us to study nature “without getting our boots muddy.” This ecological literacy means that tourists are willing to consume places with much less discernment, and locals are willing to sell their place at nearly any price. In First’s view, outsiders who approach other places as consumers, and insiders, locals who make a deal with the devil by selling their place with purely financial values in mind. Outsiders consume without any deep knowledge of the place. Locals sell their place in order to make ends meet and by doing so enable the destruction of the natural world that attracts consumption.
Thompson’s close reading of the scene points out the rhetorical effect the ad is meant to have on viewers. The stark wilderness scene appeals to our love of the sublime in nature, something that removes us from the banality of ordinary experience. At the same time, it uses the 50s-style marquee to appeal to our nostalgia for “a time when life was simpler, when our needs were fewer—an unspoiled time.” Nature too is unspoiled, the ad suggests, by juxtaposing the two, and suggests that the viewer can take in the spectacle of nature as one would watch a movie, albeit in a restored art-house theatre. However, as Thompson points out, the metaphors clash in that nature is no longer “unspoiled” once the billboard is planted in the middle of it (“5.6.2003”). The ad reduces nature to what is most easily sellable and consumable:
Sunsets and clouds are nature at her most showy, superficial self. Sunset and clouds can be seen from an outdoor cocktail bar. No understanding of ecosystems, trans-continental migration, or even the changing of seasons are required: only that we look up, and certainly not that we look within. (“5.6.2003”)
Both Thompson and First end their posts with a warning to tourists. Thompson reminds the reader that true understanding of the natural world must be earned through first-hand time and attention. Nature:
reveals herself over time spent on hard-scrabble walks, after hours spent lying in grasses and listening to birdsong. She reveals herself only to the careful heart, the watchful soul. And as a wise woman once said, “Better to wander alone in the wilderness than follow a map made by tourists.” (“5.6.2003”)
In First’s final line is a simple warning: “Caveat emptor. Be a careful tourist.” (“Now Showing”)
Blogging the Gold Rush
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Fred First (“Morning Missed”)
In March 2005, these reflections on the ethics of representing places take on renewed relevance when First receives an email from a Floyd County neighbor who is advertising the sale of his home, situated on the ridge just above First’s home. In a post entitled “The Real Estate,” First posts the description of the property and ends with the aside, “And once again, that commission check from ReMax would be a nice token, don’t you think? And I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just go ahead and get my real estate license and blog and work at the same time!” One commenter, Carl responds, “Yes you should…and per my earlier comment, someone (you?) should set up a group of concerned investors to drive new development in a preservation oriented direction….Let me know if you’re interested in the latter; there’s gotta be a way a CPA can be a part of that!” Another commenter, Scott Chaffin, points to the potential hazards of blurring the boundaries between blogging and selling places: “Sounds like a good plan to me, chief, except you’re gonna start filling up that valley, and then where will you be?” (Carl; Chaffin).
These cautionary sentiments give First cause to reflect in an April 3, 2005 post titled “Blogging the Gold Rush”:
Floyd County has been called “Virginia’s best kept secret.” It is a secret no longer, and some of us who blog are wondering if we should keep singing the praises of life here. Are we part of the problem, or can we be instrumental in bringing about purposeful and intentional change to the area by what we write about our lives in town and county? Is it okay to chronicle the day-to-day (which as journal-keepers we would do regardless of where we lived) even if our words and images may make others decide to travel or move here?
First observes that Floyd County has become attractive to retires and young families for its slower pace and smaller scale, and the blogs he and others in Floyd County keep have become resources for those considering a move to the area:
Potential residents or visitors search for information about our area, and come across the blogs of those of us who live here. They read generally good things about Floyd because we are generally positive in our writing. Floyd County bloggers—myself, Doug Thompson and Colleen Redman—are mostly pleased with our lives here, and say so in our blogs. Doug and I grab snatches of bucolic landscape with our cameras on our walks and drives around southwest Virginia, and are happy when readers are moved by what they see. But are we unintentionally advertizing a gold rush? (“Blogging”)
There are clearly economic and cultural benefits to the growth of tourism and relocation in rural areas like Floyd County, but First also describes the growing concern in the county with regards to the changes growth can bring. Though First admits there are “warts and defects” to where he lives, those who move do not always seem fully aware of the trade-offs involved in moving to a rural area. As a consequence, the very same people who come to Floyd to escape the city often end up bringing the city with them, once they begin to want access to the amenities they took for granted in the urbanized areas they left behind. Since providing these conveniences would require the development of shopping malls, theaters, and restaurants, the desires of newcomers can end up destroying the very qualities that drew them there in the first place.
First believes that this pattern can be averted with proper planning, but the threat is real: “It is possible to love a place to death. And other small communities have sold out to the promise of jobs and tax dollars, and the golden goose has died an ignoble death at the hands of her hopeful caretakers. And there is no bringing her back.” At the end of the post, First expresses his intentions to continue blogging has he has been, describing the pleasures of living in Floyd County for anyone interested in reading:
Floyd County blogs will laud its beauty, its uniqueness and its lifestyle as we describe our daily comings and goings. We’ll be happy to meet newcomers and visitors who read our websites looking for slices of life from the town and county. But be aware of the responsibility that falls on visitors and new residents to understand what it is that makes Floyd worth visiting. It is a charm easily lost if those who come cannot accept it, warts and all, and be patient as things change at a pace and in a way that preserves what is best about living here. (“Blogging”)
While First extends hospitality to his readers, he also places responsibility on those who might come to Floyd through his blog to be aware of the impact their visit or move might have on the place.
A lively comment discussion ensues in which readers around the country weigh in with their experiences of growth in small towns and rural areas. Many share stories of place they live or once lived having been overcome by development and changed into far different places. Several offer concrete recommendations to those moving to places like Floyd County, such as remodeling existing homes rather than building new ones and trying to by locally. Others recommend land trusts as a crucial strategy for counterbalancing the inevitable market forces that would tempt locals to subdivide and sell their land in ways that would spur destructive growth patterns.
Some like Suzy share First’s concerns but are optimistic that Floyd County can maintain its character in the face of growth:
Thanks for writing about this.
I grew up in NoVA and it would break my heart to see any of the SWVA counties—esp. Floyd—any more NoVA-fied.
Is it inevitable that as more people, and more money, come into our area from the North that sprawl, bad manners, gentrification, and general marginalization of Southern culture will follow suit? I sincerely hope not, but your essay here makes good sense, as I think folks in this region need to be very proactive about making sure the tourism and development we get is really the kind we want. I’d love to see more discussions on this, even if they get a little thorny.
Development is a scary thing, but I think that Floydians are plenty creative & resourceful enough to come up with a plan for the future that doesn’t put today’s residents on the cultural and economic defensive. (Suzy)(Suzy, 2005)
Others like fellow Ecotone blogger Patricia Perkins are blunt in their assessment of what First must do:
Dream on, dear Fred. I spent two months touring the USA the summer of 2003, looking for communities that had managed to stay attractive. They are few and far between. Unless you—and some very determined and like-minded friends—can get ON the planning commission, the voice of McDonald’s will simply be louder. They will argue for just a little place out at the outskirts…and before you know it, Floyd will be ringed, like almost every other American town, with ugliness and parking lots and fast food joints, car parts, Wal-Mart, and Motel 6. If you are hoping YOU won’t have to get involved (and I know you already are, to a certain extent), think twice. Serious, determined, committed activism is the only thing that has saved Boulder, Colorado, Eureka, Arkansas, and the one or two other places I discovered that had escaped ruin as places of beauty and grace. (“Dream”)
In her view, whatever role First’s blogging may or may not have in affecting readers, political action is the only force that will have an actual impact on keeping Floyd Country from being destroyed by growth.
The Rest of the Story
First’s fellow Floyd bloggers, David St. Lawrence and Doug Thompson, weigh in to reflect on their role as local bloggers writing about their place for people reading from a distance. St. Lawrence suggests they have a responsibility to write about the “warts” of Floyd County as a way to inform those considering coming to there:
You seem to have hit a nerve with your thoughtful post. Even more telling are the comments from those who have “been there and done that.”
Perhaps we should spend more time telling the world “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey was wont to say. Every township has its armpits and Floyd is no exception. A few photos of the creative countryside auto repair facilities that dot most back roads might deter the SUV onslaught for a while.
An article about the “White Elephant” industrial park building cum skating rink/abandoned warehouse might deter the settlers, but might pique the curiosity of an entrepreneur. (St. Lawrence)
St. Lawrence speculates that blogging about place in a way that highlights both its benefits and downsides might serve to attract those with the healthiest perspective:
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Fred First (“The Good, the Bad,\ and the Ugly”)
Perhaps that is where the bloggers will wield influence in the future. We are the media of the future and our comments are being read by more people every day. If we write to attract the people who can contribute most to the Floyd of the future, we may have a profound effect on the course of Floyd history.
Writing responsibly is always a necessity. It will not hold back the course of history, but it will give us early warning of the consequences of our actions. (St. Lawrence)
He projects forward into the future to imagine bloggers having to answer to the next generations for the role they played in destroying what was once a beautiful rural area:
In a few short years, if we continue to glorify Floyd as an idyllic retreat, we may become the “early settlers” pointing out to our grandchildren where the last trees stood, or recalling a time when there was only one traffic light in town.
Ah, the bittersweet joy of discovering paradise. (St. Lawrence)
Doug Thompson agrees that bloggers have a responsibility to tell the full story of a place, both good and bad, but he suggests that in the end it will be political action more than blogging that has the most effect on the future of Floyd County:
Yes, we must tell all the story. Studies show 60 percent of city dwellers who move to the country return to the city within five years. They find the country life too limiting and they first try to bring more city amenities to their doorstep and—failing that—return to whence they came.
We must talk about the brutal winters, the unresponsive county government, the provincial attitudes and even the Ladybugs that cover the floors and walls. Septics back up, wells run dry and the power goes out. The doctor is 45 minutes away.
But we also must do our part to preserve the things that brought us to (or back to) the county. That means a commitment of time and resources.
Unless we do, those who came to Floyd County to find a refuge will be packing and headed for another refuge in a few short years. (Thompson)
With their emphasis on representing the less picturesque aspects of Floyd, Thompson and St. Lawrence point to the influence of the pastoral tradition on how they and First portray rural life, a tradition that has a long history of lauding the benefits of life in the country over life in the city, often in a way that effaces or ignores those aspects of the scene that might not accord with this goal. They gently suggest that while this mode of representing place might come the most naturally for First in portraying Floyd, he might have to consciously work against the tradition in order to create a more well-rounded picture.
Write from the Heart
A few months later, First posts an entry titled “Blog It And They Will Come” in which he continues to wrestle with the issue of what effect his blog might be having on the health of Floyd. He summarizes the admonishments from his readers: “Fred, if you keep writing about Floyd and its charms, it won’t be long before it grows to become a place not like the one you photograph and write about.” First is at a loss to know how to know how to respond, and he confesses, “Frankly, it is a conundrum from which I don’t know how to escape.” It seems that following the original call of blogging has betrayed him:
Write from the heart. Write what you know. Write every day.” This is the discipline and mission that launched this blog three years ago. Short of moving to some seedy part of a large and very ugly metropolis, if I write what I know and describe and photograph what I see every day, then I seem doomed to save the village by destroying it. (“Blog it”)
Writers naturally represent the places they love, and though they may also speak of those fragile aspects of the place the needs to be protect, they cannot keep readers’ curiosity from being peaked or from them wanting to visit. But in the end, “the writer who cared so much and wrote so passionately and often for his special forest or unique genus of prairie grass has been the cause of the very problem he set out to prevent.” He wonders aloud to his audience if other bloggers have experience this conundrum and if so, what they have done to deal with it.
He acknowledges that for those who come looking for information on Floyd County, his blog is likely to be the first one they encounter. However, he claims that this visibility did not create the impulse to find out about Floyd. Instead, it might confirm someone’s intent to further investigate and even visit Floyd. But First insists his blog “doesn’t actively encourage businesses to relocate here or strip malls to mushroom on the streets of town—as some of my doomsaying advisors warn.” In fact, he asserts that he frequently expresses his concern about the threats to Floyd County by unplanned development and he is well aware that the place as they know it will be destroyed unless they take measures to curb the pace of growth. First admits that he “may have passively become somewhat of an ambassador for Floyd, as are other Floyd County bloggers,” but he wants to be clear that none of us is actively trying to “sell” Floyd County. At most, blogs “may indirectly provide the kind of information about living here that you don’t get from a Chamber of Commerce or Parkway brochure.”
As Floyd County bloggers, we do have a responsibility to show both sides of living in a very rural, isolated and slow-moving Appalachian county. But if we write what we know, we can hardly avoid adding Google hits for the word Floyd. Our words and images do not have advertisement at their root. They may, however, have it as their fruit. And herein lies the rub. (“Blog it”)
Blogging about place may provide a mechanism for paying attention to place and sharing one’s sense of place with other, but putting place into the network, whatever one’s intentions, provides means for it to circulate in ways that one cannot always control.
Karen gently insists in her comment that blogging about place can never be an neutral act:
Back to the basics of physics. Something observed is different from the same thing prior to observation…just observing changes the thing.
Never mind writing about it. Or advertising it. Or inviting others to come and share.
Yes, there is responsibility in what we write, but it is at our own peril if we attempt to fly in the face of the laws of physics.
And no, remarking the dew on the lily is not, not, not the same as inviting the hordes to come and pick it. (Karen)
Others argue that those who read First’s blog and might be influenced are a self-selecting bunch. As Carl puts it,
I think that those who read your blog will come for what you write about and will not be of the ruinous ridge raider variety. In fact, they could conceivably do more good than harm as they perhaps build in harmony with the land as opposed to those who come for other reasons… (“I Think”)
Similarly, Chris Corrigan testifies that his blog has in fact influenced others to move to Bowen Island, but he does not see this as a bad thing:
I can’t even tell you how many people have told me that Bowen Island Journal was the thing that made them move here. It must be a half dozen or so now. Thing is that I like them all, and they have all made excellent contributions to island life. So maybe it’s not a bad thing—if our readers are joining us, it bodes well. (“I can’t even”)
Cindy Lee comments that while First’s blog did not convince her to move to Floyd, it did provide her valuable local knowledge that informs the way she now inhabits the place:
I find your blog very informative. I planned on moving to Floyd well before I found your blog, I had all ready bought the property, but before visiting your blog I did not know about the ecology of the area. I did not know that Floyd was set on a plateau and that water was at such a premium. Walking and driving through the county water seems so abundant. I did not know that water does not flow into the county and what comes from the sky is about all there is. Because of what I have learned from your blog I am rethinking the type of septic system I plan to install. I want to be as water friendly as I can. Although my house will sit on a hill side I have no intentions of taking the top off of it so I can have a 360 degree panoramic view. People are going to move to the area you give some of us something to think about and an incentive to change as little as we can. Keep up the good writing! (Cindy Lee)
Jim takes issues with the notion of a place blogger having any responsibilities to represent his or her place in particular ways, absolving First of the guilt the guilt he might feel:
I disagree that you or anyone else has a “responsibility” to write about Floyd. Maybe you can clarify? I like the fact that you like Floyd, and that I can read your log and stay in touch with my memories of Floyd; however, the saying, “Hell is other people” is too true. My guess is that employment and wages are the main drivers of population growth and NOT blogs, so Floyd has little to fear. (Jim)
And Clarence suggests that its possible to overstate the effect that blogs have on the visibility or desirability of places: “Here’s what you really need to worry about…Should Oprah Winfrey ever decide to do a show about Floyd…talk about unwanted attention” (Clarence). He suggests that while the potential for drawing attention to Floyd is certainly there simply because its in the network, the vast nature of the web makes it unlikely that it will gain an inordinate amount of visibility.
The Desire for Place
An October 11, 2005 post titled “Blog as Beacon: Anyone?” First writes what appear to be his final thoughts on the ongoing discussion of the effect his blog might be having on Floyd. First confesses that he has been distracted from his normal blogging practice by the grind of preparing to teach his class at a nearby college and by world events that have been weighing on him. He feels like he has not been grounded in the observation of his immediate surround that has characterized much of his blogging over the years, and he thanks his readers for bearing with him through the rhythms of his writing:
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Fred First (“October Barn”)
I’m far away from the place I live now, even though it is just outside my window—far from the creeks, from the changing season, from the feel of the air and sound of morning. I am temporarily disconnected from my roots in the visual, the sensory, the details of the very here, very now. And since this blog has pretty much been all along a blog about place, it is not altogether the same voice, the same feel, or the original ‘brand’ of blog it has mostly always been. You understand: if one writes from the heart, and writes what he knows, if he writes open and honest, the patterns will change. And change back, ebb and flow, for richer or for poorer. And so it goes. Thanks all, for your tolerant sharing in this fragmented life.
He acknowledges that his need to write about place is now tied to the responsibility he feels to his audience, to the readers and commenters who have invested their attention in his blog over the years.
He reflects back on the why we began his blog and how his originary impulse was find an audience of any likeminded readers, wherever they might be:
Three plus years ago in a galaxy far, far away, I turned on a virtual beacon signal from a remote place—not quite a desert island, but in those days, I felt almost that isolated from the rest of the world here on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The signal went out every day, in the mornings, usually: Hello, anyone. If you’ll read what I write, I’ll tell you who and where I am. Where, mostly. I’m hoping to find kindred souls, and particularly those who live near me or who share some of my love of the place most of you have never heard of. It’s called Floyd, Virginia. These are fragments of daily life from this desert place in my life, this far-away beautiful place in the planet’s geography. Please acknowledge. Anyone? (“Blog as Beacon”)
Many people did respond and in this particular post his commenters are eager to reassure him that they continue to value his blogging, particularly those who live far away in urban areas and see his blog as a way to connect with the rural life that they long for. Cowtown Pattie expresses her appreciation for the effect First’s writing has on her: “We, your readers, are the ones owing the thanks. There is such a sense of peace, of calm that flows through your writings. When I need to take a break, I head to my virtual Floyd home. I hope not to be a messy houseguest. Thanks for leaving the lights on” (Cowtown Pattie). Kenju, like several others, professes to be daily reader of Fragments from Floyd “for the sense of calm and serenity and wonder you provide, along with a reverence for nature that I find inspiring” and he implores First to keep blogging: “Please don’t quit; we will bear with you when you don’t have the time” (Kenju). Kathy praises the quality of First’s writing on whatever topic he chooses, but she hopes that First will continue to write about his locale: “I do hope, however, that the ‘world just outside your window’ will get your attention every few days at least, so we can enjoy nature with you, and be refreshed” (Kathy).
Other commenters read First’s blog because it taps into their unfulfilled desires for the pastoral life he represents. For M. Lawless, First’s blog is a way to reconnect with a rural past that he longs for from their current state of urban exile:
We’re far from homes—prisoners of our livelihood. We’re from Piper’s Gap, Buffalo Ridge, Meadows of Dan, Mouth of Wilson. We’re from Stuart, Hillsville, Willis…and Floyd. We’ve been homesick for decades. Some of us will get back home when we can.
We know you’re busy, but we need a favor. Don’t stop opening that window to the world we left. Forget about the “current and dreaded events” for a moment. Take a good look, a deep breath and a good listen. Don’t write about it if you don’t have the time—you will sooner or later. We’re so tired of the collective. We need to read what’s on the mind of one gentle soul who lives in the gentle place that was our home. We’ll find your beacon.
You are VERY much appreciated. Thank you for everything. (M Lawless)
From Anne’s vantage point in Los Angeles, First’s blog is an escape from what she experiences as the stress and banality of urban life:
You are coming through loud and clear; your signal is being heard far and wide in this US of A. From way down South in LA, I read your words every night, after the busyness, the everyday mundaneness, or sometimes the frustration of a day. I read, I think, I imagine visuals to expand your photos, and just plain relish the idea of life in your quiet, serene, lushly landscaped part of Virginia.\
From a small city subdivision of cookie cutter homes, lined up like dominos on a board, I dream of living on the side of a mountain, or deep in a valley, somewhere in the western N.C. mountains, or in Virginia. You give each and every one of us many gifts from the heart…..your time, your thoughts, your view of the world outside of your window and your view of what’s happening in the grand scheme of this wide world, our planet. If you will keep on sending out the beacon, we will keep on receiving. That’s a promise. (Anne)
These responses to First’s post indicate the relevance of what Terry Gifford calls the “discourse of retreat” typical of pastoralism, which in its simplest form reflects an desire to “escape the complexities of the city” (46)(Gifford)
In a 2006 interview with Rebecca Blood, First describes how his audiences needs for writing has felt constraining as well as enabling:
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 were brash 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. (“Bloggers on Blogging”)
First quotes a comment on a February 14, 2003 post in which he urges his readers to read a speech Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia in opposition to the impeding war in Iraq:
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… (“Bloggers on Blogging”)
While the audience of geographically distant readers has sustained and encouraged First’s his attention to place, it can also be a inhibiting force insofar as the pastoral mode can demand certain political compromises in order to satisfy the desires of readers. In this dynamic, distant readers agree to allocate their attention to First under the condition he present a rural idyll that allows them to temporarily forget the realities of their actually urban or suburban settings.
Putting place into the network, then, can create flows of desire and attention that authors cannot entirely anticipate or control. In the end, First acknowledges how important his audience has been in motivating him to keep writing about place, but he resists being held responsible for their relationships with place, whether with theirs or his. His approach is one of generous hospitality: the beacon he sent out over the network has created a host of new relationships both in Floyd County and beyond, and First wants all of them to feel welcome:
Bloggers have said hello who never heard of Floyd and will never come here but feel they know this place, even the family dog, through this journal. Bloggers have come here, met me in town and had coffee or shared a meal with me, some even spent the nights here. Bloggers have found ties to families and land in Floyd they rarely see now, living across the country or the world. They check in from time to time to see that life goes on here in these gentle mountains, come to watch the seasons change. And bloggers have moved here, not because of this journal, but reinforced perhaps by the images and stories, knowing with greater certainty that this is, indeed, a place where they will fit in. There have been so many unpredictable encounters and friendships and opportunities that have come because real people have heard the ping of the daily beacon. I am here. Join me. (“Blog as Beacon”)
First is willing to concede his influence on some who have moved to Floyd, not as a direct cause but as a confirmation for impressions they already had. In the end, he asserts the position of host and distances himself from the notion of being a real estate agent he jokingly entertained earlier: “Good to ‘meet’ you all, and I appreciate your participation in the smallish community of those who know and love this part of southwest Virginia along with me” (“Blog as Beacon”).
Reasons to be Proud
In a April 20th, 2008 post “Reasons to be Proud: Our Town,” First observes from a distance of two years that the concerns voiced in this discussion thread are being addressed in part through the town’s practice of “adaptive re-use” in which older downtown buildings are renovated as an alternative to big box stores and strip malls. He is glad to report that “the old has become new—without abandoning the comfortable scale and pace of the old—is a noteworthy—and newsworthy—feature of today’s downtown Floyd. Small is beautiful. Other towns are noticing how this growing phase is shaping up…” First still harbors some fear that these very successes could end up attracting more population growth and development than they want. He wonders, “In all this make-over, can prosperity happen without becoming the Midas touch?” and he acknowledges that Floyd must continue to plan carefully to avoid the fate of other small towns that now “lay buried somewhere in the sprawl, gobbled up by the smothering suburbs created by loving a place to death.” Despite these concerns, First is cautiously optimistic:
That there is a risk of this happening in Floyd is certain. But contrary to the county seal, there are many who believe that we do not need not grow in the all-too-common big-box ways of small towns these days to prosper. But finding that balance between what we get and what we give away is necessarily at the center of all the discussions I’ve been involved with.
There is a large measure of caution here, of measuring twice before cutting once. And so far, the balancing act seems to be keeping Floyd on its feet, and only occasionally do you have to sit through more than one light change at the single traffic light in town. (“Reasons”)
First returns to this topic that began several years earlier with an update, and in doing so shows importance of the discussion that happened in his comments. Though First’s early audience mostly came from around the world and he did not write primarily for an audience of local readers, the discussion that occurred in his comments over the course of several blog posts suggest an evolution in audience was underway. In fact, it is the dialogue of voices from around the country with locals from down the road that enabled First to become more aware of the how is blogging might related to the local issues affecting Floyd County.
In the fall of 2008, much of First’s blogging looks similar to the blogging he was doing six years ago. On November 21, he marks the change of seasons by photographing the first occurrence of ice: “The margins of the creek are just beginning to crust over with ice. Some of the ponds between home and work are showing a thin glaze of ice in patches on the surface” (“Iceman”). On Nov. 25^th^, he describes a visit to farm in nearby Grayson:
Getting out of the car at the home we were visiting, I was struck by the radiant light from the two tractors waiting patiently in the monochrome barn. They seemed almost alive, animated cartoon machinery granting a splash of otherworldly color on the grayest of early winter days. (“Visiting”)
Image : Fred First (“The Iceman Cometh”; “Visiting the Neighbors”).
On other days, though, he sounds like Simon St. Laurent or Lisa Williams, as when he describes his recent attendance at a community meeting to discuss spraying near power lines along a tributary of Back Creek in western Roanoke County. On November 17, he posts the details of a meeting to take place later that week at the county administrative building, and then on Thursday after the meeting he offers to write up his notes from the digital recording he has made.
Moreover, the writing that began in his blog has spilled out into other media and settings. In April 2006, First published Slow Road Home: A Blue Ridge Book of Days, an edited and expanded collection of blog posts from his first few years of Fragments of Floyd, and a second collection is due to be published in 2009. He has also become a regular essayist on Roanoke’s NPR station, he writes a regular column, A Road Less Traveled, in the Floyd Press, and he periodically presents a photo-memoir of photographs, music, and spoken work to live audiences around the area.
While First’s place blogging began in the essayistic mode of the Ecotone group, he gradually adopts many traits of the journalistic style as he writes with increasing frequency both about his place and for those in that place. First refused to choose between either mode, however, and he provides useful examples of someone who is not afraid to use all means at his disposal to connect with place, drawing on a variety of genres, both online and print, as well as a variety of audiences, both local and distant. In First’s approach to blogging, both neighbors and visitors have place in his circle of friends, and though the complexities of network locality can often make it challenging to situate everyone comfortably in one place, he manages to make everyone feel welcome.