Loose Leaf Notes

It’s been a while since my Floydian friend, Fred, wondered out loud on his web log, Fragments from Floyd, about publishing a blook. According to Fred, a blook is a “Fredism” that means “a book that has risen out of someone’s blog.” Last May he wrote this:
You start a blog, not knowing exactly where it will go or even why you feel compelled to pour your thoughts and hopes out for all to read. But you do it, and you stay faithful. Readers come, and as they do, you begin to respond to these not-quite-strangers who look from the outside at your life. You find something from the legion of ideas and visions that flood in with the first cup of morning coffee–something that gives those visitors a way to know what appears out your window when the sun comes up. Dear lord, they genuinely seem interested! And after a couple of years of this, you look behind you at the creation that has taken shape from this voice, this edifice of words, these images in words and pixels. And you wonder: could there be the kernel of something larger here? From all these fragments of what the seasons have shown me, could there be a book?
Fred, a biologist, naturalist, teacher, physical therapist, columnist, radio essayist, photographer, and blogger has been writing at Fragments for over 3 years and has been instrumental in inspiring others, including myself, to start their own blogs.
His blook is ablout to become a reality, one called: “Slow Road Home ~ a blue ridge book of days.” This is Fred’s “back of business card” description of what his book is about:
It is one part memoir and four parts descriptive non-fiction, a personal account of searching for, finding and belonging at home in the southern mountains. The slow road of the title refers to the years of moving toward the place my wife and I now call home. And the slow road is also the single lane we travel home, as it follows the headwaters of Goose Creek in Floyd County, Virginia. The subtitle, a blue ridge book of days, describes the structure of the book. It is an album of sorts, composed of word pictures, essays, stories and meditations where nature, the seasons and the senses play an important part.
For more information on “Slow Road Home,” visit “Fragments From Floyd” or go directly to Fred’s virtual one stop book shop, Goose Creek Press.
Floyd’s First Regional Blogger Meet-up Update: I guess Fred was correct when, in between the telling of his dream of becoming Lucille Ball and news of his book going public, he predicted on his blog that our first regional blogger meet-up would be “one of the – and perhaps THE – most widely live-reported events in the history of the county.” Fred, the most seasoned blogger in our group, knows bloggers. Since I posted about the event on Friday, quite a few others who attended have reported in and posted photos. Leslie of “Squirrel Spur” remembered everyone’s names better than I did, and Linda from “Goin Up Cripple Creek,” who made the 45 minute ride from Christiansburg, said this in her post: I took my knitting – thinking maybe it would be a lecture-style meeting, where one presenter handled several topics. Well, suffice it to say, I won’t take my knitting to another of these meetings! We were so busy getting to know each other and exchanging ideas, that my knitting sat forlornly under a table, totally forgotten. I wished for 8 sets of ears! Doug of Blue Ridge Muse weighed in as well with “Blog Bash.”