Loose Leaf Notes

(Or at least get a face lift.) When my local webhost server told me he could no longer afford to host Loose Leaf and was planning to shut down his operation, I seriously thought about not blogging anymore. Being on an out-of-date Moveable Type publishing platform with a blog the size of Texas, I knew my options were limited.

I played out the death. Four ½ years of work down the tubes. Like a sand castle washed away. I could almost envision not blogging – even though my blog has become like an extension of myself and it suits who I am and what I do. But I couldn’t envision losing the record, the hours of research, the stories I’ve written about others: artists, musicians, actors, poets, farmers, ceremonalists, and more. Some websites, like Tour de Floyd and Floyd’s Blue Mountain School link to stories I’ve written about them here, (which would vanish with the tug of a plug).

For more than four years I’ve been documenting my Asheville potter son Josh's career as an artist, everything from his wild clay excavation of a tobacco farmer’s field and salvaging an old house on his property in Marshall Country – to his Building Community hand made brick art installations, the construction of The 3 tiered Community Temple, and the Carolina Kiln Build 3 week immersion workshop he recently hosted.

The history of Floyd’s monthly Spoken Word is all here. So is my photo journal of Floydfest through the years, my collages, travelogues, political commentaries, posts about my baby grandson Bryce, and Scrabble playing antics at the Café del Sol. If you google “Good Food for Good People,” the story I wrote about Tenley Weaver and Dennis Dove comes up. Tenley and Dennis are some of the front runners in Floyd’s local food movement. They run Green’s Garage, work a Community Supported Agriculture farm, and a retail/wholesale distribution center for mostly organic seasonal food – all with little presence on the web.

My writings on losing a loved one still touches others. I regularly get heartfelt comments from grief stricken people who find their way to my posts by way of search engines. My 2005 posts on Paragon Park, the amusement park in the town I grew up in that was torn down in the 80’s, continue to draw readers who are trying to track down what happened to the old roller coaster or are just wanting to share some sweet nostalgia.

Carrying Loose Leaf around and carrying on with it is going to cost me money. After giving my writing away or writing for below cost for many years, the last thing I want is to pay for blogging. But it will cost to have it moved, to keep it intact, to do what I don’t have a clue how to. I’ll probably have to try hosting ads. I’ll probably be closed down for a couple of days. And if that happens, just remember what the Terminator said … I’ll be back.

Posted by Colleen at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

My very first blog entry appeared online on March 12, 2005. In honor of that I’m posting a collection of excerpts on blogging from entries written over the past four years.

When something exciting happens and my husband Joe hears me say, “Now that’s something to write home about!” he knows it means I’m going to blog about it.

Blogging brings out my nutty professor side and appeals to the record keeper in me. I consider my blog to be my writer’s petrie dish, my lab where new work is developed and sometimes launched from.

My blog is the driving force behind my writing. It’s the place where everything starts, the day to day marriage between my love of the written word and my love of record keeping. If my published writing was a theatre film, my blog would be the DVD, with special features, links to follow, and posted outtakes.

Since blogs have become popular, there’s been an ongoing public dialogue about their purpose. For the most part, I see them as a modern twist in the ancient art of storytelling. Once an entirely oral tradition, storytelling today is done in a variety of ways. Storytelling venues keep changing, but the reasons for telling stories remain the same. They’re told to preserve culture, to instill knowledge and values, to inform, entertain and socialize. Human beings are a story telling species. We are known by our stories, and our stories are what remain once we are gone.

The hardest part of Guerilla Blogging is finding your cursor when the daylight casts a glare on your computer screen. You’ll need to learn how to balance your lap top while riding a bike, turn your laptop carrying case into a makeshift mouse pad, and be ready to pick up and move at a moment’s notice when the wireless signal gets low. There will likely be gnats and other bugs to contend with and discomfort from sitting on the ground. And don’t even try guerilla blogging if you can’t get used to being stared at by people walking or riding by. Some will stop and ask what you’re doing. Be prepared to explain what blogging is. Some people still don’t know.

A blog is to a writer is what a wood shop is to a woodworker or what a studio is to an artist.

I may speak English, but I think in Bloggish – that ongoing internal conversation that when put down on paper amounts to writing. My Bloggish comes in blocks of thought, too short to be a commentary or even an essay, but just the right size for …a post.

Blogging is an act of self-sufficiency that isn't dependent on editors and publishers. Not only is it an immediate forum where you can develop your writing skills, I also believe that when you share your creative output, creativity grows larger in you.

I consider my blog to be a time capsule of my recent life, which I will print out and bind in a collection for my descendants.

With blogging, the small press just got smaller. My own blog is a one-man-band writer’s reality show. Not only do I get to write what I want, but I have some diverse and witty readers (many of whom are also writers) that inspire me and sometimes leave comments!

Sometimes I wish the word “blog” didn’t sound so much like “blob” and remind me of the 1958 movie (The Blob) staring Steve McQueen where something falls from outer space and gets stuck on his arm and then grows and grows until it covers his body. It’s good for blogs to grow – more readers and posts everyday – right? It’s not going to take over my life – right?

As a writer, my blog gives me the opportunity to break down my body of work into digestible bite size pieces. About a week’s worth of posts will fit on one page at any given time. I think of them like a 7 course meal. I like to have a variety of short and long entries highlighted with a photo or two, a quote here, a link there, and a poem for those who have room for dessert. Sometimes a post is meant as an appetizer to whet one’s palette for a future main course, and often the entries (knowingly or not) are loosely related or compliment each other in some way. After preparing and serving up my own offerings, I frequently go to someone else’s site to see what they’ve been cooking up.

And lastly, my favorite: I can’t help wondering if I had been jogging instead of blogging these past four years how fit I might be now.

Post note: To read an essay I wrote on blogging that aired on WVTF a few years ago and was also published in the Hull Times, click HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

AKA: Computers aren’t the only things with hard drives that crash.

My blog is the driving force behind my writing. It’s the place where everything starts, the day to day marriage between my love of the written word and my love of record keeping. If my published writing was a theatre film, my blog would be the DVD, with special features, links to follow, and posted outtakes.

But sometimes I drive myself too hard, juggling all the different aspects of my writing: blog entries, freelanced stories for the Floyd Press, poetry, an occasional Roanoke Times commentary. I’ve recently started contributing a once a week blog post to the online version of New River Voice, a new publication out of Radford. I’ve also been involved in preliminary talks on a new Floyd publication and have signed up to do a first story. In the last few months people have begun to ask me to cover events or have given me leads on stories. I want to collage and frame my small poems, learn desktop publishing, and put some poetry chapbooks together. But my excitement at the endless supply of subject matter I want to explore doesn’t match my physical ability to do so.

Blogging takes the most time. One would think it would be the first thing to drop in looking for ways to slow down. But the informal writing I do here might just be the most personally satisfying. Some of my blogging is actually unwinding, and although my blog doesn’t generate income, it has consistently led to (modest trickles of) income. It’s given me visibility and has provided me with a writing discipline that builds momentum. The learning I’ve experienced and the connections I’ve made with others through blogging these past couple of years have been priceless.

Last week I saw a segment of the Oprah show about a woman who lost 500 pounds. When asked what prompted her to finally lose the weight, she spoke about writing online on message boards, how people enjoyed her wit, how they accepted her and didn’t care how she looked. Her experience interacting with others on the internet pulled her out of herself and made her feel more worthy. I understood what she meant and was touched by it. But I also thought of the many people who wouldn’t understand because they don’t know that relationships formed online can be real and meaningful.

I’m prone to exhaustion and it comes over me easier and more often than it does for most others. Sometimes I’m forced to work from my bed. While my body lies flat, my mind floats in and out of activity and frequently new ideas come. Reaching out, I fumble through the mess of papers spread out on the bed and feel around for my notepad. I write and rest. Rest and write. If I start to feel sorry for myself when my energy sputters or stalls, I think about Laura Hillenbrand, the author with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome who wrote the bestselling book Seabiscuit entirely from her bed. Or I think about my widely published poet and blogger friend, Pris, who also has CFS and whose personality and creativity shine through in spite of it.

A friend recently asked me what my goals as a writer are. My most recent line about my writing of late is that it’s like being in a self-study master’s degree program, one designed to give me experience and shape me into a better writer. But why even want to write better? I hadn’t thought much about what my writing might be leading to. I didn’t have much of an immediate response for my friend, but when I thought about it the next day, the answer came easily.

My current writing goals are these: It has to be fun; I prefer to be paid; I like to show people in their best light and cover stories that are inspiring.

Posted by Colleen at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

I took some time off from my blogging schedule to have lunch with a friend who has a new blog so that we could talk about blogging. Listening to the radio on the drive to the appointed restaurant, I caught the The Diane Rehm Show, which was all about blogging. Her guest was Scott Gant, a media scholar, lawyer, and author of “We’re all Journalists Now.” Blogging was likened to the early printing press and the pamphlet distributing days of Thomas Paine and others.

A third friend joined us at the India Garden lunch table. We briefly tried to talk her into a blog. Stat counters, url addresses, The Bold and the Beautiful soap opera, and the war in Iraq were all discussed. I forgot to pull out my camera to snap a blog relevant scene, and I resisted the urge to complain too loudly that dahl was not included in the buffet.

Meanwhile, upon my return home, I faced the computer screen again and got back to work on my two-hundred word blog bio for the writer's room write-up on the Hotel Floyd webpage and three-hundred spam comments were waiting to be sent to the junk folder.

Posted by Colleen at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Suzi Gablik is an art critic, artist, and teacher with an interesting sidekick named Virgil. A reptilian muse with an impressive IQ, Virgil wonders if President Bush googles himself. He isn’t too shy to ask Ivana Trump about her bra buying habits or to say “doo doo” in public when necessary.

Virgil is currently busy being Suzi’s new blog assistant. He loves the internet and has recently been quoted as saying, “Personally I just love swimming in cyberwater. But there are likely to be folks out there who'll think I'm not real either, right?"

I’m always interested in what Suzi has to say, especially since reading her last book, “Living the Magical Life,” part “oracular adventure” based in Blacksburg and part memoir. A blog is a great idea. Virgil is a bonus. I was hooked on his antics since Suzi first introduced him and I learned that he can twirl his arms like a windmill, “a reflex that gets triggered by emotional excitement and sometimes has revolutionary implications,” she explained.

Post Note: Virgil Speaks and is speaking now HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Last week when I was in town hanging flyers for the April Spoken Word Night, I saw an interesting scene. Two workers were laying a new sidewalk in between the old Rake’s mansion property and the new Village Green site and leading to the Hotel Floyd construction. It looked like an elaborate production. I was curious about how a sidewalk was built, so I pulled my car into the Village Green parking lot to get a better look.

Over the last two years of blogging, I feel like I’ve been gradually earning the right to indulge my natural curiosity. As a blogger, I don’t go out without my camera. It’s sort of like having a press pass, and recently I’ve been getting more comfortable with taking photos and not worrying what people think (and believe me, with some of the things I snap photos of, I get more than a few stares).

When I’m out, I’m not consciously looking for news. I’m drawn to what is interesting or out of place, whether it’s a bright red cup in the middle of a grassy field or a newly constructed sidewalk where there wasn’t one the day before.

The first few stories I sold to the Floyd Press last year were initially interest driven blog entries. The first one was about two travelers sitting in front of the town courthouse with a sign that read “Want to Talk Politics?” In that case, a fellow blogger called me to suggest that it might make a good story. The second piece I wrote was a review of a play about the life of a historical Appalachian midwife. As I was writing it, I knew it would adapt well to local news, and after that piece I paid more attention to blog entries that might have that kind of application.

I didn’t fill out a job application to write for the Floyd Press. I just approached the editor and told her that since retiring from full-time foster care I was writing a lot and would like to float stories by her for possible publication from time to time. It was a natural progression to what I was already doing. She looked over that first piece as I spoke and nodded her head. “It’s good … conversational,” she said.

Bloggers can be an extra pair of eyes and ears for news reporters, covering stories that might otherwise go unnoticed. All of the seasoned bloggers in our small town of Floyd interface with the local paper in one way or another. Fred at Fragments from Floyd does a regular column, A Road Less Traveled; Doug at the Blue Ridge Muse (the real journalist among us) covers local sports and county government; and some of David’s Ripples blog posts have also appeared in the Press.

In a recent editorial, the Floyd Press editor thanked local citizens for contributing news to the paper. She was also interested in using the photo I took of the new sidewalk being built (which appeared in the Press on April 5th)

Post note: Blogs are for Storytellers HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

My writing is an extension of and a way to organize my thinking. I'm more of a thinker than a writer. For me, writing is the natural final product that results from thinking. I think! ~ Comment recently made by Colleen to Kim (a thinking blogger).

I’d like to thank Blue Mountain Mama – who said my writing helps keep her in touch with her inner bohemian free-spirit – Ruth, and Carmen for naming me as a recipient of the “Thinking Blogger Award.”

The award, which has been traversing the blogsphere and originated HERE, comes with a challenge. Those who have been awarded are asked to name five others to pass the “thinking blogger” torch on to.

I read other people’s blogs for many reasons. I enjoy good quality writing, appreciate humor, and love it when the two are mixed. Sometimes I’m drawn to a blog to get a glimpse into a lifestyle unlike my own, or because I’m attracted to the blogger’s personality. I also read to learn, to be inspired, and to look at pretty pictures. Here are the five blogs I’ve chosen for the Thinking Blogger award because they make me think:

Simply Wait: Patry bakes pies for the muse and hosts the 3rd day book club. I first came to her blog through the lure of her waitress poetry. She got my attention when she revealed in her first comment on Loose Leaf that she remembered Paragon Park, the now defunct amusement park in the small Massachusetts beach town I grew up in. When I discovered that she grew up in Brockton, my maternal grandmother’s hometown, our blogging friendship (from my point of view) was sealed. I walk the Cape Cod shoreline vicariously through Patry, and recently followed her on a west coast book tour to promote her first novel, Liar’s Diary. She ponders life’s questions and encourages dialogue with her readers. This waitress turned novelist has an infectious sense of play and her writing is flawless.

Humanyms: Pearl has fun with words. She plays a glad game, loves poetry, architecture, and cooking. She passes on an endless supply of interesting links and thoughtful quotes. Her words skip, skim, and sink-in because of her playful poet's perspective. Where else would you find the following: Brain runneth over. It bobs about. Maybe it’s the rain from all night and all morning displacing it like a cork. Thank goodness for the cap of bones or the brain might wash away entirely and we couldn’t have it running down the streets on its own, its grey getting all gritty and salty in the sopped rivulets getting carried away downhill. The lobes might get lodged in the sewer grate with it mutely wiggling and jerking to free itself before the crocodiles.

Chronicles from Hurricane Country: Elissa’s range of interests span from as far up as the night sky to as low as the smallest bugs that crawl at our feet. Creatively prolific, I view her as part scientist and part poet. I love to go on virtual walks with her and her partner Mary by way of her photographs. She, a one time Bostonian now living in Florida, sings, makes beautiful collages, and has been a published writer since she was a teenager. She recently signed a book contract and was posting about her writing background when she made this wise remark: “I've always felt my freelance work is better than a free education because it's an education I get paid for.”

Carbon Press: Josephine’s current blog mission statement reads: “I'm going to drive my beat up old Honda Civic until it dies.” She’s a cancer survivor and advocate who has offered her help to others navigating through the ordeal of cancer treatments. She doesn’t shrink from revealing her real and sometimes raw emotions. Her writing is fresh. It surprises and makes me want more. In a recent post called “Ectoplasmic Is My New Favorite Word,” she wrote, Green tinted the breeze as a stormfront moved in yesterday. Chartruese pollen. Ectoplasmic green. My black car has been margarita green for two weeks. Live oak trees have thousands of neon green chandelier earings dangling from budding branches. Loblolly pines are puffing tufts of mitochondrial green clouds like crotchety old dragons huffing out snorts of smoke.

Open Book: Jennifer was voted 'Most Mischievous' her senior year of high school, has never seen a Star Wars or James Bond movie, and was once introduced to a drag queen by her uncle. “She was stunning. I was stunned. For a moment,” Jennifer explained. Her blog is “based on a true story,” and her writer’s voice is a natural one that entertains and engages. Her inventive blog titles tease you to read and you’re never sorry when you do. The last time I looked, Jennifer was on a blog sabbatical, but you can flip through her spilled ink archives, listed on the margins of her Open Book.

Post note: Oh! It's 11:00 and I haven't had breakfast. All this linking has stopped me from thinking and eating. I'll be back soon to proof this!

Posted by Colleen at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

Tell me a story of things that smell lovely … Jasmine … Patchouli … I love you truly … ~Colleen

As a blogger, I don’t need to know that Janet likes Johnny Depp, Naomi has a sweet tooth for chocolate, Rick grows hot peppers in his back yard, or that Terri drives around her island in a golf cart. I want to know because those are interesting details make for good reading.

In the same way that I get invested in a novel when the author knows how to make the characters come to life, blogs are interesting to me when their authors reveal an unforgettable personal quirk, a unique or surprising detail, or one that I can relate to and see myself in. The fact that bloggers are real people only makes their stories more compelling to me. Real stories appeal to my love of memoir, documentary, and biography. Because stories can go deep and leave a lasting impression, they have the ability to foster bonds and empathy for others.

Since blogs became popular, there’s been an ongoing public dialogue about their purpose. For the most part, I see them as a modern twist in the ancient art of storytelling. Once an entirely oral tradition, storytelling today is done in a variety of ways, but the reasons for telling stories remains the same. They’re told to preserve culture, to instill knowledge and values, to inform, entertain and socialize. Human beings are a story telling species. We are known by our stories and our stories are what remain once we are gone.

My readers don’t need to know that I have city driving anxiety, that I’m sometimes more comfortable wearing boy’s clothing, that my husband and I have the same IQ number but for different reasons, or that I’ll get up and dance no matter where I am if I hear Aretha Franklin sing “Respect.” I tell them those things because they’re part of the story I’m telling.

Posted by Colleen at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

The following essay is the one that recently aired on our local PBS station, WVTF, and it appears in its entirety here. You can listen to me reading it at the WVTF website.

When I first started blogging in March of 2005 many people asked, what’s a blog? Less people ask me that same question today; I like to think because my answers have been informative, but I know it’s more because blogs are in the news, everywhere these days.

The word blog, short for web log, is a web page that’s updated daily. Sometimes referred to as citizen publishing, blogging appeals to my sense of self-sufficiency. It’s like having my own online magazine that I post an editorial to each day. As a writer, it allows me to hone my skills, build a readership, and create a time-capsule record for my descendents, all at the same time.

Although I have some computer savvy friends who have helped me out along the way, most of my computer skills are self taught and ongoing, which is why I was at the Floyd library recently checking out a book on blogging. While doing so, the librarian looked up from her task and asked me, “Have you ever read a blog?”

“Yes, I actually have one, I confessed.

“Isn’t it tedious? There are so many of them,” she continued.

“You find the ones you like; in the same way you’d check out only one or two magazines,” I said, gesturing to the magazine rack. “You don’t have to read them all.”

On the ride home from the library that day, my conversation with the librarian continued in my mind and went like this: “Let’s say you check out a gardening magazine,” I said to her, “and in it find an article you like. Wouldn’t it be great to have instant access to its author? With blogging you can, because it’s interactive.”

My imaginary librarian was listening and nodding her head now.

“As one blog discovery leads to the next, before long networks and communities are formed,” I told her. “Blogging friendships are often based on what bloggers have in common, but sometimes they are based on differences. This past year I’ve made some unlikely blog friendships that have given me glimpses into lifestyles very different than my own.”

“Tell me more,” the expression on the librarian’s face seemed to say.

“Well, there’s the pony-tailed artist, chemical magazine editor, who works in New York City and lives up the road from where the Sopranos is filmed; there’s the performer, playwright, and composer, living in Los Angeles, who has an engaging personality and lots of famous friends; and a free spirit raising twin daughters in Istanbul who’s blog mission statement reads, “trying to save the world before bedtime.” Some of my blog friends live near oceans and post seacoast photos that ease my homesickness for the Massachusetts peninsula I grew up on. Of course, regional blogs are on the top of my daily reading list, and there are several good ones right here in Floyd,” I told her.

She was smiling, with her eyes slightly widened, and so I continued.

“After two of my brothers died a month apart in 2001, I wrote a book about it,” I explained. “Some readers come to my blog to read my writings on grief and loss, a subject I continue to explore.”

“And you’d be surprised,” I went on, “how many people follow my Scrabble games at Café Del Sol via my blog. More than one reader has commented that Floyd is like the acclaimed TV show “Northern Exposure,” Southern style, especially after the entry about the deer that crashed through the Café Del Sol window and thrashed about, wrecking the place. There was a photo included with that entry of the boarded up door, bearing a sign that read: Café Del Deer Crossing, and Bambi Was Here.”

She laughed before getting more serious. With a slightly wrinkled brow, she posed a question, one I had heard before. “Don’t you feel exposed putting your personal writing on the internet?” My imaginary librarian asked.

“Sometimes, especially in the beginning, I did, but then I asked myself ‘What difference does it make to a reader whether they read a commentary I wrote in the Roanoke Times or on my blog?’ I consider every posted entry to be a published document and keep that in mind.”

“Mostly, I blog because I love to write, and I know that when you share what you love to do, it grows larger in you. I think I was always a blogger just waiting to happen,” I said in conclusion.

By then, I was pulling into my driveway and up to my house, anxious to get to my computer and check my blog comments for the day.

Post notes: This was written before Vanx cut his hair.

Posted by Colleen at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

When I say "work" I only mean writing. Everything else is odd jobs. -Margaret Laurence

I don’t remember who was holding the camcorder at the time, but the question posed was, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” My brother Jim had just answered. “A photographer,” he said. He was nearing fifty-years-old at the time and had already had a couple of his weather photos published and won an award for one.

Next, it was my turn to answer. “A groupie,” I found myself saying just to watch my brother’s reaction.

“But no, seriously,” I continued. “I don’t want to sleep with musicians, I just want to meet them and interview them,” the Oprah Winfrey in me concluded.

Yesterday, I joked with my journalist friend Rick, who was recently outed as a blogger by his co-workers, that blogging is like “reality stand-up comedy without the fear of having real tomatoes thrown at you.” It’s also a bit like being a roving reporter covering the every day. Since blogging, I pay more attention to life’s details because who knows when a scene might re-create itself in my mind and make me run to find a pen to write it all down. Although I’m reluctant to admit, even to myself, that I might be blogging a story, I find myself taking a few pictures and asking a few more questions, just in case.

Maybe my dream job could come true. After more than a year of holding myself to the fire, writing every day and posting to my blog 6 days a week, my dedication has started to pay off in small and new ways. Early on in my blogging career, several of my entries went on to become local Public Radio essays that I read on the air. More recently, in the past couple of months, I’ve sold half-a-dozen pieces that originated from (or were adapted from) blog posts to our local newspaper. These include an informal interview, a play review, a book review, and conversational reports on local events.

Ever since I’ve been writing, a part of me has been thinking, “that was fun, but don’t expect it to happen again.” I’ve never wanted to write for a “job,” (not that anyone has offered) for two reasons. First, I’ve always feared that I wouldn’t be able to produce the quality and quantity of work that might be expected of me. Second, I feared that writing for a living would taint my love of doing it.

It’s a powerful validation for a writer to get paid for her work when she does so much of it for free. It’s doubly validating when that payment is for something she enjoyed writing. Recently, when the editor of our local paper asked me if I was working on anything new, the doubt and sense of pressure to produce that I would normally feel was superseded by the enthusiasm I felt when I answered her, "yes.”

Posted by Colleen at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)

I followed the muse into town today. It came in the form of a pink pick-up truck with a license plate that said “FARM USE,” but I read it as “FAR MUSE.” The truck was moving slowly, and I was worried I’d be late. I was meeting Ginnie from Golden Daze for breakfast at the Café Del Sol. Being that the truck was pink with a license plate like that, I cut the driver some slack. I was only 5 minutes late.

It was the second time in two weeks that I was having a first meeting with a fellow blogger, and on both occasions it was like re-uniting with an old friend. Like me, and Terri who visited Floyd last week, Ginnie is also originally from Boston, living in the South now.

She had a scone and I had an egg and cheese bagel. We got along famously and sat like two girlfriends comparing notes … how we got started blogging and why, which are our favorite blogs to read…and what about self-publishing? We also talked about family, marriages, and health. I don’t think we stopped gabbing for the hour we spent together. But I had to be at the Harvest Moon by 10:30 to pick up fresh fish from the Indigo Girls (not the singers but the two self-employed Floyd women in the fresh fish business called Indigo Farms), and Ginnie had to get on interstate 81 and begin the journey to New York to visit her kids.

After buying some mahi mahi and cod (which I made sure to pronounce as CAWD, using my Boston accent just to fool with the girls) and doing some town errands, I headed home to put the fish in the fridge.

My friend Jamie, who works downtown at The Winter Sun and frequently gives me blogging tips – one of which led to a story that the Floyd Press ended up buying – left a message on my answering machine. “There are some people from Pennsylvania driving to Baja in an old powder blue Valiant. It’s a cool car. You should come get a picture of it,” he said in his Australian accent.

The last thing I said to my husband last night before going to sleep was, “The only thing I want to do is take pictures of trees.” I was too tired to drive the 7 miles back into town, but not too tired to drive a few, up to the Blue Ridge Parkway overlooks to take pictures of the foliage at peak. The trees were waiting. But if the car had been pink instead of blue I probably would have gone back into town.

To be continued …

Posted by Colleen at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Our regional blogger meet-up at the Café Del Sol – called together because fellow-blogger Terri Dulong was in town – came and went like a whirlwind that left my head spinning. At one point I counted 8 bloggers (all talking at once), 9 if you count Bernie, who made a brief appearance and who doesn’t really have a blog but gets mentioned on Floyd blogs a lot.

The first thing I noticed upon meeting Terri was her Massachusetts accent and that her hair wasn’t blonde. I don’t know why I thought it was. Terri grew up north of Boston, Massachusetts, and I grew up in the South Shore of the same city. Her neighbors for part of the year in Cedar Key, where she currently lives, are Floydians who I know. It was only a matter of time before we would meet.

Terri was asking me how I came to live in Floyd. There was a birthday party going on at the table behind us. Rio was carving a pumpkin at the outside table in front of the Café. Hugs were exchanged. Lattes were ordered. I caught a glimpse of Jamie once out of the corner of my eye.

I think it was me that broke the ice and snapped the first picture. You know how bloggers like to record events? Snapping cameras in all directions soon followed.

Fred had to leave early. So did Gretchen and David. Deana made it up the mountain from Stuart, and Doug arrived late. After about 45 minutes, when the hubbub died down, Terri, Deana, and I set up our lap top stations and made the whole meet-up official.

Only another blogger knows what a blogger feels like when she’s been away from home and hasn’t been able to blog or even get online for days. Poor Terri ended up booking a cabin in Floyd county way off the beaten track with no internet access or cell phone signal… not to mention the winding gravel country roads that she isn’t used to.

Deana was showing me how to upload video clips onto my blog, when I looked over and saw Terri. She was in deep concentration while her fingers were tapping a flurry of typing. “Look, she’s blogging this!” I said to Deana.

HERE is what The Island Writer, Terri, had to say. She’ll have more Floyd tales to spin (a pun on the beautiful yarn she purchased here) in the upcoming days, I’m sure.

Photos: 1. Terri Dulong at the Cafe Del Sol. 2. Gretchen and David St. Lawrence, Deana, and Terri. 3. Terri, Deana, and Colleen. You can read about our past blogger meet-ups HERE and HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

AKA: Writers with Floyd-ties Hobnobbing

One of the best parts about participating in the Franklin County Book Festival this past weekend was hanging out with Fred, Floyd’s First Blogger, and running into fellow presenter and old friend, Jim Minnick. Jim is a widely published regional writer, a teacher of writing and literature, and the author of, “Finding a Clear Path,” but I remember him most as a blueberry farmer who lived in Floyd County for many years.

Although Fred’s first book, “A Slow Road Home,” wasn’t back from the printer in time for him to be a presenter this year, he participated Friday night as one of the Festival’s scheduled authors, reading excerpts from his book at the Edible Vibe, a café adjacent to the library. I knew Fred was going to be there Saturday as well, but meeting up with Jim, who I hadn’t seen in more than a few years, was a pleasant surprise.

Rapping on the window, I waved when I first saw him in the library’s glass paneled, makeshift author’s book store. He smiled and came out. We exchanged a hug. Although our presentations were scheduled to start at the same time, mine was slated for a half hour and his for a full one, which meant that I would be able to catch some of his reading.

I concluded my talk by answering a few questions and reading an excerpt from my book, from which my presentation, “Mining the Gold of a Story,” was named: In this physical world, we have to mine for treasure. Gold and silver and precious gems are not usually found laying around on the surface of the earth. It’s the same with us; we have to excavate our own treasure, down through the door of our childhood, through the pain of what hurts, into the grief of our losses. Life nudges us to go deeper because to live only on the surface is superficial. There’s so much more.

I went from images of mining the gold of a story to those of digging potatoes, as Jim was in the middle of reading his essay entitled “The Holy, Lowly Spud” when my husband, Joe, Fred, and I finally arrived. We grub for orbs of light: Kennebec, Pontiac, Yukon Gold. Earth eggs perfect in their potato-ness.

Jim’s reading took place in the children’s part of the library, and I couldn’t help but notice the rug with its larger than life prints of monkeys and trees in bright primary colors. “I’m glad they didn’t put me in this room,” I thought to myself, considering my book’s subject matter, grief and loss. Giggles rippled through the room at the start of his next essay: I inherited my hate for groundhogs from Grandpa. He instilled in me, while I was still young, his utter disgust for those hairy varmints that live in holes.

After Jim’s reading, we were all off duty, and so we headed over to the Edible Vibe for lunch. It was there, while munching on marinara soaked angel hair pasta, that I uttered these words to Jim, “Can we interest you in a blog, Jim?”

He answered calmly, slightly suspicious, as though we were playing poker and he was upping the ante, “How long do you spend at it?" he asked.

Fred and I broke out our litany of reasons why, as writers, we blog … it’s so much more than a business card… a motivator to write… a networking tool. But Jim held his ground.

“How long do you spend at it?” he repeated, causing us all to laugh as we realized our complete avoidance of Jim’s repeated question.

Clearly, as a farmer and ecology activist, Jim would rather be in the blueberry patch, or rambling down a country road, than creating more reasons to be at the computer. And he’s probably right.

“Well, you at least need your own web page,” I conceded.

“Smile, someone will blogging this!” Joe said, as he snapped a picture of the three of us laughing.

Photo: Fred, Jim, and Colleen

Posted by Colleen at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)

This is a photo of me at a Scrabble game yesterday, talking on the phone with my blogger friend, Naomi of “Here in the Hills.” I’m at the Café Del Sol in Floyd, Virginia, and she was calling from Los Angeles. Here’s the story:

Mara called to cancel our Scrabble game at the Café Del Sol because her daughter Kyla wasn’t feeling well. My date with my husband, Joe, for an afternoon swim in the pool was a wash-out because it was raining.

But all was not lost. I called my friend Virginia who had recently told me she likes to play Scrabble and suggested we play sometime. We pulled off a last minute game between her, her husband Don, and me.

After retrieving the board from the hiding place where Mara put it so that playing children wouldn’t mix up and lose the letters, we settled in to play. It was an enjoyable game, even though Don and Virginia are both better players than I am, and I tend to choke when I play with someone for the first time. I was also drawing bad letters.

Sipping on tea and chatting in between turns, we were near the end of the game – Don and I were neck-in-neck and Virginia was well in the lead – when Max, who works behind the café counter, walked over with the phone. “It’s for you, Colleen,” he said.

In a previous post, here at Loose Leaf, I wrote about my fellow Floyd blogger, Doug, making a joke about the Cafe' Del Sol’s phone number – 745- ACUP – which is displayed on a sign outside their building. “It’s a good phone number for a coffee shop, either that or lingerie shop,” he quipped.

With that entry, Naomi left a comment saying, “I’m going to call you at the Café next time you’re there playing Scrabble.” And she did!

“Naomi!” I blurted out, excitedly. I suspected it was her because I sent her an email before I left my house telling her I was off to play Scrabble.

“I’m here playing Scrabble and getting my butt kicked!” I told her.

“How can that be?” she asked. I guess I had given the impression on my blog that I was a pretty good player.

“I’m playing someone new and she’s whiz!” I answered. By this time I had walked into the Winter Sun Hall in the back of the building to get away from the noise of the crowded café.

After reading each other’s blogs regularly for about a year, I feel as if I know Naomi. She frequently features photos and stories about her life as a stage performer, playwright, singer, and artist. Because of the photos she’s posted, I could picture her in her house, see the exotic cactus plants on her deck, and imagine her cat sitting in her lap as we talked.

“Your voice is exactly how I thought you’d sound,” I told her. Naomi, who recently hosted an online party in celebration of her 75th birthday, has a warm and engaging personality that comes through her writing and was also apparent over the phone.

“The internet is amazing,” she said after sharing the story of a recent connection she just had with an old friend’s daughter, which came about by way of an old photo she had posted on her blog. I told her how my sister’s childhood boyfriend found her via my website, and how I found Terri from Island Writer whose wintering neighbors are from Floyd.

But soon, my mind wandered back to the Scrabble task at hand. I could see through the paneled glassed door leading into the Café that it was my turn. “I’ve got to get back to the game now, Naomi. Thank you so much for calling!”

Talking to Naomi was highlight in a rainy day that made my playing a bad game of Scrabble more bearable.

Posted by Colleen at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

I was in the Café Del Sol posting flyers for our Spoken Word Open Mic this Saturday night when I witnessed an actual impromptu purchase of Fred’s new book, Slow Road Home,” at the Café counter.

As a friend of Fred’s, an author with a book myself, and a roving blogger who likes to record what interests me, my curiosity was piqued.

“I’m a friend of Fred’s,” I said as I approached the petite blonde woman who was buying the book.

“You are?!” she responded enthusiastically.

“I thought you’d like to know that I just snapped a picture of you for Fred,” I went on.

Her name is Katherine and she lives in upstate New York. In town for a wedding, she had just come from camping at Rocky Knob.

“We love this area,” she gushed and explained that she was in the Café earlier when she had first seen Fred’s book.

“Tell Fred that the back cover description sold me. We’ve been thinking about moving to a place like this,” she went on.

At that point, I handed her my card, the one with my blog address on it that says ‘The Blogkeeper is in,’ and let her know that Fred and I both have blogs and frequently write about Floyd.

“Do you know what a blog is?” I asked. She did. Not only that, she is a writer and has had a blog in the past.

“Look!” I said, pointing to the locally published books by me, David, and Fred (in that order) on a shelf below the counter. “And we’re all bloggers!”

I explained how supportive the café has been to local writers, showing her the open mic flyer in my hand. She offered to get her dog out of her car to pose for the next photo, but I had a date with the grocery store. We promised to stay in touch.

As I headed out the Café door feeling like got a scoop for Fred, I was thinking, ‘That’s the cool thing about the small press. You often get to meet and hear the stories of the everyday people who read your book, even if it comes to you by way of your neighbor.’

Posted by Colleen at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

The fact that the attendance of our 4th monthly regional Blogger Meet-up at the Café Del Sol was less than normal turned out to work in my favor. I came to the meeting equipped with a pen, a notebook, and a list of blogging questions, and for over an hour I had an audience with Doug and David, two local bloggers who are more experienced at the technical side of blogging than I am.

We didn’t just talk and the guys didn’t just answer my questions. We turned my laptop on and Doug showed me step-by-step how to delete over 13,000 spam comments stored in my blog’s junk mail file. I only knew how to delete junk emails one-by-one and because I get hundreds of them each day, they had piled up like debt I couldn’t pay.

Did you know that bloggers should export their blog data to their hard drive on a daily or regular basis? I sort of knew, but I didn’t know how. Doug showed me that too. At the end of each month, I had been saving that month’s archive page to my desktop and to a CD, but that’s just blog pages and not the data. Pages won’t help to restore my blog if for some unforeseeable reason it gets lost in cyber space.

Although it was an especially productive meeting for me, and I came away feeling like I had just been to a doctor’s appointment and received a clean bill of health, not everything went right. I sat next to Doug at the meeting table because he has a reputation of uttering quotable comments that I like to record. Unfortunately, he came up with a good one, and I wrote it down, but later discovered that my writing was illegible. Not only that, the picture I thought I took of Doug and David (and Jamie when he showed up), I actually hadn’t, and the one I did take I mistakenly deleted. (The one posted above is from a previous meet-up).

Meanwhile, on the same day a deer crashed into the café’s front door and thrashed about, wrecking the place before it found its way out, Ann’s brother, Tuffy, was in a terrible car accident. Ann (pictured here in a photo I did manage to take that morning) is a familiar face, one of the women who work in the café. She was selling raffle tickets as a fundraiser to help her brother’s family stay afloat while her brother is in the hospital facing a long road home to recovery. Having lost 2 brothers and my dad recently, I was particularly touched by her dedication, love, and concern for her brother. Stationed under the hanging art exhibit of The Floyd Figure’s Art Group, she told me about a family member’s recent sighting of a white deer, as her brother – a hunter – lie in his hospital bed fighting for his life. We both agreed the white deer was a good sign.

Besides selling raffle tickets, Ann was engaged in a little farm activism. She handed me a flyer with a headline that read “Protect Traditional Rights to Farm. Just Say No to NAIS.” NAIS stands for the National Animal Identification System, and is the USDA’s government plan to track births, deaths, sales, breeding, and all movements of all livestock in the United States. Originally, proposed as a way to open up foreign meat markets to benefit bit Agri-business exporters, NAIS now says the program is justified to prevent disease. Activists believe that small farms shouldn’t be burdened with such an invasive program that does not benefit them.

It was a good morning and a good meeting. I learned something new…and came away with some homework. I’m deleting junk mail as we speak.

Post Notes: 1. Thanks to David for hosting our monthly blogger meetings. 2. Floydians, if you want to buy a raffle ticket for a TV or camera and help a family out, go to the Café and ask about purchasing one or making a donation to “Tuffy’s Tips.” 3. Learn what you can do to stop the USDA’s proposed animal tracking system by going to NONAIS.ORG.

Posted by Colleen at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Alina’s in the market for a new laptop. She perused the table full of them at our recent Blogger meet-up, asking pertinent questions about their performance and convenience, before settling down to take mine for a test run. Behind her, Fred was signing some of his newly published books, Slow Road Home, for Rigel. Rigel was inspired to move to Floyd from California after reading Fred’s blog, Fragments from Floyd, and she’s been a regular at our monthly regional blogger meet-ups.

The sun was streaming in Café Del Sol’s large windows. One of the glass paneled doors was boarded-up, a sign of the damage created when a deer crashed in and out of it on Monday, prompting Doug’s Tuesday blog post, “The Deer who Came for Coffee.”

There were pockets of several conversations going on at once. Doug opened up the Floyd Press newspaper and there was the deer story, written by none other than himself and sporting a new title. And so the details got retold, and some got re-enacted, for those who hadn’t already heard.

After Fred had finished signing a small stack books and delivered them to Rigel, he and I talked book publishing for awhile. Somewhere I managed to squeeze in a question to Doug about deleting stored junk comments, and Alina, whose blog is just over a month old, shared a concern. After a confident start, launching her blog and posting daily for a couple of weeks, she lost momentum when she went on a trip, and now she’s been feeling shy about continuing.

“It’s been a year and that still happens to me,” I told to her. Fred, who’s been blogging for over 3 years, nodded his head knowingly.

“And every time it happens, I learn something about myself and use it as an opportunity to re-evaluate my reasons for blogging,” I continued.

“What about you?” I asked David, an upbeat guy who exudes self- confidence. “Do you ever feel shy or vulnerable about putting yourself out there?”

David doesn’t, but his wife Gretchen confessed that one of their family members precedes some of their conversations with, ‘And don’t let David blog about this!’

Our meet-ups – the 2nd Thursday of each month – are fun and stimulating. They bring balance to a sometimes isolating activity. It’s good to exchange ideas and foster enthusiasm for what we do. I especially appreciate being able to draw on the knowledge of our more seasoned local bloggers and techies (compared to me): Fred, David, and Doug.

Posted by Colleen at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

A support group? A union? A class or convention? There was talk of track backs, permalinks, and spam. Mostly, we enjoyed meeting each other, some for the first time. We were old bloggers, new bloggers, wanna-be bloggers, and blog readers. The lap tops were lit up and the stats were compared. I learned that bloggers are an enthusiastic bunch, happy to find each other.

Photos: We met at Floyd’s wireless Café Del Sol. The first photo shows Jamie of Jamie’s World and Doug of Blue Ridge Muse on the right. In the second photo David from Ripples is standing on the left, Leslie of Squirrel Spur is in the center, and Fred of Fragments From Floyd is standing on the right. Go visit David for another perspective on our blogger’s day out. His photos came out better than mine.

Posted by Colleen at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

My blog is a year old. It was born on March 12, 2005 at Blogger.com. Five days later, with the encouragement of friends and fellow Floyd bloggers, it took its first steps and made its way to Moveable Type. Below are excerpts from some of Loose Leaf’s first words:

March 12: How's It Working For You?
The last thing I said to my husband, before turning out the lights last night, was: "All I want to do is write, but I feel like I have to invent the printing press first!"
The Good News: Putting up my first blog was easy. In fact, I inadvertently created 3 of them. The Bad News: It took me 5 hours to post my picture in "About Me," and in the end it wasn't me who did it. (Thank you to Nelson Pidgeon, my tech support webmaster). Posting blog messages is easy and I quickly understood how to make links. I have a rudimentary understanding of how to post pictures now, but I haven't done it myself yet. Too busy doing other things. Such as: figuring out how to delete the other 2 blogs I mistakenly set up. Read more...

March 13: Do you feel like this?
The Poem: It starts out as a sensuous pleasure, the right chemistry of words and feelings at play. But then comes the daunting work of putting it all together…digging deeper for the details…editing out the unnecessary…laboring over every line break…all done with an underlying urge to get it all just right. If you can persevere though, the effort will often lead to a satisfying climax, a sense of completion, and an excitement to share it with others. Funny how every creative process is like birth, marriage, or sex. Read more...

March 14: The People I Want To Thank
Ed was the first person who coaxed me to sit down in front of a computer for the first time. It was a scary sight. EEK…I would practically jump up on the chair, as though I had seen a mouse, every time I lost a page or got to a new one without knowing how it had happened. I acted like a high-strung, wimpy, school girl handling a live rodent when I inevitably lost control of the computer mouse and was not able to align its movement with what was happening on the screen. Ed, who was not daunted, provided my first introduction into the world of virtual desktops, folders, and files. Read more...

March 15: Spring Fever
Sitting in the office of my Chinese Medicine Practitioner, whose practices include cranial sacrum energy work, acupuncture, bone setting, and herbal infusions, a newcomer and acquaintance inquired, “You’ve been coming for a while. So, do you feel better?” I laughed. “You know,” I answered, “you might come here to cure fatigue and be cured of mistrust instead. I can’t be attached to what needs to happen first with healing.” I added, “For me the cure is not the goal – but progress is!” She understood, and I was used to her type of question. Read more...

March 16: Question for Other Bloggers
10:00 a.m. – Are you familiar with the impatient weight in your fingers when you have a post “copy” to “paste” but have nowhere to paste it? And what did you do with your time when you couldn’t get on the blogger.com site all of last night and so far all morning to post today’s entry? I cleaned off my desk (or made a dent in it) and sent in an essay submission to “The Sun” magazine. If my submission is successful, should I thank blogger.com for being unreliable? What nice things have happened to you, due to the fact that the server is down? Read more...

March 17: Moving Day
My first blog was born on March 12, 2005. Five days later it took its first step. With the help of my friend, Doug Thompson, I have moved on to another server, faster and easier to use, I am told. Coincidently, on the day my blog was being set up at this new location, the blogger.com server that initially hosted my blog was inoperable for nearly 24 hours and no one could post during that time. I’m sure every blogger knows how frustrating that can be. (See yesterdays post.) Is it also a coincidence that the rebirth of my blog is making its debut on St. Patrick’s Day? Was it a coincidence that my parents named me, the only one of their 9 children who has taken an interest and our Irish heritage, Colleen, which means “girl” in Gaelic? Read more...

March 18: Tools of the Trade
I don’t even want to mention notebooks. I try to buy them in different colors, so I can tell them apart, but it seems that I start writing in one, and then prematurely go onto a newer one, until soon they all look the same. I have scraps of paper with words scribbled on them in every room of my house. (Some people actually use file cards?) Here’s one that just says: “Things that make me have to put on extra deodorant.” An idea for a new list or a blog entry, I suppose. Below it is written, simply “105,000.” I struggle to remember that it’s probably the suggested mileage # for changing the timing belt on my CRV. Some of the various sized scraps of papers have web addresses or phone numbers written on them, and others seem to have expired, which means that I waited too long to do something with them and now I can’t read my own writing anymore. Read more...

March 21: My Normal Abnormal
My Asheville, North Carolinian, potter son, Josh, who is also a closet super-hero, turned me on to New Castle Beer, a dark but not Guinness dark beer made in Great Britain. Around the same time he showed off – what he would call “flash treads” or more informally “kicks” – his new pair of New Balance sneakers. For about a year after these incidents, whenever I was in a restaurant ordering a beer, I would ask for…“a New Balance, please.” Someone would usually laugh. Someone else would look confused. The mix-up is understandable, if you know me. More recently Josh hand-built a treadle wheel, a pottery wheel that you operate like an old model sewing machine, with your foot. I kept calling it “the tread mill.” Read more...

Posted by Colleen at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

The hardest part of Guerilla Blogging is finding your cursor when the daylight casts a glare on your computer screen. You’ll need to learn how to balance your lap top while riding a bike, turn your laptop carrying case into a makeshift mouse pad, and be ready to pick up and move at a moment’s notice when the wireless signal gets low. There will likely be gnats and other bugs to contend with and discomfort from sitting on the ground. And don’t even try guerilla blogging if you can’t get used to being stared at by people walking or riding by. Some will stop and ask what you’re doing. Be prepared to explain what blogging is. Some people still don’t know.

Where's the strangest place you've blogged from?

Photo: Picking up wireless in the woods next to The Hunting Island State Park Ranger's house. The ranger says the whole park will probably be wireless within a year or two.

Posted by Colleen at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (21)

The following are my answers to interview questions posed by Jake from the Jake Silver Show:

1. When do you first recall wanting to be a writer and what inspired that? I began writing Bob Dylan-inspired poetry as a teenager in my bedroom and then “letters to the editor” for local newspapers. As a young full-time mother I read an article in one of my favorite magazines, “Mothering,” and thought to myself, ‘I can do that.’ I knew I had something to say, but I had to teach myself sentence structure and punctuation by studying how it was done in books and magazines. The first article I submitted to “Mothering” was accepted for publication….and they paid me! (There’s a writer’s biography on my website that goes into more detail on my writing background and my genetic tendencies towards it.)

2. What made you want to start a Web Log? I was writing lots of political commentary for The Roanoke Times, The New River Free Press, and online publications. I got burned out because it was painstaking work to reference everything I wrote and because after the presidential election on 2004 I felt defeated and lost faith in the system. I wanted to do something completely different and have some fun with writing. For me, I understand life by translating it into words. I needed a container for all my writing and a way to organize and cross-reference it. I also think of my blog as a memoir writing project, a time capsule into my life and the time and setting I’m living in.

3. How did you come up with the name and theme of your Web Log? I wanted green. I wanted to let my hair down and draw on my Irish heritage (you know what good talkers and writers the Irish are). I purposely chose the bio-photo I did because it was taken in Ireland and because I have a shamrock pinned to my sweater. Besides being a nice sounding alliteration, “Loose Leaf” conjures up images of notebook paper and tea, both of which describe me pretty well. I recognized the multi-purpose a blog could fulfill. I knew it would be a natural extension to my Silver and Gold webpage and figured that it would have a re-occurring grief and loss thread. Like my webpage, I wanted my blog to offer a model of encouragement to other self-taught writers with stories of their own to tell. I wanted a forum to write about writing, post occasional poems, and feature snapshots of the country lifestyle I live. Some of the other themes, which I particularly enjoy, like the “S-C-R-A-B-B-L-E” category and “Featured Artist,” evolved over time. My Asheville potter son who loves the Red Sox and my Scrabble partner and poet friend, Mara, are regular re-occurring characters that are always fun to write about.

4. Have you ever had an embarrassing situation occur because of Blogging? The possibility to be embarrassed exists everyday when you put yourself out there (and use your real name like I do). I still swing from feeling really positive to vulnerable about blogging. I’m sometimes embarrassed that I have so little tech-no-logic sense about computers and that I have to rely on other people to help me. The worst thing that has happened thus far is this: A local city paper, which features links to regional blogs on its online front page, featured a blog post of mine entitled “Have You Seen Me Lately?” but the editor changed the title to read “America is Evil!” I thought it was a mistake or a cruel joke, but it wasn’t. I was mortified and felt exposed, misunderstood, and even libeled. By the time I got the editorial editor on the phone, I was in tears. They took it down, but for 4 hours that day people were clicking on my site looking for “America is Evil,” a black and white simplistic misrepresentation of what I actually wrote.

5. What is the best aspect of keeping a Blog? I like the interactive aspect of blogging and that it’s done without the obvious visual cues that can, sadly, sometimes cause us to judge people by how they present physically (age, size, culture, etc). I’m a social scientist at heart, and I’ve always been curious about people. I like that I can connect with those who I have something in common with, and I especially like that blogging creates a format that allows me to connect with others who live and think differently than I do. My book, about losing my brothers, my webpage, and my blog have all expanded me as a writer and a person, and have shown me that my writing can touch others, which has been very rewarding. But the best part of that equation is something I didn’t expect…the people I have touched with my writing have reached right back and touched me.

6. Is there anything that you'd love to be asked that I didn't ask you? This is like getting a blank in a Scrabble game. I know it’s an opportunity that should be welcomed. Most people like getting a blank, but I usually have a hard time visualizing it as anything other than a blank. I’m drawing a blank here, but I’m going to think about this question some more and maybe do a whole post on it someday.

Posted by Colleen at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

“She spends more time with people she doesn’t even know than she does with those she knows,” my husband said to friends we were having dinner with when the subject ‘what have you been doing lately?’ and then blogging came up.

“Not more time,” I protested, and then added with a laugh “…about the same amount of time. It’s hard to explain,” I offered sheepishly, suddenly wanting the focus of attention to be off me.

The scenario presented a great opportunity to further the dialogue I’ve been having with myself and with others about blogging, but, unfortunately, I’m one of those people who doesn’t always think well on my feet. Instead, I tend to think of all the things I should have said later, which is probably why I write.

Most of my family and friends are beginning to understand that blogging can be a way expand myself as a writer and that it provides me a format to record my life and its setting for my descendents, not so unlike the writing of memoirs. But the interactive aspect of blogging is the part I think many understand least. Not too many years ago, I myself was suspicious of relationships formed via the internet.

Blogging friendships are formed in different ways and for many different reasons. Sometimes they develop because of locality. I like to read regional Virginian blogs, as well as those from the Boston, Massachusetts, near where I grew up. Because so much of my writing was kicked into gear by the loss of my brothers 4 years ago, my blog has a grief and loss thread to it. I frequently connect with other bloggers who have lost someone close and friendships sometimes ensue. As a writer, I’m also drawn to blogs by other writers and am fascinated by some of them. A fun and creative blogger whose personality comes through online, or one who writes about things that are new to me also gets my attention.

When my husband made the comment he did to our friends, I wish I had remembered to say: When I lost my father in late November, I got enormous support from other bloggers, those people I don’t even know. Many of them left meaningful and heartfelt comments, a couple even sent cards in the mail. I wish I had also remembered to mention the married couple that we all know who met online. Times have changed. Haven’t they?

Have you met in person any internet friends, blogging or otherwise?

Posted by Colleen at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (30)

My blog is 7 months old! In honor of my 200th entry, which actually happened when we were in Colorado, I’ve picked out some past excerpts to post:

Shortest Post: In My Own Handwriting ~ Found on a scrap of paper this morning and in my own handwriting: “If no one is going to quote me, I’ll quote myself.” Is that a quote?

Post with a swear word in it: Ani in the Rain ~ …She played for an hour before saying to the crowd, “Oh shit, here we go, huh?” in reference to the rain that was soon to downpour, eliciting this from Ani, “What have we here? Whoooo!” And after describing the crowd as a light sculpture of changing colors that she was enjoying, she said, with a playful laugh, “And now you’re fixin to get wet… which would be very sexy.”

Post that got the most comments: Women Making a Difference (33) ~ …As I listened to her talk and watched her face morph into those of our various relatives, I got shivers up and down my arms, feeling like we were 2 long lost twins re-united and comparing notes. Not only did we talk about our families, attachment parenting, and the current Cesarean rates, we also talked about the possibility of an afterlife and messages we feel that we’ve received from our passed on loved-ones. She doesn’t like driving in cities. She gets shivers easily too. “Oh, one of those big softy-heart Redmans, I see,” I said to myself. Exploring and discussing the deeper aspects of life is also a Redman forte.

Post that made readers cry: Danny’s Shoes ~ …When Danny was almost four years old, he went to Florida with our grandparents for the summer, but they ending up keeping him for a whole year. A year might as well be a lifetime in the mind of a child, in the minds of children. I was five and was rummaging through the room that Dan and Jim shared when I found a pair of Danny’s shoes in the closet. They were a 1950’s style, brown with white in the center. Finding them was an abrupt reminder of the brother I used to have, the one I had forgotten about, the one I wanted back! I carried those shoes around with me all day while I cried inconsolably. I wanted my parents to witness my anguish, so they would get my brother back home for me…

Post that got published: Common Ground ~ …Abuse of power thrives in silence and silence is often obtained through fear. Name calling is one of the easiest ways to instill fear and stifle dissent. It can temporarily stop debate – debate that might be uncomfortable, but could also lead to understanding and change. But it doesn’t stop problems. In fact, without a constructive forum for dissent, resentments go underground, where they are fueled and can then cause existing problems to be magnified...

Post that I read on WVTF Public Radio: Let Me Clue You In About My Father ~ In a family photograph of my father, taken in Germany at the end of WWII, he’s standing in his army uniform holding a blonde German child in his arms. Her hair is parted down the middle, pulled tightly into two braids. She looks happy. When I was a little girl, I formed an opinion about that photograph. Regardless of the fact that I hadn’t been born when it was taken, I wondered why he was holding her when he should have been holding me…or one of my brothers or sisters at least. We all agreed that my dad was handsome and looked like Elvis Presley back then…

Most Romantic Post: I Met Him at the Laundry Mat ~ … Besides what obviously attracts 2 people who later get married, Joe maintains the two things that initially impressed him most about me were my enthusiasm for those foraged apples and the big pot of lentil soup I had on the stove the first time he came to my house…

Recent Visits to Loose Leaf from Exotic Places ~ Iceland; Riga, Latvia; Praha Hlavni Mesto, Prague, Czech Republic; Tomsk, Russian Federation; Sana, Sanaa, Yemen; Serbia; Canary Islands, Bahrain.

Posted by Colleen at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

(Photo: Colleen at the control panel) I was once a prolific letter writer. I suspect that many bloggers were. As someone from a large family, who lives in a different state from most of my family members, my letter writing skills came in handy. When xeroxed Christmas letter became popular, I jumped on the bandwagon, and because I don’t enjoy long conversations by phone, I was soon sending out seasonal mass mailings.

Blogging is a lot like letter writing. I was bound to be a convert. But the transition from pen to keyboard didn’t come easy, and I still can’t get some of my family members online. I still use a pen to sketch out hand-written drafts, as if my mind did its thinking through my hand.

I’ve always been fascinated with how much history has been revealed through personal letters and journals. I treasure my own (my dad’s, really) tattered box filled with the priceless yellowed documents that give me insight into the past…the time, the place, and the character of family members who came before me.

Even fiction stories are sometimes told around personal journals. The movie “Dances with Wolves” revolved around the journal entries of Kevin Costner’s character. And if Captain Kirk hadn’t kept a journal, how would we have known about the adventures of the Star Trek Enterprise?

I consider my blog to be a time capsule of my recent life, and I plan to print out and bind a collection of entries for my descendents. It may not be as personal or stylishly classic as letters are, but at least it will tell my story (and spare them the struggle of reading my handwriting, which has deteriorated over the years to the point of being barely legible).

Loose Leaf and the Palomino camper are off for a new adventure (Where no man has been before? Probably not.). My husband and I are heading out for Colorado to attend his brother’s wedding. I plan to beam-up my blog entries whenever possible, but if my updates and comments in the blogsphere are erratic, you’ll understand why. OK SCOTTY, I’M READY.

Post Note: The commentary I posted last week, “AKA Spending His Way Out of the Doghouse,” which was about President Bush’s responsibility in being unprepared for Katrina due to his downgrading of FEMA, got picked up by “Just Response” and can be viewed here. “Katrina KOs GOP fiscal policies” by Jason Leopold, also on “Just Response” and on the same subject is also worth checking out.

Posted by Colleen at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

All the people in my life should know this: Anything that happens when I’m with you could end up in a blog post. It’s not like I go around recording everything. Not even I know what will end up in a post. I just follow where the Muse leads me. I’m her slave.

So just for the record let me say, if I’m blogging about YOU, I might use your first name, but not your last, unless you are already using it online. I may post a picture but usually only a side viewed blurry one, one from the back, or from the distance. For full frontal face shots, I generally ask first, and I only post flattering photos of myself and others (excepting the one of my sisters that I cut and pasted myself on to).

Some people like to be linked and mentioned or have their photos posted. Others can’t get over the fact that some old nude photos of celebrities have been posted on the internet and that some people have lost their jobs because they blogged bad stuff about their employers. If I know you’re one of the second types, I’ll probably just refer to you as “a friend,” “a bystander,” or “someone.”

Rest assured, I don’t write negative stuff about people in my life or other bloggers, in the same way I wouldn’t use swear words in my act if I was a stand-up comedian. I just don’t find negativity all that interesting. Of course, occasionally, I write commentary about negative things happening around us, but I don’t consider that perpetrating negativity as much as reporting it…with the hope that it can be corrected.

So which type are you? Are you blog shy?

Posted by Colleen at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

AKA: Sunday is Optional
When I was growing up Catholic, we couldn’t eat meat on Fridays. Girls wore hats to church and the mass was still done in Latin. During Lent, we gave up candy and other sweets. No one shopped on Sunday because all the stores were closed.

In the spirit of the colonial New England blue laws, I’m going to give up posting on Sundays (or at the very least make it optional). This isn’t like a new year’s resolution or something I’m giving up for lent; it’s just an experiment to see if I’ll like having one day blog-free day a week. My plan is to spend more time in the church of my choice on Sundays, which for me is…the great outdoors. Amen!

Posted by Colleen at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I wish all my recent road trip blogging looked this pretty. This is David St. Lawrence of Ripples, blogging at our own wireless Café de Sol, here in Floyd. He’s actually writing about women from Hingham in this shot (see photo and question below).

Posted by Colleen at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

When Gretchen St. Lawrence and I first met in June for a blogger met-up, we were excited to discover that we hail from the same place. Although we both live in Virginia now, she is from Hingham, Massachusetts, and I am from Hull, the next town over.

At our second meeting, last week in the Café de Sol, the woman in the background of this photo, (using her lap top and in town for Floyd Fest) over-heard us talking and came forward to say that she is also from Hingham! Not only is she from Hingham, but her name is also Colleen (like mine). What are the chances of a line-up like that?! We couldn’t have planned it if we tried.

Do you have any “small world” stories to share?

Posted by Colleen at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My fantasy is that at some point during the recent Floyd World Music Festival (Floyd Fest), I would have finagled myself up on stage, grabbed a microphone and shouted to the crowd, “How many bloggers are out there? Let’s see a show of hands!” After all, didn’t my friend, Steve P, get up on the stage a couple of years ago and brag about his first grandson? And last year Bob the “Foreman” earned the privilege, via his building skills, to be slotted in the performers program to lead us in a Beatle’s song.

In the past two of months, I’ve had a couple of “what I’ve been calling blogger blind dates,” where I meet up with fellow bloggers that I’ve been communicating with online. At Floyd Fest, I had the pleasure to meet Jeanne from “Out and Back,” who was in town for Floyd Fest and to visit her brother, also a blogger (A Tech Monk Speaks).

This was the first year there was an internet café at the festival, graciously hosted by Blue Nova, a Floyd computing company. I wonder how many bloggers besides me were under the Blue Nova tent checking their blog traffic over the 3 day festival weekend. If I could have gotten that show of hands, we all could have met there and had a real blogger cross pollination meet-up. As it were, I was able to visit Michele Agnew for her traditional blogger weekend “meet and greet” (see photo). Something I was hardly expecting to do.

I was thrilled to run into a couple of festival goers who admitted to being regular “Loose Leaf” readers (ones that I wasn’t aware of), I sold some of my books, enjoyed the attentive audience under the poetree during my reading…and…Ani DiFranco’s poetry was so good that at one point it made me cry. Wow. Ain’t life great?!

Posted by Colleen at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I can still recall when over 10 years ago a close friend looked me straight in the eye and announced, “I love my Mac.” I turned up my nose and looked at her like she had two heads.

Sometime after that, my sister, Kathy, told me that I would love using a computer, once I got used to it. I didn’t agree with her at the time, but I took her more seriously than my friend who loved her Mac because Kathy, like me, is technologically challenged and an unlikely candidate to take to the computer, but she had.

Times have surely changed. My husband recently purchased me a Dell lap top and had it sent to my mother’s house, where I’ll be staying for the next couple of weeks. I wake up each morning and put my USB memory stick around my neck. It hangs from a cord like a key or a whistle, and I feel like a coach ready to get into the game…once I can find an internet connection, which my mother doesn’t have.

This past week, I attended a cook-out pool party, played scrabble, visited family members, discovered a new beer, walked a trail with my nephews and the beach every evening that it hasn’t been raining. I have also blogged…at the library, my niece’s house, my brother Joey’s house, and all three of my sister’s houses.

My sister Kathy’s blog, “A Particularly Persistent Point of View” made its debut a couple of months before "Loose Leaf" did. It covers a mix of political and metaphysical topics, and is set up via a dialogue with her inner critic, which in this incarnation is a tiger. I don’t think I ever could have guessed so many years ago when she was first discovering the world wide web of the internet that we would both end up being so “online,” blogging side-by side (see photo).

Special Happy Birthday Wishes to my son, Josh, on his 26th birthday. Sorry no blueberry pie this year. See you when I get home.

Posted by Colleen at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

My baby blog is 3 months old. Today is my 100th post. In honor of that, a little review is in order.

~ Most commented on post: “Is it Summer Yet?” with 17 comments. It was inspired by Fragments from Floyd, when Fred asked his readers, “When do you know it’s summer?”
~ Most commented on post with help from Michele, the fairy godmother of blogs, who featured Loose Leaf as a site of the day: “The Blog Keeper is in” with 31 comments. The subject was internet addiction, and a Radford University Professor e-mailed me to ask if he could use the post as a springboard for a class he was teaching, covering the same topic.
~ Visit from the most exotic country: (Read: Where the heck is that?) According to my stat counter: Brunei Darussalam. Or how about Noord-brabant, ‘s-hetogen bosch?
~ Strangest keyword search that brought someone to Loose Leaf: Loose Women
~ Why the name Loose Leaf? Here
~ Why the photo with my hat on, which David St. Lawrence, who thinks I look better in person, called a disguise?, Here and Here
~ The people I want to thank: For getting me this far, regardless of the fact that I have no tech-no-logic. Here (moved from my original blogger blog, which lasted a week. Comments got lost in the shuffle)
~ Most converted: My sister Sherry, who didn’t think she’d like blogging but now she does.
~ Most intriguing blog name found while bloghopping: Does This Make My Butt Look Big?
~ Fringe Benefit? I can type looseleafnotes now as fast as I can type my own name.

(I got the idea of a 100th post review from wilkeworld.blogspot.com. The author there recently had his own 100th post.)

Posted by Colleen at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

As a writer, my blog gives me the opportunity to break down my body of work into digestible bite size pieces. About a week’s worth of posts will fit on one page at any given time. I think of them like I think about a 7 course meal. I like to have a variety of short and long entries highlighted with a photo or two…a quote here... a link there…and a poem for those who have room for dessert. Sometimes a post is meant as an appetizer to whet one’s palette for a future main course and often the entries (knowingly or not) are loosely related or compliment each other in some way. After preparing and serving up my own offerings, I frequently go to someone else’s site to see what they’ve been cooking up.

And today we have a leftover…because it fits with the menu:

How a poem is like cake

Don’t use a mix
or stale ingredients

Don’t look in the oven
too much when it’s cooking
or eat too much at one sitting

Don’t over-sweeten
or over-stir

A baker and a poet
are both concerned with flavor

It’s all about consistency
and knowing when it’s done

Posted by Colleen at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

People at my Writers’ Workshop want to know why I haven’t been bringing any work for them to critique. They probably think I haven’t been writing, but the opposite is true. I’m writing more and faster than ever, but our circle only meets twice a month. Therein lies the problem.

Although 3 out of 8 of us in the group are bloggers, there’s still some confusion as to what a blog actually is. Some of my attempts at explanations have recently included:

It’s nothing like an email. You don’t zip it out as fast as you think it, spelling errors and all. It’s not like a personal paper journal. Although good writing is always personal, you don’t post what you don’t want to be published. It’s not a self-indulgent to-do-list diary, or if it is it, it better be interesting and well written if you care at all about developing a readership. And finally, if you have the time to read a section of the newspaper or a magazine article on a subject that interests you, then you have the time to read a blog, if you want to.

Most bloggers spend time working on their written posts…but not 2 weeks. And if I did have a blog entry left un-posted for over 2 weeks that I brought to the group for review, it probably wouldn’t be taken serious as a writing form. Will blog writing ever be viewed as something more than a journal entry, just a degree away from an email? I suspect I would get more credit if I said “I’m writing my memoirs” (not in chapters but in posts), rather than admit to other writers that I’m blogging.

It’s not that I don’t still need workshop critique, it’s more that my writing friends aren’t available when the majority of my writing questions come up. It occurred to me recently that what I really need is tech support for grammar. Imagine being able to log onto a grammar site at a moment’s notice, enter a problem sentence or a paragraph and then receive instant editing? Back in the day of typewriters and white-out, a spell-check probably seemed like science fiction.

The physical interactions of writers working together will never be obsolete, but an online Grammar Doctor, a 1-800 grammar line, or even a PBS Writer’s Workshop show would all be welcomed options and helpful to writers in a pinch.

Posted by Colleen at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The meter is ticking... When asked by a fellow blogger if my stats had gone up after Loose Leaf was listed in the Roanoke Times "Blogging in Southwest Virginia" list, and after my friend, Fragments Fred, who was also listed, told me his had gone up, I had to admit that I didn’t know anything about blog stats and that it was time to learn more about them. So I did some investigation; then I picked Fred’s brain a little, which resulted in a brand new stat counter on my site effective as of last Wednesday.

I don’t think there’s any going back, once one has a site meter or a stat counter, but I also think it’s a mixed blessing, one that makes me ask, “Is anything off the record?” It’s helpful and sometimes a kick to know where your blog hits are coming from, anywhere from as far away as Egypt, Turkey, and Switzerland to Canada and Mexico in the first couple of days, I discovered. But it also makes me feel a little bit snoopy.

On the other hand, I also feel slightly exposed. While a stat counter can’t tell you who has visited your site (Thankfully. That’s more than I can handle knowing), it can, in most cases, tell you what country and city they’re from, what link they were referred to your site by, how long they stay logged on, and how many pages they looked at. Through stat counts, a blogger can discover that she may have what is referred to as “lurkers,” people who spend a lot of time on her site but don’t leave comments.

I also found out through my research (Who Links Here?) that some of the comments I’ve left on other people’s sites have turned up on google and other searches engines. While I realize that my blog entries are on the record, I don’t think of my comments as such. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have a subversive streak in me. Will my blogging habits come back and haunt me someday?

Mostly the stat counter is useful and fun, and the most fun part of it is that I got to call my Asheville potter son – who loves the Red Sox and likes to use the word “stats” at least a few times a day – to say, “I’ve got stats!” I also wanted to report that two people found my site by googling his name! Who knew?!

Posted by Colleen at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

"Loose Leaf" is in the running for a Blogette Award, “a publicly-chosen award for the best female-oriented weblog/website/journal.” The contest runs from May 1st to June 25th and there is a prize$ involved. I first heard about the Blogette at Blogcruiser, and then again at Being Me. I shamelessly nominated myself (yes, you can do that), more with the expectation to meet other women bloggers than to win. I also wanted to introduce my “still so new” site to others. I’m slowly making my way down the list of nominated entries and there are some fine blogs in the mix to read. If you like "Loose Leaf" and want to vote for it, go here. Scroll down the alphabetical list and click on “Loose Leaf,” just like Dorothy clicked her ruby red slippers together to find her way home. Don’t forget to check out some of the other nominated blogs while your there.

Posted by Colleen at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Legend has it that Peter Merholz coined the word “blog” when he published a side note to his website in the spring of 1999. “I’ve decided to pronounce the word ‘weblog’ as ‘wee-blog.’ Or ‘blog’ for short.” Today the word blog is in the Oxford English Dictionary. ~ From “Who Let the Blogs Out” by Biz Stone

I’m still trying to explain what a blog is to the people in my life.

To my mother who doesn’t own a computer:

Me: (over the phone) Ma, if you picked up a magazine and saw an article titled “Where I’m From” by Colleen Redman, you’d gladly read it, right? Well, a blog is the same thing, only you read it on the computer. You’d be surprised how many people get their information from computers today.
She: (still confused) “I really like that “Where I’m From” poem you wrote and sent to us.”

To the Floyd librarian, as I’m checking out a book called “Who Let the Blogs Out.”

She: Have you ever read a blog?
Me: (laugh) Yes, I have one.
She: (surprised) Isn’t it tedious? There are so many.
Me: You find the ones that interest you. For example, mine’s a writer’s journal, so other writers might find it interesting... You would probably like Fred’s, Doug’s, or mine because we often write about Floyd.

Driving home I continue to explain blogs to the librarian (and even to myself), ruminating the subject over in my mind:

Me: (knowing she’s a gardener) If you pick up a gardening magazine, you’ll get your standard gardening articles. You’ll browse through and find one that’s relevant to you. And what if, after you read it, you could instantly ask the author questions? If it was written on a blog, you could do that. A good gardening blog might offer knowledge and advice, along with insight into the author and some background information, all presented in a personal way. You could share resources and gardening links and look at posted photos of end results. Before you know it, you could be communicating with a whole community of gardeners from all over the country or even the world.

When I was researching new studies and treatments for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I got the best information from message boards. I went directly to the source, the people who have CFS. Not only did they offer me support and cutting edge information, they knew who the best doctors were, what worked and what didn’t. The message board people had no vested interests to protect, and so shared information freely and without motive. Bloggers are free agents as well. Biz Stone, the author of the library book I checked out, rightly calls blogging “peer to peer publishing.” A blog is a writer’s publication that cuts out the middle men.

Me: (still explaining) Now replace the word gardening with anything else you might be interested in, home schooling, sports, technology, art, at home mothering…you name it. Type the word of your interest and the word “blog” into a search engine and see what you can find.

Post to note: “Blog” might be in the dictionary now, but my spell check hasn’t heard the news.

Posted by Colleen at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I received an unexpected phone call from my husband yesterday morning. He was calling to report that someone had seen me on the local nightly news. No, I wasn’t pulled over for an overdue inspection sticker or for writing poetry while driving. It seems that WDBJ-7 was doing a news report on regional blogs and mine was included in the report, or at least, as my husband retells it, my blog title and photo flashed on the TV screen, proving once again that blog connections work in the most mysterious ways.

I tried to find out more about the story at the WDBJ website and wasn’t able to. But my search led me to the Roanoke Times “Columnists” page. Here I discovered my photo on a sidebar with a caption that read “Featured Blog.” Wow, did I win something? Nobody told me.

I knew that my blog was included in the Roanoke Time’s “Blogging in Southwest Virginia” list, along with my fellow Floyd bloggers, Fred First and Doug Thompson, and handful of others from Roanoke and Blacksburg. But to be featured on another page was a total surprise. I figure The Roanoke Times blog list is where the TV station got the lowdown on Loose Leaf.

How cool is that? And hey, how come those news people haven’t left me any comments?

3:00 P.M. Post note: I just figured out what I won; a spot on Roanoke Time's online front page. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, it says: Blog: Home alone, with weary head screwed on right By Colleen Redman, in reference to recent posts.

Posted by Colleen at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Do blog readers keep restaurant hours? Have you noticed that weekdays can be slow and that blog traffic tends to pick up over the weekend? On a good day in the blogsphere, it seems that you get your early-riser breakfast crowd, hopefully followed by a few readers who trickle in around lunch time. Then there’s the after-dinner rush when your chance to tempt readers is at its highest. There’s always the possibility of the occasional late night blog hopper dropping by. If the atmosphere at your site is good and the reading is appealing, your visitors might leave you a comment. Getting a comment is like getting a good tip.

Posted by Colleen at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Some of my friends are getting tired of hearing about my blog, or they miss me because I’ve been online more than usual, writing blog entries. I remind them about the long political articles I used to email out. Since I can’t change our current government, even though it’s getting worse everyday, I might as well get on with my own life, something I can control. Considering that, blogging is a refreshing and constructive change of pace, and one that helps me remember my sense of humor. Note: This post is dedicated to Sherlock.

New bumper sticker idea: Let the Bush Administration Unravel itself. I’d Rather Be Blogging.

Recipe for Reading Blank Emails:
And some of my friends are getting blank email messages from me. Plans are being made to fix the problem, but it's going to take awhile. In the meantime, here's how you can read the messages: Right click on the message (in the list of messages) go to properties, details, and message source, scroll down and see it.

Posted by Colleen at 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I was doing a search for “writer’s blogs” (as if I don’t have enough to do) and came across a story that caught my attention about how blogging saved novelist Ayelet Waldman’s life.

Waldman, in her own words, said in her March 14th column “Living Out Loud Outline,” for Salon: The first inkling my husband had that I was thinking about suicide was when he checked my blog.

This is what she had to say about her blog: I had begun my blog two months before, imagining that it would act as a journal, a way of taking notes on my life, and at the same time be a sort of marketing tool to remind readers that I still existed in between novels. Almost immediately I discovered in myself a confessional impulse, a compulsive need to haul open the tattered edges of my emotional raincoat and expose the nasty parts lurking beneath. I blogged daily, chronicling everything from what my youngest son ate for dinner (one spaghetti noodle, one pat of butter, and all the green, blue and pink frosting off a very large cupcake), to the Supreme Court's dramatic shift on sentencing guidelines, to the various side effects of the medications I take for my bipolar disorder. As soon as I read something interesting, as soon as I heard something moving, as soon as one of my children said something funny, I posted to my blog.

Her blog, called “bad mother,” chronicles a two month period and concludes with a post titled “The End,” which follows the one she calls the “suicide essay.” It can still be read online at bad-mother.blogspot.com.

Posted by Colleen at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This one illustrates the potential of doing your own blog-thing, found at blogcruiser from The Daily Yomiur:

It’s a blog called “True Stories: A Diary on My Demonlike Wife” and is written by a Japanese man who started it as a way to deal with the stress of his domineering wife. Written under a pseudonym, the author “comically details a miserable daily life under the thumb of his wife.” Described as “farcical,” it’s apparently very popular, with photos to elaborate and a reported 40,000 hits and day. It won the nation’s best in the “Kono Burogu ga Sugoi 2005” (Amazing Blogs 2005) awards and has been turned into a book, which has the same name as the blog. According to the Tokyo-based company that published it, it has sold about 80,000 copies since publication in January. A TV drama based on the blog is next.

Unfortunately, there was no link to the blog included in the story. With a Google search, I was able to verify the truth of the story, but still no link. That’s okay because I don’t read Japanese. I wonder; will there be an American spin-off?

Posted by Colleen at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes I wish the word “blog” didn’t sound so much like “blob” and remind me of the 1958 movie (The Blob) staring Steve McQueen where something falls from outer space and gets stuck on his arm and then grows and grows until it covers his body. It’s good for blogs to grow – more readers and posts everyday – right? It’s not going to take over my life – right?

Posted by Colleen at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

As a foster care provider for the past 8 years, and a person who has done some basic family genealogy research, I understand the importance of good documentation, and I consider my blog to be another form of it.

Some of my friends have concerns about the nature of blogging, such as: Don’t you feel vulnerable, putting yourself out there so personally? And aren’t you just giving your writing away? I have asked myself those same questions. But I also have an answer.

Part of the answer is that it’s not as personal as one might think. I have a spiral bound paper journal for that. Whereas my physical journal is off the record, I understand that my blog writing is not. The nature of documentation is that you try to get it right before you officially enter it into the record, of which you are accountable.

The other part of the answer has to do with “readership.” I’m a writer (so, I’ve finally convinced myself), and writers need readers. What difference does it make to a reader whether they pick up The Roanoke Times, a We’moon Journal, or a Mothering Magazine and read something I’ve written there, or if they read it here? And why would I feel more vulnerable about having my writing online than I would about having it in printed publications?

I like the informal atmosphere of blog writing and keeping my own hours. I don’t plan to stop submitting to the above mentioned venues and others. In fact, I suspect I’ll be submitting more than I have in the past because writing leads to more writing, and blogging keeps me at my desk doing just that.

For me, it’s like playing scrabble. I don’t hold on to my Q for the whole game waiting for the play of my life. I play with what I have…for the highest score…every time. Here’s how Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prize winning author, puts it…

"One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now ... Some more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes."

Back in the days before the internet, I was a prolific letter writer, which turned out to be an important aspect of my writing self-education, just as blogging is today. One of my favorite authors, home schooling pioneer John Holt, revealed that the bulk of material in his books was taken from his personal correspondences. Sometimes blog entries are simply daily posts, other times they have other applications and could end up in a printed publication, a future book, or read as a radio essay.

And who’s to say that blogging isn’t a modern version of going to Paris, the way Hemingway and others did in the 1920s to mingle with other writers (mostly unpublished at the time) and immerse themselves in their craft? The Beat Poets of the 50s started a new “movement” by hanging out together and writing outside the traditional system.

Because of blogging, I believe that the small press just got smaller. My own blog is a one-man-band, writer’s reality show. Not only do I get to write what I want, but I have some diverse and witty readers (many of whom are also writers) that inspire me…and sometimes leave comments!

Blogging isn’t for everyone, but for many of us it’s an invitation to start from where we are and do what we’re compelled to do. Just write.

By the way: We have 3 bloggers in our small town (that I know of) and one en route who plans to move here. Did I mention that we were holding a Blogging Convention here in Floyd?

...No, not really, that’s an April Fools joke. But we could do that someday…couldn’t we?

Posted by Colleen at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Friends want to know where I’ve been. It’s hard to explain. It’s like I opened a new business with my writing, and my blog is the storefront. As a poet and writer, I’m used to doing what I love without it resulting in any income to speak of. I did have a couple of new book sales this week, though. My blog links to my web page, which is a contact place for my books. And my web page links to my blog. Shall we call it a franchise of sorts?

My husband, who is a counselor, says that computer addiction is a new emerging disorder. For some reason, he wanted me to know the danger signs, so he showed me a list of symptoms, which include:
1. Being dishonest or minimizing the extent of the time you stay on the computer.
2. Spending more time than you intended on it.
3. Feeling of depression or anxiety when something or someone shortens your time or interrupts your plans to use the computer.
4. Having a preoccupation with the computer and computer activities when you are not using the computer (thinking about the computer and its activities when doing something else).

“Yeah, I’m probably addicted…but I want to be!” I protested to my husband and then went on to explain, “Some people have a workshop or a studio. For a writer, a blog is like that. And if you have a shop, you have to put in a few hours a day shop keeping; don’t you?”

My husband is actually very supportive of my writing and all that is involved with it. But, when he hears me walking up the stairs to the computer room, I want him to be thinking…She’s off to work…great…what a dedicated worker she is…and not…She’s addicted to the computer. Is there a treatment center for that?

After shocking myself by actually posting a photo for the first time yesterday morning, and then typing today’s entry out, I came up with another symptom to add to the above list, when I realized I had forgotten to eat breakfast. So…#5 is: Forgetting to eat.

Do you have any internet addiction symptoms of your own?
Here’s a less serious list of signs to watch out for.

Posted by Colleen at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBacks (1)

I’m a new kid on the blog block and so I appreciate this ingenious way to meet other bloggers. It’s called “The Weekend Meet and Greet” and is hosted by Michele at her “all things Michele” blog site.

How it works: Leave a comment on the Meet and Greet entry, such as “hello Michele.” Then go to the name above your comment and hit the link to their site. Leave another comment there, ending with “Michele sent me.” Soon your own site is in the pool of possibility and you will be visited by new blog friends, more than once if you choose to play the game more than once. And just see if you can contain your curiosity and not visit back the people who visited you. See what I mean by blog hopping?

Michele’s blog is a blast! It’s full of interactive games, such as word association, finish the sentence, the daily three things, and site of the day, and other daily comment games. She’s all about spreading what she calls “comment cheer.” And it works. When she visited my site recently and left me a comment, I was not only cheered, but elated because, as far as I’m concerned, Michele is a celebrity in the world of blogs. Her enthusiasm is contagious.

Posted by Colleen at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I may speak English, but I think in Bloggish – that ongoing internal conversation that when put down on paper amounts to writing. My bloggish comes in blocks of thought, too short to be a commentary or even an essay, but just the right size for a …post.

Even my first book, “The Jim and Dan Stories,” about losing my brothers a month apart, was written in blog-style blocks. At first I was confused by the format that dictated itself, the slightly disjointed short pieces that I struggled to name. Essays? Vignettes? Journal entries? In the end, when viewed as a whole, those short prose pieces wove together a story; partly an account of my brother’s last weeks; part a memoir of growing up together in a large Irish Catholic family; and part a chronicle of my personal experience coping with all-consuming grief.

It seems that my mind thinks in excerpts from a larger text that fills my mind. I don’t think in linear “start to finish” ways. I’m one of those people who thinks in flash bulletins and browses through books from back to forward. Or I look at a word like “thinking” and see “thin king” or maybe “king thinking.”

Blogging comes natural to me. It reminds me of the high school notes that my girlfriends and I wrote and passed to each other in the school corridors. Whenever we got a chance, we picked up where we left off, channeling our thoughts, as though we were taking dictation from the Muse.

Blogging also appeals to my sense of efficiency. I like to speak and receive language succinctly, but I frequently struggle to put the right words together when articulating in the moment. I know exactly what I should have said, after the fact, usually when I’m writing it down. At a recent Spoken Word Event in Floyd, it was my turn to read my poetry. “Some people write because they don’t like to talk,” I announced to the audience before clearing my throat to read, hoping the written word would speak for itself.

Being a blogger, when someone asks me how I’m doing or what’s new, I can now skip the conventional perfunctory answers and refer them to my site address. Time for a letter home? Print out a blog page and catch everyone up. And of course, the archivist in me says, “Let’s get this on the record!”

Writing is the way I synthesize whatever I’m learning at the time, but it’s also the way I catalog what I already know. With blogging, I can cross reference myself and then match the results with what others are saying.

It’s a social activity too. Eventually bloggers find each other, and so you meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet. As a once prolific letter writer, I have always felt that writing is a good way to get to know one another, believing it has the potential to reveal more of one’s true self than the physical presentation can.

Don’t like small talk? Would you rather share insights? Explore topics? Are you a homebody who finds anything but the occasional social event overwhelming, or maybe superficial? Maybe you’re like me, a person who loves to get mail. You could be a blogger too, and blogs can be as light as a “pen pal central” or as serious at the watchdog political blogs that have recently been keeping the news media on its toes.

Finally, I think blogging is an act of self-sufficiency that isn't dependent on editors and publishers. Not only is it an immediate forum where you can develop your writing skills, I also believe that when you share your creative output, creativity grows larger in you.

There are lots of reasons for blogging. These are some of mine. I think I’ve been dreaming up and storing blog drafts in my head since I was a young girl. Early on, I was aware of an internal monologue, which would come through most clearly when I was off on my own, roaming the open fields of un-mowed grass and Queen Anne’s Lace in my hometown of Hull, Massachusetts. It was as if I was on a quest to perceive the world and then translate it by putting it in my own words. From there, I have arrived here… blogging on the Blue Ridge @ looseleafnotes.com.

Posted by Colleen at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Apparently blogs now have their own version of the Academy Awards called the annual “Bloggies.” Here are a few interesting blog facts that I got from a March 15th BBC report covering that event:

* Blogs had a big year last year, with a top US dictionary naming “blog” word of 2004.
* Technorati, a blog search engine, tracks more than seven million blogs and says that more than 12,000 are added daily.
* But a recent Gallup survey revealed that only one in four Americans were either familiar or somewhat familiar with blogs.
* More than half, 56%, said they had no knowledge of them. Among internet users, only 32% said they were very or somewhat familiar with them.

After reading that, I felt smaller than a needle like in a haystack, so I checked out some of the winning blogs for inspiration and Dooce.com was my favorite. It won the best US blog, most humorous, best taglined, and best written. The author, Heather Armstrong, helped coined the term “dooce,” meaning someone who gets fired from their job because of the contents of their blog. It’s not a DC tell-all-who-you’ve-slept-with; Heather lives in Utah, was raised Morman, is married with a young child, although, her writing is edgy. A photo posted on her site yesterday, shows (her) in a black T-shirt with boldly printed white letters that read: “I’m blogging this!”

Posted by Colleen at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Good News: Putting up my first blog was easy. In fact, I inadvertently created 3 of them.

The Bad News: It took me 5 hours to post my picture in "About Me," and in the end it wasn't me who did it. (Thank you to Nelson Pidgeon, my tech support webmaster). Posting blog messages is easy and I quickly understood how to make links. I have a rudimentary understanding of how to post pictures now, but I haven't done it myself yet. Too busy doing other things. Such as; figuring out how to delete the other 2 blogs I mistakenly set up.

Day 2: After several hours navigating around, I actually figured out how to get into the template code to rename some of the sidebar settings. But - and this is a warning - don't hit those links (you'll probably just have to now) because they are not what they say they are. I haven't figured out how to put the text I want in them. For a technologically challenged person with dyscalclia (a variation of dyslexia)I'm amazed at what I've done so far, but the rocket science isn't over yet. The last thing I said to my husband, before turning out the lights last night, was: "All I want to do is write, but I feel like I have to invent the printing press first!"

Day 3: The first blog message has been posted. (Although I had to type it twice because I forgot to hit save before preview and I lost most of it.) Please feel free to send any helpful advice.

Posted by Colleen at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)