Finding the perfect blog theme is like finding a good mate, a needle in a haystack, a perfect pair of pants that actually fit.  When it comes to my blog, I like to keep it simple, nothing too stylized, no flashing lights or soundtrack that sneak up on you, no hard to find links or pages that make me squint like I’m reading in the dark.   I prefer soft colors, calm and serene, and green in particular.  I think of a blog theme like an empty page waiting to be filled or a frame for the written word or the latest photograph, something functional and pleasing that doesn’t distract from the main feature.  Since moving to WordPress I’ve looked at thousands but like hardly any.  It seems that every trade for one good feature results in the loss of another.

I like the look of my new blog theme but, as it turns out, it was designed by a Turk and the word “yazims” in the comment section (which may mean “comment” in Turkish) is, as far as I can tell, here to stay.   I can’t make comments capitalize, make spaces in between post paragraphs, or fix the time (it must be in Turkey time).  I suspect that no blog theme is perfect and it’s unlikely that someone like me, who gets lost in dashboards and templates like I get lost in cities, is going to be able to customize myself into perfection. Sadly, I don’t know a widget from a midget, a plug-in from a taxi, or an app from a map.

Note: Read “Born to Blog,” an essay I read on WVTF radio a couple of years ago HERE.

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 Being on an out-of-date Moveable Type publishing platform with a blog the size of Texas, I knew my options were limited.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 touch 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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 Minick. Jim is a regional writer, past Roanoke Times columnist, 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