Blogger Tourism

The following was written in response to an article review one of my classmates wrote. The link is at the bottom of the page.

The more I have read about blogs, and experienced having one of my own on Blogger, the more I believe they have tremendous value. As you point out in your review, one valuable aspect is the ability of a blogger to give the reader a sense of place. One of the blogs mentioned in the article, Fragments From Floyd, turns out to be written by a man named Fred, who lives in Floyd County, Virginia, which happens to be where my mother was born and raised, and where my grandparents lived their entire lives ... and where they are buried. Like thousands of other places in the world, Floyd County is a place only a few people know about. It's not situated in a location that one would normally pass through on the way to somewhere else. For the most part, unless you specifically set out to go to Floyd County, you likely will never know it exists.

The town of Floyd is home to true country folk. With its one stop light, despite the one fast food restaurant and one convenience store (at least last time I was there), it can certainly boast that it was "country when country wasn't cool." Part of the reason is its remote location, 50 miles from the nearest big city, Roanoke, and far enough away from southwest Virginia's biggest claim to fame, Virginia Tech, to have been able to maintain its country charm. Willis is another town located within Floyd County. With a population of about 400, it's where my grandparents lived for 40 years. The road on which their home sat remained unpaved until the early '80s.
Bloggers like Fred, who bring people from all over the world into tiny places like Floyd County, not only give readers a glimpse into places they otherwise would never know, but they do so while preserving the very things that make such places special. People reading Fred's blog don't clog the narrow streets of "downtown" Floyd with their SUVs or rocket past dairy farms in their mini-vans. Yet they're able to get a glimpse into a way of life they may have had no idea even existed within their own state .... or on the other side of the world.

And to me, the best thing is, Fred is just an ordinary guy who teaches at Radford College and has made his home in Floyd County for the last 8 years or so. He didn't need to find a cable access channel that would allow him to broadcast or a publisher to take on his book. He just set up a blog and introduced the world to the place he now calls home.

Links:
http://myrhetoricincyberspace.blogspot.com/
http://www.fragmentsfromfloyd.com/