Fred First

Within Our Grasp – Learning To Live With What We Have

We are coming to the end of many familiar and comfortable ways of life in the next few months, and the beginnings of the new we cannot fully know....

FRED FIRST: Country Mouse, City Life / Growing New Roots without Transplant Shock

As soon as we made the decision in November to move to Columbia, calculating the...

FRED FIRST: Landing on One’s Feet

. . .  and To be a Placed Person When You Get There In Floyd County—or...

Leaving Home to Find It … Where Does This Road Go?

“When we are young, we live where we’re born. For some of us, the place...

FRED FIRST: Go West, Old Man!

We decided this fall that our wonderful, comfortable, convenient and convivial existence here in Southwest...

Dry and Warm: No Easy Matter for Plucked Chickens

by Fred First Assured in advance by the region’s soggy-foggy reputation that I would face constant drizzling rain there, I bought the first modern...

Living Within Our Means, Means Knowing Our Limits

by Fred First I recently read these headlines, and was oddly encouraged: “Europe has already run out of fish for the year.” I’ll share with...

Dragonfly Pest Control: A Free Global Service

by Fred First Even after being a biology watcher for decades, I learned something very interesting a few years ago when I chanced upon...

Every Drought Ends with a Good Rain

by Fred First This selection is from Slow Road Home, written in August 2002, a lament during one of the worst droughts in living...

In Praise of the “Wolf Peach”

by Fred First It is, in fact, a giant berry, technically a fruit. And it has been variously misunderstood, feared, loathed and praised during...

Economics As If People And Planet Mattered

by Fred First Is it just me, or does most everyone you talk to these days think that most everything in politics, economics, society...