Bang The Drum Slowly: The Passing of Pioneer Preppy

In some future history work (assuming that there is a future history and that there is power to run it), I do not wonder that this early era of the InterWeb (we are only at 40 years old as of 2023) will be looked back upon the way we now look upon the Japanese era of Ukiyo.

Ukiyo (浮世) literally means the "floating/fleeting/transient world".  The era, which technically runs the Edo Period of Japan coinciding with the Tokugawa Era (A.D. 1600-1867) refers to the idea of the transience of the passing world and the importance of living in the moment.  Its most frequent use was (perhaps not surprisingly) for that of the world of pleasure, but it could be extended to any idea of a moment or moments in time to live for.  Most people only know it from its signature art form, Ukiyo-e, or Pictures of the Floating World.  In paintings and in woodblock prints, Japanese artists presented pictures of the passing world.

(Taking the Evening Cool by Ryogoku Bridge,  Okumura Masanobu, A.D. 1745 [source])

In a similar manner, the InterWeb and the blogs that populate it ultimately have the same concept:  transient constructions of electrons and pixels, rising and falling with the waves and interests and the willingness of authors to write.

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Blogs and websites usually erupt of out of nowhere, for the most part an act of fiat lux ("Let there be light") on the part of their creators.  But they all end one of two ways. The first - the more explicit and seemingly less common - is that the creator announces its end, perhaps providing a reason or reasons for the termination of the blog/website.

In the second, they do not end as much as they simply drift away, borne on the currents of decaying search engines and links on other blogs that point to a thing that is no longer a living concern, signposts to monuments of the InterWeb now abandoned except for ghosts and tumbleweed.

In most of these cases, we never know the reason for their end.  There can be a variety of course: Sometimes the author loses interest.  Sometimes life simply happens and writing becomes a thing that can no longer be easily done.  The entries become less and less until one day there are no more entries, just a trailing set of comments that drift off into the ether without response.

Occasionally though, we do get a reason.

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It is likely because of my recent vacation that I missed what has become the final post on The Small Hold this past 27th of December 2024, announcing the death of its proprietor, Pioneer Preppy, earlier on the 8th of December.

PP had been gone from formal posting since February of last year but in point of fact, for something longer than that:  his somewhat regular posts had begun to have longer and longer gaps between them, his comments on other blogs less and less.  He never addressed the reason for the gaps and most did not ever ask (we never do - as a group we bloggers seem uncommonly respectful of privacy in a modern world so free of it).  Comments to that final post went unanswered; periodic check-ins by commenters went without response.

Now, no matter how it happened, we know the reason why.

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Given the apparently non-search function of Blogger and its comments, I cannot tell you when I first "met" PP.  To my mind it was in the early 2010's, but trying to do a search of posts is somewhat pointless and given the small sample size, it appears that really I got few comments at all before PP showed up.

How he found me I will never know now; likely it was a random search on some subject we shared an interest in.  Repeated comments led to me going back to his blog; from that, the sort of InterWeb friendship that seems to spring up from these sorts of things.

He wrote of gardens and trees, of encroaching civilization and trying to be self sufficient and the ups and downs of weather in Missouri.  His tales of trying to keep his wood furnace going in Winter became a staple of my Winter reading.  And at the end of every post, his admonition to "Keep Prepping Everyone" encourage everyone - no matter what their position or circumstances - to do what they could, where they were.

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PP was meaningful in my blogging career in two major ways.

The first was that he always - up to the last few posts - made it a point to answer everyone that commented, a trait that I have incorporated (and value in all those bloggers that do the same).  A comment is that most precious of commodities, a slice of time and therefore a slice of life and should be respected as such.

The second was that he was the very first blog I was added to a blogroll on.

It is not such a big thing now - I do not know that anyone does such things anymore on a regular basis, given that blogs come and go.  But seeing my blog there on someone else's blog for the first time was something that I valued greatly.  I had "arrived" as a blogger.

For that, I will always remain grateful

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I have no idea what the final plans for his blog are.  In a way, his blogroll has become a sort of frozen moment in time, as other blogs have continued to disappear. Their names remain, as do their last updates:  1 year ago, 2 years ago, 6 years ago.  His, too, will now go on his own blogroll list, to either slowly be forgotten and unlinked to or simply to disappear one day, either by conscious choice of his heirs or the shutdown of servers that no longer store items of perceived value.

The Floating World will have claimed another victim.  And the InterWeb will be a bit less bright for his passing.

Salve atque vale - Hail and Farewell, friend.  May we met again under that Happiest of Skies.