Smokey Mountain Breakdown is one of the blogs that made it onto my blogroll in my last Blogrolling update (biannual, whether it needs it or not - oh, who'm I kidding, it always needs it...). I first ran across Rosiewolf over on Buzznet, back before they became quite so...well, buzzy...seemed like it used to be more about photography, but then I guess Flickr kinda elbowed Buzznet out of that niche & so Buzznet's now all about bands I'm far too old and square to ever have heard of. Anyways, I'd loved Rosie's pictures of her farm & community, and she wrote lovely commentary - and then she stopped posting. Finally one day I stumbled over the answer on one of her last Buzznet postings - turned out that DSL has not made it to her corner of the world & with all the extra "stuffs" Buzznet added to appeal to the fan-tykes, her phone modem would have a li'l meltdown when she tried to open the site.

That being concurrent with Blogger's improved photo uploading thing (which had some glitches in the beginning, but now seems to do the job almost all the time), it turned out that she'd decided to concentrate her efforts on her Smokey Mountain Breakdown Blog.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the window she gives me on a VERY different world.

She's a great writer - left the following comment about squash the other day that just killed me:

I'm getting fresh squash seed this year to plant. Most of what I had saved from 2005 came up as mutant zombie squash last year. Squash and gourds are very promiscuous and breed freely with each other. You never know that your prize winning pumpkin was getting it on with the trashy slut gourd from across the hedgerow until it comes up all mishappen and inbred the next year. Though I did have a happy accident between my heirloom punkies and heirloom yellow summers...tasty pumpkin that was easy to peel. It'll never happy again though.

Prize winning pumpkins getting it on with trashy slut gourds...holy cow. Who'd-a thunk squash could be so spicy? And here I always thought gardening was a rather quiet hobby...ha!

Anyways. She's also very good at serious, and she's just finished the fifth installment of an unbelievably moving coming-out story. I've got a lot of friends who are gay (including the guy who started me blogging, a dear friend from college - sadly, he shut down his blog not long after I started, it was great fun while it lasted) and I've heard a few. Coming out seems like it's got to be the most amazingly pivotal process - almost said moment, but it's hardly a moment, - in a gay person's life - you never know how people are going to react.

Rosie's told a story that reads like fiction, but her "Friend Scott" is a real person. 5 installments. Can't resist sharing his story - her story - her story about him. If it doesn't give you chills...hopefully it'll at least make you think.