"Slowly, he attracted followers, like-minded individuals interested in living sustainably, outside traditional supports, who were captivated by his thrifty ways and homesteading solution..."

"... and by the lovely short videos he posted: of desert cottontails eating off his mother’s Limoges plates; of dung beetles rolling a cow patty like a stone; of bees drinking from a pan of water. Within a few years, nearly a million people had visited his blog — more recently, the number was well over four million — and he had a core group of 1,000 or so regulars who followed his daily struggles and small triumphs...."

I'm reading "John Wells, 64, Who Fled New York for the Solitude of the Desert, Dies/A fashion photographer, he built a do-it-yourself life on 40 lonely acres in West Texas, living like a modern-day Thoreau and telling millions of his experience on a blog" (NYT).

Is it good to see the word "blog" in an obituary? Yes. 

It's also good to see someone memorialized for his frugality: "[H]e sold his house for $600,000 to a family of five, winnowed his possessions down to what he could fit in a rented truck and set off to build a new life. He paid $8,000 in cash for his 40-acre parcel. His property taxes that first year were $86.... He started with a tiny shack, where he could live, and equipped it with a bunk bed, a galley kitchen and a desk...."