Estrogen Month - Day 31 Thanks to everyone who's helped make this a very successful month for highlighting women bloggers! And a special things to Tild~ for the images; you have been clicking on them to go to her blog, yes? Had I more energy I would have spoken a bit more about the varied subjects covered by these fine writers, rather than just urging y'all to read their stuff, but so it goes. I've now reorganized my public Bloglines bookmarks so that the Gals in Waiting sections (renamed "Where the Women Bloggers Are") have become the permanent response to the oft-asked question I've reproed on the sidebar. I've kept the three sections for ease of management, which break down as (1) those bloggers who received two votes from Pen-Elayne readers and therefore the ones I'm likeliest to start adding to my regular reading as soon as I have more leisure time, (2) those I'll certainly be paying attention to as often as time allots, and (3) those whose work I'm still looking forward to discovering more fully in the future. Meantime, I'm pleased to welcome the following women to my sidebar/regular reading list: Karen Zipdrive (Pulp Friction)Riggsveda (It's My Country, Too)Sheelzebub (Pinko Feminist Hellcat)And I'll wrap up Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month with some cool gender-based Guardian stories passed along via an e-mail from Glovefox, from whom I quote below: The ex-CIA spy who dismantled a bomb while 5 months pregnant
Women taking a successful plunge into male-dominated professions
You'd think that after decades (even a century) of wrangling for our right to have it all, our generation of women would be the one that fully takes advantage of the hard-won right. Not so.
Equality hasn't reached the prison kitchen
Musing on UK laws for moms and moms-to-bes
Women still lagging in numbers in the SME businesses despite doing much better than men when they do start them
Lastly, Glovefox recommends this link "for the full selection of gender issue reports and other stuff." Hope you'll continue to check in with it, and with the hundreds of wonderful women bloggers out there, throughout the year!
Silly Site o' the DayVia Tom Peyer, The Nameless Dread explores what the Family Circus comic strip might be like if written by H.P. Lovecraft. There are 14 panels in all, each with a different URL, so I'd advise clicking on them all from Tom's page.
Estrogen Month - Day 30 Tomorrow's the last day of Estrogen Month, and the day I add more Gals in Waiting to my sidebar blogroll/regular reading rotation based on your comments and votes. One last chance to get into the act - here's what Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month is all about. Thanks as usual to Tild~ for the illo. Posts on women and blogging which caught my eye today include the following: Astarte (yeah, I know, I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but she really has been on a meta-roll) muses about a post by Genia Stevens regarding black feminist bloggers which I hadn't gotten to because Genia's in the third Gals in Waiting section (the one with too many GIWs to count) and I've been way swamped lately. Genia's post has a number of links to black feminist bloggers that I didn't have before, so they've gone onto the GIW section too; she also mentions Owukori's blog which links to lots of African (particularly Kenyan) female bloggers, a number of whom have graced the Pen-Elayne comments section this month with their lively presence. Frankly, I was more surprised by Genia's omissions than by her inclusions - where are Natalie Davis and Pam Spaulding, for instance? Although folks like Kim Pearson are listed in the black women bloggers webring, so that's an indirect plug. It's also worth considering that, unless a blogger posts her picture on her blog, it's slightly easier to discern gender than race with most blogs. Heck, I see loads of comments from folks who still don't know Steve Gilliard and Jesse Taylor are black - but there you go, they don't put their pictures up on their blogs. Also weighing in on the subject, with lots more links, is Ophelia Payne at XX. Cindy Roy has a nice introspective post about " why I don't jump aboard to attack men bloggers for not linking to women bloggers and why it bothers me to see it happen." And let's wrap things up for the day with this post by Kevin Drum about gender and sex issues. It even passes the Shakespeare's Sister Test!
Rise of a Comics BlogDang, I miss blogging about comics. Maybe this weekend, when (if all goes well) the data entry project will be a bad memory. In the meantime, remember that Megillat Vashti project I keep harping about that I swear I'm going to write someday? You know, when I actually have my life back? (I'm serious about entertaining employment offers; let me know if you have any!) Well, the artist for the project, Michael Netzer (yeah, I've blogged about him before, do a Google search from the Blogger bar atop this page) now has his own blog as well, called Rise of the Comics. Welcome to the blogosphere, "partner!" Pretty cool sidebars as well; the blogroll's on the right, and other neat stuff is on the left. Do check it out.
Estrogen Month - Day 29 Ah, it's a jungle out there (my work day? don't ask. got a job opening for a damn good executive assistant?) but I get to come home to my wonderful artist-boy and to Estrogen Month, where it's home stretch time! All during March, Women's History Month, we've been making history of our own, answering the oft-asked "Where are all the women bloggers?" question by giving our favorite women bloggers shout-outs and voting for the ones in my Bloglines Gals in Waiting sections and just generally having fun. Here are the "rules," such as they are.Nothing really new to add, given my day (see the not-all-that-mysterious parenthetical above), but I will be adding at least three more women to my blogroll by Thursday, the culmination of Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month. I'd do it one at a time but all three are tied for the most votes so far so it wouldn't be fair to add one and not the others. As for what's up in the female section of the political blogosphere, not terribly much. Others are probably petering out on these meta-conversations as much as I am, and frankly when you have stuff going on in The Real World like pharmacists not losing their licenses over refusing to do their jobs (and bravo Jeanne, well said), I think we all agree that there are more important things to worry about. Still, as the women bloggers question is symptomatic of our invisibility in many walks of life, both political and cultural, it still deserves notice. Astarte has another good post, this one about women's acceptance (or lack thereof) in the videogame industry, which I suspect would need very little revision if the discussion were about women's acceptance in the comics industry. Pseudo-Adrienne does half-assed better than most of us do full-assed. Or something like that. Trish also subverted the dominant yadda yadda by listing me among a bunch of wonderful women bloggers. Considering how despised I feel at work, all these good vibes y'all are sending my way constitute a very needed counterbalance! Lastly, via Elisa Camahort at Worker Bees Blog, a satirical video site called Better Bad News takes on the big debate. I wish this were the 31st; as far as I'm concerned this is the segment to end all segments regarding the "women bloggers controversy." Screamingly funny, if a bit inside-baseball in places. That's all I can find at the moment, but Blogger's been, well, kinda bloggered on and off today. Please keep voting for your favorite Gals in Waiting in the comments section below...
Silly Site o' the DayAs many folks have observed, this whole Terri Schiavo matter seems to have captured the "right to life"rs' imaginations in part because a woman in a persistent vegetative state whose all-but-brainless body needs to be attached to a tube in order to continue autonomic functions can't help but remind them of a fetus. Fetus-fetishists (and now Schiavo-fetishists) give me the willies, I wish they'd care as much about people after they're born and before they die. But just for them, I present (via Jeneane Sessum) one-stop shopping at Fetus Mart.
Estrogen Month - Day 28 Work was even more hellish, which I didn't think possible, so I haven't even gotten a chance to post until now, let alone read anything. Hope nothing important happened in the world while I was buried in my job! Thanks again to Tild~ for the illo; I'll be using her others throughout the week. As this is the last Monday in March, it's time to recap what this Estrogen/Women and Blogging Month thing is all about anyway: * First, I ask readers to please check out the blogs on my left-hand sidebar (if you're reading Pen-Elayne via RSS feed, sorry, you'll have to go to the actual blog to do this). Women-run blogs appear in at least five places: in the Liberal Coalition, under News+Views (three sections there: Da Gals, Dynamic Duos, and Da Groups), and the first section under Kultcha. These are all great blogs, well worth your time to check out and perhaps add to your blogroll if you're so inclined (particularly if you're a so-called "A list" guy blogger who's ever posted wondering where all the liberal-left women bloggers are). All blogs in each section are listed in alphabetical order by the blogger's first name or handle. * Next, click here to see my Bloglines bookmarks, and look under the three "Gals in Waiting" sections at the top. I've split the GIWs as follows: those blogs receiving more than one of your votes in support (21 as of this post); those of which you've made me aware via one vote (another 33); and those that I've found via looking around at some of your blogs but for which nobody's cast a vote yet (too many to count in my current state of mine). The last section keeps growing, so check it early and often! In each of these sections the blogs are also listed in alphabetical order by the blogger's first name or handle. If you don't see a woman-run blog on my sidebar, chances are very good it's in one of these sections. By the way, when Estrogen Month is over I'll be consolidating these sections into one, and will have a link to it from my sidebar in case anyone asks where all the women bloggers are besides the ones on my visible blogroll... * Please cast a vote in the comments section below for any of the blogs you've seen in the bookmarks to "move up" to my sidebar. Only a few more days to do this! (Although rest assured I'll be adding more blogs throughout the year anyway, as I usually do, depending upon my leisure time and reading capacity.) If you have a blog and are voting for someone, your argument is more credible if the bloggers in question are on your blogroll. Please note, I read all blogs via Bloglines because there's just no time for me to do otherwise, so the blogs for which you vote should have a working RSS feed and be in English (blogs with translations often have them at the bottom and have a limited RSS feed). While you can't vote for any blog that I already have on my sidebar, please feel free to give those blogs a shout-out if you wish so that others reading your comments can take note of them. * When you vote for a blog, please tell us all why you like that blog. People reading your comments are much likelier to take to a blog if you tell us a bit about it and what attracts you to it. And that's the long-term goal here - to get more publicity for these women and to get them not only on my blogroll but on others' as well. * If you're a guy blogger, especially one higher-up in the blogosphere, consider taking the Pen-Elayne Pledge (and posting about it on your blog) to add at least one new female blogger to your sidebar and regular reading routine every week in March to celebrate Women's History Month. * If you're on CNN's blog review, I hope you'll mention Estrogen Month. I'm officially jealous of Kathy and Lisa and Elisa. If you're inclined to vote in the annual Koufax Awards, I hope you remember Estrogen Month when nominating for Best Series of 2004 2005 (gah, I'm tired, thanks for the correction Ginger). I also hope for a better job and more work assignments for Robin and to be lithe and limber and live in a castle with lots of servants, so there you are. Carry on voting in the comments section below; I think I'll collapse in front of the teevee for awhile...
Silly Site o' the DayIn honor of my brother Gene's birthday today, and via Kathy Pearlman, here's a fun birthday calculator. (As Gene runs an accounting firm I figured he'd like the word "calculator" as well.) Hey Gene, did you know you were born on a Saturday, the moon's phase on the day you were born was waning gibbous, and the Julian calendar date of your birth is 2436655.5? Well, it's true! Furthermore, as of 6:30 Eastern time this evening, you are 46 years old, which is 552 months or 2,401 weeks or 16,802 days or 403,265 hours or 24,195,930 minutes or 1,451,755,829 seconds. On your next birthday you'll be my age now, 47, and if you had a cake with those 47 candles it would produce 47 BTU's, or 11,844 calories of heat (that's only 11.8440 food calories!). You can boil 5.37 US ounces of water with that many candles. You're welcome! (You're never speaking to me again, are you?)
Estrogen Month - Day 27This is my third attempt at this post. The first time it got eaten by an interruption that the remote computer access program I'm using to do data entry job stuff had kicked me out for inactivity. The second time Firefox just closed, I have no idea why. Apologies the women bloggers whose fine posts I'd noted then marked read. On the other hand, everything happens for a reason; read on. It's Sunday, which means the highest vote-getters based on your comments get added to my regular reading. Congratulations to the three newest additions to my blogroll: Jane Hamsher of FiredoglakeKui Kihoro of Mama Junkyard'sProfessor B. of Bitch. Ph.D.I don't have the emotional strength to type up for a third time all the reasons I've come to love these blogs; suffice it to say, please check them out, they're well worth your time. I note that voting for Jane came on very strong just in this last hour, and I actually saw those votes after I'd put up the initial third-time's-the-charm version of this post, so it's much less of a problem going back and amending it to welcome Jane as well! Please check out these other good posts about women's inclusion in various media venues: Echidne looks at women and religion on TV, as well as the FAIR study on female pundits. Jessica Crispin at Bookslut analyzes "the problem with women writers."The rest of the female-pundit posts on Political Animal this week include: - Amy Sullivan on the dearth of female political consultants for the Democrats - Garance Franke-Ruta on how UK papers seem a bit better than US ones in terms of parity - Katha Pollitt returns to the subject of female bloggers - So does Amy- Garance has another look at the unspoken quota- Katha responds to Amy and names names- And finally, Garance delivers a real zinger of a post about how Democrats are all but abandoning their female base by not touting more female op-ed voices Also getting her two cents in because she doesn't have a comment section is Chris Nolan, here and here. I had a few others, but as I said my posting problems ate them, so my apologies. Here's what Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month is all about; only four days left to celebrate before I collapse in even more exhaustion...
New York No Longer Book Country?That's the buzz at PW, according to Kevin Melrose at Thought Balloons. I hope something is done to rectify the situation; that street fair is a NYC mainstay and I'd miss it terribly (even if I do agree with Rox that last year's wasn't any great shakes).
Estrogen Month - Day 25Whew! One scant week to go! Hope you've all been enjoying our look at female bloggers new and "old" this month. For the lowdown on Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month check out this post. Still wiped from work stuff which, ironically, should ease just about when the month ends. And since it's late I'm going to take the "easy" way out and just refer y'all to some relevant posts I've (barely) had a chance to peruse today: Christine Cupaiuolo at Ms. Musings and Professor B at Bitch Ph.D. both note that FAIR has also gotten into the "where are the women pundits" act (I'm glad they pointed it out, I'm about a year behind in my magazine reading), which analyzes the "quota of one" phenomenon. Anne Zook at Peevish has a very amusing list of things that automatically disqualify women from her blogroll. Astarte at Utopian Hell responds to a previous post of mine (which in turn referenced a previous post of hers) by saying she agrees and disagrees with it, but I dunno, I'm pretty much in agreement with her response, so there you are. Did y'all follow all that? I'm dizzy now. CE Petro from Thoughts of an Average Woman passes along a cool site featuring " digital images of artwork created by women artists world-wide," and has a nice Friday subverting-the-dominant-link-hierarchy post, and I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm one of the women she mentions... Lauren has been having an "open mike" for guest bloggers at Feministe, and one of them is Erin, daughter of Barbara O'Brien (see, I told you Maha was a cool mom!). Lauren also brings good news about her Ecosystem ranking, a hell of a Large Mammal ahead of me! Laura Rozen has also been following the interesting debate at Political Animal which I mentioned previously, as has Carla. I haven't had time yet to go back to Kevin Drum's place and read any more, but maybe if I get some sleep tonight... That's it for me, I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open and stifling yawns. Please continue to vote for your favorite Gals in Waiting in the comments section below. On Sunday I'll add a couple more high-vote-getters to my sidebar blogroll. See you *yawn* tomorrow...
Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)Amy's taken with credit scrawls of late...  This was from some special about directors that aired around Oscar time.
Silly Site o' the DayStill exhausted, still facing a massive load of work at the job. No light at the end of this tunnel yet, I fear. I'm even working on Sunday, although I will of course be grooving to the hip-hoppy beat (via Karin Kross).
Estrogen Month - Day 24Here's what we're doing this month. As for the why, you need only ask yourself how many times you've heard "where are all the women bloggers?" (I'd do that Google-bombing that Veronica Nichols wants to spread around but she didn't include any Estrogen Month posts as one of the links so the heck with it, you can do it or not as you see fit. I'm not a publicity hound but after doing this for 24 straight days it would be nice to have at least one of the EM posts included in her Google-bomb...) Today, in honor of my mother's birthday, I'm giving a shout-out to a few of my favorite Jewish women bloggers, as well as some of my favorite Mom bloggers. If I inadvertently omit you, please forgive me as I'm pretty hurried here today, and feel free to give yourself a shout-out in the comments section! Moms first: Milkbreath and Me - Rachel Hartman created one of my favorite characters, Amy Unbounded, for whom I named my youngest cat. So in a way, this is a Mom-to-"Mom" thing. Her journals of her adventures with young Byron are a delight. No Strings Attached - Kath David is the multitalented wife of Peter David, stepmother to the lovely Shana and Gwen! and Ariel, and mom to the delightful Caroline. Her photo albums are terrific, and her insights into life, motherhood, puppet- and costume-making and the world around her are wonderful. I especially love how she ends each post by stating something for which she's thankful. Kalilily Time - Crone extraordinaire Elaine Frankonis is mother (or, as she says, "cybermom") to The One True b!X and daughter of/caregiver to her own aging mom. Her posts are lyrical and inspiring. Two of my favorite local moms are Barbara O'Brien from Mahablog and Julia from Sisyphus Shrugged, but you probably know all about them from their political blogging. And two non-local moms I admire a great deal are Mary Beth Williams from Wampum and Jeanne d'Orleans at Body and Soul. Now for some of my favorite Jewish women: Hanan Levin at Grow-A-Brain is a treasure; why she's not as popular as BoingBoing is beyond me. Honorary Jew Kathleen Pearlman writes (not often enough!) about "life in NJ and elsewhere." Lis Riba is crazy about Shakespeare, her husband, life in Boston, liberal politics, Harry Potter fanfic and lots of other things. Riba Rambles is always a well-rounded blog! One of my favorite Gals in Waiting is Rachel Barenblat, the Velveteen Rabbi. As you might suspect this blog is very Jewish, but it's also wonderful and chatty and full of musings and travelogues and all that good stuff. As Rachel says, it's "a passionate, idiosyncratic, unOrthodox look at contemporary Judaism." Oyh, I know there are more, lots more, but work is really closing in on me. Please continue to vote for your favorite Gals in Waiting in the comments section below - see you tomorrow!
Silly Sites o' the DayWith expected down-times for Blogger tonight, I hope I can get my planned "Jewish women and moms" Estrogen Month post up during the day, but the heavy workload continues. Just in case I can't, Happy Birthday, Mom!! Since I won't see you till after Pesach, have some matzoh ball soup (via Hanan Levin). In fact, since I can't be with you tonight either, have some kosher pig as well; I know you don't read other blogs besides mine but I like Chazarmaveth's "literary correspondent" Hank Magitz and his Jew noir... Oh, and that website is via Cliff Meth, my would-be editor if I ever get Megillat Vashti written for this guy to draw... (Have I mentioned that Robin and Alan will be contributing to the Bill Loebs art auction and sketch book Cliff's organizing?)
Estrogen Month - Day 23Job responsibilities persist to the point of exhastion, plus the nasty snowstorm made for a nail-biting commute home, and now I can't move my left knee (which suddenly started hurting around 5 or so, prior to the minced walking on the slushy snow and the climb up our two flights of stairs) without feeling excruciating pain. All in all, I'm glad yesterday's post was the long essay and tomorrow's will be dedicated to my mom on the occasion of her birthday - so I'm calling on all readers to submit your favorite Mom blogs and Jewish women blogs (as sunset tomorrow also marks the start of Purim, my favorite Jewish holiday and the only one featuring a female lead character) so I can publicize the heck out of them on Day 24. But let's finish up today first, and bear in mind I haven't had that much leisure time today so, once again, I'm way behind in my reading. Well, first you should know that Kevin Drum has turned the Washington Monthly blog over to three female pundits who have been talking, well, female punditry. Here's Amy Sullivan's first shot over the bow, and some of the reactions it's gotten. I understand where she's coming from with "the fault lies not only in the media stars but with our selves" angle, but to me it sounds way too much like "blaming the victim" and absolving the folks in power of their responsibility. And if we're talking about the actual (as opposed to the mythic) liberal media, i.e. the politics of inclusion, that's a big problem. Then Katha Pollitt comes along and reminds readers of all the great female pundits already around, much like we've been celebrating great female bloggers here all month. She also puts the responsibility for female pundits where it would seem to belong; with the people doing the hiring of editorial writers. She notes that older male editors seem to like mentoring younger male opinion writers "in whom they see their younger selves... Editors socialize with these acolytes, form friendships with them, offer them important career-making assignments... encourage them to take risks and give them more chances if they screw up." Again, not that much different from some aspects of the comic book world, and I have to figure it works that way in many other creative industries. I just don't see a reason why women can't be mentored too, except that if this theory is correct men who can't look beyond appearance can't see themselves in younger women. So it's not just socialization that's the culprit here, it's also socializing (aka fraternization, a male-oriented word if ever there was one). So then Amy comes back with her second post on the subject in response to Katha. Again, I'm not sure I agree with her that the fraternization "critique is neither entirely accurate nor productive." I think you have to identify a problem before you can suggest remedies for it. Then she continues with an invitation: "On behalf of The Washington Monthly, I'm giving notice to every female writer out there: We are desperately interested in your proposed story ideas, article submissions, and getting your names in our Rolodexes. That doesn't mean we'll always run your pieces — sometimes a women gets rejected because her story is no good, not because she's a woman. But the same happens for men all the time. Have an idea? Want to run it by me? Email amysullivandc at gmail.com." Impressive, and part of me wishes I had the time! But I'll bet a lot of you do! After that we have one more earlier today from Katha and the debut post of Garance Franke-Ruda about, among other things, how the gender of editorial writers may be reflected in part by the gender of the subjects they most often cover. Oh, and for those of you who like stats, she's got stats. Elsewhere, Cruella responds to an article in the Guardian about "dull, depressed and domestic" women writers; Glovefox sends along a Guardian obituary for Constance Rover (who "who started the first university course in women's studies") as well as a bit about the disappearance at last of foot-binding in China; and I'm still trying to figure out how self-exploitation is an appropriate response to perceived racial insults if, you know, the society to which these anti-monarchy protestors belong receives a very specific signal from "hey, look at my tits!"... kinda like, you know, "hey, she wants us to look at her tits!" Anyway, I'm babbling and I'm tired and that's it for me today. If you wish, please familiarize yourself with what Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month is all about here, and do continue to vote and give women bloggers a shout-out in the comments section below.
Estrogen Month - Day 22All the "rules" of Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month, such as they are, can be found here. I wanted to pass along a few links from yesterday and today which I either liked or which gave me food for thought: I don't have anything to say about the Terri Schiavo matter because what this family is going through should be a private matter and therefore none of my damn business, but I found Kui's thoughts on the subject very moving. Sheelzebub explains today's Google picture. And, weighing in on the "women bloggers/pundits" issue are Leena, Susie Madrak, Roxanne Cooper here and here, Tish Parmeley and Astarte. I wanted to respond to the last two commentaries. Writes Tish, Maybe instead of talking about where are all the women we might talk about is the personal political? Is this more of a journal than a blog? Perhaps. And is my life political? I hope it is. One of the most political things on the web is Dru's To Do list. It's the details of the life of a single mother trying to care for her kids, her home, make a living and still have time for herself. Where are all the women bloggers? They're there writing about their lives and only a culture that values rhetoric above lived life doesn't see them.
And, ya know, even that's a generalization. Women can pundit-off as well as any man... There's a marvelous weaving of the mundane and the profound on many blogs. Maybe I feel like these where are all the women discussions put pressure on women to write more about ideas and less about their lives.
I thought this dovetailed nicely with Susie's observation that "Liberals keep getting caught in that same old sand trap: credentialism... Everyone's asking why there aren't more women pundits. I say, why aren't there more working-class voices like mine, male or female?" I see one of the things women bloggers doing this month is trying to redefine, or refine actually, what constitutes a political blog, a voice worthy of consideration on its own merits because of the writer's unique life. The more right-wing blogs march in lockstep, and the more the male lefty blogosphere is in danger of becoming the same type of echo chamber, the more variety the female-written blogs seem to show.
Which brings me to Astarte, who's really been on a nice introspective roll of late: I'm a living, breathing human being who has no interest in making her living off of blogging. To me, this is a self-betterment exercise, a hobby, and one that I enjoy. I don’t want it constantly muddied up by people who insist upon making it so much more, even if you don't want to be part of that... I’m all for having some sort of identifier on blogs who’s sole purpose is to break into big media or get a TV spot. Perhaps a sticker of some sort that says 'MEDIA WHORE'. Maybe just a scarlet 'A' to proudly place right above the 'about me' page that should also contain a resume demanding a six-figure salary for being an adviser to some news channel. Just do me a favor, and don't drag me into the pit of hell that you're throwing yourself in. I don’t blog for big media. I don’t want to blog for big media. I'm one of the few, the proud, the people who still blog primarily for themselves. The biggest satisfaction I get is not a fat check from advertising or a chance to get on the Al Franken show. The biggest satisfaction I get is going head to head with someone in the comments about an issue that gets my blood pumping...
This all ties into women and blogging because the more we fight for this (an argument, ironically, that we didn’t even start), the more we look like those hounds sitting and begging for some breadcrumbs to be tossed our way. We’d be better served to break the cycle than to constantly bemoan its existence... We are not here to beg for breadcrumbs. When, and only when, they start linking to you and taking on more 'women's issues', return their links and give them some attention... Horribly, the more that we talk about this on their turf, the more we look like raging harpies, and less like women with real issues to discuss. If we must continue to talk about this (and make no mistake, I think we must), then let’s do it on our terms, and on our turf. When at all possible, use trackbacks; don’t just leave comments on their sites, and when at all possible, avoid linking to them all together.
Two can play the game. Women who blog politics aren't a new thing. We've been around for a great deal of time, and we've no reason to beg the 'top blogs' for attention, either. This is not a case of us begging them to somehow validate our existence by linking to us. We're better than that, and we always have been better than that.
As I said in Astarte's comments, I both agree and disagree with this. While I think trackbacks are a fine thing, they're also very time-consuming (at least three steps for me via Haloscan, and that's about three steps more than I usually have the energy to do), but that's a minor quibble. And I completely agree with her bemusement at the legions of self-delusional bloggers convinced they can parlay their hobby into a stepping-stone to fame; there are only so many 15-minute segments to go around, after all.
On the other hand, I think that fighting for inclusion in the online debate regarding the state of the world that affects us all isn't really the same as "begging for breadcrumbs" from the A-list guy bloggers. Blogging is still a new enough phenomenon that, to the public at large, nobody in the 'sphere is really "famous" in that sense anyway. It's still a niche thing, like the American comics scene. Forgive me if I keep returning to this analogy, but my experience in comics fandom does seem to be repeating itself now that I'm into blogging.
Many women (and not a few men) believe that some of the most exciting things happening in graphic storytelling is coming from women. Even though A-listers like Frank Miller and Alan Moore get the movie deals and the mainstream press (and deservedly so), more often than not readers looking for non-superhero fare will turn to something like Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical Persepolis series (two books and counting so far), and mangaphiles go crazy for folks like Rumiko Takahashi. If you ask the average Wizard-reading fanboy, yeah, they may know those names but "they don't count" because they aren't working for Marvel or DC, the big two companies in the US that actually pay artists and writers a living wage.
So we need to ask ourselves "what counts?" when it comes to women bloggers and pundits, and I see a lot of that going on. For Susie, it might be working-class heroism. For Tish, it might be a skillful blending of the personal and professional, an elevation beyond the stereotypical "dear diary" writing that boys imitate when they think of girls (and I can't tell you how often that's used, badly, as a literary device in comic books, often by the same writers who sneer at using thought balloons because they can't admit they haven't figured out how to do them correctly either). For Astarte, it might be writing for the passion and the love of it without expectation of crumbs from on high. For me blogging is a means to its own end, a way to further a sense of community - and yes, I may be falling victim to a bit of stereotyping here (men are socialized toward competition and women toward cooperation and community) but my experience in various online endeavors has borne this out.
When I first started posting on the Usenet rec.arts.comics newsgroups, a regular there was less than gracious in welcoming me because, in short, he felt I had turned around the feel of the group by making it too friendly. Can you imagine? Too friendly! Can't have any of that, can we? Must have curmudgeonly, lofty debates about "ho'od win, Hulk or Superman?" using only the most proper academic rhetoric. And this wasn't new, I encountered a version of it in the comics apa CAPA-Alpha as well. It was made more than clear to me that the "friendliness" aspect was a cover for "you're a girl and we don't want you in our clubhouse." These male participants had to bend over backwards to make civility and fostering a sense of community seem like negatives, because "that's not how it's done" in their clubhouse before I arrived.
Well see, here's the thing that, for me, differentiates blogging from comics fandom. With blogging, we arrived onto the scene at pretty much the same time as the guys did, so we have as much right and credibility as they do to define the terms of debate, and of what constitutes a valid or popular blog. And particularly on the left-liberal end, every male blogger who bemoans the lack of liberal (blog) voices in the mainstream media debate then turns around and ignores women (liberal bloggers) deserves all the derision or consciousness-raising (depending on your style) that we can muster. (And that goes double for any guys who ignore the blatant creeps who leave sexist comments on their blogs; if you have an open comments section, it's up to you to maintain it, and to be conscious about what kind of an atmosphere it fosters.)
So I don't think it's a bad idea to go onto their "turf," as long as we keep reminding them to come onto ours as well. It's all aethereal, after all, it's all the same turf when you come right down to it. And that should be our goal - for every blogger, and eventually the mainstream media, to recognize that all of us, women and men, have equally unique voices as citizen activists to contribute to the national (and world) debate. Things are still new enough in the blogosphere that this is all still shaking out, so let's not lose sight of that target.
Silly Site o' the DayAnother killer data-entry-plus-boss-in day ahead, so light posting. It's so hard to get motivated nowadays, even with posters featuring characters from Marvel and DC Comics... Via Lindsay Beyerstein.
Estrogen Month - Day 21Why yes, between my illness and workload and Blogger acting up I am starting to get a little exhausted with these Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month posts, why do you ask? :) Every Monday I explain what we're trying to do here, and this day's no exception: * First, please check out the blogs on my left-hand sidebar (if you're reading Pen-Elayne via RSS feed, sorry, you'll have to go to the actual blog to do this). Women-run blogs appear in at least five places: in the Liberal Coalition, under News+Views (three sections there: Da Gals, Dynamic Duos, and Da Groups), and the first section under Kultcha. These are all great blogs, well worth your time to check out and perhaps add to your blogroll if you're so inclined (particularly if you're a so-called "A list" guy blogger who's ever posted wondering where all the liberal-left women bloggers are). All blogs in each section are listed in alphabetical order by the blogger's first name or handle. * Next, click here to see my Bloglines bookmarks, and look under the three "Gals in Waiting" sections at the top. I've split the GIWs as follows: those blogs receiving more than one of your votes in support; those of which you've made me aware via one vote; and those that I've found via looking around at some of your blogs but for which nobody's cast a vote yet. The last section keeps growing, so check it early and often! In each of these sections the blogs are also listed in alphabetical order by the blogger's first name or handle. If you don't see a woman-run blog on my sidebar, chances are very good it's in one of these sections. * Please cast a vote in the comments section below for any of the blogs you've seen in the bookmarks to "move up" to my sidebar. If you have a blog and are voting for someone, your argument is more credible if the bloggers in question are on your blogroll. Please note, I read all blogs via Bloglines because there's just no time for me to do otherwise, so the blogs for which you vote should have a working RSS feed and be in English (blogs with translations often have them at the bottom and have a limited RSS feed). While you can't vote for any blog that I already have on my sidebar, please feel free to give those blogs a shout-out if you wish so that others reading your comments can take note of them. * When you vote for a blog, please tell us all why you like that blog. People reading your comments are much likelier to take to a blog if you tell us a bit about it and what attracts you to it. And that's the long-term goal here - to get more publicity for these women and to get them not only on my blogroll but on others' as well. * If you're a guy blogger, especially one higher-up in the blogosphere, consider taking the Pen-Elayne Pledge (and posting about it on your blog) to add at least one new female blogger to your sidebar and regular reading routine every week in March to celebrate Women's History Month. Although, of course, Morgaine the Goddess has her own theory about this. As does Binky at Bloodless Coup, the 500th blogger to make Morgaine's Progressive Women blogroll at What She Said!. Now, for comparative purposes, Morgaine wants to start counting progressive guys, so if anyone has the energy to swipe my source code for the part of my sidebar that lists all of 'em please feel free to do so. Me, I'm using up all my blogging energy this month on the double-exes. Let the voting continue in the comments section below!
Silly Site o' the DayVia Betsy Devine comes a new fun doohickey you can put on your sidebar to indicate your location and find other blogs in your physical neighborhood. It's called Blogmap, and it works best if you submit your site feed URL rather than the blog URL. Of course you'll need to type in your address as well. It doesn't look like there are any bloggers that close to me, and they count my blog neighborhood as a pretty wide radius, including Manhattan and Mount Vernon in Westchester County and Stamford, CT and Fort Lee, NJ - all at least a half hour away.
Estrogen Month - Day 20It's Sunday, and here at Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month that means it's the day I add new blogs to my sidebar/regular reading routine, based on votes submitted by readers in the comments sections. Today I'm pleased to welcome four new-to-me women bloggers: Ereshkigal (Exiled from the Underworld) - Ereshkigal received four votes, and it's easy to see why. Exiled is a nice mix of the political and personal, with a very friendly outreach and community-building tone and a pleasing layout. I adored her Lovesong of J. David Brooks, a unique way of looking at something about which many others had already written (which I've found to be one of the hallmarks of many gal-written blogs). Kathy Flake (What Do I Know?) - Kathy, who got three votes, bills herself as "An American abroad [who] tries to sort things out." Also a good mix of chatter and opinion stuff, as well as both American and British politics, which I appreciate living in a binational household. Lindsay Beyerstein (Majikthise) - Lindsay, also with three votes, was the first challenger in the revived Iron Blog, taking on Iron Blogger Culture in "Battle Objective Journalism" and, in my opinion, doing extremely well for herself. Majikthise also mixes different subjects seamlessly, from culture to politics to Google etymology. Ms K (au lait) - Ms K, who received three nods as well, is one of a slew of Kenyan bloggers recently making themselves heard in the overall blogosphere. Although she currently resides in Nairobi she's also blogged extensively about her life in Ghana. Chatty and breezy with lots of lovely photos, au lait is a terrific window into a world many of us are just discovering. Welcome to my blogroll, ladies! Readers, consider adding these women to your blogrolls as well. Thank you again to the growing number of folks mentioning Estrogen Month. I suspect it's because the squeaky wheel gets the grease and, while I've never been shy about speaking up, lately I haven't felt enough physical and mental strength for a lot of self-promotion. So I'm glad I whinged a bit yesterday because, as I said, I do think the subject of women's visibility in the liberal-left blogosphere goes way beyond just this one blog or even this one month. As Jennifer Rutherford puts it, "Hey, as far as I'm concerned, EVERY month is Estrogen Month around here." Other women in the Gals in Waiting sections weighing in on the question include: Kathy Flake (now on my sidebar) - Y Chromosomes Behaving BadlyJane (Prairie Angel) - Women, Blogging and TortureLinnet (Looking at the Stars) - Entertaining tidbitsProfessor B (Bitch. Ph.D.) - Mo-ther-fuckNatalie Bennett (Philobiblon) - Friday femme fatales - a good place to go to find new names Vanessa Gatsch (Plucky Punk's Happy Land) - This topic is officially a big stupid boring snore.Chris Nolan (Politics from Left to Right) - Gender Bender and He's Baaaaaaack
Diane (DED Space) - One woman bloggers speaksLaura McKenna (11D) - Zzzzzzz.Pseudo-Adrienne's Liberal-Feminist Bias - My Sister Women-Bloggers Unite!.....Anne (Fortuna) - Slack?Cleis (Sappho's Breathing) - On blogging, visibility, and status and Women: Ya can't live with 'em, ya can't find 'em when ya need 'emGenia Stevens (Sisters Talk) - Women Bloggers Don't Interest Me (good comment section going there, including a link to blogs by black women) Jenniebie - More on the Woman QuestionJill Walker (misbehaving.net) - (Some) Women I Read (also lots of new-to-me names there) PG (Half the Sins of Mankind) - Quick Fix (more new names, yay!) Julie Leung (Seedlings & Sprouts) - Continuing the conversationsRebecca Blood (what's in rebecca's pocket?) - ( no title) Sarah (Pourquois Pas?) - Circle JerkTheresa Zolner (Heart of Canada) - Femme Fatale and A Different DrumAlso, fellow Liberal Coalition members Echidne and Natalie Davis report on the Women and Media conference, and Tim Dunlop has a very interesting post about how, in his opinion, " Reform of Islam is going to come from the inside and it is going to be led by women." There you go, lots of good Sunday reading for ya. The "what's Estrogen Month all about, Alfie?" post is here, and please continue to use our comments sections to vote for and give shout-outs to the women on my Gals in Waiting lists!
Spring Has Sprung, The Grass Has Ris...
Silly Site o' the DayGah, more data entry today before I get into blog-stuff. At least I got through my blogroll yesterday, including skimming all the Gals in Waiting, more about which later. In the meantime, if I'm going to have to look at numbers for a couple hours I'm going to need to think of them as fun, and via Hanan Levin comes a site with lots of cool animated math GIFs.
Estrogen Month - Day 19As I mentioned yesterday, I've been so sick and so crazed at work that I'd fallen way behind in blog-reading, and had only just caught up with the women on my regular blogroll enough to see that many of them were taking up the Women in Blogging mantle again. (Both Amanda Marcotte and Echidne weighed in today, by the way, and here's some more from Shakespeare's Sister.) While I admit my ego's a little bruised that none of these posts even referenced Estrogen Month, so that men reading their eloquent diatribes might have come over here to see what we're doing and find hundreds upon hundreds of female political bloggers listed on my sidebar and my Bloglines bookmarks (as of this post there are one-hundred-and-ninety-two women listed in the largest of the three Gals in Waiting sections, and that's not counting the ones who've received votes from Pen-Elayne readers!), I also know it's not about me - the important thing is our refusal as women bloggers to remain invisible, despite the best efforts of some "A-list" male bloggers to retain their blinders. That said, now that I've been through the male half of my blogroll, I note some men are indeed noticing us for the blogospheric equals we are and have every right to be, or at least they're showing signs of trying. Kevin Drum's still asking questions like "But why do fewer women blog about politics than men?" as though that's a given rather than a possibly-erroneous assumption based on his personal experience or perhaps a hunch. Steve Gilliard seems to dance around the question of women bloggers and go off on his own tangent about integrating lily-white newsrooms (which certainly needs to happen, but bloggers can influence the blogosphere a lot more than we can the mass mainstream media). Ezra Klein still wants us to color him puzzled as to why guys keep asking about women bloggers. Maybe because they're asking the wrong question, or if it's the right one they don't really want to know the answer, they're just "talking to hear themselves talk" on the subject and figure that talk, rather than action, constitutes some sort of stab at levelling the playing field? I'm not sure what Norbizness thinks of this, he's being all Norbizzy as usual, but as far as I'm concerned NTodd Pritsky gets in the best zinger. For me, the two posts from the male part of my blogroll that stand out the most are upyernoz's self-examining "blogroll gender count" (which does reference Estrogen Month, thanks Jeremy!) and Professor Juan Cole's outstanding entry "The Blogging Phenomenon." Even though Prof. Cole doesn't have a blogroll of his own, the many women mentioned in this post, most of whom were brand-new to me, epitomize what I'd hoped more male bloggers would do during Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month. It's easy for us to find each other; what needs to happen is for men to acknowledge our contributions as well, the way we've acknowledged theirs. With all their talk about how unfair it is that think-tank blogging panels are stacked with right-wingers, isn't it past time that male left-liberal bloggers cast out the log from their own eyes? Or do we really want to return to the days of Stokely Carmichael's comment on the position of women in the SNCC? Voting for women you'd like to see added to my sidebar blogroll continues in the comments section below. Tomorrow I announce my newest additions.
Andre Norton, RIPThe grande dame of sf was 93 years old. I was never that into her books but she was unquestionably groundbreaking.
Estrogen Month - Day 18[Thanks again for your patience while I work through a ton of data-entry job stuff, much of which I took home with me for the weekend. Blogging will continue to be light for the foreseeable future, as I'm too exhausted to sit much at the computer. To see the full story behind Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month go here.] Even though I'm way behind in blog-reading due to my recent workload, I've yet to see many men besides The Heretik participating in Estrogen Month. Certainly none of the so-called "A-list bloggers" has taken what I'm calling the Pen-Elayne Pledge during the month of March, the promise to link to and discuss at least one new-to-him female blogger each week. What good is Women in Blogging month if 99% of the folks participating in it are women? Okay yeah, I know, it does some good, we build up our own gender-based community as a bulwark against institutionalized sexism and strengthen our own knowledge base and find great new writers to read. But that's still just half the blogging population (perhaps even less if you talk about liberal-left political bloggers, although since all the ranking systems are self-selecting I'm not sure there's any sort of reliable measure to count how many of us there are out there). If the "where are the women bloggers?" problem starts with the guys, and it almost always does, why is the accompanying solution not being taken up by the guys? For more discussion on this from, yes, the female part of the liberal political blogosphere, see: Anne Zook (scroll down a bit) AstarteBarbara O'BrienCarlaEliseeRobin StellyGinger MayersonJeanne d'OrleansLaurenMorgaine (read through the first half-dozen) Pam SpauldingRivkaRoxanne CooperS.L. ZollShakespeare's SisterTrish WilsonHey, given that I've spent so many posts this month talking about new-to-me bloggers, it's about time I give some of the gals on my actual sidebar a shout-out. :) Although I'd also recommend Sheelzebub for just the right topping on this particular cake. And now that I've been through the female side of my News+Views blogroll, I see I need to amend my second paragraph. Although he doesn't say anything about the Pen-Elayne Pledge, Atrios referenced Shakespeare's Sister and Lindsay Beyerstein today. Lindsay is currently on the multiple-vote Gals in Waiting list with 3, and of course Shakespeare's Sister was the first high-vote-getter of Estrogen Month, being added to my sidebar/daily reading list on Day 6. Well, today Shakespeare's Sister announced that she and Pam Spaulding (who was added on Day 13) have banded together to form Big Brass Blog, which also includes three other multiple-vote Gals in Waiting, so I needed no prompting to add that group blog to my sidebar/daily reading. Looks like we have some excellent blog-reading days ahead of us, folks! Lastly, Natalie Davis reminds us that this weekend she'll be blogging from Cambridge as she participates in the Women and the Media conference. It would shock me if the center focus isn't the "where are the women in political opinion writing?" question so hot in the blogosphere of late.
Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)I'm sorry, Datsa, you can't have your sister's dry food, that's why we keep it atop the bookcase...  What's that? She's being cute again?  Looks to me like a kitty-headed lamp...
Returns and ReunionsA couple big events going on in NYC today that have, amazingly, nothing to do with green beer. The surviving members of Monty Python's Flying Circus will be on hand for the official Broadway premier of Spamlot (which I understand is already sold out for months and months); and Randi Rhodes is back on her Air America radio show this afternoon, after a month recovering from abdominal surgery. I'm a little concerned, as I came back to work only a month after my surgery five years ago, and I've not been the same since. But I'm sure she's in a lot better shape than I was... As for me, between Blogger's continued glitches and my descent once more into data-entry hell (not to mention this lingering illness), I'm unsure as to when I'll be returning to this blog to do my Estrogen Month post; probably not until this evening...
Happy International Liberal Blogroll Day!Click on the graphic below for more information.
 Given my activities this month, when I get home I'm going to celebrate by picking out the women on Wayne's blogroll that I don't yet have on my Gals in Waiting lists, then seeing what other "new" liberal women bloggers I find on their blogrolls - provided I've recovered from the data-entry hell I've been in for most of my working day...
Estrogen Month - Day 16Not too much from me today, I fear; I've succumbed to periodic sneezing fits as my body tries to expel the last of this nasty illness. Also lots of job-stuff to do. The why's and wherefore's of Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month can be found in this post. As of this typing there are 14 Gals in Waiting who have earned more than one vote, 34 women with one vote each, and I'm not going to try to count the number of GIWs with no votes yet because I keep adding to that list every time I start reading blogs. I have no idea why folks like Stephen Levy have such a problem finding us (yes, I've e-mailed him about that article); as you can see by my Bloglines bookmarks as well as my sidebar, I've found hundreds of women bloggers without even trying, and that's just on the liberal-left side of the political blogosphere! Just goes to show you, if you actually look for something that you suspect might exist, the chances are very good that you'll find it. Unless we're talking about WMD in Iraq or something... Since there are so many Gals in Waiting with no votes, I've been trying to highlight a number of them using asterisks, so they go more to the top of that list; this doesn't mean the non-asterisked names don't deserve a worthy once-over, but I only have so many hours in the day and these are the gals who happened to catch my fancy today: Amy Langfield (Amy's New York Notebook)Ginmar (A View From A Broad)Granny (grannyinsanity - on the edge in montana)Joanne JacobsLisa (Democratic Wings)SB (Watermark) - she's posted a lot in our comments sections too Susan Paxton (An Age Like This)Sylvia Paull (Berkeley Blog)The News Writer (What It Is Today)Feel free to cast your votes for any of the above-mentioned women, or any of the others in my three Gals in Waiting sections - voting continues in the comments section!
Silly Site o' the DayUp before 6 AM, puttered about doing lots of little stuff (emptying trash bins in various rooms, updating my comics list, organizing my receipts in prep for updating my checkbook tonight, inserting a couple state quarters into my map - dang, still missing Florida!) by 7, amid a lot of sneezing, but given this sudden burst of energy it looks as though the worst of the flu is finally behind me. Even Robin, who had it much worse than me, appears to be getting better in small measures. Thanks for the good wishes, y'all. I haven't done that many political Silly Sites lately, so here's one I saw via Kameron Hurley at Brutal Women: Right-Wing Eye for the Left-Leaning Guy. I guess it's funnier if you actually watch Queer Eye...
Dear Nancy Pelosi...If you want me to support the Democratic Party, you will henceforth please not have said party send me junk mail in an envelope marked "Department of Processing and Tabulation - Official Documents." Thank you; that is all.
Estrogen Month - Day 15Beware the Ides of Estrogen? No wait, that can't be right... Anyway, Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month is more or less explained in this post, for those of you wanting to catch up. I wanted to do a couple more follow-ups on previous posts: Lisa Stone asks, "Should BlogHerCon be open to men?" Her post seems to be mostly in response to questions from a man - not coincidentally, the man who organized the first Bloggercon, Dave Whiner Winer, about whom I wrote here. Based on Winer's queries, my impressions of him since I made that post a year and a half ago haven't changed. I mean, let's reverse the gender here, a good way to detect imbalance. Readers, can you imagine a Bloggercon prep discussion at which anyone asked "But will there be female discussion leaders? Will women be allowed to speak without being ridiculed? Will men who say sexist things about women be challenged, or will people who disagree be shouted down?" Okay, I'd probably ask the first one, but based on how many men in the blogosphere at best still ignore women, and at worst treat them like some sort of threat encroaching upon their precious territory, I pretty much know the answer to the others, as well as the reaction of many men to whom such questions would be asked in the first place. Seems to me that, given the obvious fact that the blogger playing field is still not perceived as level, men still have much more to worry about in cleaning up their own houses than in pursuing the remote possibility of "reverse discrimination" at a conference where the doings of men aren't the subject matter.Kui Kihoro at Mama Junkyard's is one of the many people publicizing Estrogen Month (thanks to all of you!), and offers the following additional sites for voting consideration:
AfroMusing
Guessaurus
Kaki (Scentiments)
Kenyan Pundit
Nehanda Dreams
Wambui (Snapshots of New Orleans)
Wituu
Provided they all have site feeds (Update: Nehanda Dreams' feed isn't on), they'll go on the Gals in Waiting section as soon as I'm able (Wambui, who's already cast her vote in yesterday's comment section, is on there already)! And a special welcome to everyone Kui directed here, even if it does look like y'all are starting to stuff the ballot box... (Kidding!!) Thanks again to everyone continuing to participate in this!
Silly Site o' the DayBack at work, still sick, and my head feels like it's going to explode. But at least it's not like these big heads! Via Augie DeBlieck.
Estrogen Month - Day 14 Welcome, any new readers, to Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month! Tild~, I hope you don't mind that I swiped this picture from your blog but it's neato. Here's what we've been doing at Pen-Elayne to subvert the dominant link hierarchy this month: * First, I humbly request you check out the blogs on my left-hand sidebar. Women-run blogs appear in at least five sections: in the Liberal Coalition, under News+Views (three sections there: Da Gals, Dynamic Duos, and Da Groups), and the first section under Kultcha. These are all great blogs, well worth your time to check out and perhaps add to your blogroll if you're so inclined (particularly if you're a big-name guy blogger who's ever posted wondering where all the liberal-left women bloggers are). All blogs in each section are listed in alphabetical order by the blogger's first name or handle. * Next, check out my Bloglines bookmarks under the three "Gals in Waiting" sections at the top. I've split "Gals in Waiting" as follows: those blogs I'm likeliest to add before the month is out because they've received more than one of your votes in support; those of which you've made me aware via one vote; and those that I've found via looking around at some of your blogs but for which nobody's cast a vote yet. The last section is humongous and growing all the time as I add new finds. In each of the Gals in Waitings sections the blogs are listed in alphabetical order by the blogger's first name or handle. If you don't see a woman-run blog on my sidebar, chances are very good it's in one of these sections. * Please cast a vote in the comments section below for any of the blogs you've seen in the bookmarks to "move up" to my sidebar. If you have a blog and are voting for someone, they really ought to be on your blogroll, yes? And please be aware that I read all blogs via Bloglines because there's just no time for me to do otherwise, so the blogs for which you vote should have a working RSS feed and be in English (blogs with translations often have them at the bottom and have a limited RSS feed). While you should not vote for any blog that I already have on my sidebar, please feel free to give those blogs a shout-out if you wish so that others reading your comments can take note of them. * When you vote for a blog, please tell us all why you like that blog. People reading your comments are much likelier to take to a blog if you tell us a bit about it and what attracts you to it. And that's the long-term goal here - to get more publicity for these women and to get them not only on my blogroll but on others' as well. * If you're a guy blogger, especially one higher-up in the blogosphere, consider taking the Pen-Elayne Pledge (and posting about it on your blog) to add at least one new female blogger to your sidebar and regular reading routine every week in March to celebrate Women's History Month. Let the voting continue! Today's women in blogging post focuses on Trish Wilson, who celebrates her 45th birthday today by - well, see for yourself! Happy birthday, Trish!
My Shaved GodsonStill sick enough that I was sent home from work just about as soon as I arrived, driving home with the window open all the way to cancel out my profuse sweating and keep me alert. I e-mailed a file to myself so I can do some assigned job-work at home, but mostly I'm hoping to sleep and recover. Late-season flu bugs do seem to linger, don't they? But I came home to great news. As I previously posted, my godson Jonny, who will celebrate his 10th birthday on Wednesday, had his head shaved yesterday to raise money for St. Baldrick's. Here he is with the shaving in progress:  And here's my man after the job was done:  His mom reports Jonny raised $578.42 via in-person and online donations for St. Baldrick's! Like I said, I'm very proud of him. :)
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