Blog Award Oblige

I love all the awards circulating through the blog realm. I love it that we recognize each other and appreciate each other so much that we are compelled to bestow these awards. There are so many of them! I am deeply honored to have been the recipient of so many. THANK YOU!!

Have you noticed, though, that every one of these awards has strings attached? It might be more accurate to call them blog grants rather than awards, since in order to accept them, allegedly the receiver must fulfill a number of requirements that vary from prize to prize.

Most awards require the receiver to pass them along to other bloggers. I love that rule, even though I'm not able to do it in any specific way. Look at my blog list - how in the world could I choose only five blogs to confer any of these prizes upon? There are other blogs I also read that I just haven't gotten around to adding to the list ... so you see to choose only five bloggers would be, for me, like choosing the five prettiest stars in the sky or something. I can't do it!

The Award of Noblesse Oblige is the most intense of all the prizes I've received. Please understand I am honored, I really am, in particular because it was the luminous, marvelous, profoundly compassionate Val of Monkeys on the Roof who gave me the award. Her blog, which describes her life in Botswana, has widened my horizons in ways I could not have imagined. She brings her readers into intimate contact with her world, so up close and personal that I think I can hear the monkeys on the roof, I can almost imagine the group of giraffes at the bottom of the driveway, the warhogs scampering by, or the porcupine in the kitchen. She even made it possible for me to imagine elephant flatulence! Wow!! Isn't that cool?

I could write a post about every blog on my blogroll, explaining what it is about each one that delights, entertains and informs. They're all GREAT blogs, every one of them. I feel a kinship with each individual on the list, even though I've never met most of them. The ones I have met have become true friends. I feel so lucky every time I think about it.

I could write about how blogging has opened my mind, helped me remember that the U.S. truly is not the center of the universe. Hello! I could tell you how much I love being reminded that it's not only late spring but also late fall, depending on where you live on Earth. I could relate how, for the first time in my life, I was actually invested in the South African presidential election, or how I felt truly relieved to learn that the rains finally arrived in Tanzania, in Australia, too (gosh!), how I saw the most beautiful photos of Texas bluebonnet flowers on several blogs (something that helped me understand what a big deal that bloom is for Texans), etc. etc. I wouldn't know about any of this if I didn't have blog friends who live in those places, who are generous enough, articulate enough, and willing to artfully share their lives on their blogs. Thank you! Blogging is orienting, humanizing, socializing, in a global way.

I could write volumes about what I think blogging is doing, i.e. creating a planetary neural network for artists in preparation for the next evolutionary leap. In fact I have written about this numerous times. I could go on and on. And on. I could!

Blogging is a literary and artistic gallery space and social network unlike anything that has ever existed. And that's why I'm here.

OK do you think this is enough? What I'm asking is, by writing this post, have I fulfilled my obligation?