Thank You for Opening My Eyes

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

--Emma Goldman

The Thinking Blogger Awards are a meme. If someone tags/ awards you, you are supposed to link back to that blog entry -- in my case, Joe's Hardboiled Dreams of the World. He nominated me and said all kinds of wonderful things about my blog -- actually, I don't even know how to respond to the compliment. I'm blushing bunches, thank you so much, Joe.

Here are the rules to the Thinking Blogger Awards:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

On behalf of the Thinking Blogger Awards, thanks for thinking!


And here are my selections for Thinking Blogger Awards.

1. Hardboiled Dreams of the World: (Sorry Joe, I don't care for rules and I'm tagging you back.) If you have never read Joe's blog, stop reading right here and click the link to HDotW. It is chock full of unknown and important stories, which are well-researched and wonderfully written. I have learned so much from his blog. Bonus: Joe will occasionally do a series like 10 False Flags That Changed the World. It's like a seven-course meal for our starving cerebrums.


2. Twit's The Rings Around Uranus. There are three images in a series with a title. What do they mean? What do they tell you about the world? About yourself? About Twit's twisty little mind with the very brilliant bent. Sometimes I go back repeatedly to a posting trying to make sense of it. Sometimes I have to ask for a hint -- but sometimes he highlights a connection I've never ever noticed, however the revelation is now laid out in total clarity. Wow...ouch...yay!

3. Pauly would like Change for A Nickel. Pauly is a veteran (former marine) and knowledgeable, straight-talking, down-to-earth man AND a fun drinking buddy. He's always hipping me up to the down-and-dirty, nuts-and-bolts of politics ... and occasionally his cats.


4. Social Anxiety and Friends. Tom just started this blog (about 7 entries). It is a painful and lyrical description of trying to walk tall beneath the yoke of social anxiety disorder. It shows familiar environs from a completely different perspective.


5. A small cheat here: Both of my sisters have blogs, Life Among the Trees and Meander.

Liza the Woodland Mama makes me laugh, cry, and cringe with her personal and hilarious revelations. She is much more comfortable sharing her emotions and foibles than I could ever be -- emotional and foible-prone as I am. I think that's courageous.

Meander got the whole family blogging and therefore thinking with more precision. Her new baby has made it hard for her to write on her blog as often as she used to (although I do enjoy the Dexopoly) but when she does write, she is incisive, snarky and fun.




Special thanks to Indigobusiness who soothed my fear of rank and selection by tagging 5 of my 12 favorite blogs, leaving me open to select another 5 of my 12 favorite blogs. (See IB, we often agree -- even when we disagree it's usually a vehement display of stubbornly clinging to variant descriptors.) (As for the other 2 of my 12, Deek tagged Laurie and practically everybody who's anybody tagged IB.)