Thinking blogger is also slack blogger (and 10 + blogs to love)

It has taken me sooooo long to respond to this, it’s a long response below so you can see why. All the same I apologise to the nominators. Thank you to Eglantine’s Cake for the Thinking Blogger Award (my second and the one that has finally motivated me to get around to displaying the award on my site). (My first Thinking Blogger Award was from Crimitism, who just keeps getting better and better). The Cake author is also an author of young adult fiction and her writing is dreamily transportive. Take this explanation of her blog name for example.

I think Eglantine is a little girl. The house is quiet. The baby is sleeping. Eglantine’s mother is outside somewhere, pegging clothes on the line or weeding the vegetable garden. They have a big sprawling backyard, a hills hoist, some chooks. It’s afternoon, hot outside but inside the house is dark and cool. Eglantine has a home haircut, but it’s sweet, short with blonde tufts sticking out. She’s creeping through the slumbering house, up the hallway – bare feet on floorboards. Tomorrow is Eglantine’s birthday. In the kitchen on the bench is a cake, with hard pink sugary icing. Eglantine is peeking through the kitchen door, she’s standing stretched up on tiptoes. She wants a taste, just a bite of pink, crystally sugar…

You can’t visit Eglantine’s Cake without feeling like some cake yourself - there’s that picture on the header of her site for one, and then there’s her relaxed conversational style of posting that feels like a chat with a friend; it meanders thoughtfully and effortlessly. Here’s a favourite post of mine from the Cake called The Princess Problem. A novelist for young readers can really unpack children’s stories and a feminist mother can really interrogate the princess phenomenon, combine them both and eat up - delicious cake.      

Now its my turn to nominate others for the awards. I haven’t chosen any of the superstar blogs that I read because I figure they’ve most likely already been nominated or are so covered in accolades that they’ve moved past them, but the ones I’ve chosen can all give the giants a run for their money. Actually, I probably did let a few superstars in on my list, looking at some of you I think I can see glitter on your clothes from the last awards ceremony you attended. I’d like to forcibly re-locate the following 10 people to my immediate neighborhood, I want to be able to run into them down the street (that’s run into them and not over them).

Thinking bloggers:

Hoyden about Town is probably in that ‘too big for these awards’ category but I just couldn’t talk about bloggers who make me think without referring to these two women. Not only are these two among the sharpest shooting guns in the business but they’re also the fastest, they break down a political or scientific news story almost as quickly as it is actually broken by the mainstream media. I’m tired just thinking about how they manage to pull that off, because they also happen to be mothers. If feminism had a TV channel in Australia then Hoyden is what it’d look like.  

bianca bean is acidicly delightful. She’s one of the first blogs I fell for and she’s easy to fall for because she posts regularly, smartly, and honestly. bianca’s posts are warm and sincere and full of sass (and swear words, I love swear words). But most of all bianca is all on her own interesting, she’s just one of those people who can chatter away about whatever’s on her mind and its interesting, she’s got charisma. Like this post here about what she finds sexy about a lisp, never mind the fact that this post has one of the sexiest titles I’ve ever read. She’s also brutally honest about herself and every stumble she makes on her journey of motherhood, like here about the trials of repairing the damage your parents inflicted in order to not inflict them on your own children. She doesn’t go easy on herself but she goes very easily on mothers, she’s all about empowerment.

momomax and that wonderfully peculiar writing style of hers, like poetry, it’s beautiful and whimsical and full of creative imagery and tense energy. It doesn’t surprise me that the author is also an architect, her writing is both structurally solid and aesthetically pleasing. (That’s a weird compliment isn’t it?) Here’s a favourite post or two of mine from momomax who mostly uses her gorgeous powers of writing for motherhood. That second one is just stunning, with all the machinations of a really good short story. I loved every word.

subarctic mama should start a book series, like Lonely Planet Guides for parents all around the world. I love her reviews of the parenting facilities in her part of Alaska, which are dotted throughout her blog. She doesn’t pull any punches either. But it is her finely crafted essays that will pull you in and have you fixed to the spot until long after you meant to log off the computer and start dinner. Here are three of subarctic’s that I’ve really been swept away by; one, two, three. That third one about the bittersweet moment when her partner became a father is a particular ripper.   

Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony is razor sharp as she slices through Australian politics and current affairs, while her dissections are interlaced with a jolly sense of humour. And because she’s also a feminist mother she views  events through a particularly critical prism, like this one here about the hidden agendas involved in the sentencing of a teenager for groping a breastfeeding mother. Cast Iron Balcony can construct a terribly compelling argument in her writing, almost effortlessly as she writes her way through an anecdote, like this terrific one here about drinks in a pub and male entitlement.   

Thank you So Sioux Me also for the Inspirational Blogger Award. I’ve only just discovered So Sioux Me and I’m really enjoying her blog. Firstly, she doesn’t self-censor and secondly, her blog concentrates on the dilemmas of feminist parenting, in combination the posts read like her thinking out loud. It’s a very organic writing style that facilitates your own thinking as a mother. Right away her post will have you wondering about your own opinions on the matter, and what a great point she’s just made, and how does she have the energy for all this. Because most of all, this is a feminist mother who walks the walk – mentoring programs, coaching her daughter’s soccer team, and the list goes on. No wonder she was awarded an Inspirational Blogger Award. 

Which brings me to one of my favourite posts of Sioux’s, this little number - Happy Feet Beats Bratz; all about how you think you’ve won the war when your young daughter joins a soccer team only to find that she’s being Bratz-ified and so what do you do, depends if you’re as tenacious as this mother or not.   

Inspirational bloggers:

dear meagan has exceptional taste and good fortune with op-shopping. With every post she brings you her latest finds in retro home decorating/children’s books and, fabulous fabrics from your childhood. These are interspersed with snippets of her life with five children (a combination of birth children and foster children). dear meagan makes me wish I hadn’t pushed my artistic pursuits quite so far aside (I have half a post on my toy camera photography days waiting to be completed in her honour). Her site is like an interactive collage, every post is a visual feast but check out her August 4 2007 post Spot Block for the loveliest quilt square of her dog.

Lesbian Dad, man can she write. And she punctuates her perfectly written posts with perfect photographs. In posts like this one  and this she reminds me that it is unnecessarily hard work being a family outside the sanctified little heterosexual nuclear family model in this stupid world. Lesbian Dad specialises in beautifully observed descriptions of life with a toddler (and now another baby too), with all their little challenges and yeah, this too. But this post here is still my favourite, sperm, you are powerful but ridiculous.   

Audrey and the Bad Apples reads like she stepped out of a novel, so adorably smart and cute is her writing style. But don’t be thinking that this means vacuous content, she gives sharply observed feminist commentary (and done with such flair) too. I particularly admire Audrey’s ability to skip between the serious (abortion politics in letters to the editors - really good post!) and the trivial (love-hate sexual chemistry on TV) with equal charm. 

My Fairbanks Life posts about just that - her life in Fairbanks, Alaska. If you’ve got the right writer then a blog that reads like a personal diary makes for lovely, immersive reading. Life is about being a mother, freelance working, home projects, living in Alaska, and the complexities of working out where the hell you’re at in your life, although Life manages to discuss all this and her exploration of feminism without any bitterness (she probably wouldn’t even say ‘hell’).

Brooklynite is a father’s perspective on parenthood, politics, pop culture, social justice, and even feminism. Basically my favourite blog topics. His posts remind me that there would be much more equality between the sexes and the shared understanding and harmony that comes with that if we divided domestic and external labour more equitably - like spending a bit of time being a stay-at-home parent. I want to understand fatherhood but really I have a hard time being interested in what a father has to say about fatherhood unless he has spent a bit of time at home with his kids, alone, without help. And that means more than Saturday mornings while his wife goes to pilates class - that means a couple of weeks, or months, or even years at home as the primary care-giver. Brooklynite doesn’t just have insight, he also writes the crispest of crisp posts with good taste and oh yeah, he’s funny too.     

I know that these awards resemble memes so those awarded are welcome to do something with it or just carry on as they were.