My days as a deaf blog are over...

Because I got myself an Ear! Or an Earie, as I like to call it. Lucy over at Lucy's Life in Suburb World saw fit to award me the Van Gogh's Ear award for thought-provoking blog. Lucy is one of my most loyal and conservative readers, and I have appreciated her contribution since I started this blog. I don't necessarily want to preach to the choir with these posts; part of my goal is to foster an open-dialogue about my topics. Lucy has proven that we can all talk about our differences without resorting to commiting felonies.

The award is an arts award, but includes writing as an artform (and indeed writing is). So here are my picks for the next Ear recipients:

Courageous Blogger: Possummomma (aka, Atheist in a minivan)
I've written about my girly lesbo crush for Pmomma before. Pmomma is an atheist mother of four awesome kids. She also suffers from lupus, and more recently got royally fucked over by some weird Jon & Kate Plus 8 internet-fan base (it's a weird story, but it involves overzealous religious supporters of J&K accusing Pmomma of something that never happened and then trying to post her personal info all over the internet). She went offline for a bit, but is back and bigger than ever. What I love most about her is her total honesty about her atheism, and ability to stand up for herself (and children) when challenged.

Insightful Blogger: White Trash Academic. She's smart, she's had a really interesting life, and she's overcome a lot. Oh yeah, and our childhoods are eerily similar. 17 thumbs up, WTA.

Provocative Blogger: Stuff White People Do, a thoughtful look into racism and white privilege. Macon D has a bottomless supply of posts on all-things racist and ethnocentric, written with great care and insight. I really appreciate his ability to make me step out of my comfort zone and take a hard look at how myself and the world around me in these terms.

So, congratulations, bloggers. You've won an Earie from a total Rookie :) Pass on the love.