I have received another award

and it’s called (you should pardon the expression) the Kick-ass Blogger award. This is the second time this month I’ve received this particular award. It looks like this:


This time the award came from Ruth Hull Chatlien who lives in Illinois, and who, if her blog’s name means anything at all, is -- by her own admission -- given to having visions and making revisions. I don’t know whether those are separate or related activities. She is, after all, both an Episcopalian (who could fall into a trance unexpectedly whilst attending the monthly meeting of the Altar Guild) and a professional free-lance writer, by which I mean people pay her money for her linguistic prowess). Or perhaps she just has visions and then revises her visions, and then revises the revisions of her visions. I’m a bit unclear on how that works. But I do thank Ruth for the award.

In her presentation address, I mean paragraph, I mean sentence, Ruth allowed as how my posts “are witty and often historical.” I think she meant “hysterical” and just forgot to go back and revise it. You really should go read her blog, Ruth’s Visions and Revisions, because her writing always provides food for thought, and her photographs -- especially of flowers -- are wonderful.

Here are the rules, which I somehow managed to ignore the last time I received the award:

1) Choose five other bloggers that you feel are “Kick Ass Bloggers.”
2) Let them know that they have received an award.
3) Link back to both the person who awarded you and also to www.mammadawg.com
4) Visit the Kick Ass Blogger Club HQ to sign Mr. Linky and leave a comment.

For those who are wondering, Kick-Ass is a compliment and means, roughly, “first-rate.” I’m limiting my nominees to four, and three of them, who really know their way around an English sentence*, live in England, which may be the reason:

1) Daphne, who, even though her Dad is a Communist (I know, I was shocked too), writes a really interesting blog. For example, I learned that her mother still swims in the ocean at the age of 84.

2) Andy, the Yellow Swordfish chap who gave me my first Kick-Ass Blogger award. He maintains that he is English, not British, and we all would benefit from learning the difference. He is married to...

3) Jay, who has JPOCD (Johnny Depp Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and is therefore subject to all the horrible symptoms of The Depp Effect. She also takes care of two dogs named Princess and Pirate who, we can only hope, are not similarly afflicted.

4) My fourth nominee is a three-way tie between Pat (an Arkansas stamper), if for nothing else than one very shiny truck and a triple-layer day lily; Jeannelle of Iowa, who is a new mother-in-law and a dairy farmer’s hard-working wife who occasionally channels a cow named Freckles at the end of a long day; and a woman in Oregon named Vonda who not only lives on The Little Egg Farm even though it is one egg short of a real farm, but is also following in the tradition of both F. Scott Fitzgerald, who introduced the world to East Egg and West Egg in The Great Gatsby, and Betty MacDonald, who introduced the world to Ma and Pa Kettle in The Egg and I. All three of these bloggers brighten my day.

I know, I know, that’s six, not four. Shhhhhh. If you don’t tell anybody, I won’t.

*By “really know their way around an English sentence” I mean they write words like favourite and organised and practised and manoeuvered and don’t think the words look even the least bit odd.

Hmmmm. Nothing historical in this post. My apologies, Ruth.