If the big blogs are the example to follow, I suppose I should be shamelessly blogwhoring right now for the Koufax Awards. Yes, giants of the blog industry love the telethon model for popularity.

Don't vote for media girl. We all know media girl has no chance of winning. So go pick those someones you like who actually might win. I'm just thrilled -- overwhelmed -- that media girl is nominated in five categories! So here they are:

Best Blog (nonprofessional) -- I really cannot believe media girl is even nominated here. (Oh, I'm sure my detractors, including one or three not-quite-mentioned in my first paragraph, cannot believe it, either.) But I would recommend voting for Alas, a Blog, Pandagon, The Heretik, Crooks & Liars, Echidne of the Snakes or Feministe. (Note: I really cannot believe Boing Boing is on the list. Is that a non-professional blog? I love it, but I always thought they got paid to spend so much time doing it.)

Best Blog Community -- Again, wow. But I say vote for Talk to Action.

(Note: Our Word really should have beennominated for this...but it is nominated for Best New Blog, so go vote! Also, Kactus is up for Best Post and our own bayprairie is up for Best Series [Reproductive Rights Week, on Our Word] -- go vote for them!)

Most Deserving of Wider Recognition -- Whoever is responsible for this nomination, thank you! Now everyone else, go vote for someone else! There must be three dozen on that list much more deserving.

Best Group Blog -- Amazing. Now please, give the nod to Feministing, Tennessee Guerilla Women, Shakespeare's Sister or Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Best Commenter -- This means that people are actually reading the comment threads. I thought only the trolls and five regulars did. But really, if you want to vote for the best commenter on any blog anywhere, go vote for Moiv. Really. Please. Go there now.

Thanks for the nods and votes of confidence, everyone. I'm truly touched just to be mentioned in such illustrious company. (And that's not just Oscar broadcast bullshit!)

Inspired by Dru Blood....

1. How tall are you barefoot?
5'9"

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
No, but I did once smoke opium in college. (Don't ask. I don't remember. Really.)

3. Do you own a gun?
No.

4. Rehab?
No.

5. Do you get nervous before "meeting the parents"?
Dru Blood said, "I get nervous before meeting ANYONE." Same here.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
Yuck. But a good bratwurst with dijon... I could enjoy that.

7. What's your favorite Christmas song?
"Thank you very much" (a song from the movie Scrooge, starring Albert Finney, which is simply the best Christmas movie and the perfect companion to It's a Wonderful Life)

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Dark roast coffee.

9. Do you do push-ups?
Why would I?

10. Have you ever done ecstacy?
Noooooo!

11. Are you vegan?
No. But some of my best friends are vegans.

12. Do you like painkillers?
When I am in pain, yes. But the dopey stuff messes me up.

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex potential lovers?
Based on experience, I'd say baggy sweats and dirty hair ... or a rather sad and pathetic personal ad on some matchmaking website. Overall, I think I scare people.

14. Do you own a knife?
How else would I cook?

15. Do you have A.D.D.?
It's rather silly to put this question so far down, isn't it?

16. Date Of Birth?
Obviously.

17. Top 3 thoughts at this exact moment:
I want to go home.
My blogs are being sadly neglected.
I'm glad I have this silly meme to blog, because I've had too much beer (see #18) to come up with something pithy on my own -- of course, this assumes that at some point I actually do come up with something pithy, but really, I'm under no illusions.

18. Name the last 3 things you have bought:
Beer.
Sushi.
Shoes.
When I look at that, I think, "Life is good!"

19. Name five drinks you regularly drink:
Coffee.
Wine.
Beer.
Water.
Orange (or grapefruit) juice.

20. What time did you wake up today?
6:15 a.m.

21. Current hair?
Straight on good days, stringy or frizzy on bad days. Brushing my shoulders. I like to think it's blonde, but in actual fact looks more like the color of dishwater.

22. Current worry?
Time. I really have so much to do, and it's all quite all of the sudden. I know I can do it, and I believe I can do it well, but time is the scarce resource.

23. Current hate?
The right-wing misogyny parade.

24. Favorite place to be?
Shoulder to shoulder, joined at the hip, with the one I love (if I were in love, that is).

25. Least favorite place to be?
Anywhere with fluorescent lights.

26. Where would you like to go?
Japan. Europe. I like to travel, but only if I can take the time and relax.

27. Do you own slippers?
Of course!

28. Where do you think you'll be in 10 yrs?
I have no friggin idea, but I'm sick of moving so hopefully it will at least be where I will have been 9 years from now.

29. Do you burn or tan?
First I reflect everything. Then I burn. With patience, I could tan, but tan for me would be sickly pale for most people.

30. Last thing you ate?
Sushi.

31. Would you be a pirate?
No. I get seasick.

32. Last time you had an alcoholic drink?
Right before I typed this sentence.

33. What songs do you sing in the shower?
"Singing in the Rain." No, not really. But there is this song a lounge singer sings in War of the Gargantuas (yes, that silly Japanese horror flick) this song, "The words get stuck in my throat," and I keep thinking, "The worms get stuck in my throat." I know, I'm kind of sick that way. I blame it on Saturday TV.

34. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?
Lobsters. They had live lobsters in a tank at the local grocery. My dad would take them out to scare me, so naturally I had nightmares about them.

35. What's in your pockets right now?
Nada.

36. Last thing that made you laugh?
I laugh all the time, but I never remember jokes, and when I'm stressed I tend to get too uptight and not laugh enough, and right now I don't remember laughing, really laughing, in quite some time. That really is sad, isn't it?

37. Best bed sheets you had as a child?
Clean ones. I thought flannel was pretty cool for a while, but I didn't like how they stuck to my pjs. And satin felt really neat the first time I felt them, but on hot nights (erm) they can get (um) sticky.

38. Worst injury you've ever had?
Most traumatic was breaking a toof. I had a concussion once, but I don't remember it much. When I broke my arm in high school, my dad didn't believe me and I had to wait over 18 hours before my parents finally took me to the ER.

40. How many TVs do you have in your house?
Two.

41. Who is your loudest friend?
If I said, she wouldn't be my friend any more.

42. Who is your most silent friend?
I tend to be the most silent.

43. Does someone have a crush on you?
Probably not. If so, he (or she?) has never said anything or shown any signs.

45. What is your favorite book?
I still have not found a book that moved me like The Grapes of Wrath.

46. What is your favorite candy?
Fudge!

47. What songs do/did you want played at your wedding?
Let's start with the wedding march. As Time Goes By. Whatever "our song" might be. Other than that, I really would not care, as long as it wasn't too much disco.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
I can't say I'd have much of an opinion on the subject at that point. Maybe "spring" from The Four Seasons.

49. What were you doing 12AM last night?
Sleeping.

50. Do you love the pain a tattoo brings?
Ask me after I've had one. (Does this relate to question 12?)

We were so rough, so tough, so radical ... and oh so young.

I look back to my own roots in the Women's Movement of the later 1970's, and the shoulders we stood on and recall the retrospective of a dear friend who recounts it vividly in A Year of Living Dangerously: 1968 and how things changed - and the world turned on an idea - Female Liberation!

"It has begun!" The words were galvanizing, chilling; the implications were massive, dangerous and revolutionary; their seriousness precluded euphoria. I knew that the liberation of women was not going to be easily won, nor won through any moderate means. I knew that once I had embarked on this path, there would be no stopping short. Reality shifted, and I felt myself to be in a new world.

It was a different era and we saw a different reality from what young women see today.

It was a terrifying and dangerous time. We felt that we were laying our lives on the line in a way the boys of The Resistance weren't even contemplating. We saw the violence and hatred that demands of personhood and dignity for women brought out in men who until then appeared normal. These were many women's "nice men". They were the apparently-dignified conservatives, the open-minded liberals, the justice-hungry leftists, the apolitical hippies. These men gave us every indication that they would choose open warfare, to the death, rather than yield any privilege, including the psychological privilege of feeling superior. We felt we were girding for an apocalypse in male-female relations. It was startling--and deeply disturbing--how frequently men responded to our direct but courteous remonstrances about sometimes-small issues of behavior with the verbal and body language of physical violence.

And how far we've come.

I am amused today to find young women who scornfully declare that they are "not feminists" taking for granted their rights to do some things we scandalized our feminist comrades for suggesting in the early days. I spoke the other day to a young "not-a-feminist" with a shaved head and remembered the scandal, the uproar, the outrage Cell 16 created at a feminist conference in New York City in 1969. We were speaking from the stage on the subject of the political implications of our making ourselves into conventional womanly women through the cultivation (often at the expense of great time and effort) of stereotypical feminine appearance. To dramatize this, we included a bit of guerilla theater: one of our number who had luxuriant long blonde hair had decided to cut it to a more practical chin length. To help us make the point about femininity, she had also agreed to have us cut her hair on stage. There was pandemonium in the hall, with women standing up and screaming "don't do it!" One woman shrieked, "Men like my breasts, too; do you want me to cut them off?" In 1994, in contrast, my young "not-a-feminist" acquaintance considered her shaved-head haircut practical and rather interesting. If it shocked anyone, or if someone chose to regard it as "unfeminine," so much the worse for them.

It was a time when our lives went on hold,

Beyond the matter of whether one ought to stay in an abusive relationship, we questioned how much time and energy ought to go into working out "personal" relationships even of a more promising sort, and asked whether women ought to be devoting themselves to raising children. Although we didn't condemn good sexual relationships or worthwhile family life, should these be found, it is true that, at that historical moment, we thought it best for women to stay free for making the revolution. Even good relationships take time and energy, time and energy that we needed in getting the word to women about the possibility of a better way of life, time and energy that we needed for the struggle. And isn't it obvious that a guerilla must be free? Hence we wondered at women who professed to be dedicated to fighting for female liberation and who also chose to have children. We felt that children became the hostages of the system; women's need to protect children make us vulnerable to male threats and bribes. We might be willing to bring the world down on our own heads through a revolution total enough to effect true liberation for all, but we flinch in contemplating the danger to innocent little ones. Of course, in our apocalyptic thinking, we never envisaged this struggle being one that would go on for twenty, fifty, a hundred years. In this, too, we were progeny of the sixties: we were going to remake the world in the next two or three or five years. There would be plenty of time for "a personal life" later.

This week Coretta Scott King passed, also and so I think of Martin Luther King's last speech,

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

The women of the Second Wave of Feminism are passing and we still are not free and the ERA is a curious footnote of history.

We wait and wait and wait.

Yet it has been good company that we have kept. We sorely miss those who will not get to that mountain top, but whose example gives strength to those who are still on the climb.

Selfishly, this news makes me sad. I join many in wishing her all the best. She will be missed.