Faux French
ridiculous rhymes
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Let’s build bridges
to civil rights
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Letter from
a drama queen
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Dragon’s Loyalty Award

Jo of Jo Robinson and I began enjoying conversations at her blog. We discussed some of our interests, the process of writing, and where ideas come from. I was honored to find that these discussions led to my being nominated for a Dragon’s Loyalty Award.

I quote from her site:

“The Dragon’s Loyalty Award is an award for the loyal fan/commenter, whether the recipient is a fellow blogger or just someone who follows and comments regularly.

“The rules to fully accept the award are:
1. Display the award on your site – either on your award page or in your sidebar.
2. Link back to the person who gave you the award in your acceptance post.
3. Nominate 15 well-deserving bloggers for the award, and let them know by sending a message to their site.
4. List 7 interesting facts about yourself.”

In addition to Jo (who nominated me for this award), I would like to recognize the following bloggers as the ones who contributed some of the most essential threads to the fabric of my blog by being the most conspicuous visitors.
(in reverse alphabetical order, for non-preferential treatment…and to turn you upside down)

Nominees

Syd of The Truth Shall Set You Free
Ohnwentsya of Spirit In Action
Mama D of RitesReader
IllicitByNatureThumbnail Louise of Illicit By Nature
Little Miss Menopause of Once Upon Your Prime
Leni of All Things Moocable
Jode of Jode Gray
Jess of jmgajda
Jeff of Deconstructing Myths
Heidi of heidi ruckriegel
H3nry of high-grade discourse
DandelionSalad of Dandelion Salad
Claire of Electrica In The Desert
Chris of Uncivil Liberties
Bob of MightyTurk

Seven interesting facts about myself

GraceWeaving 1. I, Weaver Grace truly am a weaver who uses a loom

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a tulip in my front lawn garden in May 2. I photograph my gardens to compare the yearly changes

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one of the gardens in our front yard 3. I have always loved to grow plants (not much mowed lawn here)

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we pureed tomatoes using an old hand-crank "squeezer" 4. I enjoy growing, preparing, and eating foods that are nutrient-dense

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completing a puzzle named Checkerboard Cat 5. My husband and I are having a blast working on one of the most difficult jigsaw puzzles that Springbok makes

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6. to 7. My book shelves and piles contain the following topics:

Natural history, gardening, homesteading
House maintenance, repairs and improvements
Spirituality
Fiction, poetry
Weaving, painting, drawing
Health care, food preparation, running, physiology
Logic puzzles, algebra
Sustainability, privilege, corporations
Business management, psychology, sociology, philosophy
Dictionaries and thesauruses
Computer software and programming
Investing, income tax preparation

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Thanks, Jo

for this opportunity to share the WordPress Dragon’s Loyalty Award tradition.

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Now my dear readers

please describe how you chose the blogs that you follow, and why you leave comments there. When have you refrained from commenting?

Grace Buchanan Audiobooks

May 19, 2014

Customs, Me

Dragon’s Loyalty Award, tradition

22 responses to “Dragon’s Loyalty Award”

dandelionsalad

May 19, 2014 at 10:28 pm

Thanks for including Dandelion Salad, WeaverGrace, much appreciated.

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jmgajda

May 19, 2014 at 11:18 pm

First, thank you so much for nominating me. I am beyond flattered and sort of at a loss for words.

Ok, so when I first started blogging I just followed anyone who followed me. I didn’t know better. Then my Reader started filling up and I started being more choosy. These days I follow blogs that move me: intellectually or emotionally. I like to laugh, I like to think, and I like my beliefs challenged.

If I don’t comment on something someone’s written it’s either because I feel my comment wouldn’t really add anything or because I wasn’t moved. I don’t tend to leave comments these days unless it really moved me in some way. I hope I’m not sounding snide, I’m just trying to convey that when I leave a comment it’s because I really responded to what I read. I’ll like something just to acknowledge someone’s hard work, but I won’t comment unless I feel I just have to.

I follow your blog specifically because you caught my eye on Stephanie’s blog. I’m trying to remember the exact sequence of events but ADD rears its ugly head. I do remember thinking, ‘wow, she really has a way with words.’ Then I started reading through your blog and I was blown away. You have a way of writing that is simultaneously intense but gentle. I also love that when I start reading your posts I think you’re going in one direction, then you end up going someplace unexpected, but in a way that totally makes sense and is connected to an overarching theme. I love that. I know when I read one of your posts I have no idea where I’m going to end up but I know that I’ll love it when I get there.

Every time I read either your posts or one of your comments on someone else’s blogs I think of one of my favorite quotes, “True strength is delicate.” I may have mentioned this before. The way you write is really profound but never heavy handed and it’s quite a skill.
You are very talented and I admire your abilities so much and I’m so glad you are sharing them with the world.

Ok, I think that’s everything. Oh, but also, I gasped when I saw the picture of you weaving. Oh my goodness, that is one super gorgeous weaving! I love, LOVE it. The colors, the pattern, the fact that you own a super big loom. Weaving is something else you are amazingly talented at.

Again, thanks for the nomination and thanks for sharing your words. They are truly appreciated.

🙂

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1. Little Miss Menopause
  
  May 20, 2014 at 2:03 am
  
  That is so perfectly put!!!
  
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2. WeaverGrace
  
  May 21, 2014 at 3:02 pm
  
  Thank you Jess for coming out of hiding and accepting your nomination. We’ve all been missing your talent!
  
  I’m glad you lost your loss for words here.
  
  I like your criteria for following blogs. If I articulated mine, it would likely be the same.
  
  Being one of my top commenters, your stiff criteria for leaving comments really hits me. I hope my work will continue to move you to leave comments. I enjoy what you write here and at your blog.
  
  I, too, have trouble recalling how I met people here. I can think of a dozen ways that I discover new-to-me WordPress blogs.
  
  When I invited people to share something about following and commenting, I had no intent of baiting praise: I thought people would be interested in reading other people’s responses, and articulating what they might do spontaneously; and I was curious. I am blown away by your praise today and previous days. I appreciate the trust that you have in me as you read past the beginning of each of my posts, not knowing where you’ll end up. I see that my posts are reflecting what I experience as I write them.
  
  Thank you for adding to the joy that I get from writing.
  
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Little Miss Menopause

May 20, 2014 at 2:14 am

Lately I feel really empty on WordPress — sort of like I am not absorbing well and then I am not process back on the flip side so my comments sound quite trite to my own ears. I think it’s a combination of all the fires around here combined with 100 degree weather and then getting that’s caused me to feel so off kilter. BUT – – if I think back to when I really felt I was on my game, I followed people because I had a gut instinct that something they had written or would write was going to speak to me. It didn’t necessarily have to be the piece I first discovered them with. It happened quite intensely with you and the first piece I ever read from you, I believe was on New Years eve in NYC and you compared people to ketchup and used a word that immediately made me think, “She is going to speak DIRECTLY to me one day soon.” I think the word was

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1. WeaverGrace
  
  May 21, 2014 at 3:04 pm
  
  WHAT WAS THE WORD!?
  
  My dear Steph, I easily imagine that you are melting from “real life,” and flattened by being Freshly Pressed. I, too, wilt in the heat. What are you doing to manage everything, especially the important things, like comments?
  
  I appreciate that you generously follow blogs written by people who might some day write something that grabs you. I have to find something remarkable before I connect with a blogger. I knew you were a winner from Day 1.
  
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Little Miss Menopause

May 20, 2014 at 2:23 am

Well, how was that for a cliffhanger!! Sorry Grace – – I accidentally hit Post. Now I can’t stop laughing. The word was something like Glugged and shortly after I was completely floored and slayed by your Bipolar Snowball post. So, I congratulated myself that I still had my Reader’s Perceptiveness. Your blog is such a myriad of woven wonder, and your eclectic vastness is only surpassed by your cultured wit! Your comments on mine and other blogs are no less than award winning and I think you are truly a gifted human being who also happens to write the best emails, intimidating even!! I am very lucky to have been educated, embraced, empowered, entertained and enlightened by knowing you and all just because my path crossed with yours one day in the blogosphere. Thank you for being such a joy.
Steph

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1. WeaverGrace
  
  May 21, 2014 at 3:20 pm
  
  Ahhhhhhh. That was quite the cliffhanger! So funny! I’m glad that you noticed the ommissi0n. Someday, WordPress will let us edit the comments that we leave, I hope. Yes, we glugged out of the New Year’s Eve crowd like ketchup. That was the word that came to mind, and no thesaurus could replace it to my satisfaction. We glugged out in small groups, not a stready stream, draining the congestion.
  
  Such praise from such an accomplished writer. I love your list of e’s. You know my intentions well. I only want to inspire you, NEVER intimidate! However, I’m afraid that when we meet in person, you will feel intimidated by my height compared with your petiteness. I’ll sit behind my computer, and maybe you’ll never notice. Or I could take you out to eat and forget my wallet (and thus come up short). Or you could be like your Freshly Pressed Guest, and I could get short with you. At least the odds of us getting along well in person are short.
  
  Thank you for putting so many teeth in my smiles, and so many chuckles in my belly laughs.
  
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Jeff Nguyen

May 20, 2014 at 9:58 am

Congrats on the well-deserved award, Grace. My short answer for how I choose to follow or leave comments at blogs is simply…do the words move me? If I refrain from commenting it’s usually because I feel I don’t have anything to add to the discussion or I prefer not to leave adversarial comments on someone else’s blog. Time is, alas, another constraint to leaving as many comments as I would like.

I appreciate your ability to not only think outside of the box but toss the box completely in order to move the discourse forward. It’s a skill that is sorely lacking in many of the important issues of our time. Peace to you,my friend.

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1. WeaverGrace
  
  May 21, 2014 at 3:22 pm
  
  Jeff, I understand your reluctance to leave adversarial comments on other blogs. Sometimes I write comments and don’t post them because I don’t know the bloggers well enough to know if they will be offended. You know that I dared to test your limits a couple times with my comments, and you refrained from deleting them…I think 🙂
  
  I’m not surprised that moving words are your criteria. I am way behind on reading your blog because your words are so moving. Yours is a blog that I can’t read very far before I’m filling in the comment box, even when I just stop by to quickly decide whether to click the Like button.
  
  I laughed so loudly about tossing the box, I woke my husband. I love the image! Is anyone out there inspired to draw that?
  
  I hope you are enjoying some precious peace, my friend.
  
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  1. Jeff Nguyen
    
    May 21, 2014 at 3:35 pm
    
    Your comments are safe with me, Grace… 😉
    
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H3nry J3kyll

May 20, 2014 at 3:41 pm

Thank you for considering HGD worthy of inclusion in such an esteemed list Grace. I follow blogs where I can usually gain some new perspective into the human experience or raise awareness about under-represented and oppressed segments of the global village. If someone decides to follow, I’ll usually return the favor, unless it’s some “get rich blogging” gimmick.

Congratulations on your award!

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1. WeaverGrace
  
  May 21, 2014 at 3:27 pm
  
  H3nry, thank you for all the support you give me as I release each post.
  
  I know what you mean about the “get rich quick” followers. When I posted my first article, I was delighted to be followed by people I never heard of. When I went to their blogs to find out who they were, I recognized their strategy for increasing their sales. Boooooo! I’d prefer that they leave comments to reveal their purpose. Maybe I’ll leave a comment to that effect the next time that it happens. 🙂
  
  I’m wondering how you keep track of all of the blogs that you follow. I mean, how do you keep up with the bloggers who are following you, if you follow the ones who are following you, and then some? I follow as few as possible to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
  
  Then, there is the setting of the frequency of notifications for comments and posts. How do you manage those when you are following so many?
  
  I am glad you are sticking with me as I continue to find ways to offer “some new perspective into the human experience or raise awareness about under-represented and oppressed segments of the global village.”
  
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  1. H3nry J3kyll
    
    May 22, 2014 at 11:49 am
    
    All good questions Grace. I do not watch any television, or the mind-numbing, hyper violent crap that qualifies as Hollywood entertainment today.This makes it very easy to keep up with the blogs that I follow.
    Most bloggers usually post once or twice a week and two or three hrs at night is more than adequate. Sometimes I do miss a few posts here and there but I try my best to keep up. For the bloggers who address subjects that I’m really interested in learning more about, I dedicate a pot of coffee and the pre dawn hours on Saturday and Sunday. I usually sign up for email alerts of those blogs.
    
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Claire Marie O’Brien

May 20, 2014 at 8:04 pm

SINCERE APOLOGY AND ADANCE WARNING: SHORT NOVEL POSING AS A COMMENT. ALL WHO HAVE LIVES TO LEAD MAY WISH TO AVOID SQUANDERING THEM.

” Young lady, that dragon is not coming into this house! The centaur you brought home last month kept me awake half the night, galloping around the attic – evidently, he signed up for tap dancing lessons over at the VFW Post Ladies Auxiliary. The dragon will just have to sleep on the roof ,,,nonsense her scales are thicker than a barn door; she’ll be as dry as toast. She can haul the old wrecked Volkswagon up against the chimney and use it for a pillow…do, uh, dragons snore?
And one more thing – if she has a passion for tap dancing, this is not her lucky day: steer her towards weaving, she looks like a natural…”

Hardy har, I really crack myself up.

Seriously, congratulations, Grace. The two images of dragons and loyalty seem to represent a perfect (among life’s many) award for you.
You know, I feel that the truth is, YOU have been the loyal one, while I have just been hanging on. I dropped by your site today, and I was inexplicably moved to tears ( I didn’t CRY, ahem 🙂 by how you had kept nudging (an unfamiliar ) reader until he had sent out the Petition and actually reported back in to tell you mission accomplished. Just – that your heart is true, and you respected what meant so much to me.

That’s also why I’m drawn to your writing. Your thoughts are well developed and multi-layed, at times nearly cyclical – because you’re not a linear thinker. You’re an open, creative thinker, and by the time you’ve organized and prepared a post for us, it’s nothing to sneeze at . Yet, no matter how well-developed it is, I’m always charmed by how you’re more interested in what readers can add to it than in focusing on it as static, complete and yours.
You’re like “Hey, look guys! Come on in – so how can we change it? What do YOU see?”
And then, as Jeff said, you might just toss part of it out to accommodate something new that works better. And the themes will reemerge, in different forms, infusing a sense of connection and growth between posts.
Anyway, I wanted to let you know that in my heart, I’m paying a lot more attention than my skimpy record of comments and Likes would indicate.

I guess I choose blogs whose writers either have a lot in common with me in terms of shared perspectives, priorities, and principles – OR people, usually young, who strike my eye because they are outrageous, pushing the limits, questioning everything and snorting at the entire concept of being nice. There is something refreshing about their refusal to tolerate an ounce of bullshit – on the theory that once you start, it’s a long slippery slope. downhill.,Also that being nice all the time is not nice at all if it’s purpose is to prevent the expression of truth.
Most people have an inner child. I think I must have an inner 21-year-old.
II’ll end with the one sure fire classroom technique I learned as a high school substitute teacher:

“Why? Because I’m an idiot, that’s why.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

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1. WeaverGrace
  
  May 21, 2014 at 3:35 pm
  
  oooooooooooooo Claire! I love it! Your story cracks me up, too. The tap dancing lessons. The dragon’s pillow and weaving. Thank you for the fun, dear one. However, the treadling might keep you awake, as it can be as noisy as tap dancing. I would steer her toward driving across the border to give the guards something to keep them out of trouble. She looks like a natural alien.
  
  Claire, I first “met” you when you wrote on Jeff’s blog about crossing the border, which I later mentioned in my comments on other blogs.
  
  I love your inner 21-year-old who refuses to cover truth. I admire your loyalty to hanging on to your values/principles/truths. I will take advantage of this opportunity to nudge people again to Claire’s petition. It’s not too late, is it Claire?
  
  I am charmed by the way that you describe my blog. That is exactly how I want it to be: not my perfect perspective, but something for my readers to think about and discuss. As I share my limited perspective, I want help seeing more of the picture. I want to attract readers who want the same, yet I want to look forward to the challenges of visits from readers who present well-thought-out arguments for very different values and perspectives.
  
  Claire, I could see that your Likes and comments did not represent all the attention that you have given my blog, thus your presence has been quiet in a conspicuous way. For example, I noticed on my statistics page that my number of views soared around the time when you left a comment or two or so, and all else was quiet. That is how you earned the award.
  
  I never sat at a conventional high school class (which is an upcoming post), but I can imagine the effect of your response to “Why”. Hilarious 🙂
  
  Thanks Claire for your generous contributions to our blogging world. I’m glad you accepted the nomination and invitation to comment here. In this case, I’m glad that WordPress does not give us the option to edit the comments that we leave 😉 No, I will not remove your comment, but invite you to continue being part of this fabric. Does anyone object?
  
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Claire Marie O’Brien

May 21, 2014 at 10:39 pm

Objection! Leading and argumentative! Assumes facts not in evidence – move to strike! Move to charge anyone who speaks this way with assault on a language.

Okay, I’ll post my blog picks with a pingback returning folks back here.

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1. WeaverGrace
  
  May 21, 2014 at 10:59 pm
  
  Objection overruled. Motions dismissed. Any appeal may be taken as contempt of court. You are sentenced to access to this blog for the duration of your life, or the life of this blog, whichever lasts the longest. No transfer of ownership or rights to heirs or creditors.
  
  Now that we got old business out of the way, on to new business. I look forward to reading your acceptance post. I hope you enjoy putting it together. 🙂
  
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Jenni

June 5, 2014 at 1:19 am

Congratulations and I love some of the blogs you’ve nominated and I look forward to checking out the ones I haven’t seen yet.

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1. WeaverGrace
  
  June 5, 2014 at 6:53 am
  
  Thank you Jenni for leaving a comment. I hope you enjoy your visits to the unfamiliar blogs, and find some new ones to follow. How do you choose which blogs to follow?
  
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  1. Jenni
    
    June 5, 2014 at 8:30 am
    
    I was haphazard at first, then worked with OM to build up readership for my own blog and now I just follow the ones that interest me. Usually mental health, social justice, politics plus a good handful of just plain funny.
    
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    1. WeaverGrace
      
      June 5, 2014 at 2:51 pm
      
      OM? :steam: I’m racking my brain here…
      
      I wasn’t expecting to be flattered by your comment. 🙂 I’ll consider adding a post on politics to hit all of your targets 🙂
      
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