Tagged

I'm overwhelmed -- really, I'm not being hyperbolic here. Compliments leave me almost, though never entirely, speechless.

My friend Pentimento, source of much excellentness herself, has tagged me for the Premio Dardo blogging award, which "acknowledges the effort of a particular blogger to transmit cultural, ethical, literary and personal values in his or her writing." "Premio Dardo," as Pentimento explains, means "first arrow." Having not myself sung much nineteenth-century Italian opera, which is to say that I haven't sung any at all, I'm grateful to her not only for the award, but for providing the handy translation. I'm beyond grateful for her kind words:

Mrs. T at Fine Old Famly, a poet, essayist, and homeschooling mother. There are so many reasons I would like to give the award to her blog, and I feel inadequate to the task of describing them all; you'll have to read her yourself to understand. Not only does she write superlatively, but the ethos of her blog combines a deeply compassionate humanity, a love for and ease within the intellectual life, and a devotion to God, her vocation, and her family that I greatly admire.

The rules of the game stipulate that the recipient of this award pass it on to fifteen other bloggers. Like Pentimento, I'm not sure that I know fifteen bloggers who fit this description -- that's not to say that they aren't out there, only that I'm afraid I do a lot less blog-reading than I do blog-writing, and that I don't remember more than a fraction of what I read online. Still, I'd like to recognize the following blogs and bloggers for their contributions to the great conversation:

1.Argent by the Tiber, a beautiful blog which I recently discovered in my travels around the web in search of music for our choir. I'd like to recognize my fellow Southerner (wherever she is, they got snow the same day we did, but a lot more of it) for her service to music and high Catholic culture.

2. The literate Lutheran Viking dudes over at Brandywine Books. I discovered them via Anthony Sacramone's Strange Herring, a blog which deserves its own award, though I haven't yet seen one which would quite apply -- some people just occupy their own indescribable category, and . . . well, that's a little like having one of those lovely but unusual names which never, ever show up on those personalized magnets in the Stuckey's gift shop (you can ask my firstborn about this -- her real name is just as unusual as her pseudonym). But I meant to talk about Lars and Phil, who write with verve and great geniality about books, politics, religion, art and culture, and whose conversation I appreciate no end.

3. My heroine, the DHM. The Common Room wins lots of awards, but you know, they deserve it. I'm continually in awe of the DHM's ability to keep abreast of current events as they unfold, and to write about them in a voice at once motherly and astringent, like the voice of your favorite loving-but-slightly-scary high-school English teacher. In fact, she deserves an award just for having the most perfectly-melded voice and persona in all blogdom. In terms of this award, she deserves recognition for managing -- and I do not know how she does it -- to write about recipes, politics, frugal living, books, hymns, and family life, at a pace which I think would kill a lesser mortal with children and a household to run. She also deserves recognition for having such intelligent, well-read, writerly Progeny, a number of whom are also contributers to The Common Room.

4. Regina Doman at House Art Journal. The author of a series of "young adult" novels which plumb fairy-tale archetypes for their inspiration, Regina deserves recognition as well for the ways in which she brings the ideals of art and culture to the level of everyday family life, and raises the often humdrum details of that life to the level of art.

I'm running out of steam, though as soon as I hit "post," I'll probably think of ten other blogs as deserving as the ones I've mentioned here. There are so many good ones out there, and even as I write, images of blogs I've visited and found beautiful are flitting across my mind, and I'm wishing I'd thought to bookmark them, or blogroll them, or return for the leisurely and attentive read I promised myself I'd take the time for, when I had the time. To everyone who sees in this medium an opportunity to push back the darkness, I hereby enroll you in the Order of the First Arrow.