Blogisattva announcements on Dec 8 & Dec 12



The Octobuddha, preparing the awards.

A post at The Blogisattva Awards website tells us that the finalists for the 2010 Awards will be announced in a post on December 8 and that winners will be announced on December 12.

The post also thanks us for our patience. [What patience?]

LET THE HONORS ROLL OUT!! LET THE FUN BEGIN!!

Categories for the 2010 Awards are…

• Blog of the year, Svaha!
• Best Post of the Year
• Best Achievement in Skilled Writing
• Best Achievement Blogging on Buddhist Practice or Dharma
• Best Buddhist Practice Blog
• Best "Life" Blog
• Best Blogging on Matters Philosophical, Psychological or Scientific
• Best Achievement in Kind and Compassionate Blogging
• Best Achievement Blogging Opinion Pieces or about Political Issues
• Best Engage-the-World Blog
• Best Achievement in Design
• Best Achievement in Wide Range of Topic Interests Blogging
• Best Achievement with Humor in a Blog Post

Move afoot to fire-up the Blogisattva Awards

An interesting development this morning: Buddhobloggers Kyle Lovett [of The Reformed Buddhist and Progressive Buddhism fame] and Nate DeMontigny [of Precious Metal: the blog fame] expressed an interest in getting the Blogisattva Awards going again.

I said Hooray!, of course.  And already things are churning.

Nate has put up a post at the Blogisattva blogsite, "Blogisattva is making a comeback!" And has updated the top-of-the-sidebar scrolling marquee to read: 

The Blogisattva Awards are on
the way back.

We are in the process of
selecting an independent
committee to judge and award
the submissions.

Categories will be announced

soon and then the nomination
process will begin!

The Blogisattvas had been awarded early in the years 2006, 2007 and 2008 to honor Buddhism blogging for the prior calendar years.

Top winners from the past:

Blog of the Year, Svaha!

• 2006 Zen Under the Skin
• 2007 Integral Options Cafe
• 2008 One foot in front of the other

Blogpost of the Year

• 2006 "Katrina's Charities"; Wonderings on the Way; Jeb
• 2007 "Vesak and the Art of Changing Tyres"; This is This; Cliff Jones
• 2008 "Addressing Comments from the Meditation Thread"; Tricycle Blogs Jeff Wilson; Jeff Wilson

The Wordsmithing Award

• 2006 F Kwan; foot before foot: the photoblog
• 2007 Will Buckingham; thinkBuddha and willbuckingham.com blog
• 2008 Ed Brickell; Bad Buddha  [6/14/10: Ed now blogs Run with Mu]

It will be great to see the awards revived, with new blood and new ideas brought forward. You go, guys!

BTW, a discussion is going on about reviving the awards in a Tricycle group, "Resurrect the Blogisattvas?"

Bad Buddha makes Good

I knew from a Oct. 30 post in Bad Buddha, "'Genesis Run' in Tricycle," that ebwrite [aka, Ed Brickell] had a piece — based closely on a post in his prior blog — that would appear in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. And from a Nov. 10 post, "Free for all," I knew that the piece was online at the Tricycle webspace. Now that I've seen the glorious, wonderful, high-styled, philosophical, keenly-descriptive, nature-loving, hard-steppin' words in hardcopy in Trike's Winter issue, I must complement Ed for his skillful writing and the touching, refreshing sentiments in his "my view" piece. I'm delighted for Ed and Tricycle readers that "Genesis Run" was published. And I am delighted that Bad Buddha can expect a bevy of new readers, who will be rewarded with reading others of Ed's beautifully well-written posts.

Also, I cannot help but do a few arm-pumps and voice a few hoorays for the Blogisattva Awards which wisely, most-appropriately gave Ed its vaulted Wordsmithing Award in February, honoring him for the beautiful way he slung words together in his blogposts in calendar year 2007. You go, Blogisattva jurors/voters! [Oh, and YOU GO, ED of course, too.]

Also #2, I am very happy because Ed is a proud supporter of homeless folk. Hooray, Ed, that.

Here, a wonderful, yet typical, paragraph ... from early on in "Genesis Run":

As I got out of my car and stood facing the lake in my running clothes, I breathed the rain-washed freshness of the air. Squinting into the clouds of mist hanging over the lake’s suddenly lively surface, everything around me wet, gleaming, and dripping, I felt as if I stood at the cradle of something unfamiliar and primal — a newborn world, a scruffy child pushed squirming, wet, and steaming, from the cosmic womb. My mind turned to the biblical story of creation, which I had recently been rereading for the first time since beginning my Zen practice.

See? Wud I tell ya? Great stuff, this.