Soul Card:  Moon Being.  I am the one who waxes and wanes, the one who lives in the house with many rooms.  I am the one whose voices you hear in the curve of the pink shell held against your ear.

Year end coming fast.

Last chance to make a difference this year:  Web Women Giving Circle.  $40 can change a girl’s life by sending her to school for a year.  $20 can halfway contribute to that year. Think about.  Click to my interview with the Circle’s founder, Joeann Fossland and use the links there to contribute.  $5 is great too.  Be a part of this wonderful way to share your wealth to give someone a hand-up, not a hand out.  If you’ve been thinking about it, now’s the time. 

Leah of Creative Everyday left a question about The W List and how it’s supposed to work.  Mostly I’d like to leave that up to whomeever grabs it and posts it on their site to add to.  I started here with a list of bloggers who write very regularly and who I enjoy immensely. A lot of them already know each other (until recently my own blogging universe was small – Leah’s Art Everyday Month was, for me, it’s own version of the Z List in the number of people it introduced me to).  Unlike Mack Collier’s (The Viral Garden) Z list, which is mostly about marketing, I see the W list as reflecting the diversity that is women today and I think the list I made, although heavy on artists because that’s who I interact with, does start that off.  I think additions will morph each list to it’s own niche.  So Leah, the answer to your question is that the only wrong thing to do with the list is turn it into a competition.  Anything else works for me.  I know that I have already enjoyed perusing the new blogs I found from Jana and Taexalia (check out Plumpiemousie which for me has the feel of entering an enchanted island) posting and adding to it.

A quick note:  Aphra Behn notes it is "ecletic" shock, not "electric" shock as I posted in my list (well, who can blame me for always reading "electric" for the amount of energy coming off that blog!)

Am continuing to browse through the Z List and also following back new folks I see linking here to find still more great blogs, many of which I have either subscribed to or put under my favorites to visit often.    One such is Flooring the Consumer which is mostly about retail marketing but which is so wide ranging and really cutting edge that almost everything she says could be used when thinking about putting a gallery together.

I’ve found activists and artists, philosophers and poets, homemakers and corporate makers and everything in between – all these lovely "stories" out there just waiting to be read daily. 

I started the W List simply because I was so pleased with Mack’s list and the impetus of community behind it that I wanted to participate. 

A final sad note:  Sage, who I met during Leah’s AEM, lost her husband this week.  Deep condolences to her for her loss, and hugs through the interstices of the web.  My thoughts are with you, Sage.

thought for the day: Women need stories.  It is through stories that we share experiences, recognize stagnant and destructive patterns in our lives, become empowered to take responsibility for our lives.  "Without stories, there is no articulation of experience.  Without stories a woman is lost when she comes to make the important decisions of her life.  Without stories she cannot understand herself…She is closed in silence [to] live out inauthentic stories provided by culture…" (Judith Christ) in which she had no say in creation.  Tammy Vitale, master’s thesis