You Like Me! You Really, Really Like Me!

As Gib Lewis, the only five-time Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, once said: "I cannot tell you how grateful I am...I am filled with humidity".

Mama Mara has given Building Common Ground the Arte y Pico award for its contributions to the blogging community. Specifically this is her "favorite clearinghouse of autism information with the best tagline out there". Not bad considering Building Common Ground has been around for all of one month.

Especially not bad coming from a dedicated, loving and strong mother - of two autistic/Aspie sons, no less. Check out her work and you'll understand why she calls herself "Mama on the Edge".

Here are the rules: (from the Arte y Pico site itself):

1. You have to pick five blogs that you consider deserve this award in terms of creativity, design, interesting material, and general contributions to the blogger community, no matter what language.

2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3. Each winner has to show the award and give the name and link to the blog that has given him or her the award itself.

4. Each winner and each giver of the prize has to show the link of “Arte y pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5. To show these rules.

So, now to pass on the torch to five excellent bloggers:

*Drumroll*

To begin with, I'm sorry I can't give one to Mama Mara - the unwritten rules include no givebacks. Otherwise, we could have recursive strings that might bring the blogosphere to a halt. :-)

1. "Casdok's" Mother of Shrek. As the single mother of a 19-year-old Aspie man, she sees a side to many human beings that lots of us are too "privileged" to ever see. The blind or the crippled may at most evoke a little resentment. Autists and Aspies encounter outright prejudice and misunderstanding. Casdok's seeing her son through such an ennobling experience is an inspiration to us all.

2. Barb Mountjoy's Awalkabout's Weblog. Together with her husband, she's raising two kids with autism and a third with ADD. She writes about her children's progress with love, patience and strength.

3. "Sam's" On the Clock. Take a wonderful person in a variety of respects, add on the will to do good, the wisdom to understand Charlie Brown's aphorism "The more I learn, the more I learn how much I have to learn" and the gift of writing, make her a young EMT and watch her master life, death, work, school, love and herself. Also check out 101 in 1001, Sam's quest to do 101 tasks she set herself within 1,001 days. (Meanwhile, Sam has been going through some tough times as of late, so please throw some support her way!)

4. "Kip, Esquire's" A Stitch in Haste. He's an openly gay economist and lawyer based in New York City (my birthplace and all-time favorite city, incidentally). I enjoy his hard-hitting political and legal commentaries, even though I sometimes strongly disagree with them. (My comments dot his blog.) Kip and I have actually met: he was my Economics TA at Cornell.

5. Watch This Space. I am accepting nominations for one winner of the Arte y Pico prize, via comments or email. Please give the name of the blog, its address and - briefly - why you think it's so great. There is no prize for guessing that autism/AS blogs will get priority, but as you can see above that is not an absolute rule.

Cheers!