Readers! Now is your chance to meet some of my new friends — fellow bloggers about the adventures, surprises, gifts, and challenges of living with Multiple Sclerosis.
Brass and Ivory MS Blog Carnival
Here you will be able to read posts from the MS blogger community all in one convenient location — come on over and find out what others are saying! New editions will be published twice per month.
And, don’t forget to read the several articles from Sunshine and Moonlight while you’re enjoying the Ferris wheel and the cotton candy!
Many thanks to Lisa Emrich of Brass and Ivory for hosting the carnival.
One community. Many voices.
Very cool intro Kim! Thanks
Great idea, great method of making positive changes, and great word–Carnival. It brings to mind the works of Mikhail Bakhtin a brilliant philosopher, literary critic and scholar. For Bakhtin, carnival is associated with collectivity and creativity. Those attending a carnival do not merely constitute a crowd; rather the people are seen as a whole, organized in a way that defies socioeconomic and political organization. According to Bakhtin, all are considered equal during carnival. In the carnival, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age. At carnival time, the unique sense of time and space causes individuals to feel they are a part of whole, at which point they become more than individuals. It is at this point that, through costume and mask, an individual exchanges bodies and is renewed. At the same time there arises a heightened awareness of awareness of self and of community. Carnival is the concept in which distinct individual voices are heard, flourish, and interact together. The carnival creates the “threshold” situations where regular conventions are broken or reversed, and genuine dialog becomes possible. It is this dialog which gives birth to creative awareness, solutions, creativity and change.
But you probably already knew that when you picked the word!
Gayle, in fact I didn’t pick that word, the people at the Blog Carnival did. But, just yesterday someone asked my why the term “Carnival” and now we have a fantabulous answer to send along to them!
Really the ‘Carnival of MS Bloggers’ could have been called just about anything. I contemplated other names, but Carnival just seemed to fit the idea I had in mind. Other collaborations in which I participate include the ‘Cavalcade of Risk’ and the ‘Health Wonk Review’. Then I enjoy reading ‘Grand Rounds’ and ‘Skeptic’s Circle’. All very different names with the same philosophy – to share your best work with others in your community on a periodic basis. And often not everybody’s submission is included.
As folks begin to witness the collaborative effort, I hope that it sparks more commentary and thoughtful writing. Unfortunately, some MSers simply said, “I want to be listed,” after the fact and without actually contributing anything.
The process should also serve to as a way to develop quality links, relationships, and increased traffic for the participants in the blogosphere. Again, unfortunately, some of those included this first time around did not understand the request for a separate post in which to ‘announce’ that the carnival was up. So the link-love isn’t quite going both ways just yet.
However, the whole process will repeat in two weeks and I look forward to what folks have to share.