Gone Blogging: Yesterday through tomorrow, I'm attending the annual Blissdom conference on blogging. There will be hundreds of mostly women bloggers there from around the globe. Above are just a handful of our local crew (Nashville Women Who Blog on Facebook) who met at my home early October. Our photo was taken by a six-year-old future blogger. More about my local blogging tribe here and here.

Creative Nonfiction Shout-out: Mother always said: If you don't toot your own horn, nobody else will. Well, I'm tootin' proud that local author, editor, blogger, writing mentor-organizer extraordinaire, Kathy Rhodes, above, has featured my blog in her online creative writing journal, Muscadine Lines, as an example of a creative nonfiction blog. Thank you, Kathy!

Three-month book tour wrapped last week: We probably enjoyed our family-oriented book event at Vanderbilt Kennedy Center more than any of our six events since our November launch. Several of the families featured in our book traveled from out of town to be there for the opening reception of the exhibit, which features 21 photos from the book. A highlight was our introduction by VKC director Elisabeth Dykens, Ph.D., who told of sitting down amid the chaos of family Christmas out-of-town travel preparations and spending an hour enveloped and then extremely moved by our book. Then, as the semester dawned, the first assignment to her students was to visit our exhibit and come back with observations, comments and what they learned. She reported they returned to class with much to share. Above, Rebekah Pope, photographer, left and I, far right, sign books after the presentation at reception's end.

Even the Pope's Doing It: In case you didn't catch NPR's "All Things Considered" segment on papal blogging, here it is: Blog Tips of Pope: Give us This Day Thy Daily Post. Apparently the Pope started a Facebook page (with all due respect…snicker*,) and is urging his leadership–you can tell I'm not Catholic because of my terminology here–to blog, etc.  The brief article (sound and online print) gives the Pope advice on how to start a blog if feels divinely inspired to launch his social media foray one step further from Facebook into blogging.  The story's teaser: "If Jesus were alive today, he'd be blogging." (Tee hee.) Yeah. He would be doing just that.

*Promise, my "snicker" is not anti-Catholic or -papal sentiment. I just snicker frequently at the surreal phenomena of Facebook.

When I shared the later portion of this post with The Fiance, he had this commentary: "Actually, Jesus would be tweeting. Can't you see it now: 'OMG. Why hath thou forsaken me?!'" While I don't plan upon hanging upon or carrying any crosses, you can follow my tweets at @LeisaHammett.