Helping out a fellow Stirrup Queen

Mel over at Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters sent out the following call for assistance.

Go on over and give Mel a huge assist with this! It is for a good cause we all, unfortunately, share in.
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So you're receiving this because you are a stirrup queen and I am a stirrup queen and I need your help. I was nominated for an award and at first, I was just touched and it was really nice. Then, Flicka wrote her post this week (http://vacantuterus.typepad.com/vacantuterus/2007/11/you-should-see-.html)
and it gave me an idea. Do I want to win? Hell yeah. But do I see a larger thing we could do with this? Yes.

This award thing will probably get press and I've certainly seen a rise in hits this week since it was announced. Flicka wrote about drafting a letter that people could use. I'd like to win this and use the glance that the general population will give to the winner to draw attention to the IF/pg loss blogosphere. To our issues (especially in an election year). To the reality of IF. Not a letter about how hard it is, but the reality of what it is like to have to pay thousands simply for a chance to get to the parenting starting line. What we need in terms of mandated coverage or job leave. The facts of IF (in numbers and statistics) laid bare.

And then post this letter if I win. Post it even if I don't win, but the winner will be announced at the end of the week/this weekend (I think) and we would need it ready to go up when the most people would be looking. With the blogroll list highlighted (take a look at 1000 stories if you need faces on the issue).

So the help from you--if you can give it this week--is two-fold. Flicka, if you can spearhead this, can you organize anyone who wants to participate (hit reply to this email and I'll compile the list of email addresses and pass them along to Flicka) and get multiple people to do research at once. And start writing this (I'll help you). We just need to finish it by Thursday-ish.

The other thing I need you to do is to ask you to use your blog to get other people to vote. It's three clicks (click on the link, click on Stirrup Queens, and click off the site) and you can vote once every 24 hours. The link to the voting site is http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-medicalhealth-issues-blog-1.php. Voting goes until November 8th. I'm posting this letter regardless, but if we want to take advantage of the general population's attention, I have to actually win.

So, um...begging for your help since I feel like my blog is a community space regardless. It is, after all, your virtual living room/bar...minus the pee bucket. If you know of other people who
would want to participate and you're not sure if they got this note (sorry, did a BCC because I'm squeamish about privacy and don't like sending out other people's email addresses unless they say it's okay), pass it along. We just need to move quickly.

Wow...I feel like an activist. Just in time for National Infertility Awareness Week!

Mel