Recently a group of bloggers who had participated in the San Francisco Food Bank's Hunger Challenge gathered to share what we learned from living on a $3 a day food budget for a week.

Yesterday was - how do I say this without risking profound understatement?

The other week, when John McCain got all dismissive about women's health during the presidential debate and kept waving his fingers around making sarcastic air quotes - or, as Jon Stewart correctly referred to them last night on The Daily Show, "dick fingers" - I thought that my head was going blow off. "Women" use "health" as an excuse to get abortions? This is something that the "extreme pro-abortion movement" uses as a ploy to promote abortion? "HEALTH"?

On October 1st, BlogHer announced it would be joining DonorsChoose in support of public education. Since then, many of you have spared what cash you could to help projects submitted by teachers. For this I thank you.

Consumer Reports isn't just for researching your next car purchase or washing machine anymore. That's right, that longtime resource for product reviews has broadened its scope to include health and wellness. In a recent article Consumer Reports tackles the topic of childbirth, concluding that "Too many doctors and hospitals are overusing high-tech procedures."

Is it just me, or does it seem that every time a celebrity (or politician: coughJOHNMCCAINcough) opens his or her mouth about anything related to health or parenting, they say something stupid?

It's Love Your Body Day. That's a good thing, and, also, a very, very sad thing.

If one of the names you answer to is "mom," chances are good that you live a decent portion of your life feeling overwhelmed. As if the responsibility of caring for another person's (or people's) every need isn't enough, you most likely also have a house to maintain, bills to pay, perhaps a job to go to or a business to run, a blog (or two or three) to keep up, a partner to cheer on, organizations to volunteer for, classes, activities or meetings to attend or to shlep kids to, and the list goes on and on and on.

Did you ever have to watch a health video from ten years ago? Or had to study materials where the hairstyles and clothing gave away the age of the information? So many of us have had this experience that it's a familiar joke in our television and movies. Well, the students in Mrs. M's classrooms (and I say classrooms because she teaches health to all the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at her school) have been making due with Current Health Magazines from 1997 to 2000.

Today, on behalf of Lisa, Jory and me, I have the great pleasure and honor of announcing that BlogHer was chosen as the 2008 recipient of The Anita Borg Social Impact Award. The Award comes with $10,000 in prize money, and we'd like to get your advice on how to give back with that money in a way that captures the BlogHer community's spirit, considering it is both your spirit and your accomplishments that are at the heart of winning this award. First, the facts:

Photography changed my life. My first photography teacher told us that photographs give us the most accurate record of our lives, and I believe this more and more the longer I devote myself to picture-taking. This is why I love looking at other peoples' photographs as much as taking my own, and I especially love to see young people excited about photography.

I always consider October to be Canadian Literature month. The Giller and First Novel awards are presented, the GG nominees are announced, and the International Festival of Authors takes place. October is a big Can-Lit love fest but there's more to it than the glitz and glamour of awards and author appearances. At its heart is literacy and a love of books. I can't think of a better way to spread that love of book than to tell you how, with the DonorsChoose Challenge, we can help one school teacher in Mississippi put some Canadian literature into her classroom.