Thanks for engaging gracefully

I want to thank the many people out there who participated in our Thanksgiving weekend blog rally in support of Engage with Grace. When the day began last Wednesday, based on replies we had received, we thought we would have roughly 40 bloggers engaged in this. By Thanksgiving, there were over 80, rising to over 95 during the weekend. If you do Google or Twitter searches on "Engage with Grace", you'll get the idea.

I especially want to thank two of our local media blogs, White Coat Notes on Boston.com, and WBUR's Commonhealth. These blogs are generally outlets for news and commentary, not for causes, and it was exceptionally generous of them to devote their space to this community effort. And, of course, Kay Lazar's wonderful story on the front page of the Boston Globe got the day off to a spectacular start.

We had participation and/or coverage by the circulation giants in the health care blog world, the Wall Street Journal; Kevin, MD; Diabetes Mine (including, of course, our co-conspirator, The Health Care Blog) -- but also in several topically different blogs, like this one from the Caribbean, this one from a Florida sportsman, this one from the Outer Cape, and this one from a religious blogger. And it was great to "meet" these and other people with whom we probably never would have connected: MaryAnne, Cyndi, Xujun, Susie, and even someone from Australia. And special thanks, too, to a related winemaker.

Some people have already written in to ask, "What's next?" Well, I'm a firm believer in enjoying a good thing and letting it sink in for a while before thinking about what might be next. The Engage with Grace blog rally worked because it was a cause in which people of all persuasions could believe, it was translatable into a pretty simple message, and it was timely. Also, I think it gave people something easy to leave on their blogs over Thanksgiving, when they wanted to take a break anyway!

Whether the idea of a blog rally becomes a vehicle for other causes remains to be seen. Bloggers are pretty independent people, and getting them all to publish virtually identical posts at the same time and over the same interval will require a highly motivational cause and the right set of circumstances.

In the meantime, thanks to all who participated.