International Rock-Flipping Day 2011 is September 11

That’s right, folks: it’s time once again to gird your loins, polish your cameras, and vulcanize your boots. The world’s largest annual rock-flipping blog carnival is almost upon us! British Columbian nature-blogger Susannah Anderson at Wanderin’ Weeta (With Waterfowl and Weeds) has volunteered to be the point-person again this year, which means that all blog links should be emailed to her, and she will then assemble, publish, and keep updating a list of participants, which all other participants will be encouraged to reproduce on their own blogs so everybody links to everybody, and we all have a rockin’ good time seeing what’s under everybody’s rocks. Er, you know. It’s actually a very family-friendly exercise in nature education, assuming you can pry the little wombats away from their video games and mobile devices long enough to go outside and flip a few rocks.

If you’re new around here, you may be wondering what this is all about. Please go read Susannah’s post and all should be made clear. (You can also browse past IRFD posts here at Via Negativa, where it all got started five years ago.) If you’re on Flickr (whence the cool badge in this post, courtesy of Jason at Cephalopodcast), please join the International Rock-Flipping Day group and add your photos and videos to the pool next Sunday (or Monday, if you have other things going on that day). We do allow schoolteachers only to adjust the date and participate on either the preceding Friday or the following Monday. Everyone else should do their rock-flipping on Sunday. If you are a religious Christian and are wondering if this kind of activity is permitted on the Lord’s day, Jesus assures me that it is.

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In other blog carnival-related news, the latest Festival of the Trees is up at Slugyard. It’s a back-to-school edition: Slugyard University. As Dave Barry would say, I swear I’m not making any of this up. Here at Via Negativa, slugs, sowbugs, and other creatures that live under or around rocks are held in high esteem. As indeed they should be. Jesus said they are going to inherit the earth.