So I'm sure you all know that there was a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti yesterday. Thousands are dead, thousands are missing. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, and nowhere near equipped for this kind of disaster.

This is a signal boost for the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Oxham International, the LJ Help Haiti community, and everyone else accepting donations. Please help any way you can: Jessie commands you!

Seriously though, thank you.

Relevant links:

Tamora Pierce's roundup post

Copperbadge's roundup post (more links in the comments)

Help Haiti the fandom effort


In slightly relevant news, it always amazes me how fandom pulls together when things like this happen. I mean, the Help Haiti community was up within hours of the disaster, and they're already pulling together a fandom auction to raise money. It's a group of smart, dedicated, thoughtful and committed citizens, and I am proud to be a member.

1) Ursula Vernon is pissed, and with good reason.

My thoughts on the matter? I believe that no one should constrict or constrain an artist to produce something. This puts me at odds with the publishing industry, somewhat, in that they seem to believe they can contract people to produce a specific product, exactly to their outline (romance industry, I'm looking at you). This isn't completely constraining, though; a writer has to have a certain amount of enthusiasm for the project in order to contract to create it. Writing to prompts is also different, as a prompt will give you an opening, but will not tell you what to write.

On the other hand, I can sort of see where the email writer comes in. Not as regards Billy Collins, of course; he's one of my favorite poets and I find him very accessible. However, throughout my academic career, poetry has had to mean something, and it's usually a meaning completely opposite to what was given. This sort of analytic reading of poetry drives me batty. It implies that for a poem to be a "good" poem, it must be either entirely metaphorical or entirely inaccessible (T. S. Eliot, the Wasteland, I'm looking at you!). Now, most poets don't believe this. See, Billy Collins, Paul Zarzyski, even T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Academics, though, certainly do.

Newsflash, academics: just because something's fun to read doesn't mean it's automatically trash.

So it seems to me that this is more a problem of how we read than of how we write. If we cannot enjoy something, we tend to say that it sucks and throw it away. Okay, fine, whatever, you're not constraining the author at all, you're simply exercising your right as the audience to ignore them. However, when you then say that because you don't like it, nobody else can because it's trash, and the author must immediately change their ways, then it becomes a problem.

2) Sherwood Smith, on writing and memory

For me, the books that bring back my childhood most clearly are The Neverending Story, the Hobbit, and Tamora Pierce, most especially her Alanna series. I can remember sitting on my bed, curled up around my teddy bear, reading with absolute amazement. The idea that somewhere there were people that dreamed just like me was such an irresistable one. I remember being absolutely stunned that people could dream like that, the same way I did. Up until then, I thought I was alone. I think that's when words became my friends. The Neverending Story in particular made me feel as if I could quite happily spend the rest of my life stuck in a book.

I've never lost that feeling, not really. You may have noticed. :D

I like to help out. I'm sure you do too. I, for example, feel like I need to give something back to the world after being so incessently lucky throughout my life (stable family and home life growing up, access to travel, educational materials, computers, books and various interests far above that of my peers). So I tend to keep an eye out for charities, and when I have money, or time, or gifts to buy, I look to them first. Though this is mostly for my own benefit, you may find this post helpful too. I will update and postdate as it becomes possible.

* marks a charity that requires nothing but time.

*The Hunger Site and associates. Here you can donate money to world hunger, free mammograms, children's health, children's literacy, rainforest preservation and food for shelter animals, all without any cost to you beyond about five minutes. The site works by providing a button that leads you to a page full of ads that donate money based on the number of views they get. The ads are attractive, not pop-up and not otherwise irritating. These sites (six related ones all working on the same principle) also have some wonderful stores for gifts.

*Freerice, a site where you can play a vocabulary game and donate rice to the hungry at the same time. Get a word right, and you donate twenty grains of rice. It's a fun way to end world hunger, and free as well. Highly recommended.

Donors Choose, recommended to me by Bex. I believe it was also recommended by the Colbert Report. Teachers submit proposals to the site for various projects that they do not have the materials or the budget for, and people can choose the project to donate to. I think we can all agree that our schools need more money. This site is an excellent start.

For the crafty folks, The Snuggles Project provides a niftily useful place to get rid of those blankets you knit to keep calm. The Snuggles Project has a list of shelters where you can donate blankets to keep the animals warm and interested. If you've ever been to a shelter, you know they often have to keep the animals in small, cold boxes. The Snuggles Project helps to spruce up those boxes and make the animals just that little bit more comfortable.

UPDATE

Kiva is a site that offers loans to entrepreneurs in developing companies. Somewhat unique in that you get your donated money repaid as time goes on (though I believe you need Paypal for that). The site connects you to the entrepreneurs; you receive email updates. Definitely aboveboard and a worthy cause.

More to come as I find them (or have them suggested.)