The Write Kind
Writers are pretty nice people on the whole. The amazing response from writers in support of Haiti has been very gratifying to see. Australian SF writer Marianne de Pierres today recommended Medecins Sand Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) as an effective group to support if you want to help people over there. John Scalzi also recommends them. It’s one of the charities my wife and I support all year round and we were more than happy to help them out over Haiti too. Their international donations page is here: http://www.msf.org/msfinternational/donations/ If it doesn’t load, keep trying as it is very busy just now.
If you’d rather donate through UNICEF (another of my favourite charities) there is a link to a Google-operated donations page in the right-hand column.
And just to prove how nice writers are, I was absolutely astonished to find a plug for my new novel, TimeSplash, on Marianne’s blog too. People can just be so kind sometimes! If you don’t know Marianne de Pierre’s writing, I’d say the best place to start is with the Parrish Plessis novels. ‘Nylon Angel’ is the first in the series. There’s an ad for it in the left hand column of this page. Click through and see for yourself.
POST SCRIPT: As soon as I’d published this post, I went off to read a few more blogs and found this amazing piece of outrageous flattery from fellow writer Terry Hornby. I’m beginning to feel overwhelmed with kindness. I’ve mentioned Terry before as being a funny and clever blogger whom everyone should read. (Yes, that was ‘blogger’ not a typo.) Now I can only conclude that he’s about to touch me up for a very big loan…
I’m definitely a fan of Medici sans frontiers. We supported them for years; they do great work.
Hmm. That’s ‘Merrilee’ right, not ‘Machiavelli’?
Er…what?
“Medici sans frontieres”? And who was around and would have loved to help them achieve it?
Well unless they’ve changed their name in the last few years, that’s what they are called
(Spelling notwithstanding
)
Well I hate to be a pedant (who am I kidding?) but it’s “Medecins Sans Frontieres” (with a couple of accents I can’t type.) It translates as “Doctors Without Borders” – but I like your version too (“Evil, Renaissance, Power-Crazed, Murdering Rich Bastards Without Borders”)
While I admit to being a grammar bore in English, when it comes to other languages, it’s every letter for themselves.
Oh wait! This post was about how nice writers are. I shouldn’t really be making jokes about commenters’ spelling mistakes should I? I should save that for a ‘Writers Are All Up Themselves’ post.
Okay, I looked up Medici, and NOW I get why it’s funny.
It was a pretty obscure joke. I should have known it would take 8 comments to sort it out. (Maybe that’s a good measure of joke obscurity. People could say, “I don’t get it. That sounds like a ten-comment joke to me.” Or, of their favourite nerd, “He’s an eight-comment joke type.”)
Er,
smiley missing from the last statement. Please insert at appropriate position.
Oops, missed.
Or maybe the real measure of joke obscurity is the comment-to-retweet ratio. When it goes above ten you know there’s a serious problem with what you said.
There is an inner decency inside most people, it is just tragic that it sometimes takes a catastrophe of gigantic proportions to bring it out.
I am in constant awe over people who devote not just a few minutes but their entire lives to helping others.
As the big guy said, “What’s in a name?”
terry
Terry, would you mind not being on topic, please?
Besides, you would admire people who spend their lives helping people for little reward, wouldn’t you? You’re a teacher!