Remember how we’ve been trying to get together some money to help out Nominatissima, a talented blogger and an autism advocate? It worked! Come take a look at a post she recently published with the good news. Now, she will be able to pay her tuition and then finally get a new computer.

The world is a beautiful place if there are all these fantastic people who decided to help out a struggling student and sent donations or, in the absence of money, kind wishes and thoughts.

Thank you, everybody, who helped this happen. I now need to go cry some more because this makes me very happy. 🙂

A productive exchange with a fellow blogger always makes me happy. Here is what blogger Steve responded to my recent post about the differences between English and Russian writing styles:

And as Clarissa gave examples of Russian writers who wrote in a clear and direct style. And the same could be found in Afrikaans in the writing of people like Beyers Naude (a dissident Afrikaner theologian), who could turn Afrikaans from the clumsy and ponderous tool of bureaucratic oppression into something light, clear, and beautiful to read.

But while oppressive bureaucracy may account for some of the differences in style, I don’t think it accounts for all. Perhaps English has also been affected (or infected) by the urban fast-food culture, with people eating on the trot.

I think that the fast-food culture definitely is one of the factors that contributed to the creation of the eating on the run and enjoying a meal with friends while standing and walking around at a party.

However, I believe there are also other reasons why this eating culture arose. One of these reasons is the belief that resting is somehow too indulgent or even sinful and one needs to be constantly on the move. Parties turn into opportunities to network instead of offering an occasion to relax. I have a terror of networking as a practice not only because of my autism but also because I always feel embarrassed when I observe these naked attempts to exploit festive occasions to meet the right people.

The very concept of “fast food” that is eaten out of a brown bag or a plastic box is very strange to me. I work a lot and always have but I don’t understand how it is possible routinely not to have time to sit down for a nice and leisurely meal served on beautiful crockery and arranged and decorated prettily. If you don’t have time for things like these, then what do you have time for?

I knew in advance that September was going to be hard because of all the service obligations I had, the office move, and the difficulty of getting back into a working mood after a long summer vacation. However, I envisioned October as a month when I would have a lot of free time to work on my research and enjoy existence. October was going to be very productive for me.

Of course, when you convince yourself that something is imminent, it is bound to happen.

During the entire month of September, I was pretty much useless. In spite of teaching only two sections of the same course that requires no preparation, I was a mess. I simply couldn’t get myself together for anything. I kept forgetting, oversleeping, losing papers, not managing to do anything on time, getting confused and upset over insignificant little things that I saw as insurmountable problems. No research was getting done, mountains of paperwork were accumulating, and I felt completely adrift.

Copying a file from my computer onto a flash drive would take hours as I wandered aimlessly around forgetting what I was supposed to do. I’m not exaggerating. It once took me 8 separate trips downstairs to fetch a flash drive. I’d go downstairs, fumble in my handbag, forget what I was looking for, go back upstairs, and then the entire charade would repeat itself. I was also permanently sick. Mind you, there were no actual reasons for me to feel and act this way. I only did because I had convinced myself I was going to.

On the morning of October 1, however, I woke up, attacked the mountain of paperwork and student assignments, worked on my translation, and did a lot of research-related reading. The forms that had been daunting me for three weeks got done in one hour twenty minutes. I honestly did more in these first two days of October than in the entire month of September. I felt (and still do) energetic, efficient, and in control.

It is all in the head, people. What’s sad is that I had to waste an entire month to get this thought really to sink in.

Whenever I read the following kind of pronouncement

The dream of a laptop-powered “knowledge class” is dead. The media is melting. Blame the economy — and the Web

I know that I’m seeing an article written by a mainstream journalist who is throwing a hissy fit at the idea that the hoi-polloi now have means of making themselves heard. And what’s even more upsetting, all those bloggers and Twitterers are doing a much better job of keeping people informed, entertained, and intellectually engaged than any conventional journalist ever could.

There is no ” fading creative class”. What we are seeing is a very positive and promising displacement of all these boring Doothats, Timbergs, and Wolfs who can’t see further than their partisan allegiances and keep regaling us with an endless rehashing of the same ancient platitudes with true creators, intellectuals, artists, and journalists.