bolivia!

19 Dec 2005 in journal

i’m so proud of bolivia: yesterday they elected evo morales as president, making him the first indigenous bolivian to hold the presidency. a former cocalero, he has vowed to de-criminalize the coca leaf and wants to kick the u.s. military out of bolivia. he also wants to nationalize the vast resources bolivia has, particularly natural gas, rather than let them be sold for enormous profit by multinational corporations and no one else. in a country where the last presidents won by mere 20-somethings percent, evo morales’ win of 51% of the population is incredible. hopefully, this will mean big changes in bolivia, with the majority of the population being finally represented in the laws and decisions made by the government.

according to the new york times, ”…Morales said his government would cooperate closely with other “anti-imperialists,” referring to Venezuela and Cuba. He said he would welcome cordial relations with the United States, but not “a relationship of submission.” i say, que viva!

in me-news, yesterday i hung out with a whole gang of knitbloggers. oof, that was fun. one key moment that really encapsulated the atmosphere: a woman walks by wearing a handknit long sweater and we all stop mid-conversation and just stare, 30 seconds later we’re discussing how it’s really a simple pattern using mostly garter and feather & fan lace stitch, and then one woman grabs her camera and is just ready to run after and take a picture of said garment. so fun! sounds probably crazy to others, but that was such a great moment.

there were probably twenty-odd knitters there, but i only had a chance to really chat with a handful – hi mj, lori, julia, marnie, lauren and kathy! – and as it was, it was really overwhelming, in a good way. so fun so fun. i really feel like i got a good glimpse of people’s different personalities and now feel so much more part of something real, whereas sometimes that’s suprisingly hard to remember. weird, maybe, but there it is. thanks for organizing this, lauren, it was a awesome!

(oh can i just say that everyone’s knitting skills were crazy good? yup, i had to stop myself from staring too much. don’t want to scare people..! and p.s. see lauren’s post for pics, since i plumb forgot to take even one – that’s the back of my very blonde head in one of the photos, yay.)

some links:
~ penguin books is offering the christmas carol as a free podcast – i love that book.

~ crazy list of graffiti from pompeii, very shocking stuff predominates, but my favorite is this one: “On April 19th, I made bread”. ha!

~ if you haven’t used pandora yet, you really should. it recommends music to you based on what you like and then it plays the music for you, along with explanations as to why they think you’d like it.

~ for phellow phildar phiends (woah, there, sorry) out there, this stitchery from the new-to-me online knitting journal knitting fog helps a lot when deciphering french patterns [via christine]

today’s my last day at work ~ happy day to all!