National Day of Service/MLK day & Bush’s last days

Before beginning my classes, and while the “snow” is still on the ground, I am working on some personal projects of my own.

Baby-Hat

For the first National Day of Service, I have been getting my co-workers together to make baby-hats as part of the Save the Children’s campaign called “Knit-One, Save-One”, where your baby hats will go to babies in need all over the world.

A friend a Lion Brand Yarn will send our over 15 hats to the project.  I think there may even be a 10% discount involved.  Today I plan on making 2 – 3 more hats.  Today is also my little nephew Reese’s 1st birthday.  I am going to dedicate these hats to him for his baby friends far away.  Happy Birthday Reese!!

Hemp Plant for Fiber Arts

My next project involves my first knit garment/ hemp project.  I was inspired to do this hemp project from a series of free patterns in Vogue Knitting.  The yarn seems to be the only major hemp distributor, but the more I research on hemp yarn the more I love the idea of using it in almost any of my projects, because it is durable, washable, won’t pill, and environmentally friendly.   For more information on the benefits of using hemp to knit, go to LanaKnit’s About Hemp page to read more.  Some interesting hemp yarn facts are:

1. the first pair of Levi’s were made of hemp!

2. Thomas Jefferson, once remarked on the economic value of hemp for the country and the Navy.

3.  George Washington said of hemp: “make the most of the hemp seed and sow it everywhere”.

4. Hemp seed can grow anywhere, even in unusable land.

5.  Hemp is a renewable resource, and can be used for the production of methanol, a sustainable fuel.

* Personal disclaimer: I am not advocating the use of hemp for any other reasons other than the one’s mentioned above.  What you do at home in your personal life is your business not mine, this is about sustainability, economics, the environment, and crafting with consciousness!!

So what does this have to do about Bush’s last day in office???  I have no clue, other than it is worth reflecting upon.  It is worth remembering how long we have had to deal living in the world with this man in power, it is worth feeling glorious and justified and emotional about it.  I have cried on multiple occasions because of what he has done.  I am including an excerpt from my journal on Sept. 11th, 2001:

9.11.01
• “it’s hard to believe right now, but here i am in Kenya & I’ve watched the news for hours about the attacks on the world trade center & pentagon.  at first i was in shock and pretty upset – i guess i was just thinking about how many people must have died in the places and buildings.  it seems very surreal because i am so removed from it.  i am glad i am not in the U.S. dealing with all the xenophobic, terrorist talk.  i was also worried about my brother.  but this is all so difficult to believe.  chip is fine.  i talk and  think about world affairs and conspiracies all the time, but i never write about them.  i think that is going to change.  hopefully the worst is over and i like to have a pretty faithful view of humanity and the good that can come of it.  what i am afraid of most is the USA and it’s retaliation.




• What are war theorists saying?  I haven’t read a Tom Clancy novel, but I think I should.  I really believe this could be the beginning of a new war. Everything that is happening in the Arab world -and I am in it.  And while maybe for a couple of days or weeks people may see us white Americans as ‘victims’, we won’t be for long.  Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth… that’s the American motto I can’t understand and many people in the world won’t – including the Muslin world.  I have a homestay with a Muslim family in a week.  I am not nervous.  I look forward to hopefully gaining a better understanding of a non-American/Christian sentiment.
• It scares me to think about how scapegoating for all on this has already begun.  The Taliban, Saddam, Afghanistan.  And I don’t even know very much about the leaders or militant groups.  A lot of that is because the name is the only thing pronounced – phonetically difficult words to understand if you grew up speaking English.  But that’s it.  There’s no meaning to it except that and then we don’t understand religion, politics, nations, needs, human beings, and how they can’t be put in a box & compartmentalized – these elements are all connected. These horrific acts were done by human beings – not monsters or aliens, or “terrorists’, which is almost becoming equated to that (aliens & monsters).
  
• i am afraid to wake up tomorrow to hear of more irrational decisions meaning more lives lost, meaning closer steps to war. And it’s just like the world view for so many to be shocked, because everyone thought America was impenetrable – at least those of us who have bought into American doctrine.  But we have been defeated, we are losing and we will continue to lose if Bush and our stupid government continues to take the steps it is taking.  I almost hope it was domestic acts because it would be even ‘more shocking – but the last thing i want is ethnic and religious warfare…
• what about the Muslim people in the U.S.? people will always treat them as perpetrators when they aren’t



Now I can finally say I am not afraid.  Now I can finally feel like a citizen in this country, encouraged by my leaders to participate, to not be afraid of being on the wrong side of my opinions.   For that I am truly inspired, relieved, elated, and thinking positively.  While maybe 8 years ago I was defeated, we have won with the election of Barack Obama as our next President.

Election 2.0 – Facebook, Social Networks, and the Obama Presidential Election Success Strategies

On September 26, 2006, Facebook became available to anyone with an e-mail address over the age of 13.  Currently, Facebook has over 120 million users worldwide.  According to the AP, voter turnout this year was over 136 million (Borenstein).   This year’s election saw the highest voter turnout in decades.  While this cannot be entirely attributed to Facebook or social-networking alone, the style and methods of campaigning will not think twice about the ways in which social networks engage participation in the political process.

One of the most widely used social-networking services, Facebook encourages communication through things like “status updates”, “superpokes”, “groups”, “causes” and so on.  Among these social-networking options, organizations and political campaigns have taken the lead in using the Facebook site to develop extensive campaigns of politics-not-as-usual via social networking.  I believe the Obama Facebook campaign understood two major concepts about monitorial citizenship, which helped make the Obama race to the White House successful; the elimination of the “punditocracy” and the understanding of and interest in youth culture via intelligently designed social networks (Facebook and social-networked websites, text messaging, phone banking, & visual graphics – to name a few).

First, while many of us look to news media – including paper, internet, magazine, tv, radio, and other forms of traditional media – for input and ideas for sharing thoughts and creating opinions about a current political campaign – traditional media has faced a lot of criticism of the last 8 years, especially when it comes to election results.  With the emergence of such criticism, as well as the increasing accessability to open-source tools like blogging, non-traditional outlets have redefined the ways we engage with sources of news authority.  The rapid production of news additionally accelerates our ability to digest multiple medias at once.  We may be reading news on our Blackberries while listening to a podcast from Slate.com, or we may be reading our Facebook page for links to sources our friends are reading.  Rather than overwhelming ourselves with the multitude of media sources outside our realm of readership ability (no matter how astute we may be), we look to recommendations from friends and colleagues on what to read.

These form of reader recommendations occur in a number of ways.  One example is the ways in which many websites allow you to “Share” an article on Facebook, Myspace, Digg, and other networks.  By sharing these articles, you can post it on one of these links, add comments or feedback, or e-mail them to your address book.  Another way to share information might be through a status update on Gmail or AOL.  By posting a link to an article in your chat status, you are not only encouraging your friends to read this article, but engage in discussion about it.   The more “plugged in” we are to media, the more increasingly we are sharing, discussing, and engaging in media.  It seems somewhat intuitive then that as the political climate increases during an historic election period, that whoever dominated this form of sharing would get more “air time” than the other candidate.

Working in Marketing and Communications in a non-profit, I can say first-hand that personal recommendations is a number one seller no matter what you are campaigning for.  Political campaigning, although it’s purpose and ideals are less superficial than this year’s fashion, is one big and expensive sales pitch.  To be able to sell an ideology based on personal recommendations over external references (ads, news, pundits, etc.) is the key to success on a campaign.  Social networking for the first time allows this kind of abstract concept (personal, complex, and intimate networks of friends and relations) to be removed out of abstraction and into concrete, computerized, measurable and constructive tools for civic participation.   By understanding this, the Obama campaign was ahead of the traditional campaign politics of looking at election results of four years ago only.

The Obama campaign similarly understood the need to connect, quite literally, with youth culture, black culture, and other traditionally disenfranchised sectors of voter populations.  However they did, they did so successfully, but one can guess that tools like text messaging, social networks, and good web design helped.   According to the Pew Research Center, 57% of adults ages 18 – 29 consider cell phones a necessity, the highest percentage of any age group reported on (Taylor, Funk & Clark).   The same report shows a significant shift in Computer necessity over TV necessities for ages 49 and younger and those who are in their 50s and up (Taylor, Funk & Clark).  Such a priority shift was engaged by the Obama campaign, making the traditional forms of media a sideline in their efforts to capture a wide voter turnout.

Borenstein, Seth. “Voter Turnout best in generations, maybe a century”, The Associated PressU. November 5, 2008.  November 23, 2008. [http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i34ao3tow5yhj2v7v24HM_wbT8JQD948LJRG0]

“Facebook.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 21 Nov 2008, 21:21 UTC. 23 Nov 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebook&oldid=253267758>.

Taylor, Paul, Cary Funk, and April Clark. Pew Social & Demographic Trends. December 14, 2006. Pew Research Center. November 23, 2008 [http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/?chartid=210]

Taylor, Paul, Cary Funk, and April Clark.  Pew Social & Demographic Trends. December 14, 2006. Pew Research Center. November 23, 2008 [http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/323/luxury-or-necessity]

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