We made it

We really didn't have great hope for Christmas this year. We thought we'd make the gesture though, and we shopped and cleaned and baked and wrapped and decorated and cooked...and we made it though. Not without some tears and some weirdness, but it wasn't a bad Christmas, just lonely and a little sad. My tactic this year was to buy the kids something really outrageously good so at least their joy could be real and they'd remember this Christmas as a good one. Jilly got a laptop and Sher and Grey got smart phones and Cassie got a wacom tablet. I got Alan an official WoW shirt (Garrosh Wants You!) and Mom an angel (I always buy mom an angel for Christmas because she collects them. This year's was from an artist in Israel who makes felted dolls). And I waited for Santa to come. I can pick out any number of moments that would qualify as my Christmas moment this year, but I can't find that one special moment that usually hits me every year, my Christmas Spirit visit that remains in my memory for years to come. Maybe I'm still waiting, or maybe it's not going to happen?

Trapped at home

There's this huge basketball tournament going on in Rapid City called the Lakota Nation Invitational. It sounds racist, maybe it is I dunno, but basically all the schools that have Lakota students gather together and host four days of basketball, wrestling, Lakota Language Bowl, Lakota Knowledge Bowl, etc. for the kids in those schools. It's a huge deal to win anything there. So, because all their parents want to go and watch their kids, the schools also host workshops. Other tribal organizations also host workshops, and everyone on the reservations in SD decamp to Rapid City for those four or five days. Basically, ten thousand Indians descend on Rapid City the last weekend before Christmas each year, and this is the 35th anniversary of Lakota Nation Invitational.

So, this year my mom had to go (she goes every year, always protesting that she hates it but she really couldn't stand to miss it.) I've been there once for a meeting and I really did hate it. My kids are not joiners of anything but band and Anime Club (which they founded), so they have never participated in LNI. Well, the problem with my mom going is that we are down to one car since my brother in law managed to ruin our old van and my mother's car last winter, and my mom had to take our newer van to Rapid for the meetings. So, anyway, stuck at home for three days no vehicle. I've played about forty hours of WoW (I got the new pets for Winter Veil), knit a pair of socks, scrubbed the fridge and threw away old food, baked, made truffles, finished the laundry, cleaned the kitchen and mopped the floor (this is rare because I usually make my sister do the mopping). There's more I am going to do in the next two days: I am hand-piecing a quilt for someone since my sewing machine broke down, making more cookies, preparing for P2 to come home from the hospital tomorrow, watching Christmas movies, etc. I am just enjoying my three or four days "trapped" at home with the kids.

My view

My view, a photo by Sansarya Caligari on Flickr.

This is what I see when I go out for a smoke break. It's too cold to smoke more than half a cigarette, but it's a nice view while doing it.

Facebook banned at work

So, last week our Vice President of Public Relations decided to ban Facebook on our campus. I work at a tribal university. We have about 1200 students, 250 staff and faculty and maybe 50 part-time employees. Most of the staff and faculty have a computer in their office that they use on a daily basis. Students have access to about sixty computers via computer labs and the library. Additionally, free wifi throughout our two main campuses.

So, apparently one employee got drunk and posted a threat to another employee via Facebook a couple weeks ago. He wasn't even at work when he posted the threat. It wasn't even working hours! The answer to this problem, according to our VP of PR, was to ban Facebook altogether. Trying to log into Facebook via phone or my Kindle Fire or my office computer will get a "no network access" message or a "SonicWall Blocked" message.

I use Facebook to keep in touch with my students. Often students don't have a computer at home because they can't afford one and they can't afford to pay for broadband. Very often my students live in areas too rural to be served by broadband, though there are cell towers throughout pretty much the whole reservation. This is something you've probably never heard of, but many people on the reservation get free cell phones. It's part of President Clinton's access to the digital divide initiative from way back, and what resulted is that our tribal council negotiated with AllTell (now AT&T) to provide (nearly) free cell phones and service to tribal members on our reservation (which has spawned the term "commod phone" because Indians who are extremely poor also receive government commodities).

With the advent of free cell phone service, many people don't have regular phones through the local phone company. They just use their cell phones.So, anyway, my students who can get a free cell phone can then agree to pay something like $5 a month for a data plan and long distance service on their cell phones, which gives them access to Facebook. Hence, why so many Indians on our reservation are into FB in a big way. It's addictive, it's nearly free, etc. I'd guess that about 50% of our local tribal members use Facebook, which is a huge percentage considering 50% of our population is under the age of 18.

So, anyway, I and many of my colleagues who teach here use Facebook to keep in touch with our students. Students who have free phones generally pay for calling minutes, but they only pay the $5 for a data plan for the month. So, rather than call them they would rather we contact them on Facebook because it doesn't use up their calling minutes. Make sense? Anyway, now the VP of PR has banned Facebook use on our campus and across our wifi networks. So, no way to contact students without using up their calling minutes.

I don't use Facebook a lot. I don't like Facebook that much, seriously. I check it maybe once or twice a day. I might post a status update once a week, if that, but due to some fighting between some of my family members I tend to stay off FB as much as possible and have any messages forwarded to my email. However, due to the completely retarded reaction the VP had to one employee issuing a threat to another employee via Facebook, I'm suddenly finding myself tilting at windmills here. When the email went out last Thursday that FB was blocked on our campus, I questioned why via email (that went out to our entire email list). Then I got a reply in private from the VP that someone had threatened someone but she made it sound like many people were posting threats. I found out later it was just one person, and he was drunk). So, then a few others chimed in saying they use Facebook to DO THEIR JOBS. Then I replied again that it was paternalistic and wrong to take away Facebook and that our students used it as a forum, they finally had a public voice, etc. Then I got a very forceful reply that Facebook is Banned, end of discussion! (Like I was a fucking child for persisting).

A lot of other employees and faculty are upset about this also, but only a few have spoken up about it because they are afraid for their jobs. I should be more afraid for my job, but I'm so angry about this that I can barely think straight.

It's not even the issue of being able to contact students, that's really just one of the functions of Facebook. The issue is the banning of a useful tool for our whole campus. The issue beyond that is that one person who doesn't understand or use technology much at all (she's seriously a luddite) can just make this blanket decision to prohibit the freedoms of our people (and yes, I consider it a race issue as the person making this decision is white and most of the population of our campus is Native American). It's paternalistic and wrong. i don't care if students were using Facebook or not. I care that this person has basically passed the Patriot Act on our campus because one "terrorist" was drunk posting threats on FB when they weren't even clocked in at work! 

Mismatched too

Mismatched too, a photo by Sansarya Caligari on Flickr.

So, yeah, I didn't have enough yarn to do two mittens out of the birthday yarn. That's because I made a cover for my Kindle Fire (favorite birthday present!) with the birthday yarn first. See how gorgeous that turned out? I couldn't believe how wonderful the birthday yarn is (considering I spun the wool for it and it was my first time doing triple ply on the spinning wheel).

I started with this Polwarth roving, which reminded me of the colors of South Dakota in the summertime:

 I love how the golden brown graduates to the aqua and green so subtly. I knit the Kindle Cover all in one piece, knit in the round, and grafted the bottom before adding the crochet tie.

 Then I decided to do mittens with the leftover yarn, which was not enough yarn. It was okay, though, because I had some Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in a color called "Button Jar" that was almost the same weight as the birthday yarn. What I love about these mittens is that there are subtle color changes in the yarn, so they are not just solid green and solid aqua, but full of lighter and darker greens, yellows, golds, blues, even a little bit of tan. Not sure it comes across in the photo, but they're lovely (and warm!). Just in time, too, because this is my smoking area at work:

It's not the first snow of the season, but it's the first snow that's stuck. And it's 9 below today. I'm wearing a hand knit cardigan, the new mittens over my fingerless gloves (smoker trick), and a scarf I made from some more of the hand spun done over the summer. Oh, and hand knit socks. Always hand knit socks. I feel so damn prepared for winter!

Mittens, English, Foo Fighters and Coffee

Mittens, English, Foo Fighters and Coffee, a photo by Sansarya Caligari on Flickr.

I woke up this morning to Foo Fighters on my alarm clock, which resulted in my listening to the Foo Fighters pretty much all morning, through my two morning classes, while knitting a mitten and drinking coffee. I'm still not over it. I suspect it's going to be a All Foo Fighters, All Day kind of day.

And it's cold here, light snow on the ground, very windy, hence the craving for wool mittens on the needles. The yarn is yarn I made (my birthday yarn from a couple weeks ago). There's not enough of it to complete two mittens, only the one (hopefully), but it doesn't matter. At this point I'm used to wearing mismatched knits and looking like a bag lady who just visited the Goodwill Store dumpster. Layers. It's all about layers.