Knitting Machines and Freshman Anthropology

I think my UMass alumni magazine is pretty good. There were two articles that caught my interest in the most recent issue:

With Each Stitch, Hope
Cari Clement ’71 helps women rebuild lives with her knitting machines
—Melissa Pasanen


Cari Clement travels regularly to Rwanda, the most densely populated country in Africa, to teach women to use donated knitting machines. Income from knitted goods helps them support their families. Already a poor, rural country at the time of the civil war in 1990, the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994 destroyed Rwanda’s fragile economy, severely impoverished the population (particularly women), and eroded the country’s ability to attract private and external investment.


SMILE AFTER SMILE BEAMS OUT from photos taken by Cari Clement during her five trips to Rwanda. In the pictures, women like Jeannette and Esperance proudly show off scarves, hats, and ponchos they have created with knitting machines and training provided through Clement’s nonprofit Fiber and Craft Entrepreneurial Development Center (FACED). Their faces tell the happier story of today, not the heartbreak of the past.
( Read More )

For more information:
Fiber and Craft Entrepreneurial Development Center, 802-229-9991; www.fiberandcraft.org.
To buy garments knitted through the project, visit Economic Development Imports at www.edimports.com.



Going Native
What an anthropologist learned when she went back to college as a freshman
—Carol Cambo


When 50-something Cathy Small ’71, professor of anthropology, waited in line to get her dorm assignment as a freshman at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in the fall of 2002, it wasn’t to relive her carefree youth. Instead she wanted to make sense of the students sitting in her classroom. “I noticed I was looking at students as if they were from a different culture,” explains Small, whose past writings have focused largely on immigration, globalization, and life in a Tongan village. “So I did what an anthropologist does. I lived among them.”
( Read More )

Art and Letters Daily

Arts and Letters Daily Highlights:

China beat Columbus to it, perhaps
The Economist

An ancient map that strongly suggests Chinese seamen were first round the world



THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true.
( Read More )

Cantonese Is Losing Its Voice
Speakers of the spicy tongue that can make words of love sound like a fight are having to learn its linguistic kin, the mellower Mandarin.
By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times, January 3, 2006

Carson Hom's family has run a thriving fortune cookie and almond cookie company in Los Angeles County for 35 years.

And for much of that time, it was a business that required two languages: Cantonese, to communicate with employees and the Chinese restaurants that bought the cookies, and English, to deal with health inspectors, suppliers and accountants.

But when Hom, 30, decided to start his own food import company, he learned that this bilingualism wasn't enough anymore.

"I can't communicate," said Hom, whose parents are from Hong Kong. "Everyone around used to speak Cantonese. Now everyone is speaking Mandarin."

Cantonese, a sharp, cackling dialect full of slang and exaggerated expressions, was never the dominant language of China. But it came to dominate the Chinatowns of North America because the first immigrants came from the Cantonese-speaking southern province of Guangdong, where China first opened its ports to foreigners centuries ago.
( Read More )

When Darwin Meets Dickens
By Nick Gillespie, TCS Daily, 29 Dec 2005


One of the subtexts of this year's Modern Language Association conference -- and, truth be told, of most contemporary discussions of literary and cultural studies -- is the sense that lit-crit is in a prolonged lull. There's no question that a huge amount of interesting work is being done -- scholars of 17th-century British and Colonial American literature, for instance, are bringing to light all sorts of manuscripts and movements that are quietly revising our understanding of liberal political theory and gender roles -- and that certain fields -- postcolonial studies, say, and composition and rhetoric -- are hotter than others. But it's been years -- decades even -- since a major new way of thinking about literature has really taken the academic world by storm.
( Read More )

The Battle to Stop Bird Flu
The pandemic has hit New Mexico. Inside the Los Alamos weapons lab, massive computer simulations are unleashing disease and tracking its course, 6 billion people at a time.
By Thomas Goetz, Wired

On a cold January day in 1976, Private David Lewis came down with the flu. Struck with the classic symptoms - headache, sore throat, fever - Lewis was told to go to his barracks at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and get some rest. Instead, he went on a march with other grunts, collapsed, and, after being rushed to the base hospital, died on February 4. He was the first - and, as it would turn out, the only - fatality of the great swine flu epidemic of 1976.
( Read More )

Jayne Cobb Cunning Hat

I make my Jayne Hats from Lamb's Pride Bulky Wool yarn, typically in Lemon Drop, Orange You Glad and either Autumn Harvest or Tigerlily. One size fits all. If you are allergic to wool, let me know and I can make the hat in acrylic, cotton, alpaca or other non-sheep's wool yarn.

The cost is 30.00 USD, which includes shipping (with tracking so you can constantly check the status of your Cunning Hat). You can pay me through Paypal, where my account is through the email: fearofafemaleplanet@gmail.com. I have shipped to Canada and will ship internationally, but would probably add a few extra dollars to the shipping cost for that.

A happy (and cunning!) customer: