stitch and bitch: knitting and letter writing @ boxcar books. 7-9p.


Crafting Community: An Evening of Knitting and/or Letter Writing
Friday, December 22
Boxcar Books and Community Center [310A S. Washington St.]
7-9pm

Bloomington is changing in terms of the structural landscape of the city, the demographics of it’s inhabitants, and the development and political decisions that face the community. Despite opportunities for public review, many of the decisions being made that affect the community as a whole, feel completely out of the hands of most people. We grumble, gossip, and debate but do our words and concerns change anything?

The idea is simple – people can get together around a simple activity like knitting and talk about their perceptions, feelings, and ideas about the things that are affecting us as we live in Bloomington. We can share information about the things that are happening around us and use our shared information and perspective to solidify our individual feelings and opinions. Then, through writing letters to the editors of local media, politicians, city officials, developers, and business owners, we can share our voices with those who make sweeping decisions around the city of Bloomington. We hope that our voices can help shape the decisions being made, but if they can’t, at least no one can claim that the decisions were made ignorant of the impact that they would have on the city’s residents.

I’m thinking that this Friday’s topic of letter writing will be the closing of Ladyman’s Cafe and the plans for Finelight’s development of the cafe’s former location. Please bring any news articles, planning documents, press releases or other information that you would like to share with others.

This event is open to everyone in the Bloomington community. You can come to knit, to write letters, or just hang out.  Hopefully we can all take a few moments to let the rants and conversations many have had over the past few weeks coalesce and turn them into clear expressions of anger, frustration, or hope that can be shared with others in Bloomington.

Take care,
Geoff

boxcar technology wg project ideas

  • Mass inventory edit feature to Boxcar inventory.  This would allow user to change inventory details for multiple inventory entries all at once. Essentially this would allow you to change everything that you can in the inventory edit form.
  • Barcode-based inventory entry
  • Integrate POS and inventory
  • Make pages card catalog/inventory electronic

opening hours

a common question that i have is when various places are open around bloomington, so i’m going to keep a running list here

  • opportunity house – M-Sa  9a-2p
  • goodwill (both east and west side locations) – M-Sa 9a-9p

post office lobby hours changing

The warm weather the last few days has been really amazing.   It seems like people were on the streets late into the night last night, just enjoying the warmth of the air.  I rode through campus and people were walking through the night gabbing loudly on cell phones as they walked, a combination of giddy excitement for those who had completed their finals and concern for those who hadn’t.  It gave me that strange meloncholy feeling that I remembered from when I was in school at the end of terms when you would have this fast transition around campus between frantic activity and a lonely desolation.  The nice thing about living in a small town is that people are instantly recognizeable, even from a distance, and as I was headed back towards Boxcar, I saw the outline of Tyson wizzing around the block on a skateboard, his motion relaxed and fluid.

I stopped at the post office and saw the lady who usually sleeps there resting, as usual, by standing up and letting the weight of her upper body fall on her shopping cart.  As I entered the post office, I noticed a sign on the door reporting that later in the week, the lobby would start closing at 8:00PM and reopen at 3:00AM.  Surely this is a measure to keep people experiencing homelessness from sleeping in the lobby.  It’s sad  because I always thought it was a nice arrangement, how the post office unknowingly offered shelter to people from the rain or cold in a way that used no additional resources, and for some, seemed to work better for their lives than a formal shelter ever could.  I guess those days are over, and I hope that it stays warm long enough for people to find a new lobby somewhere.

outdoor ap design

I’ve ben thinking a lot about wireless networks and building community wireless networks lately.  I installed OpenWRT on a WRT54G, injected DC into the ethernet cable, and built an outdoor enclosure at my friend’s house.  I was looking at different enclosures and the ones at the hardware store and cost $25.  So, I looked around the house and stumbled upon the ubiquitous fish tub as a solution.  Then today, when I was digging around for antenna designs, I came upon this outdoor AP design that uses the fish tub too!  It got me stoked to feel like people can come up with the same DIY solution independently of each other.

Link

bloomington veteran resources

Someone wrote pages asking for literature for veterans.  He said that incarcerated vets are pretty neglected by the government/military.  So, I’m trying to collect contact info for veterans groups so I can ask them about getting literature to make available to incarcerated people through pages.

IU Office of Veterans Affairs
Georgann Wilson gwilson@indiana.edu
http://dsa.indiana.edu/vet.html
812.856.1985

Monroe County Veterans’ Affairs Office
 http://www.co.monroe.in.us/veteransaffairs/index.htm
(812) 349-2568

art opening for show of photos by jeremy hogan @ sweet hickory. 6-10p.

 

Jeremy Hogan is a local photographer, photojournalist, and filmmaker whose documentary work often appears in the Herald Times but has appeared in other publications nationwide.   For years he has existed at the periphery of youth culture and counter culture and many of his photos document these movements, scenes, and communities.

The show at Sweet Hickory will feature photographs of protests and photos depicting life in Bloomington.  The show opens December 17, 2006 with an event from 6-10pm.  The show will run daily until January 19th.  Sweet Hickory is located at 317 E 3rd St. in downtown Bloomington.  For more info, contact Ryan at 812.369.5284.