Photo by Alex Morgan.

Colombia: great country. I love it here! It is beautiful and I’ve met a lot of really cool and friendly people so far.

I’ve got just a couple of complaints, you’ll be happy to hear.

1. The cheese here is very bad.

2. The pastries here are very bad. That extends to the savory bread realm, too. Bad. I am not picky either.

But honestly, that’s it!

One of the first things I noticed when I got here was the ubiquitous banners in the streets proclaiming “Bogota, ciudad sin indiferencia”. Bogota, city without indifference. Hm. Sounds to me like someone on the mayoralty’s PR team should be reassigned to a new post. It kind of reminds me of the New Orleans Hornets’ ad slogan from last year, “Shake Up Your Routine”. Who said my routine needed shaking up? Do I look bored?

Anyway, ciudad sin indiferencia is a *major* campaign going on right now. Hundreds of people are employed to spread its message, and they all wear yellow wind-breakers and baseball hats with the slogan written on it. Some of these employees stand on busy streetcorners, helping pedestrians cross safely. Sometimes they just block traffic so pedestrians can walk in the street, a protocol that taxi drivers are REALLY not indifferent to. Other times, they hand out flyers for events designed to reduce indifference. All in all, I think it’s a pretty big task they have ahead of them.

bruce greene is one of my heros. he recorded a vast amount of fiddle tunes played by ancient fiddlers in the eastern kentucky mountains in the ’70s, they were very old then (many had learned their tunes as teenagers from ex-slaves and confederate veterans), and are all gone now. until very recently, the only way to hear the music he recorded was to go hang out at his house in the hills north of asheville, something many of us at speak, peppery have done.

but now there is the digital library of appalachia, which is an online archive of mp3s including bruce’s entire collection (mixed in with a bunch of other similar collections). the fiddle playing will freak u out. there’s no single page isolating bruce’s findings from the rest, but a good place to start is this page on one of his weirdest and most wonderful discoveries, hiram stamper (click on the picture to go there):

and you can go here and do a keyword search for “bruce greene” for his other recordings.

gabe, dawn, stefan, zara, sam had a lovely walk through the cloudless, moonless, starry sky and woods for our new years night after celebrating the actual 7-8 transition itself with parents. we had a lovely time. thomas, marian, kathryn, ted, and many other friends were sorely missed all the same. happy new year y’all.

2008 is about hope. on April 4 it will be the 40th anniversary of martin luther king’s assassination. here is the fourth google image search result for “hope 2008″