Pleasantness and the picket line

I set off for the picket line this morning feeling very serious. I had two bottles of water, a sandwich, and some professional reading (Out Front with Stephen Abram: A Guide for Information Leaders), as well as a few pages of a manuscript I'm working on (for editing), and of course my guitar. I even brought a folding chair this time--not one of those high-tech nylon camping thingies that everyone else seems to have, but a wooden one I got on sale at Ikea for $10 back in the spring. One way or another, I was planning on getting something accomplished on my four-hour shift. Which goes to show how wrong I can be.

Now I don't want to give anyone the impression that I'm happy to be away from work. Every conversation with my fellow picketers today included some wistful discussion about how much we're looking forward to getting back to our jobs. (Not just for the money, but because we really care about what we do. This might surprise some of those radio talk-show callers, who think we're basically lazy and enjoying some kind of vacation.) But I think now we're adjusting to the idea that we're on strike, and that it might last for a while. Since we have no control of the situation, we may as well make the best of it.

So today most of us didn't get to the little individual projects we had brought. We talked, not so much about Harry Potter and local politics as we did on the first couple of days, but about other things. We got to know each other better. And one of the children's librarians brought a bag full of crafting materials, ranging from fabric pieces to pages of destroyed magazines and picture books and sheets of magnetic stuff. Two of us had tiny scissors on our Swiss Army knives, perfect for cutting out tiny fussy pictures. We sat around on our chairs or cross-legged on the pavement, making cards and magnets, sharing stories about public transit in other cities, pets, and where to find the cheapest and best sushi in the neighbourhood.

I wouldn't say that the shift flew by, but it was actually pretty enjoyable. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and it was pleasantly cool in the shade. One old Polish man called us Communists, but otherwise not much happened at all.

It could be worse.