Over the river and through the hood...

I walked to and from work yesterday, although I could have kept working from home, but I didn't feel like I really was experiencing the strike sitting in my apartment. God, that sounds self-centered. But I wanted to be out there, to have actually done something that required an effort. I am woefully fortunate by having a high-paying and flexible job that allows me to work from home, or anywhere, almost any day of the week. I was at no risk of losing any salary this week, or of instilling large fines for not showing up at my job. I have decent benefits and an employer that embraces its people rather than treating them as an adversary. I have never had to strike or picket or fight for my perks. Nobody is going to call me a "thug."

I am lucky.

Almost the first thing I saw as I started out, bundled to the gills with a backpack and messenger bag artfully arranged for the most even distribution of weight (including, among the basic sundries, my laptop), was something new from Ellis G.



(It's not super clear in my photo, but it says "Ellis G. Transit Strike 2005. At night, on the way home, the blue chalk lines were perfectly outlining the shadows the fire hydrant and metal posts, so that they glowed with an eerie intensity. At first I thought, oh, this is the exact time that he did this last night, the shadows are perfectly in sync, but then realized they were the stationery shadows of the streetlights, not the moving ones of the sun.)