The Incredible Boredom of Being ...

One of the many random thoughts that we have been discussing on the picket line is the incredible boredom of picketing. We are used to a certain amount of mental stimulation (a huge advantage of teaching in a post-secondary environment) which comes from our students and our fellow-professors in an average day. The picket line is sadly not particularly conducive to deep thought. It does lead to some pleasant conversations, and does give us the opportunity to talk with some people that we rarely get a chance to talk to, and also to chat with people from other colleges, but it's still hard to get into a meaningful conversation while watching out for cars running the line, for traffic lights, and for those occasional management sightings. ("Look there's one now ... let's give them a flyer and see what they do with it!") To say nothing of the fact that in the crowds that assemble on the sidewalks on the other side, we tend to lose our current conversation partner so we have about 30 seconds' worth of talk time before we lose contact, so discussions tend to be short. On the whole I think that the sit-ins in the 60's were much more mentally stimulating, even if we were freezing for a lot longer. I recall three weeks I spent, almost without a break, in front of the US consulate back in "the good old days" of the early 60's when protesters included people who are now pillars of society (as in Clay Ruby, Graham Fraser, Jay Keystone) and so on. We had some great conversations in those days. I spent almost 24 hours in non-stop discussion with some of them. Maybe we should reconsider this picketing tactic and go for the sit-ins again? :-)))

And in those days we got food too ... Shopsy's sent down a truck several times a day as I recall, to ensure that we didn't have to leave for nourishment. Of course ... strikes are a different story, and I certainly do not intend to draw a comparison here, but only wanted to draw attention to the lack of mental stimulation now as opposed to then.

The short marches back and forth across the entrance to the college (as opposed to long rambles in the woods, for example) are not very inspiring. We are thinking of bringing some trivia questions (baby boomer generation that is) to the line tomorrow so that we can at least have a part of our brain engaged. I do remember a similar feeling back in '89 but it is so long ago that the mental pain of the monotonous to-and-fro has been mercifully wiped from the top of my memory bank. This is bringing it back. Anybody got some good ideas for useful brain exercise whilst we saunter to and fro?

We're trying to think of theme days to keep ourselves amused and awake. Certainly St. Patrick's Day provides us with a costume opportunity. (I am thinking of donning a dark brown outfit with a white woolley cap -- thank goodness it's Guinness). And speaking of nourishment, tomorrow is going to be our BBQ day on the line, thanks to our clever Picket Captain and a fellow picketer who will be bringing hotdogs to be grilled over the oil drum. Today it has been my fingers that are doing the walking ... I am feeling less-than-happy, since I did not walk on the line: instead I was sitting on my duff updating our website from the luxury of my (dry) livingroom. Even though I know that keeping communications up and running is important, I still feel I should have been out there. Our Picket Captain is going to send me stories from the line later today, so I will at least have some second-hand observations about today to pass on later. I did get some good photos (thanks Carol and Mark and Brian) from fellow-picketers, which I was able to post today, and I was able to update a number of other things so I suppose I should be satisfied. But there's something about being "out there" that is important to me, and I missed that. I'll be out there tomorrow. I hope to hear some stories later tonight: if so, I'll post them later tonight or tomorrow. Over and out for now.