Monday, June 29, 2009

Boston is under a general strike.  The call is to shut the city down all this week.

Not a huge difference in my life since I don’t have a steady job to show up at, but it does mean that we’re going to have to use a bit more reserves here and there to get through the week.

So far, the strike seems to be pretty hit-or-miss.  A lot of the poorer folks are going to work regardless of what Radio Free Boston or CoL flyers tell them to do.  More middle-class folks are calling this their vacation week, thus having it both ways.

The place that seems to be having the biggest effect, at least according to the radio, is construction.  Over the past week a bunch of the major boulevards, bridges, tunnels, and rail-lines in the city have been damaged.  Sometimes it seems to be little fire-fights that happened to take place in strategic spots – other times it’s just that things are suddenly broken.  For most Boston locals, this is annoying, but we just go around on our scooters or bicycles or our feet.  It’s the BackWater Hummers and National Guard deuces that can’t get through.

Now the local construction folks, both public and private, aren’t rolling.

Neve is still busy though.  The network of soup kitchens and emergency meal centers that she was plugged into have stopped being emergency.  In Boston today, those church basements are the communal kitchens for the whole neighborhood.  Nobody can afford to eat alone anymore.