20th December 2022

The Lawrence Strike in Massachusetts 1912

Listening to books: Today is another strike day.  A day of chaos for hospitals. wretched train travel, not sure if even this is the day for strikes on the trains.  A day when food banks are still hunting round for food and donations to feed those who wait at their door.  So perhaps Judy Collin's song at the end, of 'Bread and Roses' will set the mood.

I came across the words for this through listening to Rebecca Solnit's book on 'Hope in the Dark', she had gone on a search for what it all meant.  The image that flashed through my mind was of the old Victorian industrial workers with their covered shelving in the backyard to protect the plants from the rain.  They were called Auricula Theatres,  there is a lovely history of these flowers with their downy covered leaves  here in the following The Auriculas of Spitalfield.  The roses were explained as also the bread.

Solnit is a hopeful person.  She records, through very American eyes, the part of history she is living through.  She argues that there are grounds for optimism in the end.  People may protest and then come away feeling that their demands, whatever cause, may not be met, but as she says, come 20 years later and something will have happened.

Her 'Wanderlust' book.  The title is somewhat misleading for she explores the act of walking, taking it from the moment when homo sapiens started to walk on two feet.  I have never consciously noted the movement of walking but it is a great balancing act, think of riding a bike. One foot forward followed by the second one, and remember start on the heel and roll forward to the toe.

Walking is a physical act but also gives one the space to think, it becomes part of our mental outlook, and here she covers, mostly philosophers who walk and think at the same time.  But of course there is no need to have deep thoughts on a walk, it is the external pleasure of the outdoors that please the mind.

I have often thought that it is the abundant oxygen that relaxes one on walking.  Once when walking up on the downs, the heavens opened wide and the rain beat down in stair rods, just to cull a few metaphors along the way.  But I could not breathe, it was as if the rain beat the air out of the atmosphere.  I stood under a thick shelter of bushes in the end to catch my breathe

She also talks of that which makes walking for a woman so scary, the attack by a man.  That is specific, women are scared of being attacked by men, especially at night in a town or city.  She argues of course this should not be so, we should be allowed the same freedoms as men to walk alone without fear - she is a feminist by the way.

I walked by myself for many years but always with a dog,  I remember Moss once, we were in a ruined church on St.David's Head, and a man walked in, I nodded a greeting but Moss went and jumped up at him and bit his behind much to my embarrassment.  The man laughed it off and said the dog was protecting me, so Moss was a good guardian dog.

For me walking was both necessary, walking the dogs and watching the unfolding of the seasons.  Also finding the wild flowers and fungi that appeared in their due time.  Nature was my goal and it gave me happiness.

And then of course I had 14 years with Paul to walk with, this gave him new life for he had become a miserable creature living on his own for years, and as long as the walk had a pint at the end he was quite happy.

Funnily enough, my family never came on walks with me, unless they were bribed but now my son walks every morning in Bath and my daughter goes with Andrew on his evening walks, he is one of those people who must walk every day.

So walking, has many facets, whether we take a protest march from North to South, or go for an exploration of the world around us.  Or whenever we walk to think, it is a blessing.  

Edit;  I also find things later to add to in my blogs.  So this might get up a few noses but Unions have to exist, no matter what trouble they bring in their wake.

“We realise,” Mond wrote, “that industrial reconstruction can only be undertaken with the cooperation of those empowered to speak for organised labour. We believe that the common interests which bind us are more powerful than the apparently divergent interests that separate.”  Sir Alfred Mond 1926