Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I feel like I got a lot done today, some of it stuff I'd been putting off.

I went to a rally this afternoon, in favor of a $15 minimum wage and paid family medical leave. Those are separate proposals, but being backed by many of the same people and organizations, both of which may be on the Massachusetts ballot in November.

The rally was in the Massachusetts State House. Yes, inside. (I don't know what permits are needed to hold a rally, with microphones, there.) There are at least two disadvantages to that location: it got uncomfortably noisy (even with earplugs), and I had to wait in line to go through a metal detector. Also, it will definitely be noticed by the state legislators, but not people just passing by—and a rally across the street on Boston Common will get passers-by. I assume that the organizers think it's worth it to be sure the state legislature will notice them. (Some of the emails etc. I got about this event talked about "lobbying" as well as a rally, so maybe they figured that the core group would have to be in the building anyway,)

I didn't stay as long as I'd intended to, because the noise was getting to me; I was feeling slightly unsteady on my feet; and the first speaker seemed to be talking more about religion than about the issues. (To be fair, if I'd listened longer he might have said more about what we were rallying for and less about his belief that working for this was not just a good but a godly thing.)

So I went back outside and sat on a bench, and then on the grass on the Common, before getting a late lunch from a food truck. To my pleasant surprise, "Bon Me" did have something I wanted (rather than all being too spicy): Chinese barbecue pork, which I had over brown rice, with lettuce and pickled daikon and radish. Somehow, at that moment, this was comfort food. While I was eating, I saw other people who'd been at the rally (based on stickers and SEIU local 1199 t-shirts), which made me feel better about not staying longer.

On my way home, I went to the main Boston and Somerville libraries to pick up books I had on hold. There are half a dozen apple trees in bloom in front of the main Somerville library right now. (The whole area is full of flowering cherries this week; I haven't seen many apple trees.)

This morning, before heading out, I called the physical therapy place where I went for my hips and made an appointment for a first session of PT for my left knee, which I'd been putting off in the hope that maybe I didn't actually need it. I told the receptionist I didn't care whether I saw the same therapist again: continuity of care seems less relevant now that it's a separate course of treatment, and the person I was seeing for my knee had done a few things that annoyed me.

[Edited to fix a copy/paste error that ate about a line of text.]

This was a fairly small event, or at least the Boston iteration was, and I'm not sure how much real attention we got (I don't count all the cheerful people shouting "Go Bruins!" on their way past us to the game at TD Garden), but I'm glad I went. Mostly we stood in front of the federal building where the local ICE headquarters is, holding signs where passing cars could see them. (Nothing seems to have been going on in the building today.) A little after 3 o'clock, an organizing sort of person (it sounded like she stepped up because someone had to, rather than having helped plan this) read some information about what we were protesting. (The specific impetus for this was the deportation of a young man who is part of the DACA program.)

Then she asked people to share stories of why they were there. The first person to stand up said she was born a US citizen, and her husband was an immigrant who was undocumented when they met, and talked about the long, slow process of getting him legal status here, and how things have changed in the last few years. After I think two other people, I walked up and said something like "Briefly. I'm here because my mother was a child refugee. She spent years in foster care here while her parents were in a Nazi concentration camp." (I didn't take notes immediately, or plan to talk, and am not sure if I said something closer to "other people shouldn't have to go through that" or "I want other people to have that opportunity here." But I got up, and talked, and didn't stammer or talk too fast and trip over my own words.)

I figure that in terms of my goal of one rally or similar direct action, or two phone calls, a week, this means I have more than met the standard for this week already. (That doesn't mean I can't do more in the next six days, but I won't expect myself to.)