under the umbrella

All of my outdoor views today have had polka dot spots fringing them.   Here I'm waiting to get into Alice's car this morning, before she took me to catch a bus to USC (complicated transport arrangements day ...).  But it was a lively bus ride, not least because, driving past a picketing crowd outside Virgil Middle School on Vermont (also under umbrella), the bus erupted into an enthusiastic chant of STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE.  Outside, there was an equally heartening number of car horns being tooted.  That being said - I do seem to spend more time than I'd want explaining to people that this isn't just - isn't even, necessarily, primarily - a strike about teacher pay, but it's about class sizes, about the provision of an adequate number of psychiatric social workers, of librarians, of nurses ... of the things one would want schools to have.  And that's before one even gets to the issues with charter schools in LA ...