Well who says Socialism doesn't pay? May Day is an observed holiday here on the Island. In fact, I read about it in the training materials I got before coming here, but I forgot that if 1 May falls on a weekend, they carry it over to the Monday, so I showed up to work to find the gate locked.
I should have twigged onto the fact that something was up as the streets were basically deserted (for now) and that I had heard lots of partying the night before. It's about 10 AM here and the music for the May Day Parade has already started. This has actually turned out to be a blessing for me as I'm somewhat exhausted and I still have some cataloguing to do that I had brought home on the weekend.
I'm starting to lag a little bit behind on my cataloguing activity and there is so much more to do here, like start reorganizing the physical layout of the library, staff training, getting the physical processing of materials started, getting new computers, drawing up internal forms, membership procedures, assorted policies...
The good thing about policy writing though is that last month I wrote up a collection management policy that essentially is like the main policy document and it was approved and put in place. A bunch of smaller policies need to be written for specific things, like no facebook in the library (I personally don't like that, but it was an order from my boss, so I'm putting it in there), but I'm confidant that they won't present any trouble at all.
So, for today's agenda, I intend to finish this missive, have another cup of coffee, make some pancakes (I don't eat breakfast as soon as I wake up, I prefer to drink some coffee and then eat an apple at work at around 9:30 followed by a larger lunch), do some cataloguing, enter the records onto the online Catalogue, maybe a quick nap, and then back to work to follow up on my order tracking. Then, it's time for some quick emails and hopefully, around 3 pm or so, I can knock off and listen to all the going's on in town from my couch on the porch. That way I'll be able to hear all the bally-hooing for the Labour Party in general peace.
The kind of labour party-ism here (if such a term is applicable) is similar to what existed in the 1930's in France. Now, please recall that many parties of the left were active at that time and that political unity was not present in a way we would generally expect these days, so don't go thinking I am living in some kind of anarcho-syndicalist Che Guerava Urban Commando hellhole. In France at that time, the Socialist party essentially liked to present itself as a party of economic and political progressivism while maintaining strict cultural, moral and religious values. Their youth and women's meetings were chaperoned for instance and the local party chairs would arrange for young women, men and children to be escorted to and from the political activities of the party after dark, they forbade alcohol (except wine, of course, this is France we're talking about), the party chairs would personally write letters to parents assuring them that while in their care they would prevent their children (usually in the 16-24 year age range) from engaging in licentious activity and they often encouraged members to go to Church.
Another example would be the early CCF, which was essentially a coalition between the Christian Left and socialists in Canada when it got started.
St Kitts is a little strange to me that way. They have an exceptionally diverse Protestant community, a small but extremely active Roman Catholic community and pretty much everyone here fully expects religion to play a day to day role in government, far more than even the most rabid tea partiers in the the US could possibly dream. The other side of the coin to that is there is extremely visible public shaming of people who have broken the law (sometimes they put their pictures up in public places, though never near the tourist areas), even for minor civil violations, like failing to fill a proper tax form (even accidentally).
I don't intend to go out to any of the parades or such today for two reasons: 1. I got a total of 3 hours sleep last night, so I'm in no condition to head out and 2. I find that I enjoy the music just as much when I hear it at an appropriate level from my house rather than walking 6 blocks down the road where I can be deafened by it.
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