Happy Labor Day!
[BUMPED UP]
Labor Day is the bookend on the opposite end of summer from its holiday beginning, Memorial Day.
July Fourth is its early peak, with the promise of many long light-filled days ahead. But Labor Day is summer’s last gasp, the moment I dreaded as a child because it marked the finish of vacation and the start of the school year. Spiffy new clothes, a shiny bookbag, freshly sharpened pencils, and the promise of beautiful autumn leaves’ arrival were nice. But they couldn’t make up for the fact that a new school year was beginning. Where oh where had the summer gone?
Now let’s celebrate the fact that we don’t have to worry about that anymore—except, perhaps, for the teachers among you.
As for politics—Obama will celebrate the holiday by extending paid leave for federal contractors:
The White House wouldn’t specify the cost to federal contractors to implement the executive order, which Obama was to address at a major union rally and breakfast in Boston. The Labor Department said any costs would be offset by savings that contractors would see as a result of lower attrition rates and increased worker loyalty, but produced nothing to back that up.
But let’s forget about Obama for the moment. I’m with friends and family, it’s a beautiful day, last night we had grilled steak steak and salmon (and corn and blueberry pie). Today we’re about to eat lunch, and then maybe swim.
Here’s wishing you all a Happy Labor Day! Barbecues, picnics, parades, beach, just hanging out in your yard, whatever you desire. And for the historically-minded among you, here’s some information the origins of the holiday.
[ADDENDUM: I just noticed that, seemingly by coincidence, all three posts today have something to do with the topic of labor.]
Neo, even in the NE you can still have fun with liberal friends and family.
Scott:
Yes, just avoid the topic of you-know-what.
July Fourth is its early peak, with the promise of many long light-filled days ahead.
I dunno. June 21 –the first day of summer each year– really bums me out, because from that day onward, all the way to December 22, the days get shorter. And since I live above the 45th parallel, it’s particularly noticeable. But, then, the winter solstice gives the solace that each day thereafter all the way to June 21 will be longer than the day before. So there’s that.
No more seersucker for the rest of the year.
But Labor Day is summer’s last gasp,…
That was always my take as well. The last great blast of summer, as I’ve always thought of it.
The only difference is that now, thirty plus years removed from high school, the dread of heading back to class is only a vague memory.
For perspective on how far we’ve fallen, here is a perspective on some labor laws from 1910.
As for where all the interference in labor relations comes from:
–Popular Law-making: A Study of the Origin, History, and Present Tendencies of Law-making by Statute, Frederic Jesup Stimson (1910)
So really instead of women becoming equal to a man, men were dragged down to the ward of the state condition of women and the coincident loss of liberty.
Neo: hope you had a good!
I was always ready for school to start again, to see friends that were away during the summer, and by the end of August, with early dark, I had done most of what I had wanted during the 3 months off.
Old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends
A newspaper blowin’ through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends
Old friends
Winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders of the old friends
Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy
Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear
A time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence
A time of confidences
Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left you
Simon and Garfunkle
Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, A time of confidences
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories; They’re all that’s left you
Simon and Garfunkle
JK Brown
An interesting and useful retrospective.
It’s similar to why serfs and those loyal to aristocrats, had their healthcare and living expenses taken care, at the expense of Obedience.
Modern welfare is closer to feudalism in this one singular point. Modern democratic socialism isn’t so much a progress forward, as a leap backwards.
The Democrats in the South not only treated black slaves as inferior beasts that should be happy to work in the fields, as their modified religious heresy stated, but they also treated the womenfolk as inferiors too. Favored inferiors, as in agnatic cognatic succession, but inferiors nonetheless.