Tag Labor Day

Happy no labor today

Michael 12 Comments

Happy Labor Day. In the past I’d have followed that with some wonderful tale of all those who labor to keep our cities, in fact our entire country going without needing parades or even particularly expecting recognition. First responders yes, military yes, but also hospital workers, flight attendants, television and radio presenters, even gas station, convenience store, and fast-food restaurant employees. All the people who are there for you when you drive home from the parades, or the semi-annual paint and appliance sales at the mega-marts (the other half of the semi-annual sales held on Memorial Day, naturally).

But not this year. This year I’m going to celebrate the PowerBall. It’s up to $1.1 billion and will continue to grow until the drawing at 11:00 EDT tonight. Just think of all the laboring you could get out of if you have that single winning ticket. You could fund yourself the company of poor South African draft dodger immigrants who stole the idea for electronic fund transfer and electric cars on your way to financing the biggest oaf to ever pave over a rose garden. You might be one proposal away from treating yourself to the most lavish wedding since those of Henry VIII while reducing the wages of those passing the hors d’oeuvres on solid platinum trays to your guests, mere millionaires who grovel at your feet.

Yes, with the fortuitous bounces of six ping pong balls, you could be on TV expounding how we’re all going to die someday but not you because you can now afford healthcare. You don’t have to care about gun laws because you can surround yourself with armed lackies to protect you and your ears from violence. You don’t have to worry about living alone and wondering where your next meal will come from because people will line up to be part of your inner circle where they all tell you how fortunate the world is that you are you, and of course they’ll happily pick up a quarter pounder for you for the promise that you will gladly pay them back on Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Yes, I could celebrate Labor Day, but I’d much rather hope I too can become America’s newest billionaire and take pride in the new deduction awarded me on the purchase of my own airplane and look down upon the worker bees, aka the former backbone of this country.

I could also stop and ask why are we celebrating anything when we’ve just experienced 44th school shooting (and 502nd mass shooting) of 2025? But then I remembered the main mass media has already moved on from that and and our esteemed former drug addict now secretary of HHS has assured us if we can reduce the use of antidepressants in this country the school shootings will go down too.

So instead, I’m buying up all the Powerball tickets I can afford and hit that $1.1 billion jackpot. Maybe then I’ll be good enough for the orange menace and his band of thieves to take advice from when I tell them they really need to go hell. And soon.

Laboring in 2024

Michael 5 Comments

Happy Labor Day all my fellow Americans. In honor of all the hard-working Americans, we get today off. Sort of. Over the years, I and about 27 billion other people have posted the origin of Labor Day, to honor the labor unions’ strength and importance to American society. And there was that big parade in 1892 when 10,000 people took part in that seemed like a good thing to do every year. In 1894 President Grover Cleveland agreed and made it a national holiday. Also over the years, I’ve posted a list of all the people who don’t get Labor Day off. 

Of the obvious ones who will be at work regardless of the color of the date on the calendar are police, fire, and emergency medical professionals. These are followed by the ones who get the “oh yeah” response, like military personal and hospital workers.

And there are those who few people think about like the people on live radio and television, the folks at the gas station you stop at on the way home from the beach, the people who work at the movie theater when you need something to do because the day at the beach got rained out, mostly everyone at the airport and train station although there are fewer jobs than there used to be (anyone remember “Red Caps”) and the pilots and engineers who get travelers to those places, the toll collectors on the roads and bridges that haven’t switched to EZPass or similar people-free-tolling systems, and the desk, maintenance and housekeeping personnel at the resort (oh, and don’t forget the lifeguards) you were at this weekend, unless you are one of the 10 million people working in the retail sector. Then you never get a holiday off.

Little by little, fewer and fewer hard-working Americans get time off from their work to celebrate our national holidays. In fact, about the only time a hard-working American is recognized is when a politician makes an empty promise to stand with the hard-working American.

Fortunately, we have us, and the blogosphere will be packed with sentiments wishing everyone a Happy Labor Day today, and some might even offer tips on making a memorable holiday picnic with only refrigerator and pantry staples. If you happen to notice you are missing an ingredient, that’s okay. You can always run to the store to get it. They will be somebody working hard there today.

And as long as you’re going, don’t forget to check out all the Labor Day sales!

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Life comes at us every day and no, you’re not going to like every minute of it. Enjoy what you do like about it. Learn from what you don’t. Find your enthusiasm. Encourage a friend. Love yourself. Grow from it all. And read all about in the latest Uplift post, Find Your Enthusiasm.

No, not yet

Michael Leave a comment

Across the USA and Canada, billions of people are celebrating Labor and or Labour Day. So there are probably millions of bloggers publishing the collective histories of the holidays. (Do you suppose there was some collusion that two countries came up with the same holiday within months of each other? It couldn’t have been coincidence, could it?) The few who don’t believe in organized labor but are more than happy to take the extra day off – with pay even – are celebrating the last day of summer. Now you see, that’s the one I don’t believe in.

Blog ArtFor as long as I can remember, which stretches back almost to halfway through the last century, Memorial Day has always been the “unofficial start of summer” and Labor Day its “unofficial ” end. Even the meteorologists get in on it, calling September 1 the start of Meteorologic Fall. According to my calendar, Fall doesn’t happen until the 22d day of this month and September 1 was National Tofu Day.

Yes I firmly believe Labor Day is NOT the end of summer. We might have furniture sales, we may frown on wearing white, and the pools might be closed, but the sun is still high in the sky, leaves are still high in the trees, and daytime temperatures are high enough to threaten heat stroke. That last point will be made several times, no, several thousand times over as high school and college athletes fall to the ground under the stifling weight and closeness of helmets and other protective gear in heat related injuries requiring no opponent contact, and marching band musicians and performers will do likewise in their often plumage featured uniforms designed for the coolness of autumn and the coldness of winter, football being a fall sport that often stretches into the still next season. We may not wear white but delivery and parcel service drivers everywhere will still be wearing short pants, and female TV news anchors won’t be giving up their sleeveless tops just yet. The pools and water parks might close but the lakes and swimming holes are still in business.

No, Labor Day is NOT the end of summer. We might be inundated with pumpkin spice everything and the food magazines may be featuring desserts with the classic fall warming spices, but in the backyard gardens the pumpkins are still only softball size on their vines next to the ripening tomato plants, loaded pepper plants, and never ending zucchini vines. Yard care still requires a lawn mower while the leaf rake and blowers stay hung on their hooks in the backyard garden sheds. Apple cider flavored donut holes may be featured in bakeries but cider presses are still idle waiting for the featured ingredient to ripen naturally.

So…Labor Day is the end of summer? Uh, no, not yet. Once again man makes up some oddball “rule”and then wonders why nature won’t follow suit. Well for me, I’m sticking with Mother Nature. Labor Day is NOT the end of summer. Stay tuned though. In a little less than a month you can consider having that tune up done on your snow blower. 

The grass in your side of the fence can be green too. The grass is reality, water is the motivation. Put enough motivation into a plan and you can accomplish anything. Let your motivation flow like water at www.roamcare.org. While you’re there, check out the rest of our site, then share us with your friends and family!

The Fruits of Our Labor

Michael 2 Comments

Hello! I would say “Happy Labor Day” but to those who know the origins of the day that would be just as offensive as wishing those who understand the meaning of that spring holiday a “Happy Memorial Day.”

I wonder if even the organizers of big labor know why we have today. Last month a new group voted to be represented by a labor union in their quest for more equitable treatment in the workplace. Those were the local librarians. They are now represented by, and pay their dues to, the same union protecting the interests of that other maligned worker, the part time graduate assistant. No, I’m not making this up.

According to the U. S. Department of Labor, “Labor Day is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.” Noble sounding. Actually Labor Day is a commemoration of when 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square in New York on September 5, 1882. They weren’t looking for lower deductibles for their health insurance or a guarantee 5% raise every year without a corresponding 5% increase in productivity. They were protesting 12 hour workdays over 7 day work weeks with preteen co-workers. They were protesting violence in the workplace ending in deaths of employees and employers over working conditions that would have resulted in their deaths anyway. They were protesting not having a life while at the same time not making a living. They were truly under appreciated, maligned, and frankly endangered.

Please take a moment today to pray for those killed in the 1800s so 59% of the American workforce can have today off with pay. Just don’t try to return a book to the library.

(In case you’re wondering, the union representing graduate assistants and librarians – the United Steel Workers. I guess even union officers have to find creative ways to continue living the life to which they’ve become accustomed.)

 

Fall Fetched Ideas

Michael 5 Comments

Fall arrived two days ago. Up here, north of the Equator fall arrived. In the Southern Hemisphere you’re just getting to spring so you might want to bookmark this and come back to it in 6 months. Yeah, there are a few brave souls south of zero degrees that read this. I was amazed also but thank you my Southern friends.

Anyway, fall rolled in here a little after 9:30 pm (2130 hours to those with 24 hour clocks) (just in case) and that should have been the end of it. “It” could be summer but in this case “it” is the question, “When does fall begin?” Apparently it’s not at the end of summer. Who knew?

This morning I read an article about the upcoming harvest moon, that being the full moon closest to the Autumnal Equinox, which you recall from 3 sentences ago was Saturday evening. Or night depending on your interpretation of a day’s divisions. The full moon closest to that day and time happens tonight, which according to the article signals the start of fall. Hmm.

Three weeks ago Americans celebrated Labor Day which not only commemorates violent confrontation between labor and management but also rocking hot, year-end deals on leftover 2018 model cars and trucks. And…the “unofficial end of summer” and darned if not then by extrapolation, the “unofficial start of fall.” That’s three down.

Starbucks, AKA If We Say So It Must Be So, Inc., released their Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL to those under 35), which according to Business Insider, “has become an iconic marker of the beginning of autumn.” That’s four.

FloridaFallTo meteorologists, also known as weather guys (or weather people to the more inclusive (which is the more inclusive term for politically correct)), “Meteorological Fall” begins September 1. To football fans (American Football naturally) fall begins with the first high school, college or NFL game of the year, to horse racing enthusiasts the summer ends after the Breeders Cup and by that same extrapolation used above, fall will start the day after (November 4 this year), and to residents of South Florida, fall never comes. We’re up to 5 through 8 if you’re still counting.

And then there are those who mark the change of season with the changing of time as Daylight Saving Time morphs into regular, old, ordinary Time, which itself keeps moving around. The last time I checked, and when I’m planning on changing my clocks, that is the first Sunday of November which is November 4 in 2018. Hey, that’s the same day as the beginning of the Fall of the Horse People. Should it count twice? My post, my rules, I say yes. Number 9.

Personally for me, fall begins the last Sunday of October (this October that’s the 28th) when I pull the battery on the Miata and consign it to the garage until spring (my spring, but that’s a different post).

Ten ways to figure out when fall starts. And in a few months, nobody will think twice about winter other than to question will it never end. Well, give me six months and I’ll see if I can figure out when the first day of spring arrives for 2019. Except for the Southern Hemisphere.

Sorry, you’re still on your own down there, but thanks for reading!

In Labor

Michael Leave a comment

If you are reading this from outside the United States, boy, are you lucky! Here it is Labor Day. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with the holiday. I just hate its placement in the calendar. It’s so close to the actual end of summer that everybody wants to make it the end of the season. When they started doing that a month ago I expressed my displeasure at rushing through summer. (See “Strike Up the Grill,” Aug. 27, 2017.) Well, they’re at it again!

Yesterday, a whole day before this fictitious end of summer, I received 7 e-mails, 4 tweets, and a text message touting extra special, lowest prices of the year, super savings packed “End of Summer Sales!” But, as much as I want to criticize the marketing world for keeping us 4 to 6 weeks ahead of any actual event you can think of, I have to admit that this weekend, even I was doing some preparation for the arrival of autumn.

Although I would never think of putting it into storage this early, I did some fall prep work on the little convertible. I conditioned its top and got a good wax to cover its paint, taking advantage of the coolish weekend weather knowing neither conditioner nor wax would dry prematurely in blazing sun and heat making me work less enthusiastically on an already heartbreaking time when the garage door will be closed for good. Or at least for 4 or 5 months.

And even though I didn’t put the walking shorts and the tropical print shirts away, they got shuffled to the back of the closet and the more cool weather practical khakis and polos took their spots on the lower closet bar. Save for one pair that I hope to use later today during the pool’s last operating hours of the year, the swimwear has been laundered and folded and stowed in their bin, hoisted onto the top shelf where room was made in the space formerly occupied by [shudder] sweaters.

In the dining room, the baby blue and yellow and white napery was swapped for navy and orange and ivory linens. The tablescape now sports sunflowers instead of pansies.

So there you have it. A share of my shame. As much as I decry hastening the loss of the season, I too was swept up in the American fixation of making Labor Day the end of summer. Now I don’t know what I’ll do in three weeks when fall actually makes its entrance.

Sept2017

Man At Work

Michael Leave a comment

Happy Labor Day America. That wonderful holiday when we celebrate the people who work by making people work so others who aren’t working can take advantage of another day, weekend, or month of sales. A day when the people who aren’t working complain that they might as well be at work because it will be twice as busy on Tuesday when they get back and a day when the people who are working complain that they are working while collecting twice their normal pay. You gotta love those holidays.

There are a handful of people who are working today who aren’t complaining about it. They will get tomorrow off. Actually they’ll get every tomorrow off from their current position. Those are the people at the Bangor, Maine Howard Johnson Restaurant. So why are they special? When they close there will be only one Howard Johnson Restaurant left in the country where once it was the largest hospitality chain with over 1,000 restaurants and 500 motor lodges.

I remember eating in several Howard Johnson’s but one in particular still pops into my head now and then. In 1925, Howard Johnson (yes, there really was a Howard Johnson) borrowed $2,000 and bought a pharmacy in Quincy, Mass. There he installed a soda fountain and brought enough business in to open a sit down restaurant by 1929. In 1940 the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened using the abandoned South Pennsylvania Railway tunnels and rights of way connecting Irwin in the west with Carlisle in central Pennsylvania. Eventually the turnpike mainline was completed from the Ohio to the New Jersey borders through the southern part of the state. Why are these two things related?

Although only 360 miles from east to west (or west to east, even), a distance that can be travelled comfortably in a less than a single workday today (if you felt like working on Labor Day), in the 1960s the trip just halfway across the state was far from a comfortable day’s drive. In the western part of the state the mountains made for slow climbs, challenging twisty downhill runs, and constant stoppages while new tunnels were being blasted through the Allegheny Mountains. I know because I was then a back seat passenger with two sisters while the parents rode up front each summer on our trek from Western PA to Eastern MD. A high point of the turnpike portion of the journey was the Howard Johnson Restaurants at the turnpike service plazas.  After lunch we would be allowed to splurge on dessert and have one of the famous 28 flavors of ice cream. For some reason I always picked chocolate.

Howard Johnson’s were fixtures on the Pennsylvania Turnpike from its opening in 1940 until the 1980s when the full service restaurants began to be replaced by fast food chains and their familiar counter service. The PA turnpike restaurant was the first restaurant the Howard Johnson Company would open on its way to becoming the largest restaurant chain along American toll roads.  In 1979 the Howard Johnson Company was sold and eventually many of the familiar orange roofed restaurants on and off the turnpikes were converted into other brands. By 1986 all of the former company owned Howard Johnson Restaurants were closed or rebranded and only the franchised restaurants remained open. The motor lodge business was divested entirely in 1990.

Today, where I once was served my hamburger on a plate at a Howard Johnson Restaurant along the Pennsylvania Turnpike I have a choice of picking up a pizza or a Whopper and carrying it back to a plastic table in a reconstructed service plaza holding two fast-food restaurants, an ice cream stand, a coffee counter, a gift shop, and a dirty bathroom. Elsewhere there are only two Howard Johnson Restaurants serving comfort food and comfortable memories. Tomorrow there will be only one.

Labor Day had already been celebrated for 3 years before Howard Deering Johnson was born in 1897. When Howard opened that first store in 1925 the Mount Rushmore site was dedicated before construction began on the mountain which would be completed in 1941. That was just in time for Howard Johnson to start opening restaurants along highways that would be packed with hungry families on holiday weekends.

That must be why I always manage to have a quart of chocolate ice cream in the freezer on Labor Day.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

(If you want to see the last remaining Howard Johnson Restaurant you have to get to Lake George, New York. You should hurry. It already closed once in 2012 and reopened just last year. Rumor has it that Rachel Ray worked there as a teenager. No word on if she still stops in.)

 

You have the right. . .

Michael Leave a comment

I don’t listen to satellite radio often, but when I do I prefer the commercial free channels. The funny thing about satellite radio is that on the channels that are not commercial free, a great many of the ads are for credit repair, an unusual sponsor for a service that charges hundreds of dollars a year in subscription fees. Or maybe not. One in particular caught my ear lately.

It began, “You have the right to reduce your debt.” My first thought was, no you have an obligation to reduce your debt and it’s called bill paying. Actually, my first thought was to switch channels but I fought that off, not because I need to reduce my debt but that once upon a time I was so heavily in debt that your average homeless person had a higher credit score than I. I reduced my debt by stopping indiscriminate buying, selling off assets, paying off creditors, and closing credit cards. I was pretty sure the fellow espousing my rights to un-indebtedness didn’t have those notions in mind.

I’m sure there are many reasonable ways to reduce debt. Just because most governments haven’t figured out a way to do it doesn’t mean that we have lower ourselves to their levels. Especially on this weekend – Labor Day weekend. Huh? The thing is, you don’t want to reduce debt that’s going to cost people their jobs. Huh?

It doesn’t matter if a business is a 12 seat diner owned by the guy down the street or a multi-national banking business run by a bazillionaire. If you take money away from them they will work out a way of making it up. Either that means raising prices or lowering expenses – and the biggest expense of any business is its human resource.

Yes, you have a right to reduce your debt. It’s not right up there with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But then again, maybe it is. If it makes you happy, you should reduce. You also have a responsibility to reduce honorably. When you sign an agreement to accept the terms of credit it includes the expectation of repayment. It’s what the people who lend you money deserve.  And it’s what the people who are paid their salary based on the money you pay them deserve.

Back to that ad – while most of it was playing I was mentally drifting thinking about most of what you just read. But I came back to earth in time to hear the tag line – “Don’t let the credit card companies trick you into thinking that you have to pay them what you owe.” Huh?

Happy Labor Day.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?