Happy Labor Day!
Labor Day is the bookend on the opposite end of summer from its holiday beginning, Memorial Day.
July Fourth is summer’s early peak, with the promise of 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 the 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?
And it goes even more quickly these days. But let’s celebrate the fact that we don’t have to worry about the start of school anymore””except, perhaps, for the teachers among you.
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, some information the origins of the holiday.
Uhh, in the South (? elsewhere too), school resumes mid-August. Because, I am told, more Federal statutory holidays, more teacher work days, such dilutions of the schoolyear driven by the teachers’ unions and the school boards.
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.ca/2013/09/happy-labor-day-barack-obama.html#links
A diversion for an end-of-summer holiday . . .
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/08/george-zimmerman-cures-cancer.html
George Zimmerman Cures Cancer
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Decades later I still get the same feeling of generalized dread I first experienced when I became old enough to realize that going back to school is a perennial event. To a kid it’s like death and taxes, and in my case I still get a that end of summer melancholy in sympathy with every 8 or 9 year at bus stops and carpools all over America.
The next real delight isn’t until Halloween, no? Though as one gets old enough the World Series and football certainly help. I was going to add county fairs to that list but I don’t know; in my experience there’s something about a fair that is poignant, bittersweet and disappointing; maybe it’s that they take place ( down here anyway) in September as the days are getting shorter and they usually aren’t as much fun as one hopes/expects…
Psychologically and emotionally, October through early winter is usually my favorite “season”. I don’t know why that should be, other than after 60 + years down here I have concluded that summers in the South are just too long and way too HOT (though 2013 has been surprisingly mild; thank you Al Gore!)
Probably forty years before I stopped getting that ol’ feeling. Things were ramping up.
Did read an interpretation of the issue. Fall is when fruits and veggies ripen and you can eat better, before agriculture and storing stuff, sleep better because it’s cooler and some of the critters that crawl among the bedclothes/piles of leaves are dead, you have to get ready for winter….
Halloween starts the holiday season. Kind of an energy boost.
It was a glorious day in Iowa. The 98 degree heat of last week was gone and the sky was a crisp blue. A grand day for family cookouts and neighborhood parties. Autumn is my favorite season and today it feels like autumn has begun. Enjoy the season everyone.
And for those of you who are mourning the summer’s end: remember that it doesn’t Really end until what, September 22nd?
That’s how I see it. As for the kids: wow, going back to school in August is a real drag. We had three whole months off when I was a kid.
I don’t envy the current crop of youngsters anything except their physical glossiness and stamina. Their ‘culture,’ their corporate-produced ‘music,’ the relentless vulgarity and obscenity, the death of romance, and the constantly increasing strangulation of their freedoms — what a nightmare.
Happy CAPITAL Day!!
Here in the desert Southwest, summer ends around Dec 15. A mild winter (51 degree days) becomes the norm until Spring starts around Feb 3, to by followed by the onset of Summer on April 19.
The local public schools had their first day of classes on the 12th or 13th of August.
There’s a word you don’t hear any
more: “bookbag”. The only backpacks that were around 50+ years ago were Boys Scouts and mountain hikers. School children had bookbags.