Don’t Undersell Labor Day

Holiday Cousins
or
Labor Day Appreciation Post

 

Our vast range of holidays are far from equal, varying widely in celebration, reverence, and/or fun. Many lack defining characteristics given to the more ostentatious holidays: Halloween with its costumes and jack-o-lanterns, Thanksgiving with its turkeys and overeating, St. Patrick’s Day with its shamrocks and drunkenness, and Christmas with its two month commercialization and capitalist excess. Other holidays, despite an absence of set traditions, are blessed with a self-explanatory name: Mother’s Day, Veterans Day, New Year’s Day. But some holidays can be harder to keep track of or to understand their significance; two American holidays which fit this description are Memorial Day and Labor Day. 

     
Can you tell which picture is of Labor Day and which is of Memorial Day?

Similar in our  minds, we often get Memorial Day and Labor Day confused; we interchange them, sometimes saying one when we mean the other. These somewhat vague holidays share two common traits: they both involve a three-day week created by a Monday off from work, and they both bookend the summer season. Memorial Day, falling on the last Monday in May, is the unofficial first Day of Summer, while Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is the unofficial last day of Summer.

I like to think of these two days as “Holiday Cousins.”

Summer: Glorious Champion of Seasons

 

Summer is once again ending and, once again, all too quickly. Labor Day brings an annual melancholy as my favorite time of year starts slipping away against my will.

Thanks to the earth’s tilt we have changing seasons to help us mark our slow but inevitable decay into eventual death. Despite this constant reminder of our mortality, each season brings its own unique and enjoyable aspects: Autumn has colorful leaves and football and Halloween spookiness, the first snow of Winter is magical, the Spring thaw after a long winter brings excitement and rebirth.

But none of those seasons can match summer. Sweet, wonderful summer. You magnificent queen of sunshine. You brilliant bearer of warmth and flip flops and patio beers. You are my forever love.

The Best of Summer:

30. Sleeping with the bedroom windows open
I haven’t shut my window since May. That’s over four months of fresh air circulating into my bedroom and through my lungs. 

La Croix – Ranking All 13 Flavors

If you’re like me and all my friends, La Croix is not only a big part of your life, but an indispensable facet of your very being. You probably drink at least four La Croixs each day and buy at least two cases each week. You probably have a growing pile of empty, brightly-colored cans littered about a section of your car you’ve named “La Croix Canyon.” You probably discuss your favorite flavors and inevitably start arguing whether Lime or Lemon tastes better or whether or not Coconut is undrinkable swill. 

Luckily for you, I’m here to put all such debates to rest.

A Plea to Change Our National Anthem

 

July – the month of my favorite holiday: Independence Day, AKA The 4th of July. The barbecues, the sunshine, the 10:30 pm dusk, the beach, the booze, and the fireworks. My God, the fireworks! This year, however, I have a confession to make.

This is probably what Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin had in mind.

Usually my blogs aren’t controversial. My most contentious opinion thus far is that the Harry Potter movies are frustratingly terrible. But in our current, polarizing political climate people are taking hard stances and choosing sides. Thus, I too have joined the fray. Unpopular as my opinion may be, I am compelled to state it:

“The Star-Spangled Banner” kinda sucks.

My Introduction to Harry Potter

I finished the first installment of Harry Potter. Here are some thoughts that strolled through my head while reading:

 

Dudley Dursley – This kid reminds me of so many of the students I have worked with over the years. I really hope at the end of the book/series Harry gets to ride down on Falcor and terrify Dudley until he jumps into a dumpster.

If the fantasy genre has taught me anything, it’s that bullies always get what’s coming to them.

 

Chapter 3 – Man remember when people used to get letters? Not like bills and junk mail but hand-written letters? Those were the days. Of course Tindering was a lot more difficult back then.

The 10 Greatest Quotes from Abraham Lincoln – Number 6…WOW, so true!!!

Behold the series of tubes we call the internet! 

Much has evolved since Al Gore’s invention debuted way back in 1995. I doubt our former VP could have foreseen the many useful ways in which the internet now improves our daily lives, the most popular of which are:

• Reading articles that aren’t actually articles, but lists (e.g. “23 Reasons why Paragraphs are so Passé”)
• Expressing self-righteous indignation toward the hot topic du jour (BTW, I’m extremely curious how each of you feels about Donald Trump)
• Binge watching television shows (Side Note: I’m looking to trade someone an HBOgo password in exchange for a Netflix password)
• Cat memes. Sweet, adorable cat memes.

During my daily perusal through facebook/twitter/intstagram/tumblr/tinder/grindr/myspace I often find people posting motivational and thought-provoking quotes. Why think for yourself when a famous person can do it for you, amiright? And the person I perhaps see quoted more than anyone else is none other than our 16^th President, Abraham Lincoln.

Side note: I’m trying to get my Lincoln Impersonator For-Hire business going. Teachers/Maids of Honor, please call me if you’re interested. Honest Abe will visit your history classroom/bachelorette party for a very reasonable price.

As a self-described Abraham Lincoln aficionado, I present the official list:

Honest Abe’s Top Ten Quotes

1. “Four score and seven years ago…hey Bill, what if instead of just saying 87, I start this speech by making everyone do some mental math just for funsies?”
-Gettysburg Pennsylvania, 1863*

The Album vs. The Playlist (w/Book Review – Interpreter of Maladies)

With Interpreter of Maladies in hand, I recently embarked on “A Return to the Short Story.”

…Although, I shouldn’t imply that I’ve been away from short stories. I’ve now set a personal record this year by reading three short story collections. Though they may not be as fulfilling as a full length novel, I do love short stories in their own right, which brings me to an interesting debate:

The Album vs. The Playlist

Book Review – Song of Solomon

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)

1^st Reading: Fall 2014

Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. As the most recent American to win said Prize, Morrison officially holds the title of reigning “Queen of American Literature.” (The Queen/King of American literature is something I made up but should be a for real thing).  President Obama* claims Morrison’s third novel, Song of Solomon, as his favorite book. Say what you will about his policies, the man has good taste in literature.

Book Review – Once Upon a River

As the saying goes, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.  Ignoring the metaphorical implications, let’s examine that phrase in a literal sense.

Example 1:

This cover has a boring old mountain on it. Is there anything more boring than a mountain with some dumb old clouds floating by? Maybe in Ansel Adam’s day mountains were exciting, but he lived before the invention of smart phones and color photography. One would assume this book is for dull elderly people seeking inner peace and tranquility when instead they could be out water skiing or following Phish on tour all summer.

Coming to Terms with Literary Sexism

Two notebooks were laid out before me. The one to my left listed every book I’ve read over the past several years. The one to the right listed the many books I intend to read at some unknown time in the future. I had just finished Ernest Hemingway’s “In Our Time” and was using these two lists to determine the ideal selection for my next read.

It was as I sat staring at these book titles that a disquieting realization crept into my conscience. It was soft, but unsettling nonetheless—imagine a late-night theremin playing from your attic and you’ll get the idea. But the more I examined the book titles, the more obtrusive the agitation grew. I turned away from my notebooks to analyze the contents of my nearby bookshelf. By now that small, creeping realization was no longer a soft theramin but a full drum and bugle corps marching around my living room. I was forced to ask myself a question:

Might I be a literary sexist?