:: Workers of the world, unwind! ::

Friday, August 29, 2003

It’s Labor Day weekend. As far as we’ve drifted from trust-busting, the New Deal and the heyday of union power, we still have this remarkable vestige to remind us that... we don’t really care about the history behind it, so long as we get a day off. In Germany, they observe this holiday somewhat earlier, (coinciding with the long-standing festivities surrounding spring’s full bloom - originally a pagan fire fiesta), drink beer with a 10% alcohol content, and dine on roasted suckling pig. Germany celebrates labor day on the first of May along with most of the world’s industrialized nations, and as America itself once did. Strangely, despite being one of the prime movers behind the inception of a workers’ holiday almost universally recognized on May 1st, President Cleveland dictated in 1887 that the first Monday in September should henceforth be set aside for this purpose. This proved to be convenient, as it later allowed Labor Day to be distanced from the now dyspeptic May Day, rife with communist connotations after the myriad red scares of the 20’s, 30’s, and onward. May 1st became Loyalty Day - a day each American still proudly honors by remaining utterly unaware of its existence and (5 times out of 7) not receiving the day off from work.

So, I thought to myself, what could I do to commemorate a holiday expressly designed for the oppressed workers of the world? How could I recapture the shimmering hope and palpable, pulsating empowerment of the labor movement from a time when 50% of the workforce belonged to a union? What would be my homage to the trampled, downtrodden proletarian of yore working 18-hour days in a sweatshop, dreams deferred to the point of insignificance?

Then it came to me, as these things usually do, in the form of an email invitation from a friend: I would go to the Hamptons - a place so synonymous with blue-collar accessibility and working-class solidarity that I could nigh feel it begging me, in a highly-anthropomorphic voice reminiscent of the gruff, earthy, and noble tones of a hard-working longshoreman or coal-miner, to come embrace the ethos of the labor stratum on the forgiving loam of its glory-steeped shores.

I will do better than this: I will also take pictures in real-time.

Posted by morland @ 12:36 PM

:: Comments ::

are you guys playing beer pong? i would've thought they used champagne.

Posted by: josh on August 30, 2003 04:51 PM

It's gilded beer from only the finest bordeaux hops - but tempered with Colt 45.

Posted by: morland on August 31, 2003 04:49 PM

i hear '45 was a good year for hops.

Posted by: josh on September 1, 2003 01:58 PM

we need to push for this loyalty day thing. we could make it, you know, a day off.

send me a petition and i'll send it on its way with my handy dandy "forward message" command.

holler.

Posted by: graham on September 4, 2003 08:32 PM

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