Tomorrow is the open house at my daughters' high school and I have an idea that I seriously want to address with the principal.  It's a simple idea, easy to institute, costs the school nothing, and will hopefully inject a new measure of respect between teachers and students.  I believe that all teachers should address all students by their last name with the hororific Ms., Miss, or Mr.

 

At our school and at virtually all schools the students must adress the teachers as Mr. or Mrs., while the teacher uses the child's first name.  The child must show respect for the teacher, but this respect isn't reciprocated.  I believe that all school children, from grade school to college, are deserving of the same respect that is granted to the teacher.  Some of the children may be referred to as Mr. for the first time in their lives.  How enpowering!  Each time a teacher has to refer to a child as Mr. or Miss she or he will take a subconscious millisecond to note that this child is a person to be reckoned with, not a body to be wharehoused and passed on.  When children are treated with respect, they respond with respect.  Every child deserves the public display of respect that honorifics would supply.

 

This experiment will cost nothing and can be easily scrapped if it doesn't produce a change in the school environment.  But this simple experiment could change the culture of an entire school.  The kids deserve their teachers' respect.  The least the teachers can do is demonstrate that respect in the same way as the children.  

What a luxury this is to sit at my computer, a steaming cup of coffee at my side, and to compose a new post.  I've been gone five days.  Five days of mother/daughter bonding, quality time with a girlfriend, and lots of fun and excitement.  I'm tired.

 

Mara and I spent Thursday and Friday touring Oberlin college.  It's a 3000 student school in an 8000 person town 35 miles southwest of Cleveland.  It was the first college in the US to have females and males studying together and it was the first college to give degrees to African-Americans.  The College is proud of its liberal roots and it remains exceedingly liberal:  vegan meals-no problem, there's even a vegan collective, politically aware-there are programs every day, the College even has a large contingent of collective housing,  second only to UC at Berkley.  The Conservatory of Music is top knotch with a great faculty and great facilities.  Mara knows that she would be lucky to be accepted here.  She was wowed by the place and it's now second on her preference list (to Northwestern).  

 

On Sunday a girlfriend from college came to visit from Minneapolis.  She took the train in and I picked her up at Union Station in Chicago.  We hadn't seen each other in at least five years, but there she was, still blond, still thin, and looking great.  Where did she find those perfect jeans?  She graciously agreed to attend my daughters ' recital that eventing and after a couple glasses of wine we met my husband and the girls in Wheaton.   The music was glorious.  It would have been great even without the wine.  Mara and her sister Ashley performed a Haydn quartet with two other girls.  They coordinated with wearing black dresses and strappy heels.  They looked and sounded great.  Later in the program Mara played the Saint-Saens violin concerto, what emotion she brings to a piece!

 

On Monday my friend Denise and I spent the day shopping in Chicago.  There is nothing, absolutely nothing, better than shopping with a girlfriend.  I'm looking for an after five dress and it was so great to have someone I trusted to help me in the fitting room and give me a true opinion on how the dresses looked.  So much better than relying on the saleslady.  Several hours and several stores later I had found a black halter style dress, with a flowing skirt that showed just enough but not too much clevage.  Thank you Denise!  And thank you Denise for sitting with me in thebar at the Four Seasons drinking wine and complaining about our husbands.  Actually I think we're both pretty lucky.

 

Denise took the train home today and I'm missing her already.  The telephone is great, E-mail is a miracle, but nothing can substitute for time together.  I owe my friend a visit to the Twin Cities.  Maybe a spa day and a play at the Guthrie?

I was home alone last night, we have a new TV, new shows were premeiring.  It was a perfect night to tube out.  Two shows stood out, "Jericho" with its oddly biblical name and the print ad with the mushroom clous on the horizon, and "Studio 60," the new show from Aaron Sorkin.

 

Jericho was a disaster movie without the disaster.  It had all the stock characters; the noble mayor, his prodigal son returning to town after 5 years, the mayor's nasty political opponent, a busload of imperiled school children, and another busload of escaped convicts.  It was "Lost" meets "Category 5."  Although we and the characters are told that nuclear explosions have devistated Denver and Atlanta we are literally in the dark about everything else.  I imagine that events will unfold slowly, as in "Lost."  We see no damage, only the imagined effects of such an event in a small town.  The power is out and communication is down, and the town has a brush with a riot at the gas station.  Things threaten to get ugly, but when the school bus arrives with the threatened children, the parents relent and small town values reassert themselves.  Things ore ok for now...at lest until next week. 

 

I am such a sucker for disaster movies.  I love their predictability and their stock characters.  I enjoy when the hero and the girl get together and when the baddie meets a grizzly death.  I'll stay with Jericho.  It takes itself so seriously that it promises to be laughingly horrible.  Catch it now.  Its will probably have a short run.

 

"Studio 60" was as good as "Jericho" was bad...even better.  The cast is wonderful...Amanda Peet, Bradley Whitford, and Matthew Perry deliver Aaron Sorkin's wickedly brilliant lines with meaning and zip.  And they need zip because the lines have the characteristic Sorkin rapid fire overlap a la Robert Altman.  Listen hard or you'll miss something.

 

The show begins with a nod to Paddy Chaefsky's film "Network" where Judd Hirsch, the producer of a live comedy show, goes on the air to tell the audience that he's "Mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore" but in his own words.  In his meltdown he delivers a 53 second diatribe against broadcast television that asks the viewers to turn off their sets and concludes that television is nothing but ponography, and bad pornography at that.  Judd Hirsch gets te network axe, but that opens up job for cutting edge writer Perry and director Whitford to return to the show that cast them aside four years earlier for being too cutting edge.  Perry and Whitford's characters have signed on to do "Studio 60" for two years.  I hope their run is much longer.

There is no sport like politics; where the rules change in the middle of the game, the field keeps tilting, and winning is everything.  Our generation is especially fortunate to have been able to watch the Michael Jordan of back room deals, Karl Rove, perform at the peak of his game.  Whether Mr. Rove still has the moves remains to be seen, especially in a year where the President's approval rating hovers at 40%, where an increasingly unpopular war has become an unpopular civil war, and where nothing has been accomplished domestically besides packing the Supreme Court with reactionary Justices.

 

I am a political junkie.  I enjoy working in elections, usually for doomed liberal politicians.  I vote early in even the smallest off-year park board and Circuit Judge elections.  I stay up late on election night, the television tuned to the national station and my bedside radio to the local results.  I cheered when a local school district referendum won by one vote, I cried when it lost in a recount, and I cheered again when the court invalidated the recount.  I cheered when Gore was announced as the winner in 2000.  I cheered again When Kerry was projected as the winner by exit polls in electronic -voting tainted Ohio in 2004.  Today I just looked at the polls, the Dems are looking good in the mid term election.  But I worry.  Will Karl Rove hit a come from behind walk-off homer on election night? 

 

Along with my daily blog walk, I have started visiting the Rasmussen Reports (a link is on my "check it out" list).  Rasmussen provides daily updates of Senate and Congressional numbers and also gives figures on Bush's favorability ratings (40% for, 58% against as of today--not too many undecideds).  It's like my husband checking the White Sox scores (boo hoo) or me looking at the stock market (so so).  At this time of year I check Rasmussen 2 or 3 times a day.

 

And one bit of EXCITING NEWS.  Barak Obama will be in the area on Friday.  He will be having a town hall meeting at the University of Saint Francis in Joliet.  Unfortunately I plan to be visiting Oberlin College with Mara on Friday, but if I could, I would be in Joliet with Barak.  Maybe Karl Rove will be there to cross check him into the boards.    

I've officially got everything figured out.  No more troubles or questions for this girl.   Even my subconcious tells me that everything is in order.  Unless it's telling me something else...

 

Last night I dreamed that I was doing a crossword puzzle.  It was almost completed except for about twenty squares in the very center.  I tussled with the possibilities for awhile until I realized that one of the answers I had written in was incorrect.  Presto!  Correct the answer, finish the puzzle, wake up feeling good about my prospects for the week.

 

The only problem is this comes on the tail of an emotional meltdown yesterday.  My husband was busy with meetings and work all last week and today he's traveling on a business trip.  As a result I haven't see much of him in the last ten days.  Yesterday I realized that I really needed a day with him alone, but he was busy preparing for the trip and was out of the house most of the day.  When he got home at about 7:30 did I run up and hug him like a good wife?  Did I make it clear that tonight we would be enjoying some great au revoir sex?  Heck no!  I was a big baby:  I cried, I moped, I complained that I was upset that I haven't been with him enough.  Not a nice way at all to send him on his trip.

 

So today I woke early, took the girls to school, and made sure I was home and happy for Mike before he left.  Likewise he would stop his packing and talk to me (usually he's focused only on that suitcase) and he made sure to have coffee with me before he left.  No sex (darn), no time, but both of us tried to make sure that Mike left today without any sour feelings.  We both bent.  We threw out the wrong answer and we completed the puzzle together. 

 

 

 

 

My husband the White Sox fan is beyond morose, with his team sliding in the standings.  I've noticed his mood trending for the worse for the last few weeks, but it seems to be bottoming out about now.  This is horrible of me, but I'm hoping they just lose quickly rather then prolong this.  I want my Happy Mike back.  Maybe a Bears win will cheer him up.

 

My daughter and I hope to visit Oberlin College at the end of the week.  Oberlin is a small liberal arts school just southwest of Cleveland, Ohio.  It has a world-class consevatory of music and is an exceedingly liberal campus.  Mara loves modern music--Carter, Boulez, Birtwistle--and Oberlin has one of the better new music programs in the country.  I have heard the students there are so independent that teaching them is quite a challenge for the professors.

 

Some of the activities I'm looking forward to include a lecture by Dr. Stephen H. Miles on "Finding Truth in Declassified Documents...Oath Betrayed:  Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror"  on Friday.  Quite a timely topic with the pending legislation to rewrite the Geneva Convention on torture.  Other highlights include a classics Department Talk, "The Exhausted Return to Arms:  Parody and Tradition in a Late Elegist," and a talk on "Maritime Maps as Metaphors for Inter-area History."  With luck I may be able to interest Mara in one of these lectures.  Otherwise we'll do the campus tour, attend a practice or two of their orchestras, talk with violin students, and attend the 7:00 P.M. Thursday event for incoming freshmen on, "Adjusting to and Understanding the Nuances of Oberlin's Social, Philisophical and Academic Milieu."  I figure she's Oberlin material if that title doesn't scare her off. 

 

This trip will necessarily last only one night because of our busy weekend.  At 2:00 on Saturday Mara meets with her accompanist to practice for the Saint-Saens violin concerto which she'll perform in recital on Sunday.  On Saturday night her sister and she will forgo the Homecoming Dance at their high school to go to Orchestra Hall on Mara's subscription tickets to hear the CSO perform Beethoven's 6th and Shostakovich's 5th.  If there's a female equivalent of Niles and Frazier Crane these two girls are it.  On Sunday is Mara's recital and her sister Ashley will Join Mara with their quartet at the recital, performing a movement from a Haydn quartet. 

 

It's all music all the time in the Davis household.  Now if I could only woo Mike from the White Sox to opera....

 

 

My school dreams are really gett ing out of hand.  Last night I was in high school English class.  We were studying some nonsensical book that was making me more and more incensed as I read it.  The book was large and very colorful, like a child's book.  When the teacher asked the class what they thought of the book no one responded.  After a few seconds I raised my hand and yelled, "That was the stupidest book I've ever read!  It made no sense."  The teacher asked where it made no sense and I told her on the page right before the map of Wisconsin.  Then the bell rang and we were excused.  I dawdled in class because I wanted to show the teacher the page that made no sense, but although I found the map of Wisconsin, I couldn't find the page.  I left the room after the next class started and encountered two deans in the hallway.  They began to write me up for being where I didn't belong, but they got distracted and they told me to go to the cafeteria. 

 

My other dream involved the Chicago Symphony, my parents, and black underwear.  I was in a room backstage of the Chicago Symphony orchestra changing into a dress appropriate for the concert.  I had to rush out of the room to get to the concert in time and I recall that I left a black lacy bra, lacy black panties, and stockings strewn about the room.  I also left my purse behind.  When I got to the concert hall I found that we had backstage seats and that my parents would be sitting with me.  We listened to some godawful modern piece that featured two violins, four basses, brass, and singers.  After that was an intermission where the full orchestra came onstage.  I noticed that my parents weren't in their seats as the orchestra began.  Soon I noticed that even though we were inside the orchestra was outside and that it was beginning to sleet and rain.  The wind picked up and hailstones battered the orchestra which continued to play.  (You go CSO.)  Then I noticed my father coming in from the rain, dripping wet and looking pathetic.  He was followed shortly after by my dripping wet mother.  My thoughts were:  Darn, I left my purse in my messy room with my bra hanging on the door.  I hope nobody takes my purse. 

 

Obviously I have a lot going on.  I find that the more I write these dreams down, the better I remember new dreams.   These dreams aren't making a whole lot of sense right now, but they're actually kind of fun, not disturbing at all.  I can't wait to see what dreams come tonight!

 

Thanks to Jaysey for this idea.

 

I'm a Democrat because I believe in personal responsibility.  I believe that each and every member of this society has the personal responsibility to make this world the best it can be for herself and all those who surround her.  Some may say that personal responsibility stops at the front door, that charity begins and ends at home or at the gates of one's community.  Some may say that they are not personally responsible for the war in Iraq or for poverty or racism or environmental degridation or corporate immorality or rampant consumerism or corrupt congressmen or for....it goes on and on.  Some would say that the corrupt CEO or congressman is at fault because they failed to exercise their personal responsibility.

 

That is way too narrow a view of personal responsibility.  It lets everyone off the hook except for a few offenders.  I say if our government is torturing prisoners we are all personally responsible.  If this dirtiest of countries refuses to sigh the Koyoto treaty because we want to keep our standard of living--we as Americans are all personally responsible for befouling our planet.  If we accept unethical lobbiests in Washington and look for the greatest short term corporate profits--we are all personally responsible for the corruption in our government and our corporations.  And if we believe that unrewstricted free market capitalism is the highest good--we are all personally responsible for the rapacious monsters that prey upon our increasingly greedy population.  It is only when we feel personally responsible for these and other unconscionable acts that we will try to stop them.  Otherwise the problems are too big or we can't see how we could make a difference or why we should even care.

 

I am a Democrat because I want to see solutions for the problems that beset our country.  Until we claim ownership for those problems and become willing to sacrifice there will be no solution.   

My daughter Mara has almost a year before she goes away to college and she still has so much to do:  retake the ACT with the writing part, college visits, trial lessons, applications, FAFSA, auditions.  It's like planning for a wedding without the dress.  Checklists within checklists and everything must be done in sequence.  I just hope that Mara is as anxious about this as me.

 

I even had a classic anxiety dream last night.  It was a work dream.  Usually I prepare the files for the lawyer for the next day's motion call.  I pull out the relevant sections of the file and prepare routine orders to be signed by the judge.  In this dream I was the lawyer.  There I was in court with a stack of four files, all in total disarray.  There were no orders prepared and there was nothing telling me why these particular files were in court.  I was feverishly reading through the parers while the judge called other cases on her motion call, hoping fervently that she wouldn't call my cases.  I knew that I'd be totally embarassed if I had to approach the bench unprepared. 

 

In another dream I was stranded in Champaign-Urbana, my old college town.  I was in my  early 30's, about ten years out of college.  I kept expecting to find someone I knew still on campus, but all I found were strangers.  Somehow I found a girlfriend and as we were driving out of town (in my college-era Ford Mavrick) we had an auto accident where I collided with a WV mini-bus that was stopped in the middle of the road.  The owner was a cute guy and he took care of everything, but we had to wait a couple days for the insurance check.  So we stayed at the cute guy's place.  I liked him even more when I checked out his bookshelf and saw that he had many of the same books as I, including Dover editions of classical scores.  I didn't sleep with him, but I left his apartment and walked through a door into a hidden garden and felt extremely happy.  Then I walked through another, more ornate, door into another garden.  Was this an image of sex?

 

The third dream was ostensibly about books but with dreams, who knows what?  My parents, my family, my girlfriend, and I were all assisting in loading thousands of books onto boxcars for transport to South Africa.  I was taking my time in doing the loading as I had to pull down books to look at them.  I saw a beautiful leather bound set of Harry Potter books.  I saw books by Willa Cather and Susan Sontag.  The most overwhelming picture was the book train.  Miles long, with boxcars painted to look like book stacks.

            

That's my fertile dream night.  I don't know whether the dreams were about college, or about me, or about my work, or something else.  We've been extremely busy at the office lately and my boss has been extremely grouchy.  And my period started today (sorry guys) and I'm always more anxious this time of the month.  Damn you hormones!  Maybe I'm telling myself to get my work and personal houses in order.  And I would certainly do well to follow my own advice and get out of Mara's way with college applications and let her handle them herself.  She's a big girl.  All she needs from me is a gentle nudge, not hovering.  Maybe then I'll be able to rest a little easier.  Thanks for listening. 

It's college essay time and that means it's time for this mom to do some serious editing.  My college-bound daughter Mara is a fantastic writer, but sometimes she lets her "writing chops" get in the way of presenting actual substance in an essay.  Her most recent essay was for Northwestern University.  She had to write about what she had learned by listening to others.  After she introduced the topic by saying that she and I argue about everything from morals to the Middle East to ketchup on hot dogs she graciously admitted that our dinner table debates were nowhere nearly as divisive as those of the characters of Kurosawa's "Rashomon."

 

Mara went on to relate a dinner table argument over her semester grades.  She wrote of her father's and my disappointment with her report card and her belief at the time that a college which cared so much about grades wasn't a college for her.  This in an essay for Northwestern!!!  She rallied by acknowledging that her violin teacher's and our persietence prodded her to excellence in school "by the middle of her junior year....Better bloom late than never," she wrote.

 

Bad choices can be good learning experiences she admits in the next paragraph.  And, "When one has the grace to accept another point of view, learning more about oneself is almost inevitable."  Almost inevitable!?!?!  What does that mean?  I appreciate that she here almost admits that one (not necessarily Mara) can sometimes, maybe, kinda, learn something from someone else but I think any college would think that this soup was a little watery.  Add a little meat, Mara, even if you have to stretch to give a concrete example of something that you learned and how you applied it. 

 

I wish I could edit as directly and forcefully with my daughter as I have here, but she concludes, "I still have a hard time believing that there will be a day where I don't come to verbal blows with my mom.  But the last thing controversy brings is stagnation."  Is she saying that she enjoys arguing with me?  And then she throws out a olive branch.  "Maybe a day without an argument will come between us yet."  Another day in mother-daughter paradise.

 

This was an OK first draft.  Decently written, but insubstantial.  She needs to get to the point of the essay; what she learned from listening.  Not what she learned from arguing with or from being harangued by her PMS addled bitch of a mother.  It would be better if she said that she listens to everything I say and because I don't know anything she does the exact opposite.  Like that boyfriend I couldn't stand who turned out to be great or when I encouraged her to try the viola.  Better yet would be for her to pick a teacher, a minister, a friend, someone not a parent, and discuss how that person showed her some small truth that has made all the difference in her life.  I will suggest that, but it's Mara's essay.  My job is to give support and get out of the way.  And maybe if I can learn to do that and not hover or be a nudge we'll have that day without an argument.          

 

 

I've invested so much time in this relationship that I'm surprised I'm tempted to call it quits.  I'm usually very loyal and I always try to stay until the end, but I'm bored.  Temptation is everywhere, calling to me, "Come here, I'll thrill you," and "I'll give you what you're not getting."  And the truth is I'm not getting what I want from my current book, "The Corrections."  It's full of miserable people sharng their misery with each other.  I'm only 1/3 through the book and it could take a turn for the better, but I doubt it.

 

I blame Barb.  I hadn't even thought of straying until she left a comment the other day wondering whether I had read any books by Jane Smiley beside "Moo."  I haven't, although a girlfriend has raved to me about "A Thousand Acres."  I can be exceedingly anal about books and I find it very difficult to drop a book 1/3 through but my reading has ground to a halt.  I can't bear to pick up "The Corrections" and I can't bear to abandon those miserable characters to a miserable unread existence.  So the book that I'm avoiding reading stays on my nightstand day after day.  This is how I delt with (or failed to deal with) old boyfriends who I stayed with long after the relationship should have ended.  It's time to move on.  Thank Barb for giving me the push.

 

Ok Jonathan Franzen, ok "The Corrections."  You'll just have to get along without me.  It's not you, it's me.  I need something else in my life right now.  Jane Smiley is calling and I'm going to answer.  But "The Corrections," I'll always know where to find you.     

As I sit at the keyboard I'm trying to wind down from a trip that took me from the suburbs to downtown Chicago to Oak Park and back in four hours.  Luckily traffic was light and parking was plentiful, but I'm still feeling like 70mph.  I think that my metabolism speeds up along with my car and it takes me awhile to readjust.

 

The highlight of the trip was a 30 minute visit to the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue and Van Buren street.  It's a ten story massive dark limestone 1890's building dedicated to the arts.  It houses two (closed theaters), several piano sellers, art galleries, my daughter's youth symphony offices, architects' offices, and the Bein and Fuschi violin store where Mara's fiddle was being serviced.  Bein and Fuschi is on the top floor of the building and is lit by large windows and skylights.  The store has a gorgeous recital room overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan where violinists like Joshua Bell play for the Stradavari society which lends them valuable instruments.  In fact the salesman let Mara play a violin from the 1700s the last time we were there.

 

After I picked up one violin and dropped off another, I walked down one flight of stairs to Performers Music.  The stairs pass century old murals painted on the walls above the stair well.  Everything is old and a bit grungy and the place feels lived-in historic.  Frank Lloyd Wright once had an office here.  I almost expected to see him walk around the cormer.

 

Performers Music is a small but well stocked shop.   It carries sheet music, ancient and modern, for piano, strings, voice, you name it.  If they don't have it their knowledgable staff can tell you whether you want it and put in an order.  I ordered the score from Puccini's Turandot which my daughters and I will see at the Lyric Opera in a couple weeks.  We do our homework.  We'll listen to the CD AND read the score before seeing the opera.  I also bought the score from Saint-Saen's Symphony #3 which Mike and I will see the CSO perform later in the month.  More homework. 

 

The building is serviced by two manual elevators which are driven by an attendant.  You tell him which floor you want and he takes you there.  For the return trip you ring a bell and he drives the elevator up to the floor and looks for you.  It's so old fashioned and impractal, but absolutely wonderful.  This building is a gem.  Anyone visiting Chicago should give it a visit.   

My family has entered the 21st century.  Yesterday my husband bought an HD television.  Of course he took me along to nod and smile and look pretty as he asked all the technical questions.  I felt like Donna Reed.  It was as if he and the salesman agreed that a woman couldn't comprehend the intracies of LCD vs plasma, lines of resolution, blue imputs, etc.  Well, I don't comprehend those intracies and I don't care to understand that stuff.  It's his toy after all.

 

I love the way the thin screen allowed us to get rid of a huge television cabinet.  Our long narrow sun room used to be dominated by a monsterous 2.5 foot by 8 foot cabinet with a lazy susan for rotating the TV.  Now the flat screen TV snuggles up against the wall.  I have my room back!  There will be some serious redecorating in my house soon.  New chairs, a glass table.  He may know electronics, but the intracies of fabric, furniture and fashion are my domain.   Thank you Mike for finally buying this TV.

 

I like that men are good at some things and other things remain our domain.  I wouldn't want my husband to be picking our colors or our furniture.  Likewise I don't enjoy repairing the car or fixing things around the house.   Maybe that's sexist of me.  If I were a well rounded woman I would be happy to change that tire or chainsaw that branch.  Well I guess I'm not that well rounded.  That's heavy hard work and I don't have a man's muscles.  I'll gladly do the cooking, shopping, and cleaning as long as I never ever have to clean the gutters or install the air conditioner. 

 

Reading this over it sounds like I 'd be totally happy with the traditional woman's role.  Not entirely...I pay the bills and keep track of our investments.  I plan many of our vacations and I have painted a room.  It's just that I'm better at "women's work."  And my husband is better at the man's jobs.  That my be from nurture or that may be from nature...I don't know.  I just know that part of me loves to be Donna Reed.  Maybe I'll wear a dress and pumps while cooking dinner tonight.... 

 

It's labor day weekend and it's time to remember just how far Labor still has to go.  The gap between rich and poor is widening, the minimum wage is frighteningly low, women still earn 71 cents to each dollar that men earn, jobs are still exiting this country to India and other cheap-labor markets.  The list of indignities to labor goes on and on.

 

Somehow Labor day has become a holiday to celebrate the last weekend of summer, the start of football season, and the return of our children to school.  I don't know whether this holiday ever had a true Labor feel to it.  I've never got that sense in my years.  I'll see some pro-Labor articles in the newspaper on Monday, but I know I won't see the true meaning of the holiday like I see for Independence Day, Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Martin Luthor King Day, or even Columbus day.  Are our children studying Eugene Debs and the IWW in school?  Do our High Schoolers ever debate the cost and benefit of a living wage law?  Where are the grade school pagents on union organizing? 

 

So many of us take for granted the gains ourLabor predecessors fought for.  OSHA, the 40 hour work week, paid vacations, benefits, Workmen's Compensation laws, the minimum wage, the list goes on and on.  So many of us think that all of these benefits will continue forever.  Au contraire, we must continue to be vigilant.  Off the clock work has cut into the 40 hour week, more and more employees are contributing to their own insurance, the pension is becoming a relic of the past, and we are being told if we gamble our own retirement funds in the stock market we will get a better return than from Social Security.

 

So this Laor Day while at your barbecue or family gathering, give a toast to those who labored for workers' rights.