Labor Day.

Once, M and I organized a union. I was twenty-one.

Once, M’s grandfather worked in the mines for a dollar a day for Peabody Coal, until he and others organized a union; then they made a dollar an hour. His mother was born in that town from that song. Once, before she died, she took M up the road to try to find where the town had been.

The day after Pea was born, when M held her for the first time in the NICU, he whispered to her the story about his grandfather and the coal company and the union, and he told her how she’d make the world a better place, too.

And yet, what kind of world will she work in?

When I read the news, when I realize how broken the system is, when I see how corrupt it all is, I just…I don’t know.  How do you fix it?  How do you not throw up your hands and say, I’m moving to Canada? New Zealand?  France?  Germany?  I try to think that in the 1840s, things looked pretty damn bleak for working people (men), too, but that was back when we actually made products here.  But now, what do we produce, except ideas for products that get built somewhere else? How long will it be before the ideas happen overseas, too, and we are all superfluous?

As much as I fantasize about living in a place with mandatory vacation time, this is our country; this is where we stand or fall.  The way I see it, our only option is to make it a better place, because we don’t quit. We make things better.  Somehow.

Labor Day.  A long weekend, sunny and lovely, full of friends and laughter. We’ll enjoy the day off, too, because how often do we get a break? I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend. I hope everyone has jobs to go to on Tuesday.

And damn, I really hope someone has some ideas.