TheBanyanTree: Labor Day

[Margaret R. Kramer]

I want to thank all the laborers, the police, the firefighters, the National
Guard, the doctors, the nurses, and all the people who just pitched in
because it was the right thing to do, for their labor in the Gulf coast
area.

It’s a day to honor all of us who work, whether we are top executives or the
bus boys who carry dirty dishes to the kitchen.  As much as we don’t like
illegal immigrants, it’s a day to honor them, too, because some of them do
work that none of us want to do.

Labor Day is the other bookend of summer and marks summer’s end.  It
promises to be a real summer day in Minnesota, with highs in the upper 80s
and a bit of a sultry summer breeze.  The State Fair will wind down today.
My grandsons and their parents will be there, eating Pronto Pups and going
on the rides.  Ray and I had our “childless” State Fair day on Friday, which
turned out to be gorgeous.  Somehow, we just can’t end summer properly
without going to the State Fair.

Minnesota has Camp Ripley ready to go for about 5,000 people from the Gulf
coast area.  Kids have set up lemonade stands to raise money for the
victims.  The Salvation Army has had red kettles set out at the Fair and
money is pouring in.  It’s too bad the Salvation Army has not been able to
meet its Christmas goal during the last few years, I suppose because the
people they raise money for are just poor and not victims.

Truckloads of nonperishable supplies are heading south.  I think we feel a
bond with New Orleans, because we begin the river and they end it, and we
share that big waterway.  Barges are lined up in St. Paul with nowhere to
go.  It’s the time of year when farmers ship their crops south and with New
Orleans’ ports being closed, the barges are empty and the crops are in
storage.

For Ray and I, Labor Day will be a day of nothing.  We have no plans.  I’ll
go to work out.  I’ll pay some bills.  And that’s about it.  I just finished
a book (Terry McMillan’s The Interruption of Everything, it was very good),
so maybe I’ll start another.


I’ll sit on our deck and read . . .

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.  ~Mark Twain