Labor Day
Should a Labor Day post be about the end of summer or a celebration about the value of workers? Neither conversation fills me with joy right now. There is something I love about the change of seasons, an anticipation of what is to come next, and something to look forward to as each new season approaches. That said, I never mourn the end of fall, winter or spring, only summer. There is a freedom to summer that the other seasons lack.
In central Ohio, by the middle of July, it is usually hot and dry enough that the grass begins to give up and I can choose to mow every other week (or even every third!) but we never got there this summer. My grass is growing 2" to 3" every week. It is thick and green and if you miss a mow, you are in for a real workout when you get around to it. I'm mowing three acres, so a miss can turn into a five-hour marathon mowing session if the grass is too tall.
This summer we have become a Monarch butterfly hatchery. Last year we only saw a handful; this summer we have seen dozens. I got to watch a group of three drying their wings together on the same plant. It was amazing. Have you ever noticed how fast a butterfly can fly over an open field? We think of them fluttering from flower to flower, but when they are over a grass field with no flowers, they can turn on the jets! I got in race on my mower with a Little Yellow (an appropriately named small yellow butterfly) that chased after me three passes in a row. It was able to keep up with the mower easily until it got bored.
(Writer's Note: That was an excellent example of anthropomorphism - the attribution of human characteristics to an animal or object. I don't know if the butterfly got bored. I was attributing a human emotion to the butterfly as a bit of poetic license. I am sure it was racing, however. It kept coming back. Unless it thought it was chasing me away? That would be a bit egotistical. It's called a Little Yellow for a reason.)
I'd like to weigh in on the time change drama. I certainly hope that Congress eliminates changing between standard time and daylight savings time, but it is a real mistake to adopt permanent daylight savings time. We did that in the seventies during the energy crisis to save energy and it was terrible. Having it remain dark until after 8am in the winter is not good. The solution is to remain on standard time all year. This year in Ohio our latest sunset was 9:06 pm. If we stayed on standard time, sunset would have been 8:06 pm instead and helped everyone's sleep patterns.
As for celebrating workers, who is doing that any longer? It is easy to blame corporations and their quest for profits at any cost, but consumers are a big part of the problem. We want stores open on holidays, we want Amazon same day delivery (if you can't get your sign making materials delivered today how can you go out and protest to protect the environment?) We need to reintroduce the idea of waiting for things into our culture. Other than emergency rooms and casinos, nothing should be 24/7. (The casinos comment is a joke. I think gambling is another thing our culture needs to lose.)
I guess I'm turning into a crank old man. I've earned it; I've been working for 45 years. For the last 30 years I've been blessed to work in higher education, knowing we change peoples lives. That's worth celebrating.
We cannot abide cruelty. Just because the weather is nice does not mean your neighbors are okay. Give blood, donate to your local shelter or food bank, tell someone what they do that you admire. The best way to defeat cruelty is to practice kindness and lift others up. For every two people you lift up, they lift four more and it goes on forever.
To read past issues of this blog or learn about my novels, visit www.jeffersonblackburnsmith.com
Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. Go to https://readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway/love/1 to sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!
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