Category: default || By jt3y

A late entry today: It's Labor Day, after all, which is when we celebrate our laborers by giving them a day off.

Well, most of them. As long as they don't work for a retail business. Or in a service job. Or for a public safety agency. Or, in many cases, for a newspaper, radio or TV station. And since most of the jobs being created over the past 10 years have been in retail and service industries, I'd wager that a lot more people are working this Labor Day than have at any time since World War II.

Now, if they're real lucky, the boss might pay them time-and-a-half for working on a legal holiday. Otherwise, for those folks stuck working today: Sorry, you're up the creek, but hey! Happy Labor Day!

--- History of Labor Day, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Labor.

--- Biography of the "father of Labor Day," Peter J. McGuire, courtesy of the AFL-CIO.

...

Had a good time Friday and Saturday at the National Radio Club convention in Rochester, N.Y., though I came back with a powerful case of hay fever as a result of tromping around fields looking at radio towers in the bright sun. That laid me out in bed for most of Sunday with a sinus headache. Still, it was worth if for the chance to meet a lot of talented people who I knew only from email, or from reading their articles in various trade publications.

One other thing: After driving the New York Thruway for two days between the Pennsylvania state line and Rochester, I promise not to complain about the Pennsylvania Turnpike for a while. The Thruway --- at least the western New York portion --- is poorly maintained and inadequately signed, though it is slightly cheaper than the Pennsylvania Turnpike (about 3.1 cents per mile versus 4 cents per mile). The big, sleek Mercury usually rides like a Pullman car over the roughest of roads, but the crummy pavement on the Thruway was a challenge even for its waterbed-like suspension.

And, as an extra added attraction, the New York State Thruway Authority is still paying bored and surly attendants to sit in the booths and hand out the toll tickets --- something which, in Pennsylvania, has long been handled by machines. Nice work if you can get it --- and you can get it if you try. (The pay isn't great; about $9.66 per hour, although I was making about that working for local newspapers in 1997, and I'm fairly certain that Thruway employees don't have to do "cop checks" at night.)

...

Obviously, when I wrote about our former President on Friday, I didn't realize that he'd be going under the knife today. I don't wish him ill at all, and I'm glad his heart condition was discovered before he became seriously ill. I've had several friends who had heart bypasses, and while the surgery is much more commonplace than it used to be, it's still a difficult procedure, and I wish him a speedy recovery. I hope that he'll be up and chasing skirts ... er, I mean, his dog Seamus ... in no time.

As a person, I'm sure he's a very nice guy, but I found Clinton to be a frustrating and disappointing President --- a description which I suppose could be applied to the current President, in my (never) humble opinion. In fact, I am starting to warm up to U.S. Senator Yawn Kerry, D-Monotonous, in part because he isn't exciting. His message seems to be: Straighten up, be nice to other people, don't take more than your fair share, and respect your neighbors. He's not running for President, he's running for Dad.

After three and a half years of a adolescent President whose message seems to be, "Do what you can get away with," and eight years before that of a teen-aged President whose message was, "Do whatever makes you feel good," it sure would be nice to have an adult as President, now, wouldn't it?