And a happy Labor Day to you and yours, comrades.
• One Big Union: The Industrial Workers of the World.
• Fascist v. centrist: A new “people’s party?”
• Utah Phillips: The Long Memory.
• New Mexicans on the dole: A Labor Day like no other.
• Lost wages: Income shrinks along with unions.
Holiday, schmoliday: The trash crews are on the job.
It’s Labor Day, but trash collection continues as scheduled.
This delights the neighbor kids, who jump up and down and shriek at the trash truck working our cul-de-sac until the driver toots his horn a couple of times.
I don’t know how much fun the trash guys are having. But I applaud them for their generosity to a couple of little girls.
We’re told that it’s easy to find a job these days. But what kind of a job? How much does it pay? What are the benefits? Is there a future in it? Will you need more than one of these jobs to make ends meet?
Our cul-de-sac does pretty well for itself. We work for Sandia National Labs, the University of New Mexico, the U.S. Postal Service, and local government. One loser scribbles nonsense for a couple bike mags, but every good neighborhood needs a bad example.
But I expect we all know a few people who aren’t eating quite so high off the hog.
Without even breaking a light sweat I can think of one colleague who hasn’t been paid for a few months while his corporate masters hunt for new suckers … er, investors. They didn’t ask if he’d work for free during the search. They just quit paying him. The work, of course, arrives as per usual.
Another quit a job he hated, only to go back to it for some reason. I expect it had something to do with paying the bills.
I’m a geezer and long since gone from the job market. My little bit of business doesn’t show up on anyone’s statistical radar. But I still identify with the working class, though I don’t work and have no class, and so I agitate, however feebly, on their behalf.
Thus, here are a few Labor Day notes from around the Innertubes. Chime in with your own notions in comments.
And remember, when you’re smashing the State, keep a smile on your lips and a song in your heart.
• One job is not enough. From The New York Times.
• Strike! From The Nation.
• General strike! Also from The Nation.
• A different approach to collective bargaining. From The American Prospect.
Winter may be coming, but it ain’t here yet.
We’re getting a burst of late roses here at El Rancho Pendejo. Red, pink, yellow. The works.
The four-day (!) Labor Day weekend has been a rousing success so far. Herself and I went for a short trail run on Friday. On Saturday she performed yoga while I did 90 minutes of hills on the Bianchi Zurigo. Afterward I burned a couple slabs of defunct bovine and served ’em up alongside some spinach fettuccine topped with smoked salmon and asparagus in a shallot cream sauce. Herself provided a refreshing green salad. Teevee was watched, and chocolate eaten.
Today there was more yoga and cycling (the latter on the Sam Hillborne, just rolling around eyeballing some of the top-shelf real estate over by the tram). Afterward the neighbors popped round with baskets full of homegrown goodness — tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers — that went nicely in a salad alongside the leftover moocow from yesterday, plus some mashed spuds. Also, and too, ice cream.
We are neither on fire nor under water, are unlikely to be deported, and there are no inbound missiles of which I am aware.
Is this the winning we’ve heard so much about? If not, why, then, it will have to do.
The Templeton Gap Trail has a fine new concrete surface east of Goose Gossage Park.
One of the downsides of bidding adieu to scenic theocratic Bibleburg is that I won’t be able to enjoy the new bits of bikey infrastructure the city has been laying down.
I managed to slip out for a short ride today and found that the stretch of Templeton Gap Trail that takes cyclists from the Pikes Peak Greenway to Palmer Park has a new layer of concrete (it used to be beat-to-shit asphalt and dirt).
Shiny new blacktop adorns Templeton Gap Road.
Also, Templeton Gap Road has a fresh coating of shiny blacktop and a nifty new bike lane. It has yet to be stenciled as such, but hey, it’s a holiday weekend, right?
Well, for some people, anyway. What with the Vuelta a España and live blogging thereof, the pending move to Duke City, guests in and out of The House Back East™, visiting newsie pals, goggle-eyed dogs requiring doctoring, chats with roofers, landscapers, gutter guys, real-estate types, bankers and mortgage-loan officers, Herself in the first month of a new job six hours to the south, and rain rain rain every god damn day, downtime has been a rare bird around these parts, buckaroo.
That said, I have not been shot dead by the laws and left to lie in the street for hours. Nor am I beheaded by ISIS, invaded by Russians, or infected with the Ebola virus.
I do have to go to Interbike, though. I’m not certain which horseman of the apocalypse that is.
The WordPress app for iPad apparently doesn’t let one add captions. I had to edit this sucker using an actual Mac. Go figure. …
Mister Boo is exhausted already and it’s only day one of the Labor Day weekend. Perhaps because there’s nothing to eat out here on the deck? Unless you count the delicious French rosé to my left, which I am decidedly not sharing as I fiddle belatedly with the iPad as a means of updating the DogS(h)ite pre-Interbike.
He can’t have any of the kung pao chicken that I shall be stir-frying directly, either. The Boo has a delicate constitution, and we have new carpet in the basement.
Our two cats in the yard, Turkish and Miss Mia Sopaipilla, on safari in the backyard jungle. Shhhh — they're hunting grasshoppers. Hahahahaha. ...
Patrick O'Grady, a free-range rumormonger since 1991, sells words and pictures to Adventure Cyclist and Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. This blog is his pro-bonehead work. For more on Your Humble Narrator, click the comic.
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