Labor Day 2023

It's Labor Day Weekend.

Labor Day is not Workers Day.

That Holiday is May 1 worldwide save the USA and Canada, Land of the Free and the Land tonthe North.

Workers of the World unite.

No such slogan exists for Labor Day. That holiday had originally been promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor to oppose May Day. That date commemorated the 1885 convention of the American Federation of Labor, which had passed a resolution calling for adoption of the eight-hour day effective May 1, 1886. Four days later the Chicago Police and Pinkerton agents attempted to clear a workers' protest from Haymarket Square. Someone threw a bomb to kill a policeman. Eight others died. All workers. No one claimed responsibility. The blame fell on anarchists. All workers. Four were executed by hanging. Another died of suicide by a smuggled blasting cap inside a police cell. They have been hailed as martyrs every May Day ever since.

Capitalist overloads had seen that May 1 might strengthen socialist and anarchist movements backed the workers rallying around the globe. According to Wikipedia in 1887 Conservative Democratic President Grover Cleveland publicly supported the September Labor Day holiday as a less inflammatory alternative than May 1 and formally adopted the first Monday as a United States federal holiday through a law that he signed in 1894.

The three-day weekend was soon adopted as the cultural end of summer instead of the equinox.The weekend wa marked by patriotic parades, fireworks, BBBs and national traffic migrations to see family and friends. School traditionally opended the following Tuesday and even at the age of 71 my body and soul instinctively feels the anticipation of a new school year. the next grade of school. BBQs, beaches, drinking beer before the summer is over, but in the heated seasons of the mass species extinction summer might never end. at least that is what it feels like in Brooklyn with a breeze blowing through Metro Tech Plaza.

Tomorrow Hotdogs and the Rockaways.

Riis Park and naked. In the USA lots of flags and God Bless America.

Not for me. I am a revulutionary and an devout atheist.

The final words of The Communist Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!) literally translate to "Proletarians of all countries, unite!"

ps May 1 is also a pagan holiday.

SEPTEMBER 3, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Last night at CBGBs I offered kisses to eager high school girls from Dalton, they acted sexy as if they had rehearsed the wanton kisses and yearning smiles before the bathroom mirror at home. The music at the clubs was tolerable, but I wished I had been alone instead of with Alice. Not to cheat, just to be free.

After CBGBs closed at 4am, Guadalcanal, his frail girlfriend from DC, Alice and I once more went to his place to snort cocaine. He had another pile of it, since he was dealing to Johnny Thunders, the Heartbreakers, their groupies, and entourage. It was a good business and Guadalcanal didn't have to cut his blow. The yellow Bolivian flake was the purest in the Lower East Side.

Alice and I left a 6:30 AM and she said walking up 1st Avenue in the early dawn light, "I want open spaces. I'd like to see my brother, Bobbie, in Morgantown."

"Even after you fled your grandmother's house there?"

"I was spooked by the rain falling on that old place."

"I want a holiday too. Maybe Boston."

I had family there. My mother and father woulld take me to eat at Tony's Clam Shack on Wollaston Beach. I might even get a little money from them.

"I have had enough of New York City."

That was the cocaine speaking, but I admitted, "I've had my fill too."

My heart was in this city. My heart also wanted to be in Boston or better yet Maine. Not here with all the garbage on the sidewalks. I kicked a sack.

"Why isn't this city clean?"

"Because the city can't afford the sanitation workers," answered Alice and added, "The city can't afford anything. It's bankrupt. It's falling apart."

"Right into our hands." The city belonged to the people. "Tourists complained about the garbage. We just live with it."

"Until they take it back, it is ours."

Not forever. The banks love being in one place. Wall Street. A couple of billion and the city is good as new, at least on the surface. The 1980s are less than a year away and 1984 closer than ever.

The radio announced the hundreds of national car crash deaths over the Labor Day Weekend.

We sounds like we will top last year.

I've survived two major car collisions and one pedestrian-car crash over the years.

Drink was involved in none of them and nothing bad ever happened on a highway. The interstates are my paradise of speed and skill with smooth roads late at night. 'Hit The Road, Jack' is my modus operandi.

By thumb or car I headed West, but now I am anchored to New York by commitments to nothinglessness. Everyone here says I have drifted too long and it's true, but also a lie. I love the road.

I used to sleep in desert motels Cheap ones to spend the night Crashing in a field When the towns were too far apart.

I've huddled in city alleys I knew no one. No one knew me. Golf courses had soft grass. Little League fields too The towns had no name. I forget some of the places. I remember most.

Meeting you ended my shifting A woman to whom I owe it all We settled in the big city A drifter quit running to the sun A hillbilly woman never going back home. The bad times are still bad, but you stop my shouting.

Your love steered me away from a bad ending The one drifters dream about without ever wanting to live. Now I can tell you, I ain't going nowhere.

Believe me, baby, I'm telling the truth And I'm not leaving, because every day I keep drifting to you. A surprise to you, a happy ending for me, A drifter at the end of the road.

2022 - For Labor Day Weekend I rode the Lucky Star bus from Chinatown to Boston's South Station. BBQ traffic was tough on I-95. There were no accidents. My sister-in-law picked me up in Harvard Square. We drove back to their home on the Watertown line. Nothing was open around them and now that I'm not drinking, I settled for a hummus vegetable wrap and a glass of water.

No cocaine either.

Guadalcanal is in Kansas City.

Alice is in LA.

She hates that I refer to her as a hillbilly. Her father was a lawyer, her separate other was a teacher or something like that, and the family home in Charleston was located in a suburban development.

The streets of New York especially Manhattan resemble the bankrupt city in the 1970s; encampment of homeless, drug addicts openly dealing and shooting in the streets, and young thugs getting mouthy with their elders. Once Old Bill from Frank's Lounge said to me, "The worst thing about getting old is that no one thinks you're dangerous."

He unbuttoned his elegant suit coat to reveal a holstered .38.

This changes the young punks' mind real quick, because they can also see in my eyes that I will pull the trigger."

Damn straight, Old Bill.

I'm lying on a bed at 8PM. It is quiet outside in Cambrige. Too quiet to be life.

I'm reading a book.

Philip Kerr's METROPOLIS

Berlin 1928.

Paradise.

George Grosz to Bernie Gunther

"I draw drunkards, men puking out their guts, prostitutes, military men with blood on their hands, women pissing in your beer, suicides, men who are horribly crippled, women who have been murdered by men playing cards. My chief subject is this Hell's metropolis, Berlin. With all its wild excess and decadence the city to me seems the very essence of humanity."

Not so New York.

I sense the threads of society to humanity fraying to the breaking point.

Then nothing and I know nothing well.

Thanks for your support. In order to avoid ads, please donate to blogger.com.mangozeen through Venmo. Any amount will help us. I do have a large family. My Venmo account is @Peter.Smith.18

Much more to come.

Labor Day Weekend 2021

Written Sep 3, 2021

Labor Day Weekend traditionally marks the end of summer in the USA. Millions of Americans flocked to the shore, lakes, mountains, parks, and backyards for a last gasp of enjoyment before going back to work. Few realize that the holiday was established by President Grover Cleveland as a peace offering after his ordering in troops and federal marshals to break up the 1894 Pullman Strike outside Chicago.

The American Railway Union had struck and boycotted the Pullman Coach Company throughout the summer. Executives had cut workers' wages, but refused to lower prices at the company stores or rents in their company towns. Nearly 200,000 railroad workers walked out across the country effectively shutting down transportation from coast to coast.

President Cleveland called in 12,000 federal troops to protect corporate property and escort scabs or strike-breakers across the picket lines. In the ensuing violence thirty strikers were killed and many others wounded. Public opinion favored the action and ARU leader Eugene Debs was imprisoned for six months. Further investigation faulted George Pullman with inciting the unrest.

Immediately after the end of the strike Cleveland designated first weekend in September as Labor Day rather than International Workers Day in May due to its association communists, anarchists, and socialists.

Today I asked twenty people in Fort Greene, "Why do we have Labor Day?"

Most said to celebrate the end of summer, a few replied that they didn't know, and two answered to honor the working man without any mention of the struggle to win an 8-hour day, a minimum wage, health care, social security, and many other commonly accepted entitlements for the working classes.

The Republicans, the Proud Boys, the anti-vaxxers and Bible Tumpers are too ignorant to know exactly the benefits, which were won by those strikers and the GOP has refused to enact any legislation to overhaul the national infrastructure, preferring for the country to crumple into dust rather than hired hundreds of thousands of Americans for good-paying jobs.

An annual expenditure $100 billion will transform America into a nation of workers.

Do not give them up without a fight.

The police are workers working for the bosses.

They are not our friends when in uniform, except when they remember that they are union members too.

Workers of the world unite.

The Death of the Road

In 2013 my summer holiday plans fell apart one by one. An ex-girlfriend's Nantucket house had too many guests, my mate in Millbrook had accepted an invitation to the Rockefeller’s’ Adirondack estate, and my sister was leaving Maine for a conference in Boston. All the flights to Thailand were out of my budget and Labor Weekend came with a harsh realization.

I was stuck in New York.

At least it wasn’t New Jersey.

Earlier in the day I had bought a small painting off the street for $1. It hung on my kitchen wall. Telephone poles outlined against a cobalt sky. The words HIT THE ROAD in the corner spoke the ancient language of wanderlust and I contemplated hitchhiking across the USA, following Jack Kerouac’s route in ON THE ROAD.

“That’s a great idea.” My landlord AP loved adventure. He had two kids. His freedom was linked to their attaining 21 in the year 2025.

“Have you seen any hitchhikers?”

“Not on the LIE.” AP drove once a week from Fort Greene to Hamptons to check on his building site. “Or anywhere else.”

“Me neither.” The spring of 2009 I had traveled over 2000 miles through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin without seeing a single hitchhiker on the roads. I called several friends in Florida, Maine, and California. None reported a sighting.

“Maybe they’re extinct.” AP was puzzled by their disappearance and I rethought my trans-American travels. Denver was a good two days from New York by car. Maybe 3-4 by thumb. If I left Monday morning, I wouldn’t get to Colorado until Wednesday. Another 2-3 days to the coast. Saturday or Sunday. Online flights one-way from San Francisco to JFK cost over $300. I had $700 in my pocket, plus two kids in Thailand.

Instead I went to Ralph's Deli and bought a six-pack of Modelo.

I wasn’t going anywhere.

But I had known that all along.

Fall Kick-Off

Millions of Americans are fighting their way home through the Labor Day Traffic. Jam factors are hovering around 7 with the threat to max out at 8, however everyone should reach their destination by the evening. I wish that I could say the same, because I'm sitting in a Myrtle Avenue apartment thousands of miles away from my children in Thailand.
I have $20 in my pocket.
I can't even hijack a plane with that, but this afternoon a well-known producer and a famous actor discussed two of my screenplays at the Venice Film Festival.
BET ON CRAZY and NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD.
Diamonds and porno.
So with the roll of the dice, "Seven come eleven."
Today is the end of summer for America, but for us humanists and pagans we still got a few more weeks of the season.
Dumb fucking Christians.
ps foto Pascha Ray and AJ Murray at Stonehenge

# 45 = Asshole

Donald Trump had not taken off Labor Day Weekend.

# 45 has vowed to retaliate against North Korea with massive force, if the Hermit Nation dares to threaten the USA.

His Treasury Secretary has said that any expenditure to aid those affected by Hurricane Harvey needs to offset by cuts to other programs.

The estimated cost of the clean-up has been estimated to be $180 billion.

At a Houston shelter he said he had 'big hands'. Prostitutes have said he has small hands and and even smaller penis.

And lastly # 45 will appoint a coal executive to oversee the safety of the mining industry. Zatezalo, the former CEO of Rhino Resources, has a horrible record protecting miners, but what else can you expect from Fatso Trump.

# 45 means asshole and the asshole has another day to ruin this weekend.

Golfing hopefully rather than tweeting to nuke North Korea.