Buy Nothing Day

Found here; follow the link for the full image, which is much larger and more interesting.

My Thanksgiving Prayer

My aunt said grace at Thanksgiving. It was pretty standard.

Here's my slightly modified version, the one that ran through my head on my way home:

Dear Lord, thank you for clearing this continent of brown people. May you expand your work to the rest of the world so that we may continue to enjoy our bounty of cheap, mass-produced crap (including the food you make available to us at your holy temple of Wal-Mart).

Oh, and please leave Mexico and part of Asia - we need some brown people left to make all that stuff for us.

Amen.

Have I mentioned I really don't like this holiday, even though it's the only time of year I eat stuffing or cranberry sauce?

Note: This is not a rejection of my aunt's recital, but of the context in which it takes place.

Labor Day

Today is Labor Day, a magical day early in September, when people get the day off and spend it at the lake and start packing away those white clothes, or something. (It's also the common starting point for Bush Administration "fall marketing campaigns," but that's a separate scary story.)

Labor Day is also supposed to be the day when the American Worker is celebrated, and there's usually noises to that effect.

Labor Day is bullshit.

To wit: The rest of the freakin' world celebrates the worker on May 1st. America celebrates it in September to avoid any kind of worker solidarity. Seriously:

With the Chicago Haymarket riots in early May of 1886, President Grover Cleveland believed that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 could become an opportunity to commemorate the riots. Thus, fearing that it might strengthen the socialist movement, he quickly moved in 1887 to support the position of the Knights of Labor and their date for Labor Day.

Yeah, we have May Day, but it's not the same thing. Don't get me wrong - I appreciate paid holidays and all, but this is just stupid. Having May 1st as Labor Day was a tradition started in the United States, even.

If you're interested, consider researching the 1886 Haymarket Riot and its connection to organized labor and May 1st. There's a lot of history to it, none of which makes it into the public eye. It's kind of like Columbus Day/The Day of Indigenous Resistance in that way.

UPDATE: For example, these folks should know better: Atrios, Ezra Klein, and Matt Yglesias.

A Note to the Reader

As mentioned before, I tend to write lots of short-to-medium length posts with links to larger blogs or news stories in them.

I hope you take the chance to follow the links. I'm posting them for you.

...

Also, it's the Fourth of July! Let's pretend America was founded as a free state for everyone, instead of rich white propertied men! Remember, people of color didn't exist until the 1960's, and if it wasn't for those dirty hippies, they might still be invisible!

I hate the dishonesty of this holiday.

Birthdays

I don't particularly like birthdays; ever since about the 8th grade they've always seemed artificial to me (caveat: I loved getting presents). Yeah, I was born on that day, but so what? It was random. Better to celebrate something that has meaning to me in the present. Note: This means that yes, birthdays can be meaningful and fun and all that jazz. It just feels that for lots of people (including my family), birthday celebrations are done because we've always done them and everyone else does them, not because they have intrinsic value on their own. I mean, it's not like the need to celebrate making it one more year on earth is as pressing as it used to be...on the other hand, it's not fully gone, either. Hm.

Incidentally, I tend to feel a similar way about all tradition: most of it happens because the previous generation did it, and they teach us to do it.

Frack that. That's rarely a good reason to do anything. With lots of things, if you look closer, you find the real reason, which is usually something like "we fish here because the fish have always been here." It's sometimes coated with the authority and status of the local elders (be they clan elders or your parents...it's a metaphor that carries), but it's rarely done wholly without an understanding of the underlying benefits and consequences.

A friend of mine used to leave the morning of his birthday and get back some time after sunset. No one saw him the entire day, and he usually spent it thinking. I think he started this practice in his early teens, and I think he eventually gave it up. I think it's a relatively good idea, to set aside a day to be alone and take stock of where you're at. The downside is that it can be difficult to force yourself to do that...and that your family and friends tend to get annoyed when you disrupt tradition. However, I give him credit for one thing: he managed to reclaim the day for himself, instead of letting other people dictate how it was supposed to go.