I checked the store of data about our putrid site at Google Analytics today and learned that over the last year 41.32% of our visitors were located in the United States, which means that 58.68% came to us from other lands. Which means that on average, most of you reading this won’t be observing a holiday today. It is, however, a holiday here in the U.S. Which means that I’m just lying around in two-day-old underwear enjoying the pleasures of doing not a goddamned thing. This is how we celebrate Labor Day — by not laboring.
The Labor Day holiday was created by an act of Congress on June 28, 1894. According to the U.S. Department of Labor (of course), the holiday “is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”
The labor movement isn’t quite what it used to be in the U.S. According to The Font of All Human Knowledge, in 2013 the percentage of workers belonging to a union in the United States was 11.3%, compared to 20.1% in 1983, and union membership in the private sector has fallen under 7% — levels not seen since 1932. It’s almost surprising that anti-union militants in the Congress haven’t done away with the holiday by now — though maybe they sense that’s the one thing that might really produce a worker revolt when nothing else seems capable of doing so.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, I’m laying around like a walrus on a cozy ice floe at the moment. I do have a couple of posts I plan to write, because as you may know, our site observes no holidays at all. Labor is our life. We live to work. More realistically, I clearly have a psychological disorder. Metal does not rest, nor may I.
I tried to think of some kind of music that would suit the holiday. I had difficulty figuring out how to approach the task. But because I’m feeling at least partially on holiday, I didn’t agonize too much over the choices. Which is why I wound up with some All-American music from… Norway.
I’ll be back relatively soon with some more posts today, including a premiere of a very nice song.