Perhaps we should rename Labor Day 2020 as Unemployment Day 2020. The day came and went in a COVID-19 world that has destroyed dreams, plans, and any hope of economic stability for far too many people. Efforts to contain the highly contagious, and too often deadly, virus has meant closing businesses. This has left, depending on various sources, between an estimated 18 to 30 million people contenting with unemployment and bills they cannot pay. COVID […]
Continue readingTag Archives: Labor Day
Labor Day in 1620
Since last Monday was our annual Labor Day holiday, this seems a good time to reflect on some of the the labor arrangements in the earliest days of what became the United States. Less than half, only 41 of the 102 passengers on the famous 1620 Mayflower voyage, were seeking a place to establish their own first-century style Christian community. These Separatist religious rebels had a vision and a plan, but lacked the funding to sail […]
Continue reading
Labor Day and Child Labor
The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. Carl Jung When I was a camp director I took a call one day from a mother who wanted to interview me to determine whether or not she would send her eight-year-old son to our camp for a week. I described a typical camp day and asked her if she had any questions. She did. “Do you apply sunscreen to […]
Continue reading