You know, I've never done a post on Labor Day before. I mean, about Labor Day, I'm aware it isn't Labor Day now.
Of course, there is a good reason; we seldom do much of anything about it. We've never had the day off, for example, though some of the masters usually take the day and leave their classes with substitutes. Joy, for example, does, so she can spend the day with her daughter. A few students who live nearby take the day to visit family, though I never have. There have been years when the Sprouts came on campus for the day, though this year they did not.
And of course usually Greg does one of his history talks. I've never attended it--until this year.
I went because Steve had been seriously considering leading it--he's already teaching History of American Labor Movement, along with all his other history classes, and Greg has been toying with the idea of turning over some of his talks to Steve, too. As Greg explained a while back (though he was actually talking about something else at the time), he wants to get things in order for his eventual full retirement because "it would be amusingly ironic if the campus Buddhist forgot he was going to die eventually."
But be that as it may, Greg decided to keep the talk for himself this year, and after hearing Steve talk about whether he could do the talk and how he could do the talk and whether he even wanted to do the talk, and so on, for the better part of a week, my curiosity was snagged--I had to see this famous talk.
It was interesting, though not surprisingly so in any way. I learned a few new things, but it wasn't mind-blowing for me. I guess you get used to well-delivered history lectures, after a while. We had it outside, on the Central Field, because the weather was nice, not so hot as it was last week--it doesn't look like Fall, yet, but Fall is coming. There weren't even a lot of mosquitoes as it's been pretty dry, lately.
But afterwards, as everyone was getting their things and heading off to do other things, one of the yearlings spoke up, more to herself than to anyone else, but we all heard her:
"Well, at least we did something for Labor Day."
"What more would you rather we have done?" asked Greg.
She turned to him, blushing a little, I think--I guess she was embarrassed that she'd said it aloud? Her words could have been interpreted as critical of Greg and the other masters. After a minute, she got her words together.
"Well, it's Labor Day," she said. "We're supposed to have the day off. To celebrate the American worker."
"And how much did you learn about the labor movement on your days off?" Greg asked.
So I guess we do something for the holiday after all.
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