THE PAGE TURNS

September 7, 2026September 9, 2026

Picnic & Protest, the Origins of Labor Day

International Workers of the World archives, wikimedia.

May 8, 1882: Peter J. McGuire, at that time the general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners… suggested the first Monday in September for the holiday he had in mind, “as it would come at the most pleasant season of the year, nearly midway between the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and would fill a wide gap in the chronology of legal holidays.”

Mr. McGuire’s resolution was adopted and a committee was appointed to plan a demonstration inline with his suggestion of a street parade, “which would publicly show the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations”, to be followed by “a picnic or a festival in some grove.”
Origin & Significance of Labor Day, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1936.

It’s Labor Day weekend, though unless you’ve been a member of the pipefitter’s union or the Wobblies, you may not realize that does not refer to doing household projects before the bad weather starts or going back to work after summer vacation. Labor Day has a very special history in the United States, even though the influence of organized labor is not what it was in 1882 when the holiday was designed. It’s worth a pause to remember why it’s there. What may be more interesting is why it’s then. Choosing an early day in September was a feature, not a bug, of the union organizers, nearly 150 years ago. Well-played, I say.

It is the end of summer in America, and I don’t know about you but my summer just flew by with teaching some classes on modern art and finance, rushing to meet a writing deadline, and having my knee chopped up and replaced more bits of metal. Shoulder last year, ankle back in the ‘oughts–eventually, I’ll set off metal detectors from afar. Maybe I should install a data center in there, who knows? There hasn’t been much time for blog writing, so I thought I ought to rectify that with at least one before the equinox.

Maybe you wondered, as I always did, why we bother calling this holiday Labor Day rather than Summersend or The Last Picnic or something more romantic. Plus, I thought that the international folks preferred May Day. In fact, the French led the charge in creating an multi-country day of protest on behalf of organized workers in 1889 , but there was some confusion over the date, and, by then, America had its Labor Day firmly fixed in September. Also, we wanted the picnic part.

July 4, 2026July 4, 2026

Patriotism Disagreeable

New York’s Fourth of July Centennial 1876 in front of Madison Square. No Taylor Swift but lots of fireworks. From alamy.

We long for that perfect Fourth of July. Perhaps there was some festival, some county fair, some town picnic you went to as a kid, and you can still remember the crispness of the coating on the corn dog or the smell of the kettle corn.

2015 Capital Fourth with a proper crowd, listening to rollicking music.

The enthusiasm of the band, banging out some Sousa with gusto or even some toe-tapping rock ‘n’ roll, the dusk dropping slowly, sky melting into fireworks which, as a kid, were bright and loud and wondrous. If you were born before 1970, you might even wax nostalgic for the tall ships that glided with so much grandeur and grace into New York Harbor. Even just 11 years ago, the Capital Fourth was mobbed with people of these diverse United States, welcomed to eat the overpriced snow cones in humid Washington and spread out on the National Mall to listen to cannons go off in the “1812 Overture” and whisper to each other, “that’s not about the War of 1812, y’know.”

Oh, the nostalgia of the corn dogs and our tall ships.

The Operation Sail parade in New York Harbor, 7/4/76. JOYCE NALTCHAYAN/AFP/Getty Images

It doesn’t feel terribly celebratory right now, as divisive as things are, with our 250th birthday hijacked in D.C. to score political points and to suck up taxpayer money to line someone else’s pocket. The Freedom250 festival in Washington has been a giant bust, but even if people had showed up, the fenced-off, algae-filled Lincoln pool and constant National Guard patrols would probably have turned them away. I keep thinking it’s like a teenager planning a 16th birthday bash (or quincenera or high school graduation, whatever) for years, only to find mom married a skeezy stepdad who gives out creepy looks and crashes the party drunk and ruins everything, man! We only had one shot at this party, and it’s been screwed up.

NYT photo shared last week of the Great American State Fair on the national mall. Sparse crowds led Fox news to stop their planned on site filming even before the weekend.

But the idea of a glorious Fourth has often been more imaginary than actual. What we’ve been also really good at is glorious protest. For 250 years, people have used the day to point out that the promise of liberty has not always been delivered. In that, 2026 fits right in, and you may find yourself feeling a little proud, by the end of this, to carry on a tradition of disagreeing with policy. It’s flippin’ patriotic!

June 14, 2026June 15, 2026

The Supernatural Power of Bits of Cloth

Happy US Flag Day!

This was probably the first flag flown in North America.

It’s the hrafnsmerki, the raven flag of Leif Ericsson, who landed in Newfoundland around 1000 C.E. He didn’t take any selfies of it when he landed here, in the New World, but it was in general use back in Viking-land, so it’s generally thought to be his flag.

Thus, we kick off Flag Day. I’m not going to talk about “fake news” Betsy Ross much. I pledge allegiance to my blog specifically to NOT SHOW the one that we’ve all grown up thinking was the first flag. I know it makes our nostalgic hearts go pitter patter because flags have a way of doing that, but it was probably first flown outside her tourist attraction home in 1870. Meanwhile, let’s discuss some actual American flag history.

We get all worked up about these symbolic bits of cloth. Perhaps because we have separated church and state (in theory) in the U.S., we had to substitute other sacred objects as stand-ins. You know how this works. As irritated as we get at our governmental leaders and their faux patriotism, our hearts beat faster when we see Old Glory, that familiar 50-state Stars and Stripes, carried into an Olympic stadium or even plastered on a souvenir hat in Mazatlan. That’s my flag! My identity!

What were the precise set of circumstances that created that flag out of the first flags? And why June 14?

O Say Can You See Our Totem?

The raven flag, used by the Vikings on their ships, in their battles, and stamped on their coins, was meant to symbolize Odin. Odin had two ravens: Thought and Memory. They represented intelligence and wisdom, and because they were seen after battles, they were considered good omens associated with victory in war. To fly the raven was to invoke the gods and to accept that your group was divinely inspired.