Three cheers to those who demanded fair labor laws for all working people. And thanks for the history lesson. Somewhere in my education I must have learned the significance of Labor Day. But I forgot. Tomorrow the American flag gets erected on the front porch greeting all who join us for lunch.

A Labor Day . . . non-traditional in some eyes . . . but cause for celebration, for exalting, for a combination of smiles, of tears — and for years afterwards, a day of rest . . . well, not rest exactly, but restless exuberance and big “highs”, singing and cakes, and a bit of shedding of private tears as we saw our first boy grow into a man. Not just any man. . . but an extraordinary man in what seemed too short a time. My own story: the beginnings, yes, on Labor Day. So fitting we thought. The setting: a U.S. Army base where, rather desperate, we searched in vain for the edifice fit for a king - ready to be born. Instead, in a super-secret-barracks-like building, hidden far away from the base’s center we heard the cries of what sounded like a nursery for thousands of newborns. And so this young mother, feeling too young to already have a child of her own, was told that she was crowning and her baby king was born. Looking around when my senses returned, any thoughts of a hospital-like setting were left far behind. Wheeled into a room already populated with 23 other new mothers, given bed number 24, a bassinet I wheeled, containing this precious child was mine - I mean ALL mine - from the first moment. The father — so young, and now garbed as others were - in face mask and other operating room attire — tried to cope with the fact that on this Labor Day, this day of celebration, we were now fully expected to take care of this tiny little bundle full time. Rest? A group crash course for those who had given birth in the last hour was held in a meeting room, giving all instructions we would ever hear on caring for this now very hungry baby: the refrigerator where the bottles of milk were kept, the rows of changing tables and a few particulars on changing a diaper. The crash course PhD over, we were on our own. Often in that first day as he passed the beds of new mothers, there was the call my grinning new husband and father got - as he was in his operating room garb and mask: Doctor, doctor, can you come here. I need help. He was in great demand, this new “doctor” of sorts, who only yesterday had been just a Second Lt., Field Artillery. We had to laugh for there were no big guns here. A single room, a sea of very young mothers and babies. But little did each of us know that more were being born every hour, and exactly 24 hours later, you were out of your bed, carrying your infant up a flight of stairs in a barracks. There - on floor two - you were shown your new bed and bassinet -and realized that your were in an identical room with 24 now well-seasoned mothers of 2-day old babes — and you were about to be sent out into the wide wide world and on your own. In those 48 hours with no sleep and lots of exercise running to the fridge and the changing rooms, carrying an infant upstairs and down, we all found that we had lost all that baby weight. IN fact, ladies, I arrived home weighing the same as I did when I was 12 years old. Photos show me slim and looking like a princess that must have delivered only a pea. (Lookng back, that was one of the brighter moments !) And so, with the words Happy Labor Day today, you have made me take a journey down memory’s lane — a journey that had his joyous end in the most humble beginnings that first Labor Day . . . but as what most of us WOWers can attest, it was a road stretching forever forward, a road filled with hills and valleys. And this road we found contained proof that the smallest seed can grow to be the most magnificent specimen of manhood that a young mother could ever have dreamed. And so while yet another Labor Day may have its own history going back over 100 years, this labor day had its own history — from its tiny beginnings, to its period of growth over the years, and then to its own zenith . . . one that still makes me shed tears of joy so many years later. For I, too, remember its beginnings as if it were yesterday. Joan

We should all celebrate Labor day by donating a day of work to the companies we work for. That way, the companies can be even more profitable and will experience a bump in the value of their stocks. After they get the bump in their stock prices, we can reward the CEO’s running these companies with huge annual bonuses. After they get these bonuses they can buy huge homes with huge lawns. Then our kids can get jobs cutting these lawns. People, THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Have a good Labor Day.

Exactly my question. And that huge cigar. I think its hard labor smoking that cigar.

Trickle-down economics only works for the rich. That’s why I agree with Barack Obama’s statement that we need to fix the economy from the bottom up. One of the biggest problems in the United States is the shrinking middle-class. Corporations pay executives at the top of the totem pole hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars, while the people doing the grinding, hard physical labor are making minimum wage. This disparity between the have’s and the have-not’s is destroying America. It’s a race to the bottom now that companies are moving their plants overseas in an effort to avoid having to pay fair wages, health-care costs, pensions, etcetera. The standard of living in the United States will continue to plummet, unless federal, state and local governments incentivize both domestic and foreign companies to open/maintain plants in the U.S. It’s too easy for businesses to move to China, for example, and set up shop where they can get away with paying workers $1.50 (or less) per hour. The U.S. can demand that foreign countries raise their minimum wage and benefits, in order to level the playing field, but it’s hard to demand anything of a country to which you owe billions of dollars. That’s why President Bush hesitated for years to go to the World Trade Organization and demand that China stop pegging the rate of its dollar (yuan) to the rate of the American dollar, and stop stealing intellectual property. So, the answer has to start at home. Reducing tax burdens is one way to keep businesses on American soil - and enticing foreign companies to open plants in the U.S. Another might be to raise tariffs on foreign imports. Of course, those countries can turn around and do the same to American goods. But the answer, as always, lies in American technology and innovation. We need to beat other countries to the punch. That’s why it’s so important to invest in high technology, education and re-training. A top priority for the next administration and Congress must be to reduce the trade deficit and national debt, and provide incentives for companies to invest in high-tech research and development, whether it be biomedical research, industrial technology, clean energy, whatever.

Kitty…Obama stated at the Democratic Convention that he would prevent tax breaks for people earning more than $250,000 annually, and reinvest that money into health-care. A wise plan, in my opinion. You don’t need to earn more than $250,000 a year to start most small businesses. I started mine earning $10,000 last year. Trickle down is giving tax breaks to the wealthy, and hoping that the increased business and so forth stemming from those breaks will pull up the entire economy, thereby helping those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Obama made an outstanding centrist speech at the convention, in which he stated that government shouldn’t be giving lucrative handouts to people, but should make sure that its people have adequate health-care, education and an opportunity to succeed. In other words, a nation is no better than how it treats the people on the lowest rung of the socio-economic ladder.