Sherry Chandler

From Robert Reich’s Blog via Have Coffee Will Write:

A young person asked me not long ago — only half in jest — whether Labor Day was named in honor of natural childbirth.

Most young people today have no memory of a time when Walter Reuther of the UAW and John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers were household names, when presidents jawboned labor to prevent agreements from causing wage-price inflation, when productivity gains pushed wages up, and when more than a third of the American workforce was unionized.

Now fewer than 8 percent of America’s private sector workers are in unions, median wage gains have fallen far behind productivity gains, and for most of us Labor Day means a long weekend.

You should read the rest of this post. Not only should we remember today that it was through the work of unions that most of us are living comfortable lives but also that there is a high cost to low prices.

More from Kevin Drum:

Ever since World War II, American labor unions have been instrumental in helping spread democracy and labor rights throughout the world. The AFL-CIO’s Lane Kirkland, for example, was one of the first to recognize what was happening in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk back in 1980, and immediately offered his help to Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. In the end, the AFL-CIO funneled over $4 million in aid to Solidarity, as well as both money and technical assistance to other labor movements in Eastern Europe and around the world. From Poland to Brazil to South Africa, local labor unions have played key roles in stabilizing emerging democracies, and American support for those unions has been instrumental.

Further update from Political Animal:

The GOP’s jihad against the working and middle classes, however, is far more powerful [than its alliance with the religious right], far more insinuated into the DNA of virtually every Republican politician, and undergoes far less scrutiny by the media.

From the NYTimes:

MtvU, the subsidiary of MTV Networks that is broadcast only on college campuses, will announce today that it has selected its first poet laureate. No, he doesn’t rap. And it’s not Bob Dylan, or even Justin Timberlake.

It is John Ashbery, the prolific 80-year-old poet and frequent award winner known for his dense, postmodern style and playful language. One of the most celebrated living poets, Mr. Ashbery has won MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.”

Excerpts of his poems will appear in 18 short promotional spots — like commercials for verse — on the channel and its Web site (mtvu.com, which will also feature the full text of the poems). In another first, mtvU will help sponsor a poetry contest for college students. The winner, chosen by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, will have a book published next year by HarperCollins as part of the National Poetry Series.

Alas, I found celebrating a 90th birthday more wearing than I’d expected, though the day was a great success and my mother even danced a short jig to the live music being supplied, in best country tradition, by her friends and neighbors. Still I didn’t make a rock flipping post of any kind, an omission I’ll try to make up for now.

Kudos for the day have to go to Fred Friendly’s Fragments from Floyd (County in Virginia) for RockFlippin on Goose Creek. When Gin Petty told me about this day, she told me that both poets and raccoons were in the mix, and Fred has supplied the raccoon.

From my blogroll here, Harry of Heraclitean Fire got a nice shot of a leopard slug and Rebecca at Pocahontas County Fare found a rock she could flip over.

sbpoet supplies the poem, and in the Missouri Ozarks, Roundrock Journal did flip up a small copperhead.

Gin reports “All I found were huge cracks in super dry dirt.” It would nevertheless be much worth your while to visit Gin’s journal. The description of her paper- and basket-making processes is great reading and you’ll find photos of the exquisite products of her art.

The Flickr set of photos is here. And be sure to visit Via Negativa for the full set of links and his lovely photo of Narceus millipedes.