Just thought I’d include a link to last year’s post about Remembrance Day. I like that post.
Lest we forget.
EDIT: I went to my local Remembrance Day service this morning. Simple and short – just the way I like it. I’ll try to keep remembering.
Today is Thanksgiving Day in Canada.
I am thankful for many things: friends, family, food and shelter, (relative) peace and security, and gainful employment, among other things.
This year I want to point attention to towards another thing that I’m very grateful for: literacy. I’m extremely grateful that I can read and write fluently. I’m enormously grateful that I can read and write at all. Literacy is a critical skill in today’s service and knowledge based industries. It’s the key skill we all need for learning in the age of the computer and the Web.
It’s kind of crucial for blogging, too. :)
Can anyone recommend any literacy organizations out there that help kids and adults learn how to read? I’ve heard of Room To Read, but I don’t know of any others.
Monday, September 7 is Labor Day (or Labour Day, I guess) in Canada and the US. I was kind of surprised to find out today that the holiday originated in Canada. What can I say – I was curious to learn more about this holiday.
Labour Day has its roots in the union movement, back in the 1870s when it was mandatory to work more than 58 hours per week in some trades. There were strikes around this time when workers wanted to limit their work week to 58 hours. Eventually it became a political issue and, over time, the labour movement gained strength (numbers) and power (political clout). The holiday was spun out of those events. You can argue that although many of us don’t participate in labour unions, we all get to benefit from the work they did.
A lot has changed since those days, well over 130 years ago. Today many of us work in jobs and industries that the 1870s worker could not imagine; likewise, many of us are fortunate enough to work in clean, safe, and relatively pleasant environments, compared to conditions that other people have had to endure. Today, it’s just a civic holiday that we all come to expect and enjoy… assuming we don’t have to work that day.
Funny thing, though: even though the normal work week is 40 hours or less for most people, many of us work longer than that. Sometimes this is by choice; others it’s by circumstance, whether it’s a second (or third or…) job or the demands of a profession. Some contend that there is a developing class of overextended people, working long hours in pursuit of goals, dreams, and big ideas.
Will many of those people be working on Labour Day? Probably. To them it’s probably another day to get stuff done.
Is there a need for Labour Day 2.0?
Instead of having a day to celebrate more humane working conditions, maybe there should be a day to celebrate the human ability to do new, bold, challenging, and exciting things? It would make an interesting contrast to the more traditional day of rest on Labour Day. Both are equally valid. One celebrates the rights and dignity of the work to have a life outside of work; the second would celebrate work inside of a life, if you will.
Food for thought. Happy Labour Day!
EDIT: fellow blogger Rob Diana has a good Labor Day post as well.
EDIT: here’s something from Web Worker Daily about wrestling your work back into its box.
I won’t be posting regularly during the next week or so with the Christmas holiday season just about here. I do hope to get in at least one good post per week during the next couple of weeks, though.
If you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah (or if you don’t, for that matter) I wish you peace, joy, and good tidings as 2008 draws to a close.
It’s been a real pleasure to write for you in 2008 and I plan to do even better things in 2009.
Thank you for taking the time to read Broadcasting Brain and to connect with me in any way, big or small.
For many Broadcasting Brain readers today is called Veterans Day. Here in Canada we call it Remembrance Day. This holiday marks the date (Nov. 11, 1918) that World War I hostilities ceased, bringing an end to that war at 11 AM (UK time) that day.
I’m pretty fortunate: I’ve never been a part of a war, nor have any of my family members.
Nonetheless, there are wars going on in the world as I write this post. In some ways the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are smaller in scale, but they are still brutal and they still disrupt lives and countries. It’s easy to pick on the soldiers, as happened following the Vietnam war, but soldiers do a job so that most of us don’t have to do that sort of thing. Are they superhuman, sainted, or otherwise superior to the rest of us? No, but they often do ugly work that many people could not do.
As for the generals, the leaders, and the commanders-in-chief, no one knows all of the reasons why they send soldiers to be wounded or killed in battle, but it becomes harder and harder to understand and accept these decisions. Yet still we must remember and, if not celebrate, at least honor the sacrifices that soldiers have made.
The poppy is the most visible symbol of Remembrance Day in several British Commonwealth countries, including Canada. The origin of the poppy is as follows, from Wikipedia.org:
The poppy‘s significance to Remembrance Day is a result of Canadian military physician John McCrae‘s poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy emblem was chosen because of the poppies that bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I, their red colour an appropriate symbol for the bloodshed of trench warfare.
I suppose there’s some irony in beautiful red flowers blooming over battlefields.
I’ve actually visited one of those battlefields: Vimy Ridge, near the French town of Arras. Vimy Ridge was given to the Canadian government by the French government in 1922 in recognition of the Canadian soldiers who fought against the German forces during World War I. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial was constructed at the site and it’s a pretty amazing thing to see:
I’ve visited Vimy Ridge on two separate occasions in 1998 and it’s both awe-inspiring and eerie. During the site tour you can see where the Canadian soldiers had their base: in a bunch of tunnels in nearby hills. They spent the better part of a year in squalid conditions preparing to retake the hill from the Germans, working in secret.
I can’t imagine what it was like to live and work in those conditions.
Today’s soldiers probably have an easier time of it in general, but I’m sure it’s still no picnic, as they say.
This isn’t a typical post for this blog, but I think that it’s important, from time to time, to use these social media tools to educate and inform other people about both good and bad things in this world.
Regardless of how you feel about war, you’ve got to acknowledge the fact that soliders, like policemen, firemen, sanitation workers, construction workers, relief workers, health care professionals, etc. have hard and difficult jobs to do, but they do them in the service of greater ideals and loyalty to their country.
Perhaps these social media tools that we sometimes take for granted wouldn’t be at our disposal without the sacrifices of hard working men and women who served as soldiers.
To all soldiers who have worked and sacrificed to protect their countries during times of war, thank you.
Happy Halloween, Samhain Eve, or whatever you celebrate!
