On the first Monday of September, we celebrate a federal holiday named, Labor Day.  New York City has been celebrating this holiday since September 5, 1882 but it wasn’t promoted to a Federal Holiday until 1894.

It is perhaps fitting that it is named Labor Day because President Grover Cleveland pushed for it to be made into a federal holiday after 13 striking Railroad Workers were killed and 57 were wounded by U.S. Military and U.S. Marshal troops during the bloody end of the Pullman Strike.

The U.S. Congress signed into law this holiday of reconciliation just six days after the end of the strike to try and head-off any further unrest among the nations Labor Movement.

Few American citizens have any clue as to the beginnings of this holiday, that now most often is thought of as the end of summer.

It has become a great excuse for bar-b-ques, the last hurrah for many summer activities and marks the start of the college football season the weekend of Labor Day and the NFL season usually the Thursday after.

Information for this article gleaned from Wikipedia

Renee Riva crafts a beautiful first novel set smack dab in the center of 1960′s family life. Those of us that grew up in that era will realize that she nails it perfectly. Even if the Degulio family is nothing like your family, you’ll somehow find yourself fitting right in.

It’s been too long since this site has seen anything new, that has to change. I think I got a little lost and forgot that the original idea for this blog was for me to put some of my stuff out there for people to read and comment on.

The secondary idea was for other people to have a place that they could share there work but that didn’t work out, so this site is in for a revamping. This site will start to have some of the stuff I’m working on, as far as writing is concerned and probably some idle thoughts and most assuredly some soap box kind of things. I can’t help but getting on my soap box every once in awhile.

So this is no longer the online magazine that is written by it’s readers, it’s back to being my thoughts and work.

I’ve also started sharing some of my photography on Flickr , let me know what you think. I guess I’m just getting to a place where  want to put some stuff out there and get some feed back, so please comment here or on Flickr and let me know what you think, even if it’s just to tell me it’s crap.

Have a Happy and Safe Fourth!

Most Americans know the history of the Fourth of July but just in case, I thought I might hit the high spots.

The Library of Congress > American Memory Home
Browse Collections by Topic

* Advertising
* African American History
* Architecture, Landscape
* Cities, Towns
* Culture, Folklife
* Environment, Conservation
* Government, Law
* Immigration, American Expansion

* Literature
* Maps
* Native American History
* Performing Arts, Music
* Presidents
* Religion
* Sports, Recreation
* Technology, Industry
* War, Military
* Women’s History