September 14, 2020
by Source
By Colleen O’Connor
Historians, writers, journalists, astrologers and even amateurs sometimes coin a phrase that perfectly describes an entire epoch. Or a decade.
Many of these “Age of” descriptions come long after the fact. For example, the “Age of Exploration” or the “Age of Empires.”
The truly magnificent titles capture so much than just a decade. Some span centuries. Others end quickly. The “Enlightenment.” “The Age of Reason.” “The Dark Ages.”
And they are defined and remembered in multiple forms; all personal. Literature, sports, music, art, movies, economics and politics.
Take the “Gilded Age” known for the lopsided wealth and extravagance generated by railroads, industrialization, with cosseted nouveau riche existing alongside abject poverty.
Or Edith Wharton’s, “Age of Innocence.” The writing of which, she said allowed her to find “a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America… it was growing more and more evident that the world I had grown up in and been formed by had been destroyed in 1914.” And the first “world” war.
Then there are the obvious ones. The “Atomic Age.” The “Industrial Age.” “The Space Age.”
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September 7, 2020
by Jim Miller
By Jim Miller
This weekend we celebrate Labor Day, but how many of us have any idea where the holiday came from or what it celebrates?
The first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5th, 1882 in New York City and was proposed by the Central Labor Union (CLU) at a time when American workers were struggling for basic rights such as the eight-hour day. The CLU moved the “workingman’s holiday” to the first Monday in September in 1883 and urged other unions to celebrate the date as well. The movement grew throughout the 1880s, along with the American labor movement itself with 23 states passing legislation recognizing Labor Day as a holiday. By 1894 Congress followed suit and Labor Day became a national holiday.
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