I feel Daily Kos is almost a therapy place. I am cleaning on this Labor Day. I turned on the music and cranked it. Jack and Charlie Grapski are doing music up the road and I am here with little one. We are doing a cleaning party. The pool's chemicals are screwed up from all the rain and the overshock so forget swimming...College kid is with Vet so I didn't have a way to go anywhere , anyway, not that I really want to.
Depressed? No. Nostalgic is a better description as my mind races back to previous labor days. My Dad always helped on Labor Day at the Park serving up BBQ for years and we went to the parade. Unions tried to make it's way into Ga in a big way and never did. Labor day marked the end of summer as we started back to school right after the holiday but today kids rush back in early August around here .
I used to get with my first love who eventually became my husband and swim all day at the park when I was a teen. I remember the friends getting together and telling me they were shipping off to Vietnam and it was almost like ,
Say bye bye, as in Forrest Gump, "I am going to this whole other country. Vietnam".
Of course it was not a real war, it was a police action. It would be over soon.
Nostalgia also carries me to recent Labor days. We used to get together with friends and have BBQ and cookouts. Scotty Decker, in Nashville could serve up the ribs. He was one heck of a singer and entertainer. He was not just a vet I was helping...He was like family. We were close friends with he and his wife Candi. Yep...they even helped me start the organization. Had a good friend named Fred who would invite Vet and me over to visit in Decatur. I spent labor days in all manner of end of summer days. I do not remember what I did last year.. I think we cooked out and went swimming but I remember talking to Daddy.
Back in 2004 I remember a great cookout with Cheri, our son's former fiance'. She could talk without opening her mouth and entertaine us this way and spent all holiday with us. She was terrified of guns. She died from 6 gunshots to the head. Wrong place..wrong time. So many dying now from gun violence.
We also had Jack's eldest son over on labor day years ago with his girlfriend. They brought a ham. He put a gun to his head in Michigan over jobs and marital loss but also suffered from depression.
I usually touched base with my friends from HS who still had good sense and one of my singing partners became a Professor of Music and we grew up together. She went with me to the park in our teen years.
This year is different. I feel old for the first time in a long time.. Whatgodmade, Michelle always had some memorable conversations on Labor Day weekend. We talked about DK, the great folks here, and in Ga she would stop and bring chicken or such. Oh goodie, she just called and sitting on the side of the road broke down. Radiator or something went wrong..
She is spending a terrible labor day. ( She called as I was writing..had not heard from her in two days).
This year as I reflect, all those people are gone or in peril. Michelle is spending her labor day visiting her little boy in a residential mental facility. She isn't having fun and just had some bad bouts with depression. My x husband, Daddy and Scotty all died within the last 12 months. Fred, a good friend from Decatur, another vet died last year, and so many of the old friends who went off to that police action are dead as well. I am grateful for my immediate family still on this side of the living.
My old garage band could get together right up until 2003 and make a reunion of our music, even if we weren't famous except in our own neck of the woods and now two of those members are gone.
My singing friend, the professor died this year from cancer. My husband's eldest son committed suicide in 2010 living in Michigan and Cheri was murdered in Alabama in 04. Now the war drums are pounding again this labor day and
I think of that devil Agent orange who took so many of my friends away. I am thinking of THAT POISON. I am thinking how so many of my old friends either died literally or became wingers so I don't deal with them anymore. Still I fight... Still I am here and still wondering why does it feel like the 1950's but nothing got accomplished.
Getting older means losing people. 63 really is not that old. The biggest losses if you can count big or small, would be Vet's son, Cheri, my x and Daddy. Too many tears thinking of celebrations past. Too many set backs as in the Voting Rights Act being stricken which makes me think of Fred. He would have been furious. He was a leader in his own right for justice in voting. He was a black man who got me really interested in voting rights.
I think of the War on Women and think of Karen, the music professor who was Dem and a fighter for women's rights. II think of Cheri, a victim of gun violence. I think of Syria and what does that mean for this generation.
Peace and joy is a rare commodity today in these right to work states, no jobs, poor education and rights fading away while we keep marching off to war. So if some of you are wondering why so many of us are not beating the drum, we have heard the song before and it doesn't end well. Still... The beat goes on. I guess I am now one of those Grandmas sitting in chairs and reminisce and the Beat goes on.
Drums keep punding rhythm to the brain.. Ironic I am a drummer.