It's Labor Day and I hope we are celebrating laborers - the people who do the work, including tending to the menial tasks, that make it possible for everyone else to enjoy the benefits of living in an advanced and developed society.
I want to celebrate the people who work with their hands and who make tangible things - those who participate in the manufacture of trains, planes, cars, clothing, phones, televisions, machine parts, toys, medical equipment, pipes, cables, light bulbs and the countless other things that make our lives easier, and enable some of us to have leisure time.
I want to celebrate agricultural workers who spend their days stooping in hot fields to pick berries and melons and all kinds of fruits and vegetables that find their way to our Farmers' Markets and our dinner tables.
I want to celebrate teachers who care, nurses who are careful and compassionate, and other caregivers who tend to the vulnerable.
Let's celebrate the people who pick up our trash, clean our streets, maintain our parks and highways, deliver our food, do our laundry, drive our ambulances and our cabs and our subway cars.
Perhaps, for this one day, we can disengage from the media-driven obsession with "the lifestyles of the rich and famous" and of the high-profile and dysfunctional "celebrities" who clutter our TV screens and the front pages of tabloids. Perhaps today, we can take a breather and pay attention to the people whose honest work produces and provides the essential goods and services we rely upon and, too often, take for granted.
Workers of the world - THANK YOU!
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