In Anticipation of Labor Day

Thank you to the Dads and Moms, toiling at home or in an office, on a truck or in a field.

Thanks also to the Thais and Turks and Filipinos and Sri Lankans, the Malaysians and the Indonesians, the Bangladeshis and the Vietnamese, and of course the Chinese, who make our clothes and shoes and socks.

They allow us to pay semi-literate folks a few dollars an hour so that other semi-literate folks may be paid millions of dollars to lend their familiar visage to the billboards and television ads that assure us how necessary and, yes, somehow vital, the shoes they endorse will feel upon our feet.

Thanks to them all.

And thanks to the Mexican and Salvadoran and Guatemalan and Honduran fellows who keep our grass green and our flowers blooming, bursting forth in fireworks colors that successfully distract us from the grayness, the tedium of repetition and poverty that they obscure.

Thanks to all who sacrifice a life of luxury and languor so that we, the ones who deserve to do nothing in peace and climate-controlled quiet, may enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor.