It seems a lot of holiday posts have fallen on Mondays this year. Some, of course, will do so as a matter of course, being fixed by law where I write as on that weekday; Memorial Day and Labor Day come to mind as examples. Others, such as today’s Halloween, will do so periodically as the calendar demands. And there are many for whom the association of a “horror”-themed holiday and a Monday makes sense, as if there were some greater intent at work.

There is not, of course; it is a coincidence that occurs at intervals, as noted. The idea of coincidence, though, is one that frightens many. That things happen together, results of the vagaries of human-made patterns, strikes some as impossible; for them, everything must be the deliberate action of some outside force, some sinister cabal that manages to conceal itself except to a select few who find themselves disregarded by the populace at large–unless that populace is, itself, somehow part of the cabal.

I have never understood the leaps of faith and hackneyed reasoning, the willingness to spin spurious structures from thin air to explain things. Perhaps it is only self-pity by others transmuted through some strange alchemy, brought about by bitter brews and dire distillations, that helps people not to feel so poorly about the state of the world in which they live, that things are as they are because they are made to be so by unseen powers whose shapes they glimpse in the shadows, and not because many, including them, are complacent about how matters unfold around them.

If someone else did it, it isn’t your fault, and if it isn’t your fault, you aren’t the one to fix it, right?

Except that it is not that way.

It is the case that the structures in which we exist predate us, shaping us as we begin to exist and in ways not necessarily evident to us at any time. And it is the case that there are those privileged by those structures in ways others are not, some of them consciously and abusively so. But I feel…compelled to try to make things better, however small my efforts may be. On a small scale, I usually do so. Not always, certainly, but more often than not? Maybe.

I hope so, anyway.

And I try.

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I have written before about Labor Day, here and here in this webspace, and as the observance comes around once again, I find myself in much less secure a position to write anything than in previous years. It’s my own fault, really; I shifted jobs without thinking things through, and I was hindered in the latter by not having joined the union. But that’s not why I’m returning to the topic now.

Recently, approval of unions reached some 71% of those polled, per Gallup. It’s not an unequivocal thing, as the report makes clear, but it is of some note–and some importance. My own experience as a union man–less presently than previously, when I was in a heavily unionized and union-integrated workplace and a member of UAW Local 2110–bears out the good of unions. Yes, it was the case that some members of the union were skating by, trusting in their collective contracts to cover their own inadequacies and stagnation. And it was the case that the specifics of the contract did not do as much to encourage innovation and development as could or should have been the case. But it was also the case that demonstrated expertise was explicitly and meaningfully rewarded; I got a 10% hourly raise upon completing my doctorate, for one thing, and guaranteed cost-of-living increases. I also had fully covered medical, dental, and vision, and I had access to retirement plans. (I did not invest in them, which worked out for the best, in the event, but that’s a different matter.) And it wasn’t just me; it was all of the working folk at the school, from department- and program-chair faculty through teaching staff and administrative support to the janitors and maintenance technicians.

I recognize that unionization is not something that everybody wants for themselves. I also recognize that there are some occupations where it ought not to happen–even some where it has. I also certainly understand why those who are driven to find profit–not earn, because “earn” does not really apply with them–oppose unionization. For me, though, it was a good and it is a good, and I delight in the increasing solidarity to be seen.

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Today is US Independence Day, the commemoration of the adoption by the Second Continental Congress of the Declaration of Independence of what had been colonies from Great Britain (although the dates are wrong; the vote was on 2 July, and the signing on 2 August). It is traditionally held to be a celebration of freedom from foreign tyranny, although there have long been and continue to be reservations about it.

Two hundred forty-six years on, arguments still rage–and move into violence at times, too often–about what freedom and tyranny are, and there continues to be opposition to the exercise of rights by populations traditionally exploited and denied those expressions, denied recognition of their humanity, even as those in power and empowered sputter on about the ways in which they are oppressed and claim that those who are oppressed even now should be thankful that they do not live elsewhere, where they would “really” be oppressed. And it may be the case that overt oppression is not as extensive in some places as others, although I note that the comparisons are rarely made to other industrialized nations than the one whose birthday is celebrated today. (I note, too, that many of those who claim so much love for the country that they willfully ignore its flaws and failings–which does not seem to me to be love, but what do I know?–had to be forced into its service, whether de jure or de facto, and they rail against being asked to put their resources to its support even as they benefit, directly and otherwise, from the expenditure of others’ resources to that end. But I digress.)

That it is relatively less–which may well not be the case; I know the positions of privilege I occupy keep me from experiences and understandings that may well nuance or overturn that assertion–does not mean it is little enough, though. The promise, of which the nation too often falls too far short, is of an increase in freedom, a lessening of oppression, and it won’t be fulfilled until it’s all done. And that seems quite far away today.

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For many, today commemorates the D-Day invasion of Normandy by the Allied Forces during the Second World War. I have little to add to such commemorations that has not already been said by others far more learned on the topic than I, save to note my sorrow that the same fight that was fought then is still being fought now, if with less valor and, I fear, less success.

For me, of more direct moment is that my parents are married forty-one years today. As might be thought, I’d not be here without them, so…Happy Anniversary, folks!

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It is not a secret to everybody that I live in Texas–or, indeed, that I grew up in the midst of the Lone Star State. I’ve made much in my online life of being Texan, even if I wasn’t born in the state, and so it should come as no surprise that I mark Texas Independence Day–today, in the event, y’all.

The thing is, growing up in Texas, living in Texas, and being the person I am, my feelings on the matter are…complicated. Having attended school in the Hill Country in the 1980s and 1990s, and not in one of the major cities it claims–Austin and San Antonio, even if neither one of them is all the way in the area–I was steeped in the “traditional” lore of the Republic of Texas, that it broke away from Mexico in response to the tyrannies of Antonio López de Santa Anna, working to ensure the freedom of the brave settlers who had come into the region to make their fortunes through the sweat of their brows and the work of their hands, and that it later joined the Union as a peer out of recognition that the promise it shared with the United States was best served by confraternity between it and the several states.

(No, the rhetoric isn’t an exaggeration. Nor is the usage; Texan English admits of such terms as “confraternity” and “tump” in equal succession and measure, the juxtaposition being one of the typifying features of the dialect / accent.)

As I got older and had occasion to learn more, to speak with more people, to read more deeply and thoroughly–and not seldom in the hands of those who were writing then or in the pages that were printed then–I became aware of the amply-attested problems of the revolutionary impetus (the freedom was for white colonizers, rather than indigenous peoples already suffering or African-American populations yet enslaved because of ongoing evil), as well as the faltering socioeconomics of the nascent republic. And, of course, living in other parts of the United States as I have, and interacting online with a great many people whom I respect and admire, I have been exposed more directly to the disregard in which many hold the Lone Star State.

Certainly, there are problems–a lot of them, and large ones, several of which are in Austin and in Washington, DC (if they’re not heading to Cancun when Uri visits or encouraging book-burnings in rural communities)–in the state and with the state. There’s a lot of bass-ackward thinking here, and a lot of it’s belligerent in several senses of the term. It exerts an outsized influence on the rest of the United States, rather than being willing to leave well enough alone; Texas’s purchases do a lot to determine what textbooks are available, after all, and bills its legislature passes get used as models for other places, usually for ill.

There is good here, though. The Lone Star State makes a lot of good, influential art and culture–and no, not only in Austin, although I (begrudgingly) concede that a lot does come from there. And even the stereotypes of the state–into which many, many people lean, and lean hard–are often durned good things. A willingness to work hard and hazard the self, an insistence on honesty in word and deed, a sense that you oughta be polite all the time and friendly as much of the time as you can, an appreciation for the beauty of the natural world and for the arts, the underlying belief that we are something and that we can do it–they’re part and parcel of it, and they’re of value.

Or maybe that’s just me.

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