SAYING GOODBYE TO SUMMER MEANS SAYING HELLO TO HOLIDAYS

                                September brings school lunch boxes and backpacks.  September is quite a different month from August.  This year, the heat spells from the summer have continued just to fool the thermometer which doesn't realize autumn is coming.  Wenever thought we'd still be deciding whether to go to the pool, the beach or to just stay in an air-conditioned room.
                                 Despite unusual weather, the kids are back in school and summer vacations are fading memories.  For two months since the Fourth of July, holidays have taken a vacation but September restarts them with federal holidays, religious holidays and some sentimental holidays.
                                 This past Monday was Labor Day, a federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September.  Next year, Labor Day comes a day earlier on Sept. 5th.  In 2014 it will return on the first of September, something that hasn't happened since 2008.
                                  We probably wouldn't have a Labor Day in this country if it weren't for an economic depression in the 1890's.  George Pullman, the maker of railroad cars, reduced the wages of workers because of the bad economic times.  A workers' strike resulted and President Grover Cleveland sent 12,000 troops to Chicago in 1894 to break the strike.  Many of the Pullman workers were members of the American Railway Union.  The strike was settled within a month and Labor Day was one of the outcomes.  Pullman died and was buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.  Pullman was so unpopular, he was buried at night in a reinforced casket to avoid plundering by angry workers.
                                    Concerns over worker-rights had already been brewing and the first Labor Day parade was held in New York City in 1882.  Ten years later, union workers took an unpaid day off and marched in protest around Union Square in New York City.
                                     According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2009, 15.3 million were members of unions which equates to 12.3 percent of the entire workforce.  Membership in unions has been on the decline from its high in the 1940's when 36 percent of American workers belonged to unions in 1945.
                                     On Wedensday at sunset, Sept. 8, the Jewish New Year holiday Rosh Hashanah begins.  Next year, it will come almost a month later, starting at sunset on Sept. 28.  In contrast, in 2013 it begins in the evening of Sept. 4 and Labor Day is on Monday Sept. 2.
                                      This coming Sunday, Sept. 12, is National Grandparents Day.  It became a holiday in 1978 after President Jimmy Carter signed a proclamation making the day official each year on the first Sunday after Labor Day. We wonder if the holiday will ever get the recognition enjoyed by Mother's Day and Father's Day?
                                      In history, the United States had many important events in September.  On Sept. 3, 1783, the signing of the Treaty of Paris by the United States and Great Britain ended the Revolutionary War.  John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay signed for the United States.
                                      In 1789, President George Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton to be the first United States Secertary of the Treasury and Samuel Osgood to be the first Postmaster General under the United States Constitution.  On Sept. 26th, under Washington, John Jay became the first United States Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
                                      On Sept. 14, 1814, 36-year-old Francis Scott Key wrote a poem that was renamed The Star Spankled Banner.  He had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British.  The fort had protected Baltimore during the War of 1812.  His poem became the national anthem of this country in 1931.
                                       On Sept. 8, 1921, Margaret Gorman of Washington,D.C., was crowned the first Miss America in Atlantic City.  The Miss America Pageant was held each September from 1921 through 2004 in Atlantic City but was moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 2006.  In a terrible racist aspect of the pageant, no African-American woman was included in the event until 1970 when Cheryl Brown, Miss Iowa, became the first African-American to win a state title and enter the Miss American Pageant.
                                       To add some melancholy to the end of summer, "September Song" was written in 1938.  The thought-provoking somewhat sad song became a hit and was recorded by Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Jimmy Durante and Ella Fitzgerald.  In these modern times, video music has becomes famous with the MTV Awards, a yearly event since 1984.  This Sunday, Sept. 12, the MTV Video Music Awards will be broadcast from Los Angeles.  Ranging from that the young to the old, pop-culture shares Sunday with Grandparents Day.