"... On Labor Day, summer seems preposterously short, just a daydream, really. It's a day when we can almost admit that autumn will feel welcome, bringing a resurgence in the normal rhythms of life. Labor Day isn't a holiday that most Americans take very seriously, unless they come from union families. It's a day off just as the children start school - a quiet echo of the Fourth of July - and that's about it. But even a holiday as transitional and as muted as this one still creates in many Americans a feeling of having the whole country in view at once... In a way, that is what these civic holidays are meant to do - to create a moment of self-awareness, not as individuals but as a nation, to get a glimpse of who we are and where we are at this moment. The political campaigns encourage us to look up from the America in which we actually live to the Americas the candidates want us to imagine and believe in. Judging which version is closer to reality is very much what elections are all about..."
--Editorial, From Now Until Then, The New York Times.


Image from Class Brain.