I’m currently reading The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough, and it’s very interesting. Of course, it’s my bedtime reading, so at 562 pages I’m figuring I’ll be done by 2015.

In my reading last night I came upon a paragraph I had to reread multiple times before I figured out what was going on.

…Roebling returned to Muhlhausen and began organizing a party of pilgrims to leave for America, something that had to be done with caution just then since the government frowned on the immigration of anyone with technical training.

America didn’t want immigrants with technical training? What? The next paragraph continued:

Talk of immigration was a common thing in Germany.

That one I can accept, but the first sentence? No.

If you’re wondering what the hell I’m going on about, let me refresh your memory:

immigrate: to enter and usually become established; especially : to come into a country of which one is not a native for permanent residence

emigrate: to leave one’s place of residence or country to live elsewhere

I thought perhaps it was a mistake missed by the copyeditor, though glaring mistakes are usually caught by the time a book comes out in paperback, so I checked the copyright date. Copyright 1972. This book is 38 years old, and in all that time no one noticed this? Or was this mistake added into newer editions?

Regardless, it’s a fascinating book, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the first 65 pages.

It’s time for word association! Today’s word is: coal

No pics today folks, I find myself needing long breaks while baking to put my foot up, so I didn’t bother with the camera.

I did, however, attempt my first loaves of sourdough bread. I think I’m going to need to work at it a bit. The dough turned out entirely too moist and sticky, so I ended up dumping the mess into bread pans least I end up with sourdough crackers. The loves, unsurprisingly, look ugly. Very ugly.

But that’s okay. I’ve got time to learn. And if I decided it’s not working out, I have no problems going back to normal yeast breads–I’ve still got plenty of experimentation to do there as well.

And since I don’t have any pictures of my own for you, I leave you with this: an xkcd wedding cake.

Labor Day in the United States exists to celebrate the rights that workers in the United States have achieved in the past century, and to give us time to allow those who keep the power on and the trains running and all those other jobs that require you to get your hands dirty, a day to be recognized for their work.

We must remember the past, and some of the incidents that made labor unions so critical, and continue to make them important today.

Health and safety have improved vastly across the board in the past century. We hope never to have another incident like The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, where 146 men, women and girls died when the exits were barred and a fire broke out.

However, some industries seem hardly to have changed in the past century. Farmworkers struggle to live on less money than most Americans make in a year.

The median personal income from farm work and other work sources combined was between $5,000 and $7,500.

And the modern meatpacking industry seems in some ways hardly to have moved beyond conditions described by Upton Sinclair in “The Jungle.”

…the reported injury and illness rate for meatpacking was a staggering 20 per hundred full-time workers in 2001…

…OSHA administrators and independent researchers have found a common corporate practice [in the meatpacking industry] of underreporting injuries of all kinds. One recent estimate puts the undercount of nonfatal occupational injuries across industrial sectors as high as 69 percent.“

And then there is the industry of my home state, the coal industry. From the Mine Wars in the US of over a century ago, to modern mine disasters, such as the Upper Big Branch Mine and the Sago Mine men die while trying to make a living digging coal.

[Massey Energy] amassed more than 1,100 violations in the past three years, many of them serious. Federal regulators even ordered parts of the mine closed 60 times over the past year.

…two Massey Energy Co. officials who spent four unsupervised hours underground immediately after the deadly April 5 explosion.

[Coal companies including ICG and Massey Energy] …hope to use newly loosened campaign-finance laws to pool their money and defeat Democratic congressional candidates they consider “anti-coal,” …” they want to “”create a politically active nonprofit under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, so they won’t have to publicly disclose their activities — such as advertising — until they file a tax return next year…

Today is the day to remember those who have lost their lives and their health doing nothing more than trying to make living.

Yeah, my garden is still a mess and I am resigned that it will remain so until next year. But there are still a few bright spots of beauty.

A volunteer sunflower!
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You may remember that a couple weeks ago someone busted up part of our fence.

Yesterday, Michael finally got around to making the preliminary fixes. He had to purchase new support poles, but the rails managed to (somehow) come through unscathed, and so could be used again.

He just go the poles in the ground yesterday to get the fence up. Cementing them in the ground will come later.

Why do I have a fence you may ask? Because this is not even close to the first time someone has driven into your yard. (They have also take out the light post, driven into the upper yard, and knocked the hell out of the railing around the parking space.)

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You won’t move? Fine. Won’t stop me from sitting Right Here.

It’s word association day! Today’s word is: shopping