Let me tell you about my friends Diane and Jack, and why I consider Labor Day one of America's most important holidays.
Jack is a journeyman ironworker, currently working in New York City on the 9/11 memorial site at Ground Zero. Diane, along with their three children, lives in Wisconsin, where they moved a few years ago because they couldn't afford the high cost of living in New York, and because one of their children has special needs that simply weren't being addressed. So for large parts of the year, Jack gets on a plane, flies a thousand miles away from his family, and literally rebuilds America. Diane is trying to get into social work as a means to give back to her community some of the assistance and guidance she and her family received as NYC expatriates - basically, helping to identify families in need of assistance, and providing counseling and guidance for where to find the assistance that best suits their needs. I'm not trying to wrap them in the American flag too tightly here, but these are the sort of folks that build good communities.
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