The Significance of Labor Day

Here we are, at the annual Labor Day weekend, and that means four things:

1.  You will not be able to wear your white Guccis after September 3.

2.  The Calgary Stampeders and Edmonton Eskimos will meet once again in their internecine blood rivalry. We're predicting Stamps by 12, even though Slap Maxwell loves Mike Reilly.

3.  School is about to commence a new term, and students--and teachers--face the future with either eager anticipation or resignation and dread.

And now, for many of us, hunched over keyboards, the big event:

4.  The 3-Day Novel Contest--the 72-hour literary marathon, engaging word-spinners from wherever English is writ. It is the Iron Man event for storytellers. Some may view participation as masochistic madness, but there are hundreds ready to leap to their laptops, or their lined legal pads, or their scribblers. Len Deighton said, "All you need to be a writer is the stub of a pencil and the back of an envelope."

Good luck to them all.  And to the football players, the teachers and students, and the fashion police.