Comments on: Sabbaths: Public and Personal

By: Metallzäune

Metallzäune — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:08:22 +0000

Metallzäune

By: Ettie Voelker

Ettie Voelker — Thu, 20 May 2010 19:56:10 +0000

I have read a few of the articles on your website now, and I really like your style of blogging. I added it to my favorites web page list and will be checking back soon. Please check out my site as well and let me know what you think. Thanks.

By: Ailsa Ek

Ailsa Ek — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:30:00 +0000

I remember when they voted down the blue laws in Maine. The working class people were the ones in favor of keeping them, and getting rid of them was seen as purely for Yuppie convenience.

By: Rosa

Rosa — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:37:23 +0000

We did, very much, despite our lack or reasonable planning. People were very kind to us when we messed up, and the island was beautiful. Also, we’d just been in Glasgow where I couldn’t understand a word anyone said, so it was a relief to hear English I could understand.

I daydream sometimes about getting a writing grant and going to live in an abandoned no-electric no-phone cottage for the summer. And learning to cut and dry peat.

By: Mandy

Mandy — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:28:39 +0000

Reply to Rosa
As you say the island has a lot of sheep. Most people keep a couple for themselves when they are ready for the freezer. There is also a growers group of which I belong, any surplus produce can be sold at the Saturday market in Stornoway from May to December. More and more people are now growing what they can. But we lack a bulk dry food co-op. As all this sort of food needs to be brought by ferry from the mainland it would be expensive to set up and run. Hope you enjoyed your time here.
Mandy

By: Rosa

Rosa — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:53:55 +0000

p.s. Mandy, is there a local food economy on Lewis at all? We vacationed there several years ago and the island was full of sheep but the grocery store was full of pork. It was very odd – like when I used to bike through the soybean fields in Iowa but not be able to buy tofu or soymilk in the grocery stores there. But I thought maybe everyone put up their own veggies & lamb meat, and only bought exotics at the store.

Also, we planned to ride all the way across the island on a Sunday (for everyone else: it’s not that far) on our bikes because the bus didn’t run, but then there was a horrendous wind & rain storm & we ended up begging a ride to town from some poor man who was just enjoying a Sunday afternoon home with the family. It was not the brightest moment of that vacation, but it worked out OK in the end anyway. I still think the post bus is a concept we need to import to the rural parts of the States.

By: Rosa

Rosa — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:45:56 +0000

After my dad left when I was sixteen, I ended up driving my little brother to Nebraska to see him several times.

Even then, in the early ’90s, if you were out on the two-lane highways after 10 pm or on a holiday or after 5pm on a Sunday, there would be a good chance of no open gas stations – I actually peed behind some bushes and slept in an out-of-gas car in a little town in Iowa when I was in my 20s, because nothing was open.

Now, there are autopump places *everywhere*. Lots of towns are a bar, a church, and a gas station where you can buy gasoline 24/7. And I don’t have a credit card either – I have a debit card. It works fine.

Personally, I think pushing back to a 40 hour work week would be a bigger improvement than mandating which days people can work. The Friskies plant in my home town didn’t add workers when it got busy, it just made everyone work mandatory 12 hour shifts. The meat packing plants do the same thing, and the pink-collar job I have now has 3 weeks of mandatory overtime at the beginning of every fiscal quarter.

Most of the white collar workers I know work 50-60 hour weeks – my boyfriend typically works 50. So every quarter for a few weeks I go up to 46 hours and he tries to stay around 50 and things just fall apart. Or our kid gets sick, like last week, and I can’t take sick time so his dad takes it, but his work load doesn’t go down, so his dad works Saturday and I work Sunday.

I’m waiting for the day those overtime hours are seen as robbing someone else of work, again.

By: Vegan

Vegan — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:45:35 +0000

I’m all for the 4 day week. In 1973 while working at UF Library, I worked 10 hours/day Monday through Thursday. How about legislating a 32-hour week for the same pay as the 40-hour week?

Sharon, have you seen this?

“Hunger Brings Anguish for Millions of Pakistanis”
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/07/11/asia/OUKWD-UK-PAKISTAN-HUNGER.php

By: Florence

Florence — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:27:56 +0000

I am a hospital pharmacist and of course we can’t shut the hospital down one day a week. However, I made arrangements with my employer so that I could work a 4 day week. No legislation required. I think people are going to have to take responsibility for their own lives–whether it is growing our own food, getting off the grid, whatever.

By: RC

RC — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:57:36 +0000

I want three days off. I’m an agnostic so it is strictly practical and enlightened, not at all G** inspired for me. Yes, pharmacies may have to open, nurses and doctors and cops may have to work, but in the 1950s we had the Sunday closings, so we are not reinventing the wheel, just rolling it out in a refurbished condition.
And yes, we really need three days, I am serious.
Sharon, you, as a Jew: I am sure you are not pressing elevator buttons at your homestead {hey I was raised with Jews in Brooklyn} but do you work in the garden and write for the blog from sundown to sundown? Just curious.
I enjoy the rabbinical legalities.
If Aaron is going to be lobbying this thing seriously he needs to go to three days. Think about it. I love the idea.