Labor Day 2015 through the vision of Edmund Marion Ashe and Molly Wheeler Wood Pitz

Edmund Marion Ashe (!867-1941) Work n.d. Oil on Canvas. Photo by Wayne Stratz

This guy caught my eye as I entered Iron and Coal; Petroleum and Steel at the Michener Museum in Doylestown.

For my ancestors in the Lehigh Valley it was Fabric and Cement; Slate and Steel. I grew up as Bethlehem steel descended, slate quarries were illegal swimming holes, grandmothers who quilted worked days in sewing mills, and grandfathers made Mack trucks or told stories of deaths in cement hoppers.  Unions were the friends of generations of workers who remembered conditions. Labor meant something.

My dad worked with the tools of a draftsman, but did not escape the industry that sprang from what the ground contained. He drew on paper of what would become blueprints, which in the field became the places where concrete blocks were formed.

Now Bethlehem Steel is a casino. Drafting tools have been replaced by Autocad. Scrubbers keep the cement dust off of cars. The students at my school travel north to see the Mack Truck museum.

and my dad's drafting tools are used to draw art in my studio.

Molly Wheeler Wood Pitz (1913-?) Lime Kiln at Night, 1936 oil on Canvas. Photo by Wayne Stratz

Jazz on Tuesdays: Labor History composed by Jim Kuemmerle

Mosaic Woman and I had just completed our first of what would be four interstate moves in 1987. I had a teaching job at a residential school which required me to work every Monday evening and every fourth weekend. Which meant that once a month I would go to work on a Friday morning and leave the school Monday night. Can you imagine the teacher's squawks?

At some point in my three year tenure, which placed me high on the seniority list (and thus better assignments on those weekends), Mosaic Woman took a class on Labor History. I would hope that I learned something in high school about how unions struggled to make the lives of workers livable, but conversations with Mosaic Woman opened my eyes more fully to the need for those battles and the brave men and women who fought it, and yes it was a fight.

This past weekend, I suggested that once a month we give a little bit to a jazz artist trying to get a project off the ground. So we headed to Kickstarter and there we found a most interesting project. The Triangle Shirtwaist Jazz Project by Jim Kuemmerle.

Kickstarter makes you want to promote the project because if they don't make the goal by the deadline, they get nothing. That is why I blogged about the first project we sponsored and I am proud to say that thanks to us and many other jazz loving folk, Jason Parker made that goal and is making music with the joy of paying people fair wages in the process.

Mosaic Woman had lots to say about this too.

As the project moves forward you get updates. Today Jim sent this joyful note to us:

Quick update:

My 21-month-old son, with no coaching from anybody, has started saying "New Backer!"

As if anybody needed YET ANOTHER reason to pledge. :D

Jim is 7 dollars away from 80% of the goal. In football terms he is nearly in the red zone. I don't know what that means for the success of kickstarter projects, but he is on a roll and I hope the momentum makes this happen.