September is the ninth month of the year, which is why its name is derived from the Latin septum, meaning seven. (We have previously addressed this problem last month; see "August, the Sixth Month.")
September is Classical Music Month, Fall Hat Month, Honey Month, Baby Safety Month, and Chicken Month, as well as International Square Dancing Month and National Piano Month.
I can find no specific description of National Chicken Month's origins or history. The Director of Communications of the National Chicken Council is Richard L. Lobb, and you can email Mr. Lobb at rlobb@chickenusa.org. Maybe he could tell you more about Chicken Month. He might be especially helpful if you sent him a Happy Chicken Month e-cards from Hallmark.com.
Chickens probably don't celebrate Chicken Month. Chickens don't celebrate anything, and even if they suddenly decided to get a little more festive, I doubt they'd start with a celebration of their being the "simple, smart choice for healthy meals." (Or maybe it would: who knows what lurks in the heart of a chicken?) Chickens would probably appreciate PETA's approach to September, which is a radical call to "Give a Cluck—Chuck the Chicken."
The Delmarva (Delaware) Poultry Industry believes that National Chicken Month—they've added the "National"—is "a time to remind consumers that the Delmarva Peninsula is a leader in supplying wholesome, nutritious, affordable chicken to consumers throughout the United States and around the world, while working to protect the environment and improve water quality here at home." You say you've never heard of the Delmarva Peninsula? Let them tell you about it:
The Delmarva Peninsula is the sixth largest chicken producing area in the nation. Last year, 2,500 local farm families produced 587 million chickens or roughly 1.6 million birds a day. Delmarva-grown chickens are processed and prepared for market in 12 processing plants owned by four of the nation’s top poultry companies.
Thousands of area residents are employed in these plants and in the peninsula’s 15 hatcheries, 10 feed mills, or in a wide variety of other industry-related jobs. A recent economic study reported that each job in the poultry processing industry creates 7.2 jobs elsewhere. Without the poultry industry, every segment of the Delmarva economy would feel the economic impact.
If only for the sake of the Delmarva Peninsula's economic well-being, please honor Chicken Month!
Fast-food retailer El Pollo Loco has a different interpretation of the holiday: "National Chicken Month is an ideal time for the flame-grilled chicken leader to celebrate what it does best," they observed in a September 2003 press release. "Chicken at El Pollo Loco today is prepared the same way Pancho (founder Pancho Ochoa) prepared it many years ago. It’s fitting that we celebrate National Chicken Month by providing our fans exceptional value on the pollo they love."
My favorite find, however, was the advice from "PromoMart E-News." I'm going to cite their Chicken Month suggestions in full:
Now if you look on our Promotional Planning Calendar, you'll see that September is National Chicken Month. At first glance, you might think: I can't do anything with that, but we think you can.
* It's a good year to create a promotion around Herbert Hoover's 1928 presidential slogan "A Chicken In Every Pot." (The whole slogan was, "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage). Add your own twist. For a continuity campaign you might even send out a rubber chicken as the first mailing and a pot as the second. Can tie in with an election year.
* Go with a play on words as though you thought it was National Chicken Month so "We thought we'd just chick en with you to see how you're doing."
* Create a promotion around the use of the word chicken to mean someone who is afraid. National Chicken Month would then be the month honoring all those who are afraid of something. What might your clients be afraid of that you could help them with. Use imprinted packs of corn seed, rubber chickens, farm-related items, etc.
Please, this month as every month, to celebrate responsibly.
Today is Labor Day in the United States.
Grover Cleveland was a very unpopular man back in 1896. He had broken up the Pullman Car strike using United States Marshals and some 2,000 United States Army troops, on the premise that the strike interfered with the delivery of U.S. Mail. During the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded. It didn't win him any friends with the fledging labor movement in America.
In order to throw a bone to Labor, Cleveland supported a holiday honoring workers on the first Monday in Septmber, hoping it would help Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. May 1st was initially proposed but was then rejected because government leaders believed that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 could become an opportunity to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket riots which had occured in early May of 1886.
Cleveland was proven wrong and the Democratic party suffered their worse defeat ever. So remember the cynical origins of the hoiday while you are BBQ'ing this afternoon.
"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," explained Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Mr. Gompers elaborated further: "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day. . . is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."
And yet, despite Mr. Gompers's assertions, Labor Day is not a Seinfeldian holiday about nothing. It is, according to Department of Labor, "dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country."
Workers being whom, exactly?
Whenever someone talks about Labor with an audible capital L, I picture a bunch of sweaty, grease-stained steelworkers, or guys in blue overalls and goggles with soldering irons. Their contribution is the oft-cited "sweat of their brows." Union regulations being what they are, though, they seem to be pretty well compensated for that sweat.
The term "Workers" has to include more than steelworkers and welders—otherwise we could just call it "Steelworkers and Welders Day." After all, a worker is just "one who works." I'm a worker (until recently, I was a worker). Almost everyone I know is or was a worker.
The difference seems to be unions. If you belong to a union, you're a Worker or a Laborer (I'm not sure if they have different unions). If you don't belong to a union, you're a lousy lazy-ass—an exploiting bourgeois bastard.
Think what this means: Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Selma Hayek, and Madonna are Workers. Your friends who work awful hours at lousy jobs in wretched offices—they're bourgeois scum.
A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la lune),written and directed by Georges Méliès, assisted by his brother Gaston, is a 1902 French black and white silent film, considered to be the first science fiction movie, was released on this date. It is loosely based on two popular novels of the time: From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells.
And so it goes.
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