To all our friends celebrating, Happy Rosh Hashanah!
Shanah tovah um'tukah.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Labor Day is truly the Janus of holidays. 
New Year’s Day actually takes place in the month named for the double-faced god who looks both ahead and behind, but nowadays we tend to do most of our reminiscing about the previous year in the run-up to New Year’s, and save the actual day for black eyed peas, hangovers and planning for the days to come.
But Labor Day is genuinely divided between looking back to the summer now gone and looking forward to the fall. So, for a change, I’d like to pause directly on the day itself. Usually part of the last long weekend for a while, Labor Day Monday is often spent mostly on the road by travelers who need to get back to the city from the shore/lake/mountains. But this year, of course, a lot of us are staging closer to home. And the mass get-togethers of the past are also fewer and further between right now; ball games, big BBQs, outdoor concerts. After all, it’s not just an ongoing pandemic out there - to paraphrase a tweet I saw, half the country is on fire and the other half is underwater.
So Reds, let’s plan our ideal Labor Day for 2021. Where would you be? What would you be doing? And most importantly, who would you be doing it with?
LUCY BURDETTE: I know what I’ll actually doing--not much! I will be making fried shrimp tacos for the back of book #12, and maybe lying around reading:). However, I read an interesting article in the Real Estate section of the New York Times on Saturday about how renovating old motels is a new trend. There was a photo of one with ten rooms and a big outdoor kitchen and lounging area--wouldn’t that be a perfect place for a Jungle Red writer get-together and writing retreat? I think I’ll go with that…
JENN McKINLAY: I’m on deadline so that’s what I’ll be doing. Wah! Although, I’m planning what would be my ideal Labor Day weekend for Thanksgiving. A family vacation to San Diego with a house on Mission Bay/Beach near Belmont Park (amusement park). Hub and I will ride bikes, skateboard, boogie board, and stand up paddle board and then 
eat our body weight in fish tacos. The Hooligans will join us with their Plus Ones - for the first time on a family trip - and I expect we’ll only see them at meals or when I badger the bravest among them to go on the old wooden rollercoaster with me because I love that stupid thing so much. Let’s hope this trip actually comes to fruition because...2021 has not proven much better than 2020, at least to me, and frankly I could use a break.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Lucy, LOVE the retreat idea. I am now in fact, in full retreat. I have so much to do that this morning it crossed my mind--what if I simply don’t do it? What would it really matter? And then I went back to work.
What I’d love to do: float on rafts in the pool and read in the sun, with maybe lemonade and bird song. If the baby children came to visit--that would be great.
What I will do: Labor. Type type type type type. And in the evening, we will have a gin and tonic, and prosciutto and melon, and cook out, and count blessings that we are not sick, not underwater, and not on fire. And that the lights go on. YIKES.
JULIA: Hank, that should be our new standard for complaining. Am I sick? Am I underwater? Am I on fire? If no, then all is well.
HALLIE EPHRON: I’m just back from a week on Peaks Island in Maine - the perfect end of summer break with walks and beach and time out for special meals in Portland. The grands doing cartwheels on the lawn. It was nippy enough to need my sweatshirt,and we were only grazed by Ida. And when I got home my basement wasn’t flooded. Come Labor Day I’ll be home… which is pretty much my favorite place to be right now. Boring, I know. But it’s my cozy place and as the weather turns, it’s what I yearn for.
RHYS BOWEN: Jenn, your wish was exactly what we did this summer with the whole family. Big house on Mission Beach. Lots of paddle boarding, kayaking,boogie boarding and eating. Perfect
But Labor Day usually depresses me as it means darker days are coming. This year I’ll be packing for a trip up the coast the next day ( a consolation prize for the canceled trip to Hawaii). A few days getaway over the ocean should revive my spirits
DEBORAH CROMBIE: Lucy, sign me up for the motel REDS get-together! I wonder how much of the motel renovation trend is due to Covid and how much to Schitt's Creek?
But until then, I'm voting for somewhere at least fifteen degrees cooler than it is here in Texas. Whenever I hear about other people's Maine adventures, I think that sounds perfect. Maybe we'd get a couple of cabins, one for us, one for the kids, and do all that beach/lobster stuff that sounds like so much fun--especially the part where you don't melt the second you walk outside...
JULIA: So far this weekend, I've gotten to have a pretty-close-to-perfect Labor Day experience, with a lobster bake at friend-of-Reds Celia Wakefield's place, and the following day a luncheon (and private communion service, which probably isn't everyone's ideal) on her deck overlooking the lake. The only thing missing is my traditional visit to Maine's largest white sand beach, Old Orchard, but I'll be hanging out there later this week with author Jessica Ellicott!
How about you, dear readers? Share your ideal - or actual - Labor Day!
