Today is the Columbus Day federal holiday in the United States.

“Columbus Day” puzzles many African readers of this blog. After all, Columbus didn’t land in America but in the West Indies. So it seems a fickle holiday in a country that’s known to not have many.

Many Americans are as puzzled as Africans and recently a movement among larger American cities is growing that would change “Columbus Day” to “Indigenuous Peoples Day.”

The idea began in Berkeley, California, where it has been the law since 1992. But there it sat unmoving anyone until just a few years ago when Sacramento, then Minneapolis and then the largest city so far, Seattle, also adopted the new orientation.

Today, regardless of what they day is called where an American lives, almost all government services are suspended, schools are closed, all banks in all states must be closed, and there’s no mail delivery. The holiday was proclaimed in 1937 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus into the Americas. So this year, with so much of the federal government also closed, America is really chilling out.

Many large cities, including New York, have huge parades. Over the years the celebration has taken on an ethnic tone, celebrating Italian heritage.

Many of us take short road trips to country house BnB’s and tiny towns further north to enjoy the fall colors, because the holiday traditionally marks the end of summer and warm fall, and the start of dreary fall and frigid winter.

Today is “Labor Day” in the United States. America’s May Day.

Foreigners are understandably surprised to learn that our very expensive political campaigns for elections in November, 2016, have already begun. So today politicians are joining the tens of thousands of “Labor Day” parades organized by towns big and small across the country.

I live in far northwestern Illinois right on the border with Iowa, the state that holds the “first primary” for party elections next March, and all the important politicians are marching in parades there today.

But this year we normal folks are really fed up with the politicians. In one large Iowa city near where I live the city organizers have told the politicians that they have to march at the end of the parade line!

Politicians do not like to be at the end of anything.

Labor Day marks the end of summer when friends and family gather for the last summer barbecue. It vies with Christmas and New Years Day to be the least worked day in the U.S.

Vacations end, schools reopen, the fall sports season begins (especially American football), the culture season with operas and symphonies begin in the great cities, and everyone piles back to work.

Many species of birds are flying through and many of our own species are beginning to fly south. The wild turkey are eating madly to beef up for winter. Deer fawn are grown and losing their spots. Our pet dogs are shedding handfuls of hair all over the place.

Where I live in the Driftless Area near the Mississippi River in the Upper Midwest, the great green forests are beginning to change color. Soon there will be piles of yellow and red leaves where now there are only patches. The sumac are a deep red, elm turn yellow, maple become blood red and oak a warm, deep orange.

Where I live this many sportsmen are getting ready for the opening of the hunting seasons. Shots can be heard along the great Mississippi River as the duck season opens first as tens of thousands of the migrating ducks head south.

Days shorten. Right now we have 13 hours of sunlight, but that’s shrinking by nearly 3 minutes a day until December 21 when we’ll have less than 9 hours.

Before we know it the forests will have shed all their leaves and the crackly ground beneath them will be covered in snow.

If ever a holiday marked a turning of the seasons, it’s Labor Day.

It’s Memorial Day in America, similar to the Remembrance Days celebrated in many parts of Africa.

America’s holiday is intended to honor the memories of U.S. soldiers who have fought our wars. Similarly, African Remembrance Days are usually in homage to freedom fighters for independence.

America’s Memorial Day honors all dead soldiers, so in that regard our own revolutionary fighters are to be honored, too. But it began as “Decoration Day” right after the Civil War, following a petition by recently freed slaves to honor the Union soldiers who had freed them.

After World War I, it was changed to “Memorial Day” and extended as an honor to all soldiers in all conflicts.

As a young boy it was a big red-white-and-blue festival. We decorated our little red wagons and bikes, just as we would hardly a month later for July 4th. And in those days we were remembering mostly the two Great Wars: defensive wars.

Since then my own personal regard for Memorial Day has diminished. The numerous wars my country has begun since the 1960s have been unfair and unjust. And with the end of the draft when I was in university, the military has changed radically. It no longer represents society as a whole.

Today, the military is composed either of young people who can’t get any other kind of job or who need the benefits once their service is finished, or avowed militarists.

Politicians today use the military not to protect our freedoms but to protect their positions in power.

I do stop during the day and think of my relatives in the Great Wars. I think of the way the country ultimately came together to fight world tyranny.

But that was all a long time ago, before I was born. In my life time, there is little in America’s wars to be proud of. They are mostly memories I wish I didn’t have.

I do empathize with the poor soldier, but I honor her/him no more than those who marched in Selma or the hundreds of thousands of unnamed heroes who still offer their lives for human rights in Baltimore and Ferguson.

So it is a complicated day with a much too simple name.

Today is one of the most important benchmarks in the American calendar, the Martin Luther King federal holiday.

Yet in America in recent years King’s dreams have retreated into the fog of self-righteousness. His detractors, America’s Right, has rolled back many of the voting freedoms he had fought for a half century ago, assisted by a conservative if vindictive Supreme Court.

King’s supporters were certainly re-energized this past year by a number of horrible police actions against innocent blacks. There have been massive demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri and New York, where cops were absolved of culpability for people they had murdered by grand juries.

But there has been little follow-up, and legislative remedies seem nearly impossible with both houses of Congress firmly in the control of Republicans.

Dr. King is ascribed in history — like Ghandi – as a champion of non-violence. But what I most remember of King’s turbulent last days was unbelievable violence. My most vivid memory is as a very young journalist penned under a burning El Stop in downtown Chicago while the city raged in reaction to King’s assassination.

I remember gun fire was a regular sound in my low-rent apartment in Washington, D.C. during the summer of 1968. Or the unending sirens and tear gas around my apartment in Berkeley that fall.

Those days ended in victory for my side. The Vietnam War came to an end. Civil Rights and Voting Rights leaped forward. There is much violence in America, today, but it seems to occur without a cause.

Gun violence in America is horrific, today. While the number of households with guns has been declining, the actual number of guns has been skyrocketing. There are now almost a quarter billion guns in private citizen hands and countless murders daily.

This is not what Dr. King had in mind. So today we celebrate his 86th birthday, wishing sorely that he were still here to explain.

I met an Australian family in the elevator of a mall in Chicago on Christmas Eve as we were all frantically shopping the sales.

They were so disappointed that there was no snow! In a way, so are we, but the mild temperatures and lack of precipitation makes traveling during the holiday so much easier…

The week ends with more feasting, as Friday is “leftovers day.” The Christmas feast usually includes turkey and “trimmings.” The trimmings change from family to family but in ours include sweet potatoes (yams), green beans, oyster stuffing, cranberry cornbread, cranberry compote, heaps of white mashed potatoes, lots of turkey gravy and my favorite, rutabaga!

The feast ends with lots of different pies: pumpkin is traditional but in my family the younger generation loves apple, raisin, pecan and cranberry/walnut as well.

Then, when everyone is totally stuffed, out come the holiday cookies!

So the weekend is spent sleeping off the feasts!

For our Christmas week holiday we travel into Chicago for a big family gathering. Many of the normal display windows of the city’s large stores are transformed into holiday scenes like the one photographed above by Chicago blogger Caroline Siede… I enjoy last-minute shopping on Michigan Ave, because as the clock tickets towards the end of Christmas Eve Day, the sales get bigger and bigger!

The Christmas week continues to be unusually mild and that’s good for many of the animals found here. Rabbits, for example, don’t hibernate like bears, and large numbers of them die over the winter. In an unusually warm time like this, many more will survive. That could mean a spring with a lot of jumping cottontails! (caution, of course: Putting the environment out of balance is tricky. With so much more food, coyote populations may also explode and that in turn could reduce deer populations.)

Today begins the Christmas Week, and for all of late fall and early winter we’ve had unusually mild temperatures and little or no snow. The holiday week actually began this weekend with our little town of Galena brightened at night with “luminaries” or candles in paper boxes… Few of us can remember the last green Christmas, yet the scene below of country near my home suggests that will be the case this year!

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. (Canada celebrates it earlier.) Thanksgiving is one of Canada and the U.S.’ major holiday celebrations, characterized by copious amounts of food featuring seasonal recipes and lots of sweets. The traditional meat served at the feast is turkey.

The two-day holiday originates with the first permanent settlers to the New World, people who called themselves pilgrims fleeing England’s restrictive laws on religion and who arrived the northeast coast of America in between 1620 and 1621.

They faired poorly in the beginning until two local native Americans, Wampanoags of the Algonkian-speaking clans, both of whom spoke English (because one of them had previously traveled to England in 1605) befriended the settlers. The “Indians” taught the pilgrims how to farm and build homesteads, and the summer planting season was so successful that the pilgrims invited the Indians to a “Thanksgiving” harvest dinner in November, 1621.

Click here for much more information about the history and meaning of Thanksgiving by a native American school teacher, who dispels not only the myths about the “primitiveness” of native Americans, but also about the pilgrims’ history and beliefs.

Today is a controversial American holiday. Many of us are reluctant to celebrate America’s wars. Yet we can’t ignore the life stories of those who have become conflated with them.

During my life time, which began just after World War II, America has fought far too many wars. I supported Obama to end some of them, but instead he’s ratcheting up the War in Iraq, again.

In my new novel, Chasm Gorge, I tell a story of an American president starting still another war.

For someone like myself it’s an intellectual challenge to praise the soldiers who fight America’s wars.

America’s armies, today, are radically different than when I was a boy.

Today America’s fighting forces are entirely voluntary (with the subtle distinction that “reserve” soldiers, those who have technically retired or enrolled mostly as home guards are now being routinely called upon as active troops).

This differs radically from WWII and before, when the bulk of our armies were conscripted from young men. It was a mandated responsibility for young men approaching their third decade to be prepared to serve in the military if called.

The transition to an all-volunteer force was accomplished fairly easily by raising soldier pay and benefits. As America became more of a war fighting country, the rich also become more powerful, the poor parts of society enlarged, and so becoming a soldier was actually a good job choice.

Much of America’s armies, like ancient Rome’s and Persia’s, are opportunities for the oppressed and downtrodden to break out of an endless cycle of hopelessness. It’s therefore hard to criticize these young people for joining the American military.

The least advantaged are often those who their society takes the greatest advantage of. I morally condemn in the strongest sense most of America’s past and present wars. But my heart goes out to the vast majority of Americans who fought them, like my father.

Today is Columbus Day in the United States, a federal holiday.

“Columbus Day” for my African readers has always perplexed them. After all, we know that Columbus didn’t land in America, but in the West Indies. So it absolutely strikes non-Americans as a fickle holiday in a country that’s known to not have many.

This year, though, it has special meaning. We in America normally take long weekend breaks much deserved and anticipated around days like this. For those of us living in The North it’s always a beautiful time as the trees change color and the frost of winter appears on our morning windows.

But this year we aren’t relaxing a bit: Americans are glued to their TVs and radios anxiously wondering if they will contract ebola and if not that, end up in yet another war in the Levant.

All but a handful of states suspend many elective services, schools are closed, all banks in all states must be closed, and there’s no mail delivery. The holiday was proclaimed in 1937 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus into the Americas. So this year, with so much of the federal government also closed, America is really chilling out.

Many large cities, including New York, have huge parades. Over the years the celebration has taken on an ethnic tone, celebrating Italian heritage.

Many of us would normally take short road trips to country house BnB’s and tiny towns further north to enjoy the fall colors.

But this year the only color we see is black. The country is worried, today.

Today is the Labor Day holiday in the United States. America’s May Day.

Labor Day is traditionally the end of summer when friends and family gather for the last summer barbecue. It vies with Christmas and New Years to be the least worked day of the U.S. year.

Vacations end, schools reopen, the fall sports season begins particularly American football, the culture season begins in the great cities especially operas and symphonies, and everyone piles back to work.

Many species of birds are flying through and many of our own species are readying to leave. The wild turkey are eating madly to beef up for winter. Deer fawn are grown and losing their spots. Our pet dogs are shedding handfuls of hair all over the place.

Where I live in the Driftless Area near the Mississippi River in the Upper Midwest, the great green forests are beginning to change color. Soon there will be piles of yellow and red leaves where now there are only patches. The sumac are a deep red, elm turn yellow, maple become blood red and oak a warm, deep orange.

Many species of birds are flying through going south and many of our own species like the hummingbird and red-winged blackbird are readying to leave. Shots can be heard along the great Mississippi as hunters try to get some of the migrating ducks.

Days shorten. Right now we have 13 hours of sunlight, but that’s shrinking by nearly 3 minutes a day until December 21 when we’ll have less than 9 hours.

And we all know that right around the corner the leafless forest will be covered in snow.

It’s Memorial Day in America, similar to the Remembrance Days celebrated in many parts of Africa.

America’s holiday is intended to honor the memories of U.S. soldiers who have died in action. African Remembrance Days are usually in homage to freedom fighters for independence.

America’s Memorial Day honors all dead soldiers, so in that regard our own revolutionary fighters are to be in our memory as well. But it began as “Decoration Day” right after the Civil War, following a petition by recently freed slaves to honor the Union soldiers who had freed them.

After World War I, it was changed to “Memorial Day” and extended as an honor to all soldiers in all conflicts.

As a young boy it was a big red-white-and-blue festival. We decorated our little red wagons and bikes, just as we would hardly a month later for July 4th. And in those days we were remembering mostly the two Great Wars.

Since then my own personal regard for Memorial Day has diminished. The numerous wars my country has begun have mostly been unfair and unjust. And with the end of the draft when I was in university, the military has changed radically. It no longer represents society as a whole.

Today, the military is composed either of young men who can’t get any other kind of job or who need the benefits once the service is finished, or avowed militarists.

Politicians today use the military not to protect our freedoms but to protect their position in power.

I do stop during the day and think of my relatives in the Great Wars. I think of the way the country ultimately came together to fight world tyranny.

But that was all a long time ago, before I was born. In my life time, there is little in America’s wars to be proud of. They are mostly memories I wish I didn’t have.