3 Things I Learned This Week

Okay, one is just a good laugh...

I wrote to you twice last week…so this will be a less meaty post. But I wanted to share 3 things I learned this week:

Wikipedia.org

1 May…Dia do Trabalhador

Thursday was Labor Day in Portugal and most of the rest of the world. All public offices were closed and many local businesses.¹

My regular readers know that I was not a great student of history…so what I didn’t know is that Labor Day (which is celebrated on 1 September in the US) came about to memorialize demonstrations held by American workers in 1886. On 1 May 1886 500,000 workers took to the streets of Chicago to demand that their work day be reduced to 8 hours. They returned for days, even though police attempts to disperse the crowds resulted in injuries and arrests. Unfortunately, a bomb was thrown at police as they attempted to disperse the crowd on 4 May killing 7 officers and 4 protesters and injuring many more. You can read more about what is called the Haymarket Affair here.

An anti-union sentiment followed this event, but in 1889 the International Worker’s Congress, meeting in Paris, declared 1 May to be International Workers Day. In 1890, American workers did achieve an 8-hour workday and in 1894 Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September a national holiday.²

People try to board a bus in Lisbon. - SkyNews

11 Hours Without Power

I was prepping for Denise’s birthday dinner on Monday when the power went off. I walked to meet Denise and our friends for lunch. I learned our friends, who have a Spanish cellphone provider, didn’t have cell either. I offered them my MEO hotspot so they could contact their children’s school. By 13:00 rumors were already spreading: it was a Russian cyberhack… there were Russian ships near the underground cable in the Baltic Sea … it was not just Spain and Portugal but extended to Finland. The exact cause of the outage is still not fully understood. A friend who seems to know this kind of stuff suggested that it is more difficult to manage an electrical grid that gets most of its power from renewables. More than 50% of Spain’s power is green while renewable energy supplies 91% of Portugal’s electricity.

What I did learn is:

• Every YouTuber and Instagram account holder had new content!

• A lot of people went nuts…emptying store shelves, filling tubs with water, queuing up in gas lines even though they had half a tank of gas.

• My Portuguese neighbors were more nonchalant … the linen shop owner and I enjoyed a cold beer at the bar across the street.

For us, this was não faz mal! When friends complained the estimate to restore power was 6-10 hours I replied, “We didn’t have power for 10 days following a Florida hurricane…just keep your refrigerator and freezer closed and all will be well.” We went to bed early and while we slept the power came back on.³

And Just for Fun

Finally, I came across a very funny guy, Doug Lansky, on YouTube this morning. He has several videos … Sweden Thanks Trump, Denmark Thanks Trump, Switzerland Thanks Trump, etc. I had enough time to enjoy all of them which you can find here. Even though the dollar is relatively weak, thanks to the Criminal and Chief, there is no better time to leave the US and enjoy Europe. If you are living in the US, the social and cultural shift will amaze you. There are countries where the vast majority of the population is happy!

Viajar para aprender como os outros vivem, até à próxima semana, tchau

Nanc

1. I knew 1 May was a holiday because we had traveled to Estoi in 2022 and the attraction we went to see was closed. However, we had a lovely day and learned all about maias, a palm-frond-e-ish plant placed outside of homes to scare away evil spirits.

2. The date fell roughly halfway between 4 July and Thanksgiving.

3. Part of my birthday prep was to buy Denise’s favorite wine, a €22 bottle of blush. Though we didn’t have dinner we did enjoy the wine … perhaps assisting in the earlier than normal bedtime.