Reprise: "No Vacation Nation" And The Degradation Of American Workers

Dear Fred,

Concerning your recent email about Pope Francis' apparent "retreat" from the public sphere, here is a contradictory article on Papa Paco's hyper-activity. https://cruxnow.com/analysis/2016/08/13/memo-pope-francis-gods-sake-take-break/

"Pope Francis Links"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/11/pope-francis-links.html

Pope Francis: Quotations On Finance, Economics, Capitalism And Inequality

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/04/pope-francis-on-finance-economics.html

Ferragosto is a real thing. 

Rome doesn't quite become a ghost town in August, but pretty damn close.... Late summer visitors are immediately aware that "workaday life has moved to the back burner" and that LOTS of people have left the city. 

Elvisio is no longer in the building.

Relative to the Italian way of life-and-work (la dolce vita) gringos (with their salvation-driven Protestant work ethic... https://psmag.com/the-protestant-work-ethic-is-real-42740cb3e6d5#.azg81ov7y) are WAAAYYYYYYY past crazy. 

Certifiable.

A sure sign of locked-down lunacy is when folks assume that "just one more dose of poison is the cure."

I also note that workaholics are unusually eager to call others "slackers." (No one keeps better score than a workaholic. Or, as Leonard Cohen observed in "Beautiful Losers," "grief makes us precise.")

Fittingly, such accusations are not infrequently leveled against other near-workaholics simply because their brand of over-exertion does not meet the divinely-ordained standards of "the certifiable."

In a workaholic culture, nothing is more self-validating than workaholism? It is a perfectly circuitous system... tautology at its best,

Best Pax Posts On "No Vacation Nation" And The Degradation Of American Workers

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/07/best-pax-posts-on-no-vacation-nation.html

Predictably, we have become a nation of "the overworked" and "the underemployed."

Early on in my "Latin American experience," I realized that latinos conceive their primary life mission as celebration whereas gringos see it as "responsible" laboriousness, punctuated by tiny "vacation orgasms."

Not surprisngly, most latinos can dance.

But not many gringos...

Pax

Alan

PS I commend your nicely-balanced integration of life and leisure. AND!!! (Drum roll...) You get a good night's sleep!