A bit of nostalgia here, since we seem to have been in a continual U.S. political campaign since 2018, with little or no letup.
The day after Labor Day used to be the traditional day for school to start, but the start has crept backwards: the local schools start a full two weeks earlier. Are there schools that have the patience to wait until after Labor Day? (colleges don’t count).
Since this is CIDU, we’re including this one, that’s not so much a CIDU as a search engine lookup for Hokas.
Labor Day is typically the end of the period when vacations are taken for adults as well, at least those who have children in school.
And to close out with a return to a pet view :
Comics I Don't Understand 
It’s a state law in Michigan that government schools not start until after Labor Day.
Yes, it’s still common for schools in northern states to start in September. A lot of schools up here still don’t have A/C in every classroom, so starting in August is infeasible. (Going through June, though, is becoming equally problematic, so the parent demand for A/C is growing.)
@ Mark H (1) – There is a similar law regarding the end of summer in Minnesota (in favor of the State Fair), and in the 1980s Virginia became notorious for enacting the “Kings Dominion protection law”, but that was finally repealed in 2019.
P.S. To save everyone the effort, here’s a link to the “Hokas” in Frazz; even if the padding might help, they are far too ugly to actually wear:
P.P.S. This year, Olivia Jaimes celebrated Labor Day by ending her Summer sabbatical at Nancy:
She enjoys teasing or provoking the random.
The “Beardo” strip that appeared in yesterday’s LOLs would have been appropriate for “labor” day, but rather than repeat it here, I found an old Foxtrot that makes a similar point:
to Mark, that’s the law, but “437 school districts requested the state waiver last year to start school before Labor Day while 106 did not,” according https://www.abc12.com/news/education/michigan-bill-would-end-post-labor-day-start-requirement-for-schools/article_c182d8b0-4782-11ee-92a5-179d60f88992.html#
It’s common knowledge that Pennsylvania is “The Quaker State”, but it’s less clear where “The Shaker State” is (or was) located. None of the online references that I could find give a definitive location for “Gasoline Alley”; similar to “Springfield” in the Simpsons, it appears that the indeterminacy is on purpose.
It was Labor Day 2018 when we learned that Sluggo is Lit.
Labor Day, Schmabor Day,
What a dumb day!
You hire some jerk, then send him away,
To celebrate work by playing all day!
— Garfield
@ larK (10) – Yes, Garfield:
…
and not Wiley from B.C., like I always used to assume, and still sometimes suspect.
Does anybody else get black vertical bars through the Baldo? I tried refreshing, using a different device, no joy. Looks like a bar code.
I think it’s part of the joke, Chak.
I agree, it’s probably intentional and part of the joke.
And it was treated the same way in the Spanish version.
Hunh – it really doesn’t look deliberate to me. Ah, well, being a dinosaur as I am I generally miss the joke.
To me, “Hokas” are an alien species in a series of Gordon Dickson SF stories. The Hokas like to roleplay in various human historical milieus. It’s not clear, at least to me, what they did before contact with humans.
I was going to mention that at least one state I’d heard of mandated the starting date of schools. I don’t know if there are others. You’d think the school districts would be better able to evaluate that, but I seem to recall something about tourism. Who knows with state legislators.
Missouri’s have gone way off the edge to the point where the people keep passing laws or amendments to end-around them, which annoys the legislators to the point where they keep trying to shut that down.
Here on Long Island, schools seem to mostly start on the Wednesday after Labor Day, for some reason.
For Kilby (#3): I have been wearing Hoksa for over a decade on the recommendation of my orthopoedist. I was having problems with my feet, partly because I was walking about 25 miles a week but also because I had arthritis in one of my big toes. I had never heard of them, did an online search and found there was a store not even a mile from home that sold them. They were designed for runners and have an enhanced cushion that minimizes the impact on your feet. They had $1.3 million in sales in 2013 which grew to $1.4 billion in 2022, showing how even an ugly shoe that provides comfort to people can be very successful. It took me a while but I finally talked my DIL, a professional ballerina, into trying a pair and now she loves them. Most of the dancers for PNB are wearing Hokas now because they are on their feet all day long. I highly recommend them for anybody that walks or runs a lot.
I’m trying to understand the energy-exchange physics of springy/spongey shoes or their insoles, and of course socks for many of us.
The main question is about how much work you do, walking or running a set distance, with different footwear setups. With springy footwear, aren’t you putting a non-negligible amount of work into compressing the footwear material, over and over? Maybe that’s fine if you’re doing it just for exercise anyway, but if you record your times ( or your distance before tiring), doesn’t that extra energy expenditure slow you down? Or does the compressed material as it springs back return that energy to you?
The other scenario is taking your weight. If I’m wearing soft slippers, and thick soft spongy socks, and stand on a scale where my weight transfers some potential energy to a spring [would this be any different with a counterweight balance?], is some portion
of that instead stored in compressing my socks and slippers, thereby reducing the amount given to the scale’s spring and the reading?
Chak, I agree it’s hard to judge. But when we add in the evidence of the Spanish version, doesn’t it become unlikely that the same mishap would affect them both, in the same way?
Interesting thoughts, Mitch4 (20). The effects would be so minimal that designing an appropriate test could be quite a challenge.
Nike, Adidas, & Co. have demonstrated that it isn‘t necessary to do the physics, nor is it required to design a conclusive test to demonstrate the results. All that is needed is to produce an entertaining marketing campaign, with enough computer generated graphics to simulate an effective advantage, anchored by some well-known sports personality, who is paid millions of dollars to prove the authenticity and independence of his authoritative opinions. Even if P.T. Barnum didn’t really say it, it’s still true.
Powers – Never heard that the reason school around here (Long Island, NY) starts after Labor Day is related to air conditioning. They have done so since long before there was air conditioning in schools and summer school is held – well, during the summer, in the same schools without air conditioning. It is just that Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer.
Schools districts here traditionally started school – and most still do – the Wednesday after Labor Day. Each community has its own district (with NYC all being in one district as far as I know) which decides everything including the schedule for schools in its district. I have read that one district did start the week before Labor Day this year.