{"id":1091,"date":"2005-09-05T00:26:17","date_gmt":"2005-09-05T08:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/09\/05\/a-national-day-of-service\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:25:29","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:25:29","slug":"a-national-day-of-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/09\/05\/a-national-day-of-service\/","title":{"rendered":"A National Day of Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has often been said that Americans were ready to make a genuine sacrifice after 9\/11 but that none was ever asked of them. The message from the Bush administration was, essentially, that the best thing we could do was to continue living our normal lives, continue our shopping and debt expansion, and all would be well. It was a way of saying that a certain selfishness was the best method of giving to others. Instead of asking what we could do for our country, the president seemed to suggest that the country would be just fine if we went back to business as usual.<\/p>\n

This country repeatedly shows that it responds generously and willingly in times of crisis. Sept. 11 and now Katrina aroused in Americans a profound desire to help out, and many millions of dollars have already been donated to the hurricane recovery effort. And yet that is clearly not enough. There is an unexpressed, unfulfilled appetite in this country to put our hands, and not merely our dollars, to work – not only in emergencies, but in ordinary times as well.<\/p>\n

—A Day On<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This excerpt was a reader’s opinion submitted to the New York Times. The writer suggests that rather than a day off, Labor Day could become a day of national service stating, “The opportunity to make a meaningful sacrifice lies right in front of us, right around the corner or up the street, every day.”<\/p>\n

I like this idea. While it’s nice to have a three day weekend, gathering with others even for a few hours to assist some part of my community appeals, and I would like to see if this sparks interest in others. What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has often been said that Americans were ready to make a genuine sacrifice after 9\/11 but that none was ever asked of them. The message from the Bush administration was, essentially, that the best thing we could do was to continue living our normal lives, continue our shopping and debt expansion, and all would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11361,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions\/11361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}