Vacations and Truly Apropos Monuments

So I have a very little (but actually fun) job working at a national clothing retailer often patronized by a certain prominent Ms. O. It is unfortunate in America that we do not issue warrants to indicate that certain stores are under employ to the State, or something, alla Great Britain:



But really, what would an American warrant look like? Would they just slap a big eagle on the front of the store?

Anyway, these days all we're getting in at the shop from corporate is beachwear. Beachwear, you say, in January? Yes, that's right folks. Apparently all of us are supposed to be jetting off to Bermuda. For me, there are several flaws in this reasoning. First, it's freezing here, where people actually live. I can't tell you how many customers come in asking for gloves, and are confronted with row upon row of board shorts. Second, it just makes me grumpy, because there is absolutely no way I can go on vacation.

However, were I to go on vacation, I can't imagine anything duller than spending time on a hot beach in a poor foreign country. No, not me. If the vacation gods came from on high and offered me reasonable airfare to any part of the world, I suspect I would elect to see this august monument in Southwest Scotland:



It's certainly more apropos than that 195,000,000 dollar WWII monument we built in Washington, and it doesn't look like something designed for Hitler by Albert Speer. Even though I have my little retail job and a few other little jobs, I am by no means making a living wage, and feel this simple granite monument represents me, too. However, it was carved under these conditions:

"The miners suffered a brutal defeat in the strike of 1921. In the aftermath miners' wages plummeted and there was widespread unemployment across the coal fields. This stone memorial to the death of a livelihood sits between Patna and Waterside in Ayrshire and is freshly painted each year by the descendent of a striker."

C.o. the Doon Valley Museum.