Hello, September

At least for this day, we should fill our lives with positive vibes only. Enough with disparaging news. Afterall, yesterday was payday and today is a rest day for most workers and students. What more fun way to welcome the first day of the first –ber month than to lounge around the house this fine away-from-your-boss-or-teacher Saturday morning with a thick, fat wallet!

Thing is, there is actually an ocean of issues out there that can be very worthy giving a comment on. Scan through the news pages of this paper and you’ll see what I mean. But just for this day, it pays to take a break. We should give way to this month with some kind of optimistic aura. We’re done with all those celebrated death reports. Come to think of it, there’s 115 days to go before Christmas and for a country always overly stricken with bad news, this is already something worth spreading!

More than the superficial craze though, the advent of –ber months should remind us that we’re by now past this year’s halfway mark. Have we done what we’re supposed to do for this year? This is a good chance for everyone to evaluate their individual performance and make corrective measures as needed. Whether we are a student, a boss, a son or a daughter or a parent, this may be that part of the year when it’s most appropriate to check what we have missed out doing in the roles that we play.

Anyways, just to give this month a sort of spotlight, I have traversed the whole of the Internet to get a dose of some September trivia. This led me to a discovery which might help explain why this month is intertwined in a special way to December. Accordingly, September begins on the same day of the week as December every year, because there are 91 days separating September and December, which is a multiple of seven (the number of days in the week). No other month ends on the same day of the week as September in any year.

Some of the world’s events that fall in September are Australia’s and New Zealand’s Father’s Day (first Sunday), Brazil’s Independence (Sept. 7), Canada’s and USA’s Labor Day (first Monday), Venice, Italy’s regatta storica parade (first Sunday) and the German Oktoberfest, celebrated near the end of September to welcome the coming of October which is their traditional harvest month.

In the Philippines, few of the most significant historical events that happened in September were La Independencia’s publishing of Jose Palma’s poem (Sept. 3, 1899) that later on became the lyrics of the Philippine National Anthem and the declaration of P.D. 1081 by former President Marcos putting the whole nation under martial law on Sept. 21, 1972.

You see, around the world, this month has such a huge significance apart from just being an opener for the coming of Christmas. For Filipinos, however, September’s only setback could be that there are no known national holidays in this month! So no double pays, no ‘no classes’!

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Very recently, I was impressed to know that in Metro Cebu, working students have something that they call Cebu Federation of Working Students’ Organizations (CFOWSO). This is a coalition of all working scholars from USC, USJ-R, CIT-U, CTU, UC-METC, Benedicto College and CNU.

Their joint declaration so states its objectives as follows: to accelerate the academic growth, social progress and cultural development among working students through joint endeavors under the dominion of equality, partnership and amity; to promote active collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interests in the social, cultural and academic fields; and to provide assistance to each other though collaborative efforts.

Congratulations to these young people who have seen the need to create a link where they can discuss and act upon their mutual interests and concerns. More power!