Editors tend to toss aside press releases, but one in a thousand begs for a response.

Flash: The "March of the Americas" was scheduled to begin on Oct. 1, 1999, with representatives of "poor people's organizations" gathering in Washington, D.C., for a 30-day walk to the United Nations in New York. The plan was to have not a dull walk but "an around-the-clock cultural festival, with musicians and poets performing during the day as the March makes its way through five states over thirty days, performing at rallies each night, and performing in bars and clubs."

I receive these days about 2,000 emails a month, some with attempts at humor, but one I received at winter's end has stuck with me. This one listed anagrams, words or phrases made by transposing or rearranging the letters of other words or phrases. Some were clever: Dormitory transposed into Dirty Room, Desperation into A Rope Ends It, The Morse Code into Here Come Dots, Slot Machines into Cash Lost in 'Em, Snooze Alarms into Alas! No More Z's, and Eleven Plus Two into Twelve Plus One.

Almost 50 years ago, on Sept. 23, 1949, the world passed into a cloud of fear. President Harry S. Truman announced that the Soviet Union had the capacity to wage nuclear war. Over the next decade the prospect of mankind wiped out became the subject of novels (On the Beach) and concern that led some to construct backyard fallout shelters.

Labor Day these days is one of the least significant holidays on the calendar. It used to be one of the most joyous, when it celebrated the efforts of union founders who struggled against great odds and did much to improve the lives of very poor people.

It can be exciting again, if it becomes a day to remember those who face obstacles but never, never, never give up.

We see and enjoy such stories in movies. Sports films like Hoosiers and Rocky capture the spirit of the underdog who trumps talent with gutsy persistence.

Sprawl. That's the six-letter dirty word Al Gore's campaign folks utter a lot these days. Their enemy is urban sprawl, the move to the suburbs of hundreds of thousands of former city-dwellers, many of whom-the horror!-like to eat at fast-food restaurants and shop at malls.