The American labor movement began as a way to recognize the contribution of workers to the development of the United States.
It was proposed by trade unionists late in the 19th century and in 1894 became a federal holiday celebrated in 30 states.
To progress! (from 1913)
Imagine, a holiday not only honoring workers in unions but also giving them equal credit – with corporate leaders – for this country’s achievements.
Is that socialism?
Is it communism?
I don’t think so.
Once upon a time this was the American way.
Amen to that!
We still celebrate Labor Day in 21st century America but these days it’s more about the long weekend and the sales being offered online. The latter corporately curated for our shopping pleasure by an elite, profit-driven tech oligarchy of owners.
They are said to be innovators but what they do remains a mystery to most of us. It’s not like they are constructing bridges, buildings or cars.
Whatever this monstrosity is doesn’t count
Instead they create methodology behind-the-scenes and deliver it to us.
Not primarily in the form of a cool phone or easy-to-use computer anymore.
But in platforms of supposed digital connection and technology credited to a very small cadre or mostly bro-y guys who take the lion’s share of the bows for the societal changes they’ve wrought and the many billions they’ve earned.
Ugh do I have to see this movie?!
But that seems apt.
Because if it felt as if they were bringing us together at one point that is no longer the case.
More recently the overbearing reality of “artificial intelligence,” whether we like it or not, not to mention the brazen algorithms that shove whatever product you clicked on last down your throat in endless ads and variations each time you scroll one of their platforms, have made us pretty much loathe their product and them.
That’s a hard pass from us
And made us prouder than ever to be a mere laborer.
It’s true.
Almost no one else can compete with the lavish homes and grand ballrooms they party at all across the world.
And often with interchangeable versions of each other.
“Cool” should definitely be in quotes
They launch themselves into space, get married in over-the-top gazillion dollar weddings for the world to see and hopefully envy, and endure a series of state-of-the-art cosmetic procedures and makeovers that change them physically but make them no more attractive to anyone with what we used to refer to in my younger days as a moral conscience.
Case in point on the latter score: The many millions contributed by each to the construction of an almost half a billion dollars’ worth of ballroom no one asked for that will replace the historic east wing of the White House.
A vision into the not so distant future
Rest assured they didn’t do it so they could have an event to celebrate their workers one Labor Day in the future.
They did it….
…Well, we know why they did it and for whom they did it.
Money money money
The question is, what the heck is the point of being a billionaire if you can’t say no to something you don’t want to do?
Which leads us to only one conclusion.
Their actions are exactly who they are.
That is affirmative
As for we workers, it’s always good to remember there are A LOT more of us than there are of them.
And that we Americans built the country too And have a holiday named after us.
They don’t.
There is no Federal Oligarch Day.
Yet.
Let’s keep it that way
So this weekend, and week, have a barbecue and ponder that.
And know that you don’t have to just accept a data center in your backyard or listen to a fake new computerized songstress whose talent was illegally stolen, I mean programmed, from every great singer who ever lived, on your Apple Music or Spotify playlist.
Dolly Parton and Tim Curry passed away last week and it got me wondering:
Why did their deaths resonate so much publicly in a world full of consistently more terrifying breaking news?
Why was I so personally thrown for a loop by the loss of two people I didn’t really know even if I had once been in the same room with each of them on two separate occasions? (Note: More on that later).
They were both 80 years-old and, well, isn’t eight decades a good enough run for us fans? Especially when they’ve reached the height of their professions? How much more time do we realistically expect? Of them or in life?
Too existential?
Be back later
Lucky you because I’ve always thought this way.
Imagine the expression on my parents’ faces when at the age of six I relentlessly questioned them about what happens after you die (Note: Heaven wasn’t good enough) and how a bump in my mother’s stomach could possible mean the start of life in a few days for my new brother or sister?
No wonder they got divorced before I fully entered my teenage years and was really able to bring down the entire room and all of us in it.
My Charlie Brown phase
But back to Dolly and Tim and how it relates.
I’m no expert but I did love them both and do think a lot. Especially about this kind of stuff.
They were quite different but did share one quality.
They were the elixirs to such dramas. And thoughts. And fears.
A kind of cure to the quiet desperation lurking silently in all of our young, troubled, or on the surface untroubled though secretly turbulent, thoughts.
They did this by being honest.
Through their talents. Their songs. Their performances.
Their hair. Their makeup.
They rose to fame by playing characters who told you it was okay to be the part of you that embarrassed you. The part you were ashamed no one would ever understand. The qualities everyone would see and look down on you for. Or perhaps hate you for.
Dolly Parton became an international icon not only as a performer but as an entrepreneur and philanthropist. So much has been written and you can read about a lot of it here.
The 100 million records sold. The 3000 songs written. The 300 million free books gifted to children. The many million dollars donated to charity and medical research, including helping to save humanity at the very beginning of the Covid pandemic by co-financing Moderna vaccine research. The hit movies and the closet full of awards.
How did she manage it?
But at the end of the day they all seemed to spring from a kind of clarity about who she was and what she felt.
Famously apolitical and a woman of faith, she was nevertheless for decades baited into back-pedaling about her support for the LGBTQ+ community. But she never once wavered. “If you’re gay, you’re gay, if you’re straight, you’re straight, and you should be allowed to be how you are and who you are,” she said.
The answer came in various forms, even as recently as 2023 when her home state of Tennessee enacted a series of anti-transgender legislation.
There’s a direct link from here back to what was her favorite of all the songs she wrote, Coat Of Many Colors.
We will always love you, Dolly
Having grown up “dirt poor,” it recounted a story based on the coat her mother had stitched together for her out of colorful rags that she thought was beautiful but that her schoolmates relentlessly laughed at and shamed her for.
She wasn’t ashamed. Instead she set the story to music for public consumption and spent her life determined to never shame anyone the way people tried to shame her.
Tim Curry starred in numerous plays and films and become a different kind of international, yet enduring, icon, for one particular performance in one very specific film and stage musical, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Now that’s a reveal!
The 1975 cult classic has become the longest running movie of all time, still playing in several hundred theatres internationally in mostly late-night shows. It centers on a brilliant, pansexual, transvestite mad scientist doctor from the planet Transsexual who is unabashedly sexually liberated and honest about it to anyone who happens to cross his path. This includes a very square, unsuspecting couple from the Midwest who wander into his castle one rainy night.
The sight of Mr. Curry sauntering off an elevator in his platform shoes, swathed in a cape, then picking his spot and revealing himself in full corset, jewelry and fishnet stockings that compliment his overly theatrical makeup, is still a sight to behold.
But you can only imagine what it was like at movie theatres in 1975, and on the stages of London, LA and NYC two years before that.
Iconic
Nothing prepared you for how honest and unashamed the actor was in the skin of Dr. Frank-N-Furter and how he fully he brought the reality of the lyric, “don’t dream it, be it,” to the screen.
Dolly spent a lifetime both on and off the stage doing this in a variety of ways. And in one performance as one particular character Mr. Curry inspired authenticity in multiple generations (Note: And counting) of young people.
But I can tell you that as a not-yet “out” gay person in the late 1970s, Mr. Curry and his brood were part of the inspiration for unabashed self-acceptance. Not only for what they were showing us onstage but how their campy, fun-loving approach to performance and love was affecting those of us in the audience.
I mean, if they could have sex with either sex (Note: And anyone in-between) and dress as all or part of any sex – and then inspire so many of their peers to do so – the least we could do was be honest with ourselves.
Is it any wonder that I went on to see Rocky about a dozen times at midnight shows in five different American cities by the time I turned thirty? And never got tired of it?
Sunset Blvd, 1980
Notoriously private, Mr. Curry never publicly came out as gay or pansexual, though he did drop a few clues along the way. That is his prerogative.
Still, the real truth about the themes of Rocky Horror are not to be found with him or anyone else in the cast.
Rather, they abound in the revealing and riveting documentary focusing on both the project and its writer-composer-co-star, Richard O’Brien. It’s called Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror” (2025) and is available on Amazon.
Streaming now
Directed by Mr. O’Brien’s son, Linus O’Brien, it unlocks key truths about the Rocky phenomenon that I never knew or had even considered.
And that is: Mr. O’Brien, a tall, gaunt, balding and now bald performer conceived the piece not only because of his love for B science fiction movies.
But because he had spent his entire life battling that feeling that he was both part female and male.
Speaking honestly and emotionally, the father of three children and the husband in three heterosexual marriages, says he considers himself 30% female and 70% male, and sees gender on a degree scale for most people rather than being set in stone at one end or another.
Still serving
When all these years later his own son points out to him how much of what his father considered just a “fun” project helped change the lives of so many young people and continues to do so to this day, we watch his father try to suppress tears in his eyes as he becomes in his own words, “unusually” emotional.
It’s a real sight to behold. And evidence of another enduring observation.
You can never know how beneficial and liberating it can be to live in your truth.
Both to yourself, and for the world.
Tim Curry – “Don’t Dream it, Be it”
Dolly Parton – “Stairway to Heaven”
P.S. – I saw Dolly Parton in concert in the early 1980s when she was on tour with her big crossover record, “Here You Come Again.” She was so delightful and accomplished that I had no existential thoughts for many weeks after.
P.P.S. – I saw Tim Curry enter a dark screening room in the mid 1980’s yet somehow I knew it was him. But I have seen Dr. Frank-N-Further, the guy/gal he first embodied, everywhere, and in every year of every decade since.
notes from a chair 