I know I am a bit late to the wake but I am so sad that the world has lost Dolly Parton.
And I was so furious when I read that the US President had ordered flags to fly at half mast for a week in her honour.
Not because I don’t think Dolly deserves to be honoured, but because it shows zero understanding of what really mattered to her.
Flags flying at half mast was not it.
How about investing in universal health care or education or minorities or something to actually help others rather than some empty, attention-seeking gesture?
Dolly’s passing hit me weirdly hard. I cried over a few tributes to her yesterday. What an amazing woman.
She grew up with her 11 siblings in a one-bedroom shack in the Great Smoky Mountains. The family had no electricity, heating or running water, and very little money. Her dad couldn’t read or write and laboured for a living.
“I thought if Daddy had an education there was no telling what he could have been,” she wrote in her 2020 memoir.
When fame brought her wealth she was determined to make a difference.
Her Buddy Program in the 1990s promised every 7th-grade and 8th-grade student $500 if they graduated from high school. The dropout rate among students quickly fell from 35% to 6%.
Everyone who works at her theme park Dollywood is eligible to have 100% of their college tuition paid.
She also launched the Imagination Library, which has donated more than 300 million children’s books worldwide to families who can’t afford them.
She donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to help fund research that ultimately contributed to the development of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.
She donated millions to children’s hospitals and medical research.
She supported flood and hurricane victims.
And that’s not even a fraction of her generosity.
Her personal emblem was the butterfly because she loved chasing them as a child, plus she said the gentle creatures “don’t sting, they don’t bite and they’re beautiful”.
She even opened a special facility at Dollywood in 2023 so monarch butterflies could migrate safely.
She was everything that Trumpty Dumpty is not. His tribute irks me deeply.
Dolly’s kindness reminds me that there is still good in a world where it often feels like evil is triumphing.
Vale Dolly. You were the best of us.
Song of the day: Dolly Parton “Love is like a butterfly”
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