Tressie McMillan Cottom

Dolly Parton was born into a culture that was incredibly rich in music.

Black churches, as Professor Cotton says, are like a conservatory of music.

And you can't disconnect that individual spirit and gift and talent from the soup, or as we kind of called it last week, the exposome, in which music they were born.

And usually we use the word exposome kind of negatively, like what toxic chemicals are you around or what level of poverty or lack of safety are you around? But in this case, I'm using it as what were you exposed to? And one of the things she says that really landed was one of the things we're mourning right now is that there is kind of a collective feeling that the system that we're in right now, The current iteration of it, what we've built and how it exists today, isn't built to support a Dolly Parton or a Prince.

We grieve what's important to us.

If you are grieving Dolly Parton right now, let your grief tell you what it is you're grieving.

If what Professor Cotton was saying, I'm never going to say it like a normal human.

If what Professor Cotton, I think I did it.

She gave half of it away in her lifetime.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is a progressive black female college professor who I very often disagree with.

I want to read this from her because I thought this was very, very moving.

To understand Dolly, you have to read her as a writer.

But Dolly has, you know, hopefully helped a lot of children.

So one take that I that really resonated with me that's like a little bit more sad that I thought was really interesting is writer Tressie McMillan Cottom, who she writes for The New York Times.

I love her.

Yeah, she's great.