Dolly Parton, 1946-2026 😢🙏

Well, speaking of feelings of nostalgia, I, along with the entire civilized and uncivilized world, was able to take a nap today and woke up to the really horrible, awful news that Dolly Parton had passed at age 80.

And I can't claim to have any deep insight into her, but what an amazing person Dolly Parton was.

I can remember as a very young person thinking that she was, um, a country and western singer.

And that was, for a time, kind of the designation of Dolly Parton because she did have a country style to her music.

And she sang a lot of songs that fit very comfortably within that genre.

And certainly, as a much younger person, she had a look and a presentation like many of the great old stars of, for example, the Grand Ole Opry.

Dolly Parton was so much more than just a great musician.

She seems to have been a wonderful, remarkable human being.

And you look no further than the number of Grammy nominations.

She was nominated for fifty-five Grammys in her career, and she ended up winning eleven.

She was nominated for two Oscars and, um, was given an honorary Oscar for her humanitarian work, I think it was the Jean Hersholt Award, in 2025.

But she was nominated most famously for Nine to Five, the movie, certainly the most famous movie most people would agree.

Although there's a lot of young people or people under 50 that'll say Steel Magnolias.

But, um, Nine to Five, she was nominated but did not win.

That was the year of Fame.

And I still think that Nine to Five should have got the nod there, but I understand why Fame ended up taking the, uh, Best Song.

But she did an Oscar-nominated song, and I didn't know this.

I'm sorry.

I should be up on these things.

I did not know this until-- was reading one of the, I can't believe I'm saying the word obituaries, but was reading an obituary, an, uh, obituary, and it mentioned her Oscar nominations, and she was nominated for a song I have never heard of called Traveling Through for a movie.

I remember when it came out, there was some controversy.

There was some Oscar buzz for Felicity Huffman.

I don't know if she got nominated.

Uh, but it's a movie called Trans America, and, you know, you gotta say it was controversial then, and it would be controversial now about a trans parent, um, going on an unlikely road trip, uh, with their son.

[lips smack] And you can judge Dolly Parton for having anything to do with a film like that, or you can say that it just seems to fulfill what her life's goals were, what her process was, that she was the sort of person who would always reach out a helping hand or try to maybe understand more than what was just on the surface and get to know people.