My Weekend Crush

We have, at best, a handful of universally beloved living celebrities. Your Tom Hanks. Your The Rocks. Your Betty Whites. And, of course, your Dolly Parton. I mean, who doesn’t love Dolly Parton? Her music. Her feistiness. Her advocacy. Her philanthropy. Her everything makes her a true American original and one of the, again, handful of country artists I adore and could listen to on repeat forever.

And, even if her distinct twang and even more distinct vibrato aren’t your cup of moonshine, you’ve got to admire her charitable work. Like, for instance, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The free program mails a book once a month to any child who asks from the day they are born until they turn 5 years old. Started in 1995, the charity flew under the media radar until the Library of Congress celebrated her giving away the program’s 100th million book two years ago. Yes, 100 million books given away for free by Dolly Parton. It is now one of the largest literacy programs in the world.



There’s also how she has responded to the global pandemic, by donating $1 million to coronavirus research at her home state's Vanderbilt University. How many billionaires are in Trump’s cabinet and how much have they donated? Yeah, thought so. But she’s not just putting money behind the fight of COVID-19, she’s also putting her heart into it. Last month she started reading bedtime stories to all of us once a week. Yes, you can have Dolly Parton read you to sleep. What an empathetic way to reach out to each other during this frightening, crazy, stressful and unprecedented time. “The Little Engine That Could” was her inaugural read which is pretty perfect, given everything.



And, if all that wasn’t enough, it was recently revealed that Dolly Parton’s production company Sandollar Entertainment was an executive producer on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Yes, you read that right. Dolly the Vampire Slayer! She is an uncredited producer, and was co-creator and owner of the production company that was involved both with the movie (meh) and the series (yay). So Dolly is a member of the Buffyverse. Like, hello, mind blown.

So, yeah, Dolly Parton. A great musician, a great entertainer, a great celebrity, a great philanthropist, and in generally just a great human being. The world could use a lot more like her. Happy safe and healthy weekend, all.

P.s. Please enjoy Dolly being Dolly singing “Here You Come Again” above, which is low-key my favorite song of her enormously impressive catalogue.