Goodbye Dolly

     Everyone had a reasonable expectation that she would live forever.

     But country music icon Dolly Parton passed away today at the age of 80. 

     Dolly was just about the perfect celebrity. With her effortless charm and wit, she'd captivated audiences for seven decades and never made an enemy. And she succeeded in everything she attempted. She sold countless tens of millions of records, was a movie star, a successful businesswoman, bestselling author (she wrote a thriller with James Patterson) and remained happily married to the same man for nearly six decades. She wrote hundreds of songs that resonated with millions. "Jolene". "Coat of Many Colors". The discography goes on and on.

     She once dashed off a song and sang it on the Tonight Show, giving Johnny Carson credit for launching her career into the stratosphere.

     She famously refused to get into politics or even to express her political opinions. But in a rare example of making her feelings known, when the Tennessee legislature was hashing out a bill that would've banned drag shows, she publicly supported drag performers and the LGBTQ community in general.

     Dolly never wore her political stripes on her sequined and rhinestoned sleeves. But when Donald Trump tried to give her the Presidential Medal of Freedom not once but twice, she refused both times. Still, even though he famously holds grudges and never forgets a slight, Trump had ordered that all flags be flown at half mast for a week in Dolly's honor.

     But out of all of Dolly's many accomplishments, including the 10 Grammies and the Dollywood theme park, the thing she did that I admire the most was her Imagination Library donating over 300,000,000 books to needy children. That alone makes Dolly Parton perhaps the one human being who'd done more for child literacy than anyone else.

     Dolly achieved the nearly impossible- she straddled the Great Ideological Divide and united people across the entire political spectrum. With a seemingly effortless grace and good cheer, she made fans of even people who didn't listen to country and western.

     For the next few hours, or maybe even a day, we will all be united in mourning Dolly Parton.