Who
doesn’t love Dolly Parton? The poor
little girl from Pidgeon Forge
with big dreams and a coat of many colors. The country
music legend who warbled with Porter Wagoner. Penned hundreds of songs that were hits for
her and many others who celebrated 50 years on the Grand Ol’ Opry this year. Big hair, big smile, big boobs and cheerfully
honest about it—“It takes a lot of money to look this trashy.” A bigger
more generous heart than anyone
could imagine. A loyal
wife and a successful business person
who met and conquered the world on
her own terms leaving nary and embittered enemy.
That
generosity of spirit extended to her
family, shirt tail relatives, friends,
and neighbors. She began giving books to school
children in her home town and
ended up endowing a program that has provided more than 100
million books sent monthly directly to
children from toddlerhood to kindergarten around the country and the
world to get them excited about reading.
And this year her $1 million gift to Coronavirus research was partly
used to fund Moderna’s promising
Covid-19 vaccine.
Like
I said, what’s not to love!
Dolly
really loves Christmas. This year she
released her fourth or fifth—who’s counting—holiday album which mixes new
material with old chestnuts. She is showing up on late night talk shows, day-time
women’s gab fests, and at the virtual
Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and the Rockefeller
Center Christmas Tree Lighting program this Wednesday on NBC.
Our
Murfin Winter Holiday Music Festival selection
today from the album, A Holly Dolly Christmas is one of
her new songs features her duet with
her real-life Goddaughter Miley Cyrus. Most of the Nashville Country Music establishment turned viciously on the
former Hannah Montana star when
she rebelliously shed her good-girl image embracing tattoos, twerking, flashing her
boobs, licking a wrecking ball, and generally flipping off prudes and fuddy-duddies.
Dolly
never wavered in her love and support for Miley. The girl from a mountain Baptist upbringing has become a shining example of what Unitarian
Universalists call the inherent worth
and dignity of every person and justice,
equity, and compassion in human
relations. That has been shown in
her embrace of feminism—she wrote
the anthem 9 to 5, the Civil Rights movement, support for the LGBTQ community and marriage equality, and this year vocal support for the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd.
Miley
outgrew the rougher edges of her rebellion but like Dolly stakes out her own personhood
regardless of criticism.
Together Dolly and Miley are a seamless duo on What Christmas Is.
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