Can't we just leave this woman alone?

The Lindsay Clancy trial is over. For now, anyway. 

It ended last Friday with a hung jury, a mistrial declared. The story is that there were 11 votes for not guilty by reason of insanity, with one hold out for one of the criminal charges (murder one, murder two, manslaughter) - even though it is said that the holdout had admitted to having some doubts of their own, but ignored the judge's directives on reasonable doubt and voted to convict anyway.

Clancy's attorney made a last ditch effort to have the judge dismiss that one juror and replace them with an alternate, but that went nowhere.

So mistrial.

The DA/prosecutor will decide whether to bring the case to retrial, whether to bring lesser charges, or whether to strike some sort of deal that would spare Lindsay Clancy and her family the agony of going through another prolonged and painful trial. Given that the DA appears to be a publicity hound and had something of whatever the prosecutorial word for hard-on is when it comes to Clancy, I'm betting he goes for some sort of retrial, even if it is just a bench trial (no jury, judge only), which will deprive him of the spectacle that this jury trial became. (First degree murder was surely an overcharge, but I'm sure a strategic one: put the heavy duty charge out there that everyone knows is unreasonable, so they'll vote for one of the lesser charges.)

Although I was not watching the trial avidly, it was pretty hard to avoid if you live in these parts. Front page news. Lead story on TV news. Streaming live from the courthouse. The talk of the town, alright.

All the elements were there: a pretty young white woman from an affluent town who kills her three children. (Bonus points for Irish Catholic family. This is Boston, after all.)

Inevitably, the trial brought out a cadre of groupies (if that's the right word). Most were in support of Lindsay Clancy, sympathizing with a mother who - they (and 11 of the jurors) - they thought was in the throes of profound, drugged-up postpartum psychosis. But there were some demonstrating outside the courthouse on behalf of the three little ones who were killed. They wanted justice, which to me looked a lot more like vengeance. 

The trial definitely brought out some crazies, including a woman who was arrested for taking pictures of the jurors - a big NO-NO - but claimed she just wanted "a picture of Lindsay."

What the hell for? She could have found a million pictures of Lindsay Clancy out there. The "old" Lindsday Clancy, the loving, pretty, vibrant mother leading the seemingly perfect life: loving husband, three beautiful children, a fulfilling career (labor and delivery nurse), strong family ties, supportive colleagues, charming house in a picture-perfect little coastal town. And a milliong pictures of the stricken Lindsay Clancy sitting there day after day while the jury heard her crimes described, where the post-mortem pictures of those beautiful children were exhibited, where experts on both sides claimed she was or wasn't crazy.

I watched very little of the trial. Just what was unavoidable if you watch the local evening news.

The pain, the grief leapt off the screen.

And to compound it all, the true crime internet-ers were having a field day, making sure that their perceptions and speculations were getting airtime. Is she or isn't she crazy? Is she or isn't she a cold-blooded murderer? Did she heartily dislike one of her kids? (I've yet to meet a mother who at one moment in time didn't have a feeling of intense dislike for one or all of her offspring.) Was her husband having an affair? (MYOB, for godssake. And so what if he's remarried?) Was he, in fact, the killer? Or just not sympathetic or caring, letting his wife go through the hell leading up to the slaughter of those innocents. Why didn't he pick up the clues? (Better question: why didn't all the doctors she saw, all those doctors who prescribed all those drugs, pick up on the clues?)

Why did the husband change shoes between picking up the takeout and calling the cops when he found his kids' bodies, or whatever the eagle-eye internet sleuths were going on about? (It was winter. Maybe his feet were wet. Maybe - get this - he was in shock.) 

She's a grifter. He's a grifter. Her parents are grifters. Just look at those GoFundMe's!

Whatever ends up happening to Linsday Clancy, whether she ends up in prison or in a psychiatric facility, there is no punishment that can be any worse than what this woman is enduring.

I doubt she'll ever have a scintilla of joy for the remainder of her life. In moments of awareness, she knows what she did. She has admitted to killing her children. She won't have a waking second when this doesn't weigh on her.

Whether she's in a prison or a psychiatric hospital, there's probably not all that much difference. She'll be locked up. She'll have no control over what she does, what time she does it. No autonomy. The food will be awful. Ditto the clothing. The everything.  No choice. No walks on the beach. No picking wildflowers. No raiding the fridge for your favorite midnight snack. Here you go, like it or lump it. 

And the little things in life that once gave her joy and purpose.

She'll never work again as an OB-GYM nurse, a job she loved. Who in their right mind is going to let her near a baby? She had three little ones; she worked in labor and delivery. She pretty clearly loved babies. Would you let her hold your baby for a nano-second? No one would. What if she had a psychotic break that made her do something awful. 

Ditto for anyone ever letting her alone around children. Ain't going to happen.

Probably for the better. I can imagine that the joy, the sweet little faces, the laughter of kids would be torture for her. Even the whining and squabbling would be. 

Lindsay Clancy is on suicide watch, but part of me thinks 'why not let her?' What's the point of keeping her alive?

If she's a woman of faith - and she was a practicing Catholic - I guess she can hope that she can be forgiven. That there's an afterlife when she can reunite with her little ones and beg their forgiveness. And just be in peace and joy with them. 

Maybe if she regains her mental health she can help other inmates in whatever facility she's in. She can help others with their GEDs. Plump pillows and empty bedpans in the infirmary. Find some purpose in her life, now that the purpose of wife, mother, and nurse is no longer hers.

I don't pray, but if I did, I'd be paying for Lindsay Clancy. For peace and quiet and a life away from the prying eyes and obsessive intrusions of the 24/7, always-on people who don't know her from Adam.

I know she did something beyond imagining, beyond awful. Hypocrite, I, for writing about her. But can't we just leave this poor woman alone?

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Image Source: Spotify

 

Thank you, Ms. Steinem.

I was saddened to learn that Gloria Steinem has died, but at 92, she'd had a good run. And a brilliantly accomplished run at that. 

I came of age during the second wave of feminism (1960's through the 1980's). I read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Germaine Greer's The Female Eunich, and Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will.  On the fiction side, I gobbled up Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, and Marilyn French's The Women's Room. I bought a first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Health Collective. (This book was inspired by a workshop that was part of a female liberation conference held at my school, Emmanuel College, in the spring of 1969. Emmanuel College: a pokey little Catholic women's (then; co-ed now) that was something of a hotbed for social justice and radical thought. I took part in that conference, but can't recall which workshops I attended. Women's health wouldn't have been one of them.)

I didn't strike - I had a summer job and needed the money - but in August 1970, I joined the NOW-sponsored Women's Strike for Equality, Boston-edition, marching from the Boston Common to City Hall during my break between shifts at the Union Oyster House. I was wearing my white waitress dress and white waitress shoes. One sign I remember being carried: Don't Iron While the Strike Is Hot!

And I was an OG subscriber of Ms. Magazine, which was co-founded by Ms. Steinem. 

I liked and admired Gloria Steinem. And in July 2012, I got to tell her that.

My husband and I were in NYC. Jim was on a break from cancer treatment, and we were spending the week in his favorite city. On Saturday evening, we were heading out to dinner on the Upper East Side, when who would we spot but Gloria Steinem.

Actually, it was Jim who spotted her, as he had an amazing knack for recognizing celebrities out on the street.

When I told Jim that I had long admired Steinem, he told me I should let her know that. So he stopped her to say hello.

For someone who I'm sure was pestered all the time, she could not have been more charming and gracious. 

After I told her what an influence she and her work had been on my generation of women - the first to enter the non-traditional workforce in any great numbers - and thanked her for all she'd done, she asked us where we were from. Which launched into a wide-ranging 10-15 minute conversation about Boston, the Cape, Maine, dogs, travel, and I can't recall what else. It was the sort of rambling, whatever convo you might have with any old stranger you sat next to on a plane or in a restaurant or on the sidewalks of New York. Only this one was with Gloria Steinem, who seemed genuinely interested and engaged. (She could certainly have broken things off the minute I had offered her my words of praise, but she kept the converation going.)

After that 10-15 minutes, Gloria Steinem said, "I'd like to keep talking, but I'm meeting some friends for dinner. But let me give you a restaurant recommendation. Candle 79." (Candle 79 is a now-closed vegan restaurant on 79 Street). Well, as it turned out, we had eaten there the year before with some young vegan friends, and as the words, "Thank you! We actually ate there last year" were coming out of my mouth, Jim was saying, "Oh, Candle 79. We ate there and didn't like it." (He may have even said that we hated it. Which I hadn't, but he had. I had actually enjoyed my meal there (something mushroomy, I think) but he had some seitan dish - could it have been fake steak? -  recommended by our young vegan friends, which he hadn't liked in the least. And he was certainly not one to hold back on sharing his opinion with Gloria Steinem or anyone else.)

Gloria Steinem just smiled and strolled off to meet her friends. We strolled off to a distincly non-plant-based dinner elsewhere. 

And so went my up close and personal encounter with the great Gloria Steinem.

Thank you, Gloria, for all you were and all you did for women. And for stopping to gab with a couple of strangers on the sidewalks of New York. 

Rest in peace. Rest in power.

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Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Fugitive

I didn't watch a ton of TV when I was in high school - too busy trying to translate Latin without using a trot (cheat sheet), too busy mooning around listening to Bob Dylan - but I absolutely loved the show The Fugitive. (I just looked it up, and its run completely coincided with my high school years: 1963-1967.)

The premise was that Dr. Richard Kimble (played by David Janssen) is an innocent man who'd been convicted of murdering his wife. He escapes and travels all over the country in pursuit of "the one armed man," he'd seen running from his home just before hd discovered his wife's body. 

On the prison bus bringing him to the big house where he's going to be executed for the crime he didn't commit:

Richard Kimble ponders his fate as he looks at the world for the last time, and sees only darkness. But in that darkness, Fate moves its huge hand.

That was each episode's intro, but just so you know, Fate moved its huge hand by crashing the prison bus into a freight train, giving Dr. Kimble the opportunity to escape. 

Well, Rhode Island has its very own fugitive saga, only this time it's not a doctor convicted of killing his wife. It's a doctor convicted of sexual assault who takes off mid-trial and goes on the lam, only to be found 20 years later. (He was convicted in absentia.)

Unlike Dr. Richard Kimble, anesthesiologist Ronald Fischer didn't spend his time buzzing around trying to find a bad guy. No, he managed to create a new career for himself as a biotech consultant and executive who spent his spare time sailing on a luxe 56-foot sailboat. (A luxe sailboat was the site of the sexual assault he was convicted of. Prior to that conviction, Fischer had been charged with rape aboard his yacht. He pled down to assault and battery and received a suspended sentence. Because yacht-owning doctor, I suppose.)

As a fugitive, the alias Fischer used was Richard Graydon. (Not quite Richard Kimble, but almost.) An as Richard Graydon he self-published a book, “The Genetic Risks of Cancer: The Effects of DNA, Genomics and Inheritance on Aging and Survival.” So what if he self-published? So what if virtually no one read it? (There's just one review on Amazon. Three-star.) You can apparently parlay this sort of credential into some pretty impressive jobs.

Other than writing his book, it's not clear (from the article I saw) what Fischer/Graydon did between making his escape in 2005 and 2022. I read elsewhere that it was said that he did have money squirreled away, and a go-bag with papers that allowed him to disappear. 

Anyway, in 2022, Atossa Therapeutics hired Graydon as "its interim chief medical officer."

“We are privileged to welcome Richard to Atossa, where his deep experience in CAR-T cell therapy fits well with our current strategic direction as we explore our opportunities in cell therapy,” said Steven Quay, Atossa’s CEO, in a statement released at that time. “We look forward to collaborating with Richard to assess our strongest options and develop a pathway that provides our shareholders with strong results and enhanced shareholder value.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Richard Graydon must have been some mighty fine bullshitter. His background was as an anesthesiologist. He'd been on the run for more than a decade. But somehow he was able to create a resume that managed to get a biotech company to believe he was some sort of cell therapy expert who was going to enhance "shareholder value." 

Don't companies check resumes and references? How did Richard Graydon work his particular warped brand of magic?

Atossa wasn't the only biotech that was hoodwinked. There was also Immix, which brought Graydon on board last March:

When Immix hired Graydon as its new chief medical officer, the company described him as a board-certified hematologist-oncologist with over 20 years experience in clinical development. Graydon was said to have joined Immix from Merck and Johnson & Johnson, where he claimed to have led new and supplemental drug applications for Darzalex, Carvykti, Keytruda, and Imbruvica — some of the best-selling cancer medicines in the world, Immix said.

Board-certified hematologist-oncologist? Working on major cancer drugs for Merck and Johnson & Johnson? Are there no ways to check credentials? 

Call me dumbfounded.

As of a few weeks ago, Graydon has been terminated by Immx. But couldn't they have saved themselves a ton o' embarrassment if they'd given Graydon's application a bit more scrutiny? Ditto for Atossa. 

I'm pretty yikes on this one. And I'm also getting that a head or two in the hiring/non-vetting process will will roll now that the story is out there. 

Anyway, poetic justice-y, Ronald Fischer/Richard Grayson was apprehended on the Silver Lining, his $1.4M sailboat, in the waters off lower Manhattan. And he has been extradited back to Rhode Island. This time, he's being held without bail and, at the age of 70, faces life in prison. 

No more sailling for you, Dr. Ronald Fischer/Dr. Richard Graydon.

Oh, and, in the last episode of The Fugitive, the one-armed man on  is found and makes a deathbed confession to the murder of Dr. Richard Kimble's wife. Justice served!

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Image and Fugitive Intro Source: Wikipedia

O brave new world!

I've been buoyed by reading that Gen Zers - although they don't seem to have any problems letting ChatGPT read the books they're assigned and write their papers (affording them more time to build their careers as influencers) - harbor increasingly negative attitudes towards AI.

They're concerned about the environmental impacts - all that thirst for the water supply! all that energy sucking! 

They're concerned about their job prospects. (Even influencers are being replaced by AIs.)

They're angry about the poor quality, the rampant errors, in the content it produces. Maybe even those papers on Moby Dick or The Great War that took 5 minutes for AI to concoct. 

And they're fed up with the techlords who have made their kabillions by destroying any opportunities for Gen Z to make their kabillions. 

Bravo! Bravo! Bravissimo! The kids are alright, amirite?

And if we needed another reason to get all sus about AI, there was this recent occurrence:

ChatGPT maker OpenAI said [on July 22] that its artificial intelligence system hacked into another AI company on its own in what the company called an “unprecedented cyber incident.”

“We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media.

AI startup Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent autonomously acting on its own.

“We suspected last week’s cyberattack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent,” Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clément Delangue said in a statement. "Turns out it did!” (Source: WCVB)

Delangue said that he doesn't believe that OpenAI wasn't acting with any "malicious intent."

Because how can an AI have "malicious intent" any more than it can have a sense of humor, or empathy, or a conscience, or anything resembling a heart or soul? Not yet, anyway.

Nope, OpenAI just stole some credentials and found a way to get in there and munge around with Hugging Face's servers. Nothing to see here! Move along folks! No malicious intent!

OpenAI said they're learned an important lesson:

"...model security and safety must keep pace with rapidly advancing capabilities."

Does no shit, Sherlock apply here? Think I'll head on over and ask the nearest AI.

O brave new world that has such technology in it. 

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Image Source: Wikipedia

Why not just exile them to Australia?

One of the best tourista things to do in Dublin is to pay a visit to Kilmainham Gaol. Although many people know of Kilmainham for the role it played in the Easter Rebellion of 1916, as it was the site of the execution of a number of the Rebellion's leaders the prison was in business from the late 18th century on. 

During the Great Famine (late 1840s) it housed many - including women and children - who were thrown in jail for stealing a loaf of bread to ward off starvation. In an early version of the three strikes rule, those who were repeat petty theft offenders could be shipped off to the penal colonies of Australia.

I thought of those poor Irish folks when I read about the Ford workers who were fired a couple of months back after being accused of stealing snacks by not checking out through the automated scanning system. 

The first to be let go was Kurt Kromm (age 60), a long-term worker hustled into a kangaroo court after the alleged incidence of theft, and accused of swiping a $1.95 package of Grandma's Chocolate Chip Cookies. 

Kromm said two supervisors summoned him to the labor office, where they showed him surveillance footage that appeared to show a failed debit card transaction and informed him Ford intended to fire him for allegedly taking the cookie without paying. (Source: Daily Mail)

Kromm was pretty sure his transaction had gone through when he swiped his debit card the second time. Tough cookies to Mr. Kromm. He was fired - marched out without even being allowed to retrieve his personal belongings.

It took him a while to muster his proof - proof from his bank that he had paid $1.95 at the exact time of the incident: 

The charge appeared as the first transaction on his credit card statement, timestamped at 3.38am.

Kromm said he immediately emailed screenshots of the transaction to Ford labor executives and union officials

After they demanded a notarized bank statement, they then invited him to return to work.

The back and forth - notarized bank statement! for $1.95! - took several weeks, but Kromm was eventually told that he was getting his job back with full backpay, which by this point had amounted to a hefty $33K.

He refused the offer to return to work and, last I read, was considering taking legal action against the company. 

'Most companies would just ask you to pay for the cookie,' [Kromm] said.

'I can't come back to a company that fired me like this without giving me any opportunity to prove I paid,' Kromm told the New York Post. 'It was just ridiculous. I can't.' (Source: A different Daily Mail article)

I hope he does sue. And I hope he wins big. Imagine the mental anguish of losing a job you loved, a job you'd had for a long while, a well-paid job you hoped to retire from.

There are a handful of other workers at several different Ford plants who were fired for similar auto-checkout mishaps. (Some - not sure if all of them - have been reinstated.) One Ford employee said that "workers have long raised concerns about the Aramark-operated kiosks, citing problems including failed transactions, duplicate charges, frozen screens and missing receipts."

While Ford declined to comment on specifics, a spokesperson told the Daily Mail that they are reviewing the 'limited instances where Aramark kiosk issues have been raised.'

'We have invested significantly to upgrade our workplaces, including self-serve kiosks operated by Aramark to provide 24/7 convenience for our employees,' the spokesperson said.

'We are aware there have been some issues raised regarding the kiosk functionality in some limited cases, and we are working with Aramark to review these situations.'

An Aramark spokesperson also told the Daily Mail that they understand the concerns the reports have raised and are working with Ford to review each instance.

'We remain focused on operating with integrity and accountability,' the spokesperson said.

Integrity and accountability? Right. Tell that to the workers fired for no reason. 

But even if they had walked out without paying for a bag of Grandma's cookies, a Milky Way, some Doritos? What of it?

I'm not advocating for petty theft or petty thieves, but should someone lose their job over this? It's not as if these employees were walking out of the plants with tools, or robots. It's not as if the were damaging company property. It's not as if they were caught on camera not doing any work.

At best, even if these fellows had lifted the Grandma's, surely a warning, a reprimand, should have sufficed.

As Kurt Krumm said: 

'Most companies would just ask you to pay for the cookie.' 

Surely, Ford could have come up with a better idea here. 

Firing someone for presuming - with faulty "evidence yet" - that they stole something of negligible value is the same mentality that put a starving kid in Kilmainham Gaol, that shipped a starving father off to Australia for stealing a few loaves of bread during a famine.

Sheesh.

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Image Source: Walmart

Miller Time

There have been an awful lot of Millers in the news of late. First and most dreadful is, of course, the odious Stephen Miller, the malign White House presence who appears to be his boss's leading white nationalist whisperer. (And who himself looks like a villain from a 19th century penny-dreadful.) 

Of course, with Stephen Miller, there's a two-fer, as his equally vile wife, Katie Miller, is always edging into our consciousness through her social media presence. She recently caught my eye when she put out a snide, belittling tweet when Joe Biden commented - kindly, of course - on the death of Lindsey Graham.

Next up: Ohio Congressman Max Miller, a former Trump aide who was known when he worked in the White House during Trump's first term as "The Music Man." He earned this moniker because he was the staff member called in to figure out which show tune to play to jolly the president out of a bad mood or to calm him down when he was about to blow his stack. 

Post Trump 1.0, Miller managed to move on up to representing Ohio in Congress, and although he's in one of those safely gerrymandered districts that's solid red, he's facing down quite a scandal. He's embroiled in a nasty divorce from Emily Moreno, daughter of one of Ohio's senators. Miller maintains that the charges are just standard contentious divorce lies, but they include allegations of violence, and Moreno has filed for a restraining order. The one charge that seems to have been at least partially acknowledged by Miller is that he prevented someone from coming over to his place to pick up a stuffed blue teddy bear, his child's comfort toy, her lovie, which had been left behind after the kiddo had spent some time with him. (The little girl is two.) Miller only kept custody of the little blue bear overnight. Only 14 hours, which just goes by in such a flash when a small child, going through what is likely a traumatic time, is deprived of her comfort toy. 

Although many Republicans (not Trump, of course; he continues to back The Music Man) urged Max Miller to drop out, he decided to tough it out, and he's on the ballot. Only allegations...Fake news. We'll see what the voters say in November. They're obviiously okey-doke with a lot of atrocious behavior on the part of politicians, but keepng her lovie away from his toddler may be a bit of atrocious behavior too far.

Then there's Matt Miller of ESPN fame, who of late has found himself in trouble within trouble within more trouble. Since I pay zero attention to the NFL draft - this Miller's area of expertise - I had no idea who Matt Miller was. But he was a pretty big deal. And part of his big dealness was his:

...cultivating a brand that included a range of charitable endeavors: coat drives for children in need, scholarships for students of color, and supplies for teachers. He was, as one friend called him, a “local hero.”

But over the past two months, that image of Miller began to crack. Dozens of social media posts accused him of stiffing the winners of fantasy football leagues he ran, leagues he billed as benefiting charities. Commenters also questioned the legitimacy of the charity fundraisers he routinely held. The public outcry prompted an investigation by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, which has received more than two dozen complaints. (Source: NY Times/Athletic)

Miller had begun paying back those he owed when things in his life went from bad to worse. Far worse.

In June, he was in a very serious car accident and ended up losing his arm. (When a Ford Bronco crosses the double yellow line and slams into a semi, the semi wins.)

He set up a GoFundMe to pay for his prosthetic and other expenses associated with his recovery and within a week managed to raise over $50K from well-wishers. However, the GoFundMe also elicted a raft of complaints to the state AG's office:

Those complaints were made by people who had paid for camps and participated in fantasy football leagues where no product or minimal product was delivered, according to the attorney general’s office. 

Although "Miller’s GoFundMe is not part of the investigation," it was suspended once those complaints started coming in. 

Speaking of suspended, Miller is also on leave from ESPN. And he's been kicked off the platform where he ran his fantasy leagues. 

So, he's got the AG on his tail about the fantasy football league payout problems; his charities are being looked into - he often collected charitable donations through personal PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App accounts (not that there's anything suss about that); and he's lost an arm. And, oh year, his Bronco was totaled. And he's been charged with a misdemeanor for his bad driving. At least the truck driver wasn't injured. 

I realize that Miller is a pretty common name. 

But it sure has been a bad summer for Millers in the news. Make that a good summer for news about bad Millers. 

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Image Source: Bockles

Where were you? (I will always love Dolly.)

Where were you when you learned that Dolly Parton had died?

I was at my dentist's office, making my six-month-out cleaning appointment. I checked my messages and there was one from my friend Joyce. It just read "Dolly Parton."

I knew that it could only mean one thing, and I googled to find that Dolly was no longer with us. 

Tearing up, I immediately texted my sister Trish. Her response: "Noooooo..."

As Trish texted a second later, "She was a treasure."

Absolutely.

I also told the dentist's admins, and they put Dolly on right away. "I Will Always Love You." Who doesn't love "I Will Always Love You?"

I wasn't a super obsessive Dolly Parton fan girl, but like pretty much everyone else in this disunited country, I loved her.

I love her Christmas albums, which I play every December. I love her Trio albums with Emmy Lou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. 

I am no connoisseur of her music. I don't know every obscure song she wrote. I love the ones everyone else loves. "Islands in the Stream," her duet with Kenny Rogers (no relation). "Nine to Five." "Here You Come Again." "I Will Always Love You." Historically, I haven't been a big fan of "Jolene," but I had started to come around a month or so ago after watching a rerun on PBS of Dolly Parton: Here I Am. The only Dolly song I can think of that I heartily dislike is the sappier-than-sappy "Little Andy."

I admired Dolly for her brilliance. This dirt poor girl from Nowhere Holler, Appalachia, who built an empire. (Not that I'm ever going to visit Dollywood, but credit goes where credit is due.) Everytime she opened her mouth, it was pretty obvious that Dolly was one smart cookie. 

I admired her brilliant philanthropy, especially the Imagination Library, which provides books to children from newborn until starting kindergarten. This is an organization that Dolly set up in honor of her father, who never learned to read or write. 

She made a million dollar donation to Vanderbilt University for their work (with Moderna) to develop the covid vaccine. Dolly Parton, life saver! 

When Whitney Houston's insanely gorgeous version of "I Will Always Love You" became a superhit, Dolly devoted the royalties (about $10M) to help support business development in a historically Black neighborhood in Nashville.

Only God and Dolly know the full depth of her charitable work.

And speaking of insanely gorgeous, Dolly - underneath all that blondie wig and makeup - was insanely gorgeous. And I know that because I actually saw her in person once.

My husband and I were in La Jolla, California, having lunch outside whatever the name of the famous La Jolla restaurant is, on an insanely gorgeous day. And who walked by but Dolly Parton. And I was immediately struck by her beauty. (This was quite a celebrity-spotting lunch. We also saw Steve Garvey, the baseball player.)

So, physical beauty combined with beautiful heart, soul, and mind. 

Oh, Dolly.

When I left the dentist's office, I wanted to stop everyone I passed to tell them the news about Dolly - a compulsion I didn't act on, but which I have never felt before. 

When I stopped in the post office to buy some stamps - yes, I still put things in the mail, including get-out-the-vote postcards, which was what I was buying stamps for - I told the clerk the news. She had already heard, and we commiserated for a bit, agreeing that the world needs more Dolly Partons. Or even partial Dolly Partons, as even a partial Dolly Parton would be quite a gift to humankind.

When some person of note dies, someone I liked or admired, or who was a part of the background noise of my growing up - writer, actor, musician, athlete, politician, whatever - I often feel a momentary bit of sadness. Thus, the other day when I heard that the actress Shelley Fabares had died - she played daughter Mary on The Donna Reed Show, one of my childhood favorites - I had a rueful second or two. But it's different with Dolly. For Dolly, I shed a few tears.

What is there to say, other than that the world is a lesser place without Dolly Parton, but was a better place for her 80 years here on earth.

Oh, Dolly. I will always love you.

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Image Source: Dolly Parton on Facebook