The music world lost another great this year. Jazz singer-songwriter Cassandra Wilson died at age 70.
I’m not big on jazz—unless
you’re talking Miles Davis or John Coltrane. But I am big on amazing female voices, and Wilson
certainly had that. She commanded whatever she sang. Actually, she reminds me a
bit of Eva Cassidy, Nina Simone and Norah Jones.
Hear for yourself. Here she is covering Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time”.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Do you need some clips of bees in late-August action?
Well, I do, so here we go.
©2026 Bas Bleu
We had kind of a wet beginning to August. So there were crops of mushrooms around the ‘hood.
I followed the lifecycle of
one of them.
©2026 Bas Bleu
It’s occurred to me that Dolly Parton and JD Vance represent the spectrum of what comes from Appalachia. So—a couple of thoughts.
I mean—it’s interesting that
they both came from families in grinding poverty; Dolly in Tennessee and Shady
in Ohio and maybe Kentucky. (I frankly can’t be arsed to research. His parents
were in Ohio, but he spent time with his grandparents in Kentucky, I think.) Hers
was a loving, happy family, while his appears to have been dysfunctional.
Something about drugs, I dunno. Maybe that accounts for the contrast in
strength of character?
Because Dolly’s life of grace,
generosity, acceptance and joy was built on a core of integrity, honesty and an
abiding sense of fairness, while Vance is a grifting, lying, shapeshifting
opportunist, eager to latch on to anyone and any ideology that he thinks will
advance his personal goals. (Which I think revolve around acquiring wealth and
power.)
They both made their
Appalachian heritage focal points of their careers. Dolly captured universal truths
couched in images of the mountains in the more than 3000 songs she wrote in her
lifetime. She never exploited her subjects in the process, though. Couch Boy shat
on the people he grew up with in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, to both
make a buck and declare his superiority.
Shall we speak of charity? Compare
the millions that Dolly’s contributed to her community and the world—seeing a
need and stepping up to meet it, from early childhood literacy to medical
research—with…uh…yeah, I got nothin’. His charity is mostly self-directed,
which is truly on brand.
As for faith, Dolly lived hers
in her actions with consistency and humility. JD journeyed from evangelicalism
to atheism to a form of Catholicism that somehow gives him the unmitigated gall
to instruct the Pope on theology. His new opus, delving into his spiritual path is more of the same Elegy performative exceptionalism, for which he has used his office as the vice president to promote sales. The cover of the book features a very picturesque country church; a Methodist church, into which he has never set foot. Also, I believe, like the grandees of the 17th
Century, Mr. Late-life Convert prefers to have Mass said in a private setting
in his official quarters, rather than mix with the plebs in the local parish. (Okay—TBF,
the folks at Saint Thomas the Apostle lucked out in this regard.)
Someone whose blog I support last
week said he was going to church to pray for the repose of Dolly’s soul. I
thought, well, okaybut—I cannot imagine anyone leaving this life with any more
certainty of the welcome she’ll receive in the next than Dolly Parton. By any
measure, her soul is guaranteed to rest easy.
JD? Yeah, not so much.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Yes, of course—my gratitude for today (and the year) is for the life of Dolly Parton. The singer-songwriter-actress-philanthropist-entrepreneur-humanitarian died last week at age 80, but her legacy—no, legacies—of love, generosity, acceptance, joy, fairness and (of course) music are going to live for the ages.
I titled this post “Cup of
ambition” (from her hit “9 to 5”) because Dolly was supremely ambitious. She left
her home and family the day after she graduated from high school, taking the
bus to Nashville because she was determined to turn her musical talent into a
successful career. IMO she was definitely not running away—hers was a
loving and happy family, albeit abjectly poor—but running to something: stardom. She knew she
had it in her at age 17.
Four years later, she joined country
star Porter Wagoner’s television show, where that quality became evident to
everyone who saw her, even the people who resented her replacing a beloved
fixture of the show. She stayed through her five year contract with Wagoner, and
two years beyond; then left to go out on her own.
Wagoner, who’d come to resent the
attention Dolly was getting nonetheless sued her (in 1979) for breach of
contract, demanding $3M and 15% of royalties from the songs she wrote and
performed. Eventually Dolly settled for $1M, which took her years to pay off.
But she never said anything negative about Wagoner.
And no one ever got a
percentage of her royalties. When Elvis Presley inquired about recording “I
Will Always Love You” he demanded 50% of the publishing rights (as was his
custom). Dolly said no—in the nicest possible way. It was a difficult decision,
because: Elvis. But that cup of ambition came with very clear ideas about
boundaries, acknowledgement and fiscal canniness.
It also came with a firm sense
of self. Early on, she developed the persona of the big-haired blonde who put
her makeup on with a trowel, could make music with her acrylic nails and let
her chest precede her into any room. She liked that image, so she kept it her
entire life. Anyone who tried to take her down discovered that she was way
ahead of them with the jokes. One of my favorite lines was “It costs a lot of
money to look this cheap.”
She may have looked cheap, but
she was all class.
Along with accepting herself,
she took others as they came. Race, religion, country of origin, sexual
orientation, gender, level of education—we’re all God’s children, she said. If
God was happy with his creation, she wasn’t the person to quibble. She particularly
enjoyed drag queens, many of whom model themselves after her; she sent gifts of
support to at least one of them who ran afoul of Texas law.
Speaking of which—it was kind
of divinely ironic that on the day of Dolly’s death, 25 August, a federal judge
in Texas struck down a 2023 law banning “sexually oriented performances”. In
his ruling, U.S. District Judge David Hittner cited Dolly’s exuberant persona
and told the pearl clutchers that if they were offended by this kind of thing, “just
don’t go.”
Dolly’s career was enormously
successful. Her financial assets were estimated in the hundreds of millions. And
she used that money to do so much good. She built Dollywood, a theme park in Pigeon
Forge, Tenn., the largest employer in that county. All employees—full-time and
part—are eligible for full tuition at Tennessee universities and receive health
insurance, paid time off and child care.
When Whitney Houston’s cover
of “I Will Always Love You” rebooted millions in royalties, Dolly invested that
money in a Black neighborhood in Nashville, turning a down-at-the-heels area
into her recording studio and kick-starting further investment.
Her friendship with a medical
researcher at Vanderbilt University led to her contributing $1M for research
into the mRNA vaccine that was developed by Moderna into the Covid vaccine
received by tens of millions of people around the world during the pandemic.
She also had a video made of her receiving the vaccine early on, encouraging
people to do the same by repurposing her early hit “Jolene”.
More than 30 years ago, she
started Imagination Library, a program that sent a book a month, from birth to
entry into kindergarten, to children in Sevier County, Tenn. Eventually, she expanded
the program to all of Tennessee, then the US, and now Canada, Britain and
Australia. For blind children, the books are in Braille.
Imagination Library does rely
on partnerships with government, and Republicans in Indiana and Missouri
recently cut a combined $10 in funds to the program, even as they all tweeted
their condolences at her death. That is, after all, how they roll.
Which reminds me: I was
expecting something typically crass and self-aggrandizing from the Kleptocrat.
(Remember how he responded to Aretha Franklin’s death? “She used to work for
me.”) I was surprised at the measured reaction, although I didn’t rule out the
probability that someone whomped him with a stun gun and prized the phone from
La Harp’s claws to send that tweet. And, of course, a couple of days later he
tweeted out an AI slop image of Dolly and him at the White House. I’m not
linking to it, but it shows him with his tiny hands in his coat pockets and
Dolly reaching through to hold his arm, as though 1)she’d ever be seen in his
company; or 2)she’d be the supplicant. Asshole.
(Not that Dolly would ever
call him that. She was pretty scrupulous in her non-partisanship. She just did
what was right and kept moving.)
Dolly showed us that a fundamentalist can live the spirit of Christ, and that you can be highly ambitious without also being a prick.
As you can tell—I’ve been
letting the spirit of Dolly Parton infuse my thoughts this past week. She set
such an example of strength, focus, happiness and welcoming; it makes me smile
even as I type these words. That woman was born with a joyful heart and she was
a goddamn national treasure.
I’ll leave you with a clip
from Designing Women, the late-20th Century sitcom set in an
interior design company in Atlanta. Charlene, about to give birth to her first
child, is overjoyed to find that Dolly Parton has entered her dream. Dolly
insists that she's not an angel, but spoiler alert: later in the episode, she
returns as an angel to escort an elderly Black woman, played by Bea Richards,
to heaven.
Well, we knew she was an angel
all along, didn’t we?
©2026 Bas Bleu
Back in the late 80s, my life pretty much imploded. No need to go into details, but at the time a friend gave me some advice. “[Bas Bleu], you don’t have a job, you don’t have a place to live, but you do have a nice car. Why don’t you go somewhere?”
So I packed up my gold Celica
and hit the road—I-40 and then I-10, to be precise. I had 10 cassette tapes,
and one of them was Trio, the collaboration between Dolly Parton, Linda
Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. I have no recollection of the other nine, but I
about played (and sang) Trio to death on that trip (which eventually brought me
back to California, but only for another year before I moved East).
I’ve got plenty to say about
Dolly Parton, who died this week at age 80, but while I’m still collecting my thoughts, here’s “Wildflowers”,
from the album, which Parton wrote and which she said is about her own journey
as she left Sevier County, Tenn., and went out into the world.
Which she undeniably conquered with love, generosity and joy.
©2026 Bas Bleu
This guy seems to have chosen a patch along the W&OD Trail for his morning meditation. He’s not there every day, but does appear with some frequency.
The thing is—August in the
People’s Republic is ghastly: hot and humid, even in the mornings. Also, this
year the gnats have absolutely taken over this part of the W&OD. I often
see him using his towel to swat them away, which must interfere with the
meditative experience.
However—full props for the
practice.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Saw this collation alongside the road Monday morning:
It was gone yesterday.
Either person or persons
unknown found them of sufficient value to take them all or the original owner
just finally chucked everything in the bin.
©2026 Bas Bleu
I was in a local Lotte store recently, looking for turmeric tea. And I came across this:
I looked it up. According to
Forbes Health, it’s used for precisely what you’d think it’s for. Although
evidence supporting its efficacy is weak.
I don’t want to think about what it
tastes like.
©2026 Bas Bleu
A friend of mine organizes a novena to Saint Bartholomew via Facebook each August. I’m glad to be included, because for nine days, I have to carve out—oh—five to 15 minutes to say the prayers, examine the art works accompanying the posts and contemplate the significance of that day’s devotion.
Yeah, some days, even five
minutes is monumental, as you get wound up in this and that. But I do my best,
even if I end up doubling up some days.
(For those unfamiliar with the
novena, it’s a ritual of intercessory prayers across nine days, typically
culminating on the day a particular saint is recognized in the liturgical
calendar. It can be performed alone, or in the company of others. There’s an
introduction, a novena prayer constant to all nine days and a prayer specific
to each day. Then there are concluding prayers.)
Every year a phrase of the
Saint Bart novena catches me up: “May [the saint’s] prayers obtain for us every
grace and blessing we need in our lives, and we thank you for the graces you
have already granted us through his intercession, especially those
which have come unasked and unlooked for.” [Emphasis mine.]
Graces and blessings that
come unasked and unlooked for. Huh.
How many of these surround us,
filling our lives with joy and comfort? Graces and blessings we didn’t think to
ask for, which surprise us every day in ways large and small? What would our
lives be like without them? An unexpected call from a friend, watching a puppy
squirm and wriggle in a pile of leaves, the first sip of a perfect latte,
arriving safely home through urban traffic—I typically don’t think to ask for
these things, and while I do try to acknowledge them when I encounter them, I
don’t think I could be said to look for them.
I wonder how many of them have
slipped past me in my worrisome fugue every day?
Every year this prayer reminds
me that I am in fact engulfed by graces and blessings, whether I’ve asked for
them or even notice them. Every year I’m stopped cold by this reminder.
But this year I was also
struck by a phrase from the prayer for day nine, Saint Bartholomew’s Day (which
is today, as it happens): “O Glorious Saint Bartholomew, when you met Jesus you
recognized him as the Son of God and the King of Israel. Pray for us that we
may always recognize Jesus when we meet him.” [Emphasis mine.]
Well.
Um.
Now—this is only my
interpretation, mind, and YMMV—but, I’m thinking that the Jesus we might meet
these days could appear in, well, any form, really. If we limit ourselves to
just humans, given how he manifested the last time—an itinerant Jew who relied on
the kindness of strangers to provide him with food and shelter and did not
build mega-churches, get around Galilee on the biblical equivalent of limos and
private jets or exchange blessings for credit card details—it seems logical to
me that 2026—Jesus might look dark-skinned as well as light; could shine
through a woman’s face; may perhaps be found in a refugee camp seeking children
forcibly pulled away from parents; might have been hauled out of a car on the
city streets by ICE agents; possibly suffers from a pre-existing medical
condition.
In short—we can’t rely upon
the Almighty to publicize the arrival of Jesus (or even on Saint B to give us
guidance in this), so we ought to be on the lookout for him or her or
non-binary them…well, everywhere, really. In the supermarket, on Metro, at work
(although—and this is just me being me—probably not in the boardroom or the
executive suite; I could be wrong), in school, along the bike lane, out in the
woods. We should be alert and receptive to him/her/them and maybe not get
pissed off when they’re in the express lane with more than 15 items, or
panhandling at an intersection, or wearing shabby clothes or don’t seem to be
able to control their kids—which I recognize is not necessarily easy. At least,
it isn’t for me.
However, by looking for Jesus
everywhere, by seeking out the good and the godly and inviting these graces and
blessings into our lives, I believe we can become a conduit for them to those
around us; we can help bring them—unasked and unlooked for—to those around us. Idea: we could be the grace.
And this is my grace—my
gratitude—for today.
©2026 Bas Bleu
