fashion of the early 1980s

 

        A video about then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1983.  That's the year when they took their first trip to Australia.  They had been married for two years, and had their first child, Prince William - they brought him with them on the trip.

Diana's dresses:  pie-crust collars abounded!

I wanted to wear dresses like that!

        At the age I was, then, I kind of wanted to wear - everything.  Dreaming, and yearning, and wanting.  Wanting everything (well, not really, but you think  you do)....

        ---------------- Making an exception, perhaps, for the hats.  It's a British Royal Family tradition - ladies wearing hats.

-30-

in a subterranean chamber

 One of the people on that Kennedy Library panel discussing Jackie Kennedy's "literary life" is Greg Lawrence, author of Jackie As Editor, copyright 2011, Thomas Dunne Books - St. Martin's Press.

------------------------ [excerpt] ------------ {the narrator here is Eugene Kennedy (no relation to the Massachusetts Kennedys); he's a Catholic priest from Chicago who worked with Jackie on a book about Mayor Daley} -------------------- "I was her escort at the Democratic Convention in 1976. ... She had talked to me in advance about going with her and whatnot, and it was quite an experience.  

I was traveling with Mike Royko and a group from the Chicago papers.  What occurred that night, first, of course, we came into the hall, and it was mayhem as soon as she entered.  

        She was extremely calm, and I walked with her, and I didn't have my collar on or anything like that, and I went to these seats that had been reserved for her.  And her sister was there.  And then all these people came streaming over to say hello to her - the actor Lorne Greene and the Carter family came down.  Everybody wanted to be seen with her.  It was highly amusing, in a way, because you could see why she did want to walk fast....

"Here we were at the heart of the Democratic Convention, and she had asked to meet Daley, who was a delegate.  We talked to the guy that was the chairman of the party then, Robert Strauss, from Texas.  So he set up this meeting, in a lower level of Madison Square Garden, in some subterranean chamber.  

And here's Dick Daley in his blue suit, and I knew the way Daley would react.  She went over to talk to him, and he just listened, very happy to see her.  But even to her...as far as a book, he was very self-protective and protective of his family.  

She wanted him to know she was having a book written about him.  She was very straightforward.  She told him that she had commissioned a book, and he said something like, 'We'll look into it.'

        "He died the next December.  Now while he was alive, nobody would talk.  They feared for their lives and their jobs and so forth.  It was very interesting, the control he exerted.  After he died, I ended up talking to dozens and dozens of people, who knew him in various ways, some of them in a very intimate way, and they were very helpful.  

Jackie was fascinated by all this, and her support never wavered.  

Before Daley died, it didn't matter to her that he wasn't going to give any direct support.  She understood, if you were on to something, if she felt you were on the right track, she would encourage you to keep going along that track.  If she thought you were diverging from it, that's when she would intervene and say, 'Well, I'm not sure about that.'  She did it so nicely."

-----------------------------------------------------

On You Tube:

World Turning

> Fleetwood Mac

...and play

Lorne Greene

-30-

"I'm a senior editor at Doubleday"

 Oh! - you can find this on You Tube, video titled:

The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

channel / uploader:  John F. Kennedy Library Foundation

------------------------------------- I've never seen this, before.  It's an hour and 38 minutes, so if you put it on when you have some work to get done, it will last for a bit - you don't have to keep stopping what you're doing to find something else to play.

        One panelist tells the story of getting invited to dinner at the home of New York City Mayor Ed Koch.  The guy arrived at the mayor's apartment and the 20 people who were there didn't seem to know each other.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was one of the guests.

        When they all sat down at the dinner table, Mayor Koch asked everyone to go around the table, each person introducing themselves.

        ("I'm Jacqueline Onassis; I'm a senior editor at Doubleday.")

I think people for whom English is a second language will enjoy this video, as well as people whose first language is English.

        In our economy, I cannot help but notice, there are many things that aren't good and are expensive, while at the same time there are things like this "literary Jackie" video that are really good, and - free of charge - !  LOL.  It's like some kind of absurd, unexpected miracle....

Ed Koch, mayor of New York City, 1978 - 1989

-30-

...when the conditions are right...

 One time at work a few years ago, I was telling a guy about a book that I thought he might find interesting.

        He said, Yeah, that sounds good - it would have to be raining out, for me to read it.

I hadn't thought about activities as being able to be participated in only if the weather conditions are right.  Although, yes - it can be that way.  We cannot ski if there isn't any snow... what other examples are there?  ...

        I was reminded of that convo recently when re-reading a passage from Chronicles, by Bob Dylan:

------------------------ [excerpt] ---------- I cut the radio off, crisscrossed the room, pausing for a moment, to turn on the black-and-white TV.  Wagon Train was on.  It seemed to be beaming in from some foreign country.  

I shut that off, too, and went into another room, a windowless one with a painted door - a dark cavern with a floor-to-ceiling library.  

I switched on the lamps.  

The place had an overpowering presence of literature and you couldn't help but lose your passion for dumbness.  Up until this time I'd been raised in a cultural spectrum that had left my mind black with soot.  

Brando.  James Dean.  Milton Berle.  Marilyn Monroe.  Lucy.  Earl Warren and Khrushchev, Castro.  Little Rock and Peyton Place.  Tennessee Williams and Joe DiMaggio.  J. Edgar Hoover and Westinghouse.  

        The Nelsons.  Holiday Inns and hot-rod Chevys.  Mickey Spillane and Joe McCarthy.  Levittown.

        Standing in this room you could take it all for a joke.  There were all types of things in here, books on typography, epigraphy, philosophy, political ideologies....Books like Fox's Book of Martyrs, The Twelve Caesars, Tacitus lectures and letters to Brutus.  Pericles' Ideal State of Democracy, Thucydides' The Athenian General - a narrative which would give you chills. ...

Endless rows of books - Sophocles' book on the nature and function of the gods.... Alexander the Great's March into Persia.... There was Simon Bolivar's biography, too.  I wanted to read all these books, but I would have to have been in a rest home or something in order to do that. ----------------------- [end / Chronicles excerpt] ----------------------

Bob would have to be in a rest home ... my former co-worker would need some rain....

-30-

a thin, translucent coating

 That gossip columnist we wrote about here in the last post, Nigel Dempster (that's  his photo at the top), was quoted saying, "There is a holiday in my heart when I discover another marriage breakup."

        Nice guy.

----------------- ...the sentences and phrases that Tina Brown writes tend to fascinate me:

the two tabloids that have "a thin, translucent coating of middle-class respectability"

"sources routinely denounced and routinely embraced"

"screaming populist tabloids"

"daily blizzard of headlines"

"from the benign to the malign without a pause for magnanimity..."

"a swashbuckling editor"

"fiendishly well-connected, dazzlingly anecdotal"

..."scattered rains gave way to drenching gales and then to spectacular and finally lethal hurricanes" - and here, of course, she isn't even talking about actual weather, she has made a series of metaphors to describe escalating media intrusion on people whose images grab attention....

        Such prose could knock you flat.   It's a plush, dynamic writing style.

        Tina Brown sort of does with words and language what Julia Child did with food.

One thing to bear in mind - Ms. Brown's description of print media in Great Britain, which is quoted and excerpted here in this blog, was from a book that was published in the year 2007.

        We had the Internet back then, but social media had not yet "taken over" to the extent it has now, so all that information about Britain's "voracious" readers buying newspapers might need updating here, nearly 20 years later.

Fleet Street - the heart of the British newspaper and printing industry for nearly 500 years

-30-

total recall

 

[excerpt from The Diana Chronicles, by Tina Brown] --------------- Lady Diana Spencer took her bow at the nexus of a national malaise.... The plebeian tabloids - The Sun, the Mirror, and the Star - no longer had the field to themselves.  

Under a swashbuckling editor, David English, the Daily Mail converted itself to a tabloid format in 1971 and quickly eclipsed a wilting Daily Express as the enduring bible of middle England; English's successor, Paul Dacre, has only increased its power.  

(By 2006, the Daily Mail was selling more than two million copies a day.)  

        The magic formula of the Mail was a combination of curtain-twitching class envy and strident rightist politics, with the added spice of the most waspish gossip columnist in London, Nigel Dempster, whose scoops from the highest circles of the Establishment were read at every upper-class breakfast table like a ransom note.  

Dempster had a thirty-year reign of terror until he was felled by ill health.  He was a miniaturist in tabloid takedowns.  His demonic social energy seemed to take him everywhere at once; in a car he always drove at a hundred miles an hour with the horn blaring.... He was dapper, fiendishly well-connected, dazzlingly anecdotal, and blessed with total recall.

-30-

so much good writing

 ------------------ [excerpt from The Diana Chronicles, by Tina Brown.  Copyright 2007, Broadway Books / Random House - paperback.  Hardcover - Doubleday.] -------------------------- In 1980, there were ten national daily newspapers selling 20 million copies, more per capita than in any other country in the world.  

Their relative positions along the spectrum of sensation have remained consistent, but the entire spectrum has shifted sharply toward the garish, a trend accelerated by the resort to checkbook journalism - a practice of buying sources routinely denounced and routinely embraced.  

Three of the nationals - the "red tops" of The Sun, the Daily Mirror, and the Daily Star - are screaming populist tabloids, on most days almost entirely devoid of anything resembling serious news.  Two more tabloids, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, compete in the same mass market but with a thin, translucent coating of middle-class respectability.  

        The Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Guardian, and now the Independent, are supposed to occupy the high ground.  Despite the advent of the Web, the Brits remain voracious newspaper readers, often buying more than one paper.  

That fact plus the country's compactness and newsstand culture make it impossible to ignore the daily blizzard of headlines, picked up immediately by television.  

When all the papers are on a rampage against some public figure, which nowadays is always, they invade your life.  They are billboarded at every newsstand.  They leap across your screen.  

They buzz around in your head all day like a low-grade fever.  

Paradoxically, it is the flair of the British tabloid press, its superb professional elan [the "e" in the word elan should have an accent mark over it, I don't know how to do that on my Chromebook, begging your pardon...], that makes it so feared by its subjects and targets.  

        So much good writing and theatrical presentation goes into mounting the daily crucifixions.  So much competitive professional pride goes into finding just the right killer adjective.

        The Royal Family used to be exempt from routine abuse.  But in thirty years the tabloid view of royalty moved from the benign to the malign without a pause for magnanimity in between. ----------------- [end / excerpt]

-30-

much ado about nothing?

 Harry and Meghan moved back to England several weeks ago, and the ongoing, relentless talk-and-commentary about the move is unbelievable.

        But then, I think, well of course it's believable - this is what British newspapers and chat-videos always do constantly.

I guess the word "unbelievable" is a word that comes to my mind when I see some phenomenon as being kind of "a bit much."  Or - as The Bard would call it, "much ado about nothing."

So - not literally "unbelievable."  Rather - a lot.

 

        Royal commentators and experts talk and talk, and then the listener finds herself or himself wondering, OK, what did they say??  What is the substance of all this?

Some critics say the various forms of media just take famous names and images, splatter them on paper or video or whatever, and build stories around them.

The stories come in several forms:

--  true, but exaggerated

--  there's a grain of truth, but the rest is made up

--  completely made up.

        It would be like if I made up a story, right this minute, about someone famous:  U.S. President Donald Trump is buying a library in China, and its shelves are going to be filled with books about him.  (All complimentary, of course.)

        Grains of truth:  1) The president of the U.S. is currently Donald Trump; 2) China is a country that exists.  

        The rest of that - I just made up.

        This is an example of what they do. ...

And that is what a lot of what is published and recorded in England is: made up and put out there because people watch it or buy it.  It's catering (pandering?) to an audience, for profit.

-----------------------------------------------

Listening to a video on You Tube titled "Why have the Sussexes suddenly decided to move back to the UK?" - one person on the panel spoke about the nature of the British press, saying -

"I think, if anything, the reaction from certain sections of the press who may have been sued in the past, some successfully, some unsuccessfully - it's going to be even worse.  

        You know, and that is an issue I'm not sure that they've completely taken on.  Because, trust me, the U.S. media is extremely tame, compared to the U.K. press.  So I don't know how that's going to be managed...."

-----------------------------------------------------

        In order for us to contemplate the media in England, I want to have an excerpt, here, from The Diana Chronicles, written by Tina Brown.

----------------------- [excerpt] ------------- Just before Diana Spencer began to emerge so vividly into public life, a kind of journalistic global warming was altering the eco-balance between the British press and the British Royal Family.  

The sunshine of publicity in which Diana would at first be happy to bask, posing and smiling for the cameras, grew steadily hotter and harsher.  

As the superheated imperatives of an invasive press bumped up increasingly against the milder human necessity of privacy, scattered rains gave way to drenching gales and then to spectacular and finally lethal hurricanes.  

        The ultimate tragedy of the disaster in the Paris tunnel in 1997 was that Diana herself had accelerated the climate change that ended up making her life literally impossible.

        For Americans used to local newspapers homogenized by the stingy monopolies of big chains and no national newspapers except the inoffensive USA Today, the staid national edition of the New York Times, and the staider Wall Street Journal, the volume and variety of the British print press feels bewilderingly promiscuous.  

In 1980, there were ten national daily newspapers selling 20 million copies, more per capita than in any other country in the world....

Despite the advent of the Web, the Brits remain voracious newspaper readers, often buying more than one paper.  That fact plus the country's compactness and newsstand culture make it impossible to ignore the daily blizzard of headlines, picked up immediately by television. ---------------- [end / excerpt]

        

Tina Brown

-30-

a side-table for your garage

 

The You Betcha channel on You Tube has a couple of videos about tools:

"I Bought Tools Reddit Told Me Never To Buy"

"I Bought TEMU Tools, So You Don't Have To"

        He had a video about "Man Caves."

He discussed drill bits purchased from Amazon.

He uses some of the tools on-camera.  Testing them.

He discussed a portable project center that sounds cheap if you clank the pieces together.

        I started thinking, people who are mechanics could watch these videos and they would understand more of this person's video "content" than I do....  -  then realized actual mechanics probably already know all this stuff, and hence don't need the videos....

Maybe the videos are appropriate for people who have an office job or something, but in their free time they want to fix some things, or build some things, at home.  In their man-cave, maybe....

-30-

"I continue to be stunned"

 

You Tube viewer comments:

||    The "whelp" with the double knee slap when it's time to go.

||    "How were the roads"?  Classic when they arrive

||    "Ope.  Sorry, just gonna sneak right past ya."  Gotta have that "sorry" in there.  It's important for the "not being an inconvenience" complex.

||    Canadians have sorry locked down.

||    The Midwest goodbye, "well I better get going" proceeds to talk for another 3 hours.

||    "Twenty-below isn't so bad if the wind would stop blowing"

||    "I dunno about all that" = "That's dumb"

||    "Well, that's different." = I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns

||    "It is what it is" could be the slogan of any small town in the Midwest

        ----------------------------- No joke my (central Minnesota) High School senior class wanted to make this our class motto last year.  Principal vetoed it.

||    As a Midwesterner engaged to a Canadian:  No, yeah

||    My Minnesota family's favorite form of small talk is asking which route you took to get to the place where you met them.  

        Did ya take 94 the whole way, or did ya take the back roads?"

        Nothing excites them quite like navigation.

||    100% my dad any time we visit and no matter which way you go he always knows a better route lol

||    If you could just run to the store for us real quick, but if not, it's no biggie

||    Felt the, "rather suffer alone than ask someone to do something they don't want to do" in my f-cking soul

||    Also because frankly aggressive volumes of community service as default is both a religious / cultural value and expected, and will eat every last moment of your waking hours if someone doesn't give you an out on something.

||    "If not that's totally fine" is an everyday one for me lol

||    Suffering alone instead of bothering somebody for help, is the cornerstone of Japanese society, surprised to see it in the Midwest

||    "You guys" is the Midwest version of "y'all".

||    Way back when, Wisconsin had a brand of cash machine called "Tyme".  When I moved to Chicago one day I was frantically looking (and asking people) if they had seen a "Tyme" machine.... got very funny looks!

||    I'm from Minnesota and I went to Colorado a few years back.  We got an Uber back to the hotel and the driver guessed where we were from by the "yea no's" alone

||    I just used "ope, let me sneak past ya" the other day.  They just looked at me and said "sawrry".

I love the Midwest.

||    I can totally relate, with pushing my emotions and feelings deep down and never reveal them, just let it out slowly over time victim by victim!!!

||    My old man is a born and raised Finnish Minnesotan.  He complimented me for the first time when I was 38 years old.  It was beautiful but brief...and never happened again.  Midwest emotions, ha!

||    I continue to be stunned at how similar Midwestern and Norwegian culture is

||    I was in Germany for work and the "Yeah, No, Yeahs" definitely caused some confusion a few times.  They spoke perfect English too.

        --------------------- Europeans often learn British English or Hollywood English, any other localism will throw them off.

||    When you think about it, the Yeah no Yeahs are a derivative of the don't wanna inconvenience you lol

||    I was born and raised on Long Island.  I've lived my entire life in the Northeast.  I absolutely LOVE saying "ope".  I've yet to pair it with "lemme sneak right past ya" but my goal is to get there one day.

*[the name of the channel is You Betcha.]

-30-

living in beautiful surroundings

 

On You Tube, I watched / listened to, a biography of American actress Rue McClanahan.

        She played Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls, in the '80s.  

        I first saw her in an episode of All In The Family, in the '70s.

        She also appeared in plays onstage in New York City, both on- and off-Broadway.

She was married six times.

She was born and grew up in Oklahoma.

She went to college at the University of Tulsa, and earned a B.A. with a double major in German, and Theater.

        In the biography, it got to where she had achieved some success with her acting career, and she said for the first time, she had financial security, and "I was living in beautiful surroundings."

-30-

Micronesia

 

A woman at my work told me that in Micronesia, where she's from, when a woman has a new baby relatives and friends come over and help.

        I thought that was interesting.  And since the Lindsay Clancy case and trial have been in the news lately, I have recalled that conversation a couple of times.

Underneath a video on You Tube, the following Comment was kind of similar:

------------------------ "This is so tragic.  I have Indian roots and in our culture a woman who has given birth is taken care of by the women of the house, mother, sisters, aunts etc. so she gets the rest she needs.  

This is what is lacking in our western society.  She was struggling and yet after 4 days in hospital she was thrown back into the lions den.  

        We as a society need to do better.  Giving birth is so overwhelming and we all need to do better.  Medication is not enough." ------------------------------

Two more from the same Comment Section.

||    Thank you for highlighting this important issue, as someone who suffered severe postpartum depression, it's so clear to me that Lindsay suffered from psychosis.  

Many mothers don't realize they have the depression until it's so bad that they either can't cope or we can't hide it anymore.  

        Here in Denmark postpartum depression can be diagnosed within the first year of the birth.  We also have a lot more time off and check ups from professionals every month after the birth, in our own house, which makes a difference, imo.

        [Isn't that something?!  "House calls."]

||    I'm American but many years ago I lived in Denmark for a time.  My second child was born there.  My prenatal care, my labor, and delivery and my postnatal care were far superior to what I received with my first child in the United States.  

        There was true concern for every person in the family, especially Mom and newborn.  

        At that time, all moms were kept in the hospital for a minimum of one week....The US healthcare system could take a page out of many other countries' healthcare book, and learn a few things.  

It breaks my heart that this family and many others like it have had to suffer such tragedy in large part due to the inadequacies of our healthcare system.  As a retired nurse with a 40+ year career, I saw this every day.

-------------------------------------------------------

A lobbyist told me once, the three most powerful lobbying groups in Washington D.C. are drugs, guns, and insurance.

-30-

a civilized society

 They have a "hung jury" and mistrial, in the Lindsay Clancy trial in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Horrible tragedy - hard to get your mind around it.

        But apparently this can happen, sometimes.  Remember the Andrea Yates story, about 20 years ago?

I found a couple of videos on You Tube that give some information to try to enlighten us about these situations.

------------------------------------------------------------

Lindsay Clancy Update:  Boston Globe Health & Sciences Reporter Sarah Rahal Breaks Down All The Meds

uploader / channel:  Hot Mics with Billy Bush

Postpartum Psychosis:  What the Lindsay Clancy Trial Gets Wrong

uploader / channel:  Savvy Psychologist and Dr. Judy Ho

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

         Los Angeles trial lawyer Alan Jackson said, of postpartum psychosis, "As a civilized society, we do not criminalize illness."

We "civilians" - lay people, non-experts - assume, in the midst of shock, "a person would have to be crazy to kill their own children."

        The various videos talking about this case show photographs of the Clancy family - the dad and mom, and three children.  In the photos, everyone looks so happy.  

        I saw some of the trial, on You Tube.  I felt so sorry for the families involved.  At one point, a prosecutor was directing questions to, I think it was Patrick Clancy's mom, and the prosecutor asked if the lady is a Catholic, and then insinuatingly crooned, "Isn't murder a mortal sin?"

I was like - What The Actual f-- ...???!!

The lawyers and judge had a little thing about that in the sidebar. ...

Or, as defense lawyer Kevin Reddington would pronounce it, "side - bah"...

        He pronounces "post-partum" as "post - pah-tem."

"Kevin."

All those Boston-Irish are named Kevin....

    

-30-

your perfume should linger

 

Shag, one of the best movies ever, is on You Tube!

Posted 12 days ago.

Watch it now, before they take it down!

        In the very early part of the movie, there's a glitch where the sound goes out.  But it's only gone for about one minute.  Then the sound is back, and the rest of the movie is perfect.

        It came out in 1989.

        The story is set in the summer of 1963, at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which is a real place.

"We're going to make like a tree, and leave."

"Where have I seen you before?"

        "Maybe in one of your better dreams."

The make-out parking spot is named "Wee-Waw Point."

What can I say?!

        (Nothing that clever....)

-30-

please don't take him just because you can

 

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene - Jolene

I'm beggin' of you, please don't take my man

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene - Jolene

Please don't take him just because you can...

        That song by the late, great Dolly Parton captures your attention when you hear it, and it's an easy song to remember.

        It has seemed to me for a long time that I've known that song all my life.  But not my whole life, because it got released in January 1974, when I was in my freshman year of high school.

Sometime in the years between then and now, the idea formed in my mind, and was committed to memory, that "Jolene" came out in the mid-Sixties.  My family lived in Mineral City, Ohio, then, & I thought I heard the song then.

        But recently it came to my attention the song didn't come out until 1974 when we were two towns away from Mineral City - we had moved to Rootstown, Ohio 1967, and then moved again in 1973.

So why did my memory conflate the song with the earlier years?  Turning that question over in my mind,  it finally came to me that when we lived in Mineral City I had a doll that I named Joleen.  (That's how I spelled it, I think....)

        I knew that name, not because of the Dolly Parton song, which wasn't even out yet, but because there was another little girl at my school who was named Joleen.

I liked that name.

The doll had yellow hair in braids, and wore colorful "peasant"-style clothes.

-30-

enough to drive you crazy if you let it

 

In London, England, the Buckingham Palace Band honored Dolly Parton by playing her song, "Nine To Five."

on You Tube:

King's Guard plays '9 to 5' outside Buckingham Palace in moving tribute...

uploader / channel:  @TheLondonStandard

        It's a "moving tribute," for sure, because it will get you movin' / dancin' ....

-30-

what a way to make a living

 In videos and articles about Dolly Parton's life, a story is told where Elvis Presley wanted to record "I Will Always Love You" but when his manager, "Colonel" Tom Parker met with Dolly, he said, Well the way it always is:  any song Elvis records, he has to have the publishing rights to it.

Dolly was happy that Elvis wanted to record her song, and she was enthusiastic about the idea, but when the ol' colonel tried to scam her like that, she had to say No.

        One narrator stated that Dolly Parton's father was very "business-savvy," even though he was illiterate.  "He knew exactly how business worked, and you can tell how Dolly picked up on that...."

She kept her song publishing rights, and got paid.

(If she didn't make sure she got properly paid, she wouldn't have been able to make the substantial charitable contributions that she did.)

        When Queen Elizabeth passed away people said, "She's just always been there."  

        That's how Dolly Parton is for a lot of us, I think.  Part of our lives - just always there.  On our televisions, on our movie screens, on our radio waves, on our records and music CDs; putting books in people's mailboxes. ...

-30-

I could sing with Bob

 You Tube's "cup runneth over" with Dolly Parton videos:  songs, interviews, documentaries, podcasts, random conversations.

The consensus seems to be:  "everybody loves Dolly Parton."

        In one interview, the host got her talking about duets:  she loved singing with Kenny Rogers, of course, and also they discussed other artists' songs that Dolly has covered.

Go on You Tube and type in

Dolly Parton - Don't Think Twice

and Play!

        It's a Bob Dylan song.

        The guy asks her if she would like to sing a duet with Dylan.

She answered, "I could sing with Bob."

-30-

...gonna be all right

 "Light Of A Clear Blue Morning"

a Dolly Parton song to listen to

----------------------------------------------------------------

-30-

there's a better life, and you think about it don't you

 "She was one of the  most unifying forces in American culture."

That's what a news announcer said a few hours ago, about Dolly Parton.

 In a television interview, Dolly said, "I look like a woman but I think like a man, and in this world of business that has helped me a lot, because by the time they think - that I don't know what's goin' on, I done got the money and gone."

Sometimes when I think of Dolly Parton, I remember the movie 9 To 5, starring Dolly, and Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda.

I saw that in Boston, when it came out.

        The song "9 To 5" from the movie was played on the radio - living in Boston I listened to WBCN, which was an AOR (album-oriented rock) station - they played "9 To 5" and country music stations played it, too.

Tumble out of bed and stumble to the kitchen,

Pour myself a cup of ambition,

And yawn and stretch and try to come to life

Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumpin'

Out on the street the traffic starts jumpin'

With folks like me on the job from 9 to 5

Workin' 9 to 5,

What a way to make a livin'

Barely gettin' by 

It's all takin' and no givin'

They just use your mind 

And they never give you credit

It's enough to drive you  

Crazy if you let it

9 to 5, for service and devotion

You would think that I

Would deserve a fair promotion

Want to move ahead

But the boss wont seem to let me

I swear sometimes that man is out to get me

They let you dream

Just to watch 'em shatter

You're just a step

On the boss-man's ladder

But you got dreams

He'll never take away

You're in the same boat

With a lot of your friends

Waitin' for the day your ship'll come in

'N' the tide's gonna turn

And it's all gonna roll your way

Workin' 9 to 5

What a way to make a livin'

Barely gettin' by

It's all takin' and no givin'

They just use your mind

And you never get the credit

It's enough to drive you crazy

If you let it

9 to 5, yeah

They got you where they want you

There's a better life

And you think about it, don't you?

It's a rich man's game

No matter what they call it

And you spend your life

Puttin' money in his wallet

9 to 5, whoa

What a way to make a livin'

Barely gettin' by

It's all takin' and no givin' ...

-30-