Friday Thoughts (August 28, 2026)

I thought that week in January 2016 was bad. David Bowie on the 10th and Alan Rickman on the 14th. The rest of that year was AS awful (Prince, Carrie Fisher, Garry Marshall, Harper Lee, Gene Wilder, and a TON of others), but that one week set the tone.

2026 has been different. We’ve lost titans, too. Robert Duvall was the only actor my employees had explicit instructions to call me on days off if he came in. Catherine O’Hara was one of the most delightful presences on or off camera. As a Georgian, Atlantan, and big fan of 80s and 90s TBS and Braves baseball…we lost Ted Turner! have questions for the Grim Reaper as well as ideas for his performance review…

But this week decided to collectively kick the planet in the teeth with a two day two-fer.

We’ll start with Mr. Tim Curry. Just a delightfully devilish man in every role. Even his real life encounters are beautiful and unhinged. There are two actors considered the perfect co-stars for the Muppets, Sir Michael Caine and Tim Curry. The saying goes they work so perfectly because “Caine considers Muppets as fellow actors…Tim Curry considers himself a fellow Muppet”. That is as joyous a description for anything as I’ve ever heard.

But the Reaper decided that we REALLY needed to experience true loss and took away America’s and most certainly the South’s closest thing to royalty as we will ever have…Dolly Parton.

People that are far better writers than me have expounded on Dolly’s talent and generosity and kindness (but I’m gonna try). Her leaving the world feels bigger than the others. There is a global mourning now. She was a genuine ray of light in a world that seems to be darkening rapidly. Was she a perfect human? Of course not. She would absolutely be the first to point out how ridiculous that is. But she tried her hardest and it made the world such a better place.

As a boy, I was raised on country music. WNGC in Athens, Ga. I didn’t understand the world around me. There’s a lot of folks that would argue that is still the case. They’re probably right. But listening to Dolly made it seem like I would and that it would be a beautiful thing. My favorite song of hers is “Love is Like A Butterfly”. It’s soft and sweet and makes life seem safer. Everyone has a favorite and here’s the wonderful thing…I guarantee that most people have only heard a FRACTION of her output. If you go grab any random Dolly album, you’ll find an amazing song that may be your new favorite.

And then there’s the philanthropy. Donated money to Vanderbilt that helped develop the Moderna Covid vaccine. Money for hospitals. Victims of wildfires. Hurricanes. School bands. You name it…she helped it. But the big one to me is The Imagination Library created because her father couldn’t read. Giving over 320 MILLION books to kids since 1995. From the day they’re born til they turn five. My ONLY issue with this program? I was 24 when it started. I genuinely longed for Dolly to send me a book.

The stories of her kindness and humility are absolutely amazing. There’s far too many but I’ll share my favorite that makes her the most relatable to me and reminds me of many of the best people in my life. A caterer for a show got her food ready and because it was Dolly, put it on an actual china plate. Dolly’s assistant stopped her. “Please don’t do that. If you put it on that, she’ll wash it before she gives it back.” I love that so much.

The only good that (I hope) comes out of our loss of this legend is that the world comes together in mourning and starts to realize what is truly important. That would be her greatest gift if she actually caused a collective awakening to the kindness that we now need to replace.

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” -Dolly Parton

She’s right. But this week the raindrops are the tears we’re crying for our loss. I sincerely hope it creates the rainbow we all need.

Have a safe weekend. Listen to a new Dolly song and love each other extra.

-The Paintmonkey