Dolly Parton picked up the phone for queer press

I have a good reason why I didn’t post at the end of last week. At 11:00 Wednesday night I stood outside and watched a lightning show with flashes more frequently than once a second. The wind was rising. The city’s severe weather sirens went off at 11:30. But the rain didn’t start until about 12:15, after I had gone to bed. My electricity went out 12:30 am Thursday morning. The loss of power was exactly timed to a lightning strike. The next morning the electric company sent me a text saying they detected my meter was not online. Even so I used my phone to file an outage report. The power was back on at 10:15. Total time without electricity was 9:45. Reason for outage was given as wind damage (though I still think it was a lighting strike). I heard the weather report for the afternoon and recharged my phone. Another storm hit mid afternoon Thursday. Again the city’s sirens went off. I got an extreme weather alert on my phone (for once accurate). At 4:00 the power went off again. I heard later a tornado had touched down in Detroit. I tried calling the electric company, but the call wouldn’t connect. I tried several more times, no go. I used the texts they sent earlier to get to their outage website and filed a report. There was a bit of “but we fixed that one!” but I persisted in reporting the problem. At the time their overall outage page said there were over 360,000 customers without power. A while later I got a message saying the expected time of restoration would be Sunday, September 6. Yikes! I read for much of the rest of the day, then prepared for bed by candlelight. Friday morning I figured the food in my refrigerator was still good. I went to a restaurant for lunch and supper. I spent some time in the city library as a place to sit and read – and recharge my phone. Then another evening by candlelight. On Saturday I had lunch with Sister and Niece. During the meal I got a text saying the power was back on. Total time off: 44:20. Thankfully, this was a day earlier than their estimate. Reason for the outage was “Private property tree damaged equipment.” I had checked a website on what foods to keep and what to discard after a long outage. Once home I did what it suggested. Then I went to the grocery store. Along with the food I bought another candle. My Sunday movie was the documentary Bad Axe. At the start of the pandemic son David saw the times were of historic importance and began filming his family as they ran the family restaurant. That restaurant was Rachel’s in Bad Axe, Michigan. By the end David got a pretty good story. I remember Bad Axe was featured in the Detroit Does Docs film festival in 2023. I didn’t see it then, though it got rave reviews. The father of the family is Chun. He and his five siblings and their mother made it out of Cambodia during the Killing Fields. His father didn’t. Chun knows the power of hate and might have some PTSD from watching so much death. Chun married Rachel, who has Mexican ancestry. Their children are David, Jaclyn married to Mike who is white, Raquel with boyfriend Austin who is black, and a few more. They’re quite the ethnic mix. David documents the pandemic shutdown and the pivot to takeout only. Chun doesn’t want to isolate to stay safe. Bad Axe is a small town in rural Michigan and very much nasty guy country. The Lower Peninsula of Michigan is shaped like a mitten and this farming region is known as the thumb. The family tries not to comment on other’s political views, just serving everyone as best as they can. Even so there was some mask backlash. Then the George Floyd protests began. Jaclyn felt she needed to speak out against racism. Many in town were on her side, but there were a few guys in skull masks holding guns. And Jaclyn, Austin, and the rest of the family stuck out and were memorable. Add to that the nasty guy’s rhetoric about COVID coming from Asia. Some customers could be so rude! Kos of Daily Kos wrote that Republicans have been mighty effective at claiming allowing transgender girls to play on girls teams is unfair.

Democrats are stuck between two crappy options: They either fully embrace a maximalist “trans women are women” position that, while morally correct, is poison with voters, or they do the thing they used to do with abortion and run away and hide—also poison with voters. However, political strategist and Substacker Eric Schmeltzer has the perfect response. The goal is to stop playing defense on the issue and instead go on offense. And Schmeltzer has identified exactly how to do it. 1. Acknowledge that sure, it can be an issue of fairness, and while there haven’t been any notable instances of trans-related unfair advantages, sports governing bodies are well equipped to handle them if they ever arise, just like they do with issues such as drugs and weight classes. Then, here’s the coup de grâce … 2. How would the government enforce these bans, anyway? With beyond-creepy genital inspection schemes.

In 2022 Ohio Republicans passed through their House a bill that would required a physical exam of a child’s genitals if anyone, such as a sore-loser coach, disputed a girl’s sex. That could be aimed at girls who are more tomboyish than their teammates. That horrified the public and that language was pulled. And a horrified public is the only thing that slows them down. Yes, there may be a fairness problem. But it is not on the scale of the panic being sold. So let’s keep the government out of your family – and out of your daughter’s shorts. Kos posted the Associated Press obituary for Gloria Steinem, who died last week at 92. Throughout her long life she spoke out about women’s right. She recognized women needed control of their own bodies and that was regardless of sex or race. She traveled the world with that message. She didn’t like being called glamorous because that implied she got where she was because of her looks, not because of how hard she worked. She hated public speaking though she would be the most rousing speaker on the program. She co-founded Ms. Magazine as a way to discuss a wide range of feminist issues and not have editors assign her to cover food and fashion. Steinem would have gaining her voice about the time I was old enough to be aware of voices like hers. She has been speaking about women’s issues, and doing quite well at it, my entire life. Alix Breeden of Kos wrote about some of the many people who posted remembrances of Steinem, usually about how their lives were influenced by her. They include Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Kerry Kennedy, and Zohran Mamdani. Chris Azzopardi is a reporter for Between the Lines and has an interview with an arts figure in nearly every issue. In the latest issue he talked about his several interviews with Dolly Parton.

Here's the thing nobody's obituary is going to lead with, so I will: Dolly Parton picked up the phone for queer press. Not just the glossies with the biggest circulation — she talked to a small LGBTQ+ paper out of Michigan, the one I write for, the same way she talked to Rolling Stone or Playboy, at a time when most of country music wouldn't return that call at all. There was no algorithm rewarding her for it, no cultural mandate yet that made it the safe or expected thing to do.

The LGBTQ+ press was not “a liability to be managed. She treated it like a call from a loved one.” She is a person claimed by both sides in America. But that isn’t because she stayed quiet or being vaguely agreeable so neither side could find fault.

She got there by answering hard questions in a way that made it very hard to be mad at her for the answer because it was honest, and honesty was Dolly’s default.

She could see the God light in everyone, including LGBTQ+ people. She didn’t criticize or condemn. And in 1991 – way back then – her song lyrics for “Family” included:

Some are preachers, some are gay, some are addicts, some are strays, but not a one is turned away, when it's family.

She didn’t say it to be provocative, but because it was true. She said that we all have LGBTQ+ people in our lives, though we may not know it. “They're ours and they're who they are and we know they're wonderful and they're like us.” She had LGBTQ+ people working for her company because they were “told it was safe to be honest.” There was a time that an Azzopardi interview of Parton was what was quoted by other news sources. Another of his interviews was collected into a book of her interviews. It was included by an editor that had no stake in the queer press, but saw that interview as essential to record.

I once asked Dolly why she'd taken that step, becoming one of the first major country artists to stand up for LGBTQ+ equality. She didn't treat it like a stance at all. Just unconditional love. "Why wouldn't I stand up for everybody, for all people?" she said. "In the country field, we're brought up in spiritual homes, we're taught to 'judge not lest you be judged,' and it's always been a mystery to me how people jump all over things just to criticize, condemn and judge other people when that is so un-Christian — and they claim to be good Christians! We're supposed to love one another. We're supposed to accept and love one another. Whether we do or not, that's a different story. But that's what we're supposed to do." Not a one is turned away, when it's family. She meant her own. Turns out she meant ours too.

A couple of Azzopardi’s articles about Parton are here:

Counts of death by heat are way too low

I finished the novel Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher. Art is a descendant of the legendary King Arthur many generations and a few centuries back. Or maybe the line goes through Mordred. He’s the son of a lord and has no interest in doing the things lords do and a lot of interest in being a playboy. Gwen is a descendant of Guinevere and probably not King Arthur and she is glad her full name is Gwendoline. Her father is the current king of England, who has relocated his capital back to Camelot. Gwen was betrothed to Art when she was an infant – something that happens with royalty at the time. But while they were growing up Art acted like a bratty brother and they still despise each other. The summer Gwen turns 18 and Art is 19 Art’s father sends him to live in the King’s castle for the summer in hopes the two will turn their spat into love. Within a day of arriving Gwen sees Art kissing Mitchell the assistant to the master of the hounds and Art sees Gwen swooning over Lady Bridget, a female knight who has arrived for the summer to take part in the season long tourney. They agree to cover for each other, which means they have to spend time together acting like their relationship is developing. And it works – they no longer hate each other. But will someone please call off the wedding? In the meantime Art notices the bookish Gabriel, Gwen’s brother and crown prince, looks mighty cute. The story is enjoyable and the writing pretty good, though not to the high quality of Fredrik Backman’s work I praised in my previous book discussion. There is a sequel. Alas, I think its title and book cover are somewhat of a spoiler for this book. I had recently written about projections that high heat could kill off half of humanity by 2050. Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to investigator Alejandra Borunda who, along with Quinn Adams of Boston University, took two years to investigate how many people die each year of heat-related causes. The segment I am linking to is one of several being aired this week. US Federal numbers day 1,700 people die each year from high heat. Boruda’s reporting made her think the number was much higher. Her research suggests the real count is about 9,000 deaths a year. Boruda explained the difference:

So to show up in those official counts, heat must be marked down on someone's death record, but that doesn't always happen, and that's because it can just be really hard to figure out how heat influenced a death. There's often multiple factors at play, like a preexisting heart condition, and so doctors or medical examiners or coroners often have to really look for heat role - heat's role. And that takes time, it takes training, it takes money, and there aren't really clear national standards, so everyone is kind of figuring this out for themselves.

She talked to people who lost family to heat. Factors can include: Living in a manufacture home. Addiction and drug use. Medical conditions. Financial pressure so the people couldn't afford to run or fix an air conditioner. What do do? Count deaths more accurately. We can’t fix a problem we don’t understand. A barrier to doing that is heat may not leave a mark on the body. The medical examiner may not think to ask whether the deceased had just been in a hot environment. Other needs: Understand who is most at risk. Teach people and their caregivers what to do. Pay for cooling. Pay for insulation. A comprehensive article of the series is here. It includes a chart showing the CDC counts compared to their models and a chart showing maximum temperature across the US – 2026 is at the top as the hottest. It also includes the study methodology. In the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos exlrrp posted a meme:

You know you’re a terrible person when the photos of you with Jeffrey Epstein are real, but the ones of you with Dolly Parton are fake.

I’d revise that a bit. He’s not going to know he’s a terrible person. So it should say, “We know he’s a terrible person...” and “...photos of him...” A tweet from Headquarters News posted by paulpro:

Fox News complains that underage teenage girls aren’t getting pregnant enough: “The problem is teens and young adults. From ages 15-19, the fertility rate is down 70% in the last 2 decades, which means we are telling people who are young not to have babies.”

Something is profoundly wrong when a dude insists that 15 year olds should be getting pregnant. That seems way too adjacent to being a pedophile. I went to the tweet where Midatlantica added, “Teen pregnancies and single mothers were literally sold as the root of all societal ills by this same cohort through the 70s, 80s, and 90s.” A cartoon posted by paulpro shows an AI robot sucking resource, wages, and intellect out of a worker.

Bears, beavers, and moose defend Canada from tariffs

My Sunday movie was Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. It was released in 2022 and sounded interesting, but I always found something else to watch (my lists are long). I watched now because Kanopy is dropping it at the end of the month (as in tomorrow). Marcel is a shell, an inch high, with feet (with shoes on) and one eye. He lives in a human house with his grandmother Connie. The house is used as an Airbnb and there used to be a much larger community of shells. Most of the time the shells hide from the humans. Marcel thinks that during an argument someone threw their stuff in their luggage and happened to include the rest of their community hiding in the shoes and clothing. Now Dean is living in the house (that’s Dean Fleischer Camp, who wrote, directed, and acted in the movie), discovered Marcel and is making a documentary about Marcel’s life. Dean uploads episodes to social media and gets a lot of response – even the house becomes famous. But the thing Marcel really wants – to find his community – remains elusive. Help comes from a surprising source and Connie has to persuade Marcel to seize the opportunity. Marcel and Connie are quite inventive in creating their environment. They tend a garden. Marcel steps in honey so he can walk up the walls (to the annoyance of the cleaning lady). He hollows out a tennis ball for a faster way to get around. Marcel moves through stop motion animation and this is done quite well. His world is well thought out. The story is cute and touching. I quite enjoyed it. Marcel was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature film. It was also nominated and won a slew of other awards. Last Monday an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos discussed climate disasters. They will be more frequent and more intense. As that happens regular people will think scientists are exaggerating, like the boy who cried wolf. A few other things in the article:

In the 1850s, while living in Seneca Falls, New York, amateur scientist Eunice Newton Foote did a series of experiments that put different substances, including carbon dioxide and moist air, inside glass cylinders and left them in the sun. What she found was extraordinary: cylinders with carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is released when coal, gas or oil is burned, heated up faster and took longer to cool after the sun went down. ... Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at Australian National University, says she had a “come to Jesus moment” when she realized that constant extreme weather events wouldn’t stop even if the world could immediately reach net zero, the point when as much greenhouse gas is taken out of the atmosphere as released into it. Many countries and major companies have net-zero targets for 2050 or beyond. Because carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and so much has already built up, the damage could take centuries to reverse. And we keep adding more.

We’re not prepared for major climate disasters. Also, the risks are changing. We don’t like to talk about uncomfortable things, and the worst the weather can dish out is one of those. Denial is a way of coping. However, if people believe risks are real and solutions are possible they will make changes. Alex Brown, in an article for Stateline posted on Kos wrote about his experience in becoming a Certified Prescribed Burn Manager. Brown didn’t take the course to become a manager, but to be able to accurately write about those who do as part of his job of environmental reported. A Prescribed Burn Manager is a person who can use fire to clean out the undergrowth in a forest, to start a small fire with the intention of preventing a massive fire. This is a well known tactic to improve a forest, but for perhaps a century it is one forest managers have been avoiding, thinking all fire is bad. Those who completed the class have to consider the current plant moisture level; to understand the current weather to know what the smoke will do; to know the nearby roads, dwellings, and businesses and how they might be affected; and to know what city and county organizations need to be contacted and involved. Those leading the class want all kinds of people to attend because so much forest land is under private ownership, including timber companies and native tribes. Prescribed burns need to happen there too. The bad news is the nasty guy has cut the funding for such training and operation. The good news is state and local governments are picking up some of the shortfall. Andrew Mangan of Kos, in his weekly look at important surveys, looked at the state of Texas gerrymandering. Texas fired first in the Great Gerrymander War in an effort to flip five House seats from Democrat to Republican. A new poll showed Democrats leading in three of them. One of them, the 15th District, was designed to be very safe for Republicans. Yet, Democrat Bobby Pulido is ahead. This is a 23 point swing towards Democrats. Part of what is happening is Republicans based their new districts on the Latino vote in 2024 and Latinos have made a huge shift away from the nasty guy. Just remember a poll result is not the same as an election result. Kevin Hardy, in an article for Stateline posted on Kos, wrote about ALEC and Democratic efforts to match it. I’ve written about ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative effort started in 1973 to craft conservative state legislation and to get state legislatures to pass them. They have been annoyingly successful. Hardy wrote that Democrats are becoming more serious in matching that effort. ALEC had recognized that they can do a great deal to advance their goals at the state level. Part of that is because Congress can be dysfunctional and is sometimes firmly in Democratic hands. When a state legislature passes a bill the national discussion is changed, making the passage of the same bill or similar bill in another state or in Congress more likely. So doing the same effort for liberal goals improves our chances. The current Democratic effort isn’t the first. However, ALICE – American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange, started in 2012, seems to be gaining strength. Matching the strength of conservative efforts might still take a decade or two. I’ve written that Republicans are very concerned about the national debt when a Democrat is president but not when a Republican is. Oliver Willis of Kos confirms that and adds a bit more to the story.

In 2020, after working as Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney laid out the entire scheme in a speech to the Oxford Union in England. “My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House. The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we’re a lot less interested as a party,” he said.

Willis wrote that this two-sided effort by Republicans is promoted by mainstream media because they tend to repeat Republican propaganda. In doing so they also push the lie that Republicans are better at economic issues. Jessica Kutz, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos wrote about men’s fascination with cars, the bigger, louder, and faster the better. The most recent examples are the Indy style race in Washington in the Mall and down Pennsylvania Avenue and the plans to defund “DEI bike lanes” Kutz has a few examples of men who love cars and their message of “freedom, domination over the environment, strength, power, speed.” There are examples of administration officials promoting car culture and with it the idea that women belong in the kitchen. There was also ridicule of Pete Puttigieg and his commuting to work on a bicycle. The effort to defund bike lanes is part of the promotion of the macho image of cars. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been leading that charge. Along with it is lying about the benefits and harms of bike lanes. A bit of truth: bike lanes improve the safety of both cyclists and drivers. In contrast, American cars have gotten bigger and the number of deaths of pedestrians and cyclists has been going up. Back in January I wrote about AI generated videos showing polar bears and walruses coming to the defense of Greenland as the nasty guy threatened to take it over. The images were accompanied heroic music. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, has included a similar video by the same maker, demonflyingfox. This one shows bears, beavers, moose, and a few wolverines (the actual animals, not residents of Michigan, which is known as the Wolverine State), on their way to take up the barriers to defend Canada against the tariff war begun by the nasty guy. The video quality is quite good, the tune again heroic, and all quite fun. Beavers playing bagpipes... I went to the YouTube channel for demonflyingfox and found the video made for the defense of the name of Lake Ontario. It has been up for only three days and has 1.8 million views. An eagle with a nasty guy hairdo keeps erecting signs claiming the name was now Lake America, but beavers, moose, and finally bears with big guns keep destroying the ever bigger signs. This one has a lot more interaction between the animals and humans as it promotes what fun activities can be done around the lake.