Get the Ricochet app

Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Become a member.

Tired of the toxicity of social media? Why not join Ricochet for just $5/month? Think of it as an online bar. Come in, have a drink, hang out, say whatever you want. But don’t badger, bully, or berate the other drinkers. That's our only rule.

The Tale of Dolly Parton

She
@She
Join to bookmark25likesJoin to like5comments
File:PeterRabbit4.jpg

From, of all places, the BBC: Dolly Parton's 'incredible' book scheme praised.

Deborah Bullivan, who ran the Imagination Library in Rotherham - the first to be launched in Europe in 2007 - praised the "incredible" country music icon for her work to inspire children to read.

The initiative, which still runs today, gives a book a month to children under five, with more than 300 million gifted so far, worldwide.

The singer visited Rotherham in 2007 to launch the Imagination Library scheme in Europe at the Magna Science Adventure Centre. She also visited the town's hospital

[where] the first book - The Tale of Peter Rabbit - was given to a one-day-old baby girl on [the] maternity ward."

Deborah Bullivan said: "Thousands of children in Rotherham received a book every month from the Imagination Library, they were fantastic books and it was delivered to them in their own name."

The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust said: "Dolly Parton leaves an incredible legacy as not only one of the world's most loved entertainers, but also a passionate advocate for children's literacy.

Rotherham. Who--in 2007--would have given a thought to the children of Rotherham?

Dolly Parton, that's who.

On August 27, 2026, Britain's Beatrix Potter Society had this to say:

I don't have many heroes. Beatrix Potter is one of them: Incomparable teller of stories. Superb illustrator of the natural world (whose detailed drawings achieved no publication or recognition during her lifetime, due to that inconvenient second "X" chromosome. She had to wait almost another hundred years for the apologies and the exhibitions). The shy Victorian woman who, in early middle age, picked herself up after the sudden death of her fiancé, and who, when she was forty, defied her controlling parents, and decided to live life on her own terms, where she wanted, and to marry--when the time was right--whom she wanted. The dedicated, respected, prize-winning farmer and shepherd of Herdwick sheep in England's Lake District, and the lady who left more than 4,000 acres of prime English farmland, and fourteen farms to Britain's National Trust, with the stipulation that the land be farmed in perpetuity, for the preservation and "survival of the Lake Country landscape."

Dolly is another of my heroes.

That their stories intersect is a beautiful thing, and one that doesn't surprise me in the least.

*Illustration at top of post--Beatrix Potter, 1901, Public Domain per Wikimedia

This post was promoted to the Main Feed at the recommendation of Ricochet's members.

Discussion (5)

  • She@She
    ReplyingtoCharlotte

    Charlotte (View Comment):

    Wonderful post.

    I always loved that Beatrix Potter’s animals wore shoes. I can still see Jeremy Fisher’s tiny galoshes in my mind’s eye.

    The indomitable Beatrix has been part of my life since I was about three. And I agree with you. She somehow managed to avoid the accusation of "twee anthropomorphic sentimentality," while still giving her animal characters entirely relatable--to us humans--characteristics.

    Some of that may have had to do with her rather matter-of-fact and pragmatic role as (perhaps) the original "bunny boiler," in that she and her younger brother Bertram often boiled down the carcasses of pets (not limited to lagomorphs, but including "Peter Piper") who had died so that they could study the bone structure and ligatures, and make better drawings and paintings as a result. Bertram was an accomplished painter of the natural world in his own right, one who also escaped his parents' baleful influence to live happily, but who died--of a stroke--much too young, at the age of 46, in 1918.

    Unlike that of his at-least-equally talented sister, Bertram's work was exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1894 and 1903.

    The Victoria and Albert Museum dedicated its year long Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature exhibition (which ran from February 2022 to January 2023 to the children's book author. As Dolly herself might have said, "Bless their hearts."

  • She@She
    ReplyingtoJimmy Carter

    Jimmy Carter (View Comment):

    Chicks and shoes.

    I learned, oh, so many years ago that the best opening line is to compliment Her shoes and She’ll start talking to no end.

    Oh, I used to wear such shoes, in my youth. High heels. Open toes. Sling back. Stylish for the time, and appropriate, even for what passed for professional wear.

    And it used to be so "OK" for men to comment on them, not only in private conversations, but also in public. I used to work for a company, late 70s, early 80s, that manufactured devices that--in the age before the personal computer--were called "word processing systems." Computers with proprietary architecture, specifically designed for secretarial use, for long-document typing, storage, and retrieval, and especially aimed at legal, publication, and scientific markets.

    One of my duties was to be the girl seated at the machine for in-office demonstrations, at which senior executives or partners would come to the office to see exactly what it could do. The two most effective salesmen in the office at the time were both ex-IBM typewriter salesmen. One of them was a particular character.

    "Isn't she lovely!" he'd exclaim. "Buy one of these, and we'll throw her in too!" (I was also the person tasked with training the secretaries, and following up with technical support on each account.)

    But, he was just getting warmed up.

    "Look at those hooker shoes!"

    I never took it as a compliment. And the day "Chuck" came into the office looking rather dazed, with a large sticking-plaster across his forehead, we were delighted to learn that his wife, "Judy" had--the night before--whacked him in the head with a frozen leg of lamb.

    I'll never forget the sublime feeling I had when I found that out.

    UPDATE: Just looked him up. He died a little over a month or so ago. May he rest in peace. I have many fond and funny memories of those so very different times.