Oh, Dolly! Oh, Rocky!

Public domain photograph of Dolly Parton in 1970 via RCA Records and Wikimedia Commons. Look, I know a solid portion of the planet has been sharing their love of Dolly Parton, but damn it, in this instance, it’s the right thing to do. When a bedrock of true humanity is taken out of a world that seems ever less humane, reiterating what was good about her is a form of trying to keep that goodness alive, and finding the determination and support to try and go about it. Less caught up in the hubbub is Tim Curry, who died a day after Parton. Though he was a star of stage and screen, he was far less of a public presence. And yet, strange to say for someone who tends not to have much of an idea of or opinion about celebrities, much less be influenced by their coming or going, the death of both forced me to pause for a beat; both Parton and Curry left their stamp on different stages of my life. You might say the pair bookended my childhood. The former had been in the background long before I…