Tag: Parton

Everything at Dollywood, Dolly Parton‘s theme park located in her native east Tennessee, is deliciously on brand. Sometimes literally—the park’s famed cinnamon bread, made onsite at the still-working grist mill, was worth the 20 minute wait it took to get. Taken on their own, you might not see how attractions as varied as the fastest wooden rollercoaster in the world and a 30,000 square-foot aviary of bald eagles are connected to the singer, but it’s obvious once you’re there and see them in context. Parton’s joyous, positivity-is-king spirit is coursing through every inch of the park, from the Cozy Bear Cove gift shop to the nightly fireworks display.

The universe just feels a little more magical when you’re at Dollywood, a phenomenon host Jad Abumrad describes in his popular podcast Dolly Parton’s America. In episode three, “Tennessee Mountain Trance,” Abumrad describes feeling an almost dream-like sensation while touring the park. I felt it firsthand, too: While I was there, I received some disappointing personal news and started tearing up. When I turned around, looking for a place to sit and take a moment, I saw a giant display of red birds—a symbol I always associate with my late grandmother. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe not. What’s important is that it felt significant to me, a message of kindness from the universe among the butterfly T-shirts and sequined Koozies.

Parton, I think, would be pleased with this sentiment. “I always ask for God to use me and to help me do something,” she told me earlier that day. “To throw a little light on things and lighten the burdens a little bit if I can.”

We were discussing her new anthology series, Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, which is now streaming on Netflix. Each episode is inspired by a different Parton song and features actors like Melissa Leo and Bellamy Young in heartwarming tales about friendship, family, and love found and lost that always, always end happily. In “Jolene,” for example, the story is more about Julianne Hough and Kimberly Williams-Paisley’s characters forming a friendship than any dated “other woman” tale. “These Old Bones” features Ginnifer Goodwin and Kathleen Turner as two women who seem opposite on the surface—Goodwin’s an overworked lawyer representing a big corporation, Turner’s a prophet of sorts who prefers hanging out with goats over people—but discover they have a deep, surprising bond. It’s all extremely Dolly: kind, flashy, humble, and timeless.

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