Departures

Dolly Parton 

-Image RCA Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

There have been so many good people leaving lately, I am hoping this doesn’t have to become a regular feature.

Dolly Parton  

I have long been a fan of Dolly Parton who passed away on August 25, not just because of her music which brought joy to millions, but through the legacy she leaves behind. In 1995 she began her Imagination Library in honour of her father who had been unable to read. By the time she died, it had given away 332 million books, including some in Braille, to children from birth to age five in five countries around the world. 

She also created Dollywood, a theme park near her hometown in the Smoky Mountains, Tennessee, so that people would have jobs. In addition, she funded tuition for all her employees as well as many scholarships to encourage students to finish school. In 2016, after wildfires tore through the region, she supported 900 families who had lost their homes for over six months. She also contributed $1 million towards the development of the Moderna Covid vaccine. Those are just some of her achievements. Perhaps you have to grow up “dirt poor" – she was the fourth child in a family of 12 children, to understand the value of money. See more about her work here.

Of course it would be better if the world didn’t need charity, but Dolly Parton’s practical philanthropy is precisely the antidote to a world characterised by greed and graft. Her work demonstrates clearly that money is not an end in itself. It’s not about who has the most when they exit this world. It’s about what you do with it while you are still alive. No one illustrates that more clearly than Dolly Parton.  Now that’s what I call a star!  

 Let’s Do the Time Warp Again!

Tim Curry’s departure on the same day as Dolly Parton’s almost got lost in all the tributes to the former. Indeed, I had to look him up because his name was much less familiar. I do not know if he did any charitable work or about his other films and plays, but as soon as I saw the clip of him playing Frank-N-Furter in cult movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I recognised his wicked smile and it brought back a whole era.  

These were our Weimar Republic years, when the boomers came of age and started turning society on its head. It was a hugely creative time when authority was challenged in every domain -in music, fashion and the arts, along with long-standing traditions and social taboos. We were also quite sure we were going to change the world.

Stopping the Madness

Also sorry to lose Sam Neill (13/7/2026), who is almost a local boy made good – a New Zealander in fact, and perhaps best remembered for his role in Jurassic Park* and for being a thoroughly nice person. Among his more recent endeavours was trying to stop an open cut gold mine in the nationally significant hills and valleys of Otago near his family home. As he explains in his video, mining provides temporary benefits but leaves behind long -term problems. Why go for the short term sugar hit, when tourism can provide slower but more sustainable employment?  

While the curtain may have fallen on their last performance, we thank them all for the joy they have brought and their efforts to make the world a better place.

Here's a lovely quote to close my Sunday Sermon 

"Any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again."

— Achilles, in Troy (2004), screenplay by David Benioff

Fact-checking and proof reading by Claude, along with some editorial discussion. Some help also from Ecosia and ChatGPT for additional verification and when I have run out of time

 * Why does the opening to Jurassic Park remind me of Próspera, the private city owned by tech billionaires in Honduras and which has its own experimental lab, free of the usual restrictions?