La Robe Rouge: hitting the road

08/26/2026

This Muhammad Ali interview reads like a set on a late-night show.

08/26/2026

“Sudan is facing the world's largest attack on civilians in our mod...

08/26/2026

https://youtu.be/EnkJSntktBQ?is=e3EUxsl9OkzK5Gjx

Some of the teens kidnapped by the Islamist militants are free and ...

08/26/2026

An excerpt.

After U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan and the country fell to...

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Educate Enable Empower

Since Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban, girls have been prohibited...

08/26/2026

Nakummek ♥️ Dolly.

A Mighty Girl Pick of the Day: "Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics" by Dolly Parton. The first song Dolly Parton ever wrote, at the age of six, was an ode to her corncob doll Tasseltop. She was the fourth of twelve children in a two-room cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, singing before she could read and writing lyrics on scraps of paper her mother saved for her.

In the over seventy years since, she has written more than three thousand songs -- Jolene, 9 to 5, Coat of Many Colors, I Will Always Love You, and hundreds of others that people around the world know by heart -- built a business empire, opened a theme park in the mountains she grew up in, and funded a children's literacy program that has given away more than three hundred million books. "I may look like a show pony," she writes in this book, "but I'm a workhorse."

In "Songteller," Dolly walks her readers through 175 of her own songs, telling the story of where each one came from and what it meant to her. Illustrated throughout with hundreds of previously unpublished photographs from her personal and business archives -- childhood snapshots, sequined stage costumes, handwritten lyric sheets, backstage moments with everyone from Porter Wagoner to Emmylou Harris -- this New York Times bestselling memoir is at once an intimate self-portrait and a working songwriter's master class.

Dolly writes candidly about her painful split from Porter Wagoner, about the years she was underestimated as a woman in country music, and about the private grief and self-doubt that fed some of her most enduring songs. The result is a portrait of one of the most prolific songwriters in American music history, told in the only way that would ever do her justice: song by song, in her own words. Highly recommended for adult readers.

"Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics" is available at https://amzn.to/4xgl9ta (Amazon) and https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9781797224732 (Bookshop)

For an uplifting picture book about her childhood growing up poor in rural Tennessee -- which helped spark her desire to help others -- we highly recommend "Coat of Many Colors" for ages 4 to 8, visit https://www.amightygirl.com/coat-of-many-colors

For more books to introduce kids to the extraordinary Dolly Parton, we recommend the picture books "Dolly Parton: Little People, Big Dreams” for ages 5 to 8 (https://www.amightygirl.com/dolly-parton-little-people) and "Dazzlin' Dolly" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/dazzlin-dolly), and the illustrated biography "Who Is Dolly Parton?" for ages 8 to 12 (https://www.amightygirl.com/who-is-dolly-parton)

There is also a fascinating biography on her life and impact on working women, "She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived By Her Songs," at https://www.amightygirl.com/she-come-by-it-natural

08/26/2026

Committed. Determined. Bringing the past into the future. Nakummek!

08/26/2026

Nakummek Dolly. ❤️

When a Light Leaves the Circle

My relatives…

Today, the world lost Dolly Parton.

Many will remember the rhinestones.

The unmistakable voice.

The laughter.

And the songs that somehow became part of our own lives.

But I find myself thinking about something quieter.

A woman born into poverty
who never became ashamed of where she came from.

A woman who reached some of the highest places in this world
and still remembered the children
who had very little.

She understood that a song could accompany someone through sorrow.

That laughter could soften a difficult day.

And that placing a book into the hands of a child
could open a door long after she was gone.

Dolly Parton became famous because the world saw her.

But she remained beloved
because she never stopped seeing the world.

She saw working people.

Struggling families.

Children with dreams larger than their circumstances.

She saw those who felt different
and somehow made room for them without demanding
that everyone become the same.

In a time when so many people build their names
by dividing others…

Dolly built hers by bringing people together.

Not through arguments.

Not through anger.

But through warmth.

Humor.

Music.

And kindness.

She once said that her songs would be her legacy.

And perhaps they will be.

But legacy is not only what carries our name.

It is what continues working
after we are no longer here.

It is every child who opened a book
because she believed imagination mattered.

Every person who found comfort in one of her songs.

Every woman who saw that she could be intelligent, strong, generous, and entirely herself.

Every human being who was reminded
that humility does not require us to make ourselves small.

The measure of Dolly Parton’s life
was not simply how brightly she shone.

It was how much of that light
she chose to give away.

Tonight, one voice has grown quiet.

But the songs remain.

The stories remain.

The laughter remains.

And somewhere tonight…

a child will open a book
that arrived because Dolly Parton remembered
what it was like to begin with very little.

That, my relatives…

is how a person becomes an ancestor.

Not by refusing to leave.

But by placing something loving into this world
that continues walking after them.

Journey well, Dolly.

May you find Carl waiting for you.

And may the love you gave so freely
now surround you.

Êkwa.

Walk gently.