In 1990, the high school dropout rate for Dolly Parton’s hometown of Sevierville Tennessee was at 34% (Research shows that most kids make up their minds in fifth/sixth grade not to graduate). That year, all fifth and sixth graders from Sevierville were invited by Parton to attend an assembly at Dollywood. They were asked to pick a buddy, and if both students completed high school, Dolly Parton would personally hand them each a $500 check on their graduation day. As a result, the dropout rate for those classes fell to 6%, and has generally retained that average to this day.
Shortly after the success of The Buddy Program, Parton learned in dealing with teachers from the school district that problems in education often begin during first grade when kids are at different developmental levels. That year The Dollywood Foundation paid the salaries for additional teachers assistants in every first grade class for the next 2 years, under the agreement that if the program worked, the school system would effectively adopt and fund the program after the trial period.
During the same period, Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995: The idea being that children from her rural hometown and low-income families often start school at a disadvantage and as a result, will be unfairly compared to their peers for the rest of their lives, effectively encouraging them not to pursue higher education. The objective of the Imagination library was that every child in Sevier County would receive one book, every month, mailed and addressed to the child, from the day they were born until the day they started kindergarten, 100% free of charge. What began as a hometown initiative now serves children in all 50 states, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, mailing thousands of free books to children around the world monthly.
On March 1, 2018 Parton donated her 100 millionth book at the Library of Congress: a copy of “Coat of Many Colors” dedicated to her father, who never learned to read or write.
And she’s reading these books every day on all the socials through lockdown.
Dolly is the one person I can think of that shows that you can be incredibly rich and actively use that wealth to make a real, lasting difference. She is an incredible person.
Natural Black Hair Tutorial! Usually Black hair is excluded in the hair tutorials which I have seen so I have gone through it in depth because itâs really not enough to tell someone simply, âBlack hair is really curly, draw it really curly.âÂ
The next part of Black Hair In Depth will feature styles and ideas for designing characters and I will release it around February. If you would like to see certain styles, please shoot me a message!
Anyone who spends decent amount of time in Appalachia knows the Not Deer. If youâve gone on the Blue Ridge Parkway at night, youâve probably seen him.
Now: keep in mind if you donât live in an area with a lot of deer, deer are freaky bastards on their own. Theyâre really big, extremely agile, move surprisingly quietly, and are extremely durable. Itâs not unheard of for someone to hit a deer and total their car. Once I heard a story of a man who hit a deer on accident and decided to take it home and least get some good meat out of a bad situation. On the drive home the deer woke up and absolutely shredded the inside of this manâs trunk. Theyâre very cute but you definitely donât want to mess with one. Just keep that relationship in the back of your mind.Â
Anyway, the Not Deer is more or less what Iâd call a folk cryptid. Everybody has their story about it. Theyâre all somewhat similar. Youâre in a car at night, in a rural, heavily wooded area, and probably a bit lost. Itâs not wildly uncommon to see a opossum crossing the road, see blips of little animals with your headlights. You see a deer. So you/your friends go âOh! Deer!â and slow down in case it leaps in front of you.Â
Then you see it more clearly. Thereâs just something wrong about it. Thereâs something about its eyes. You feel your stomach get heavy like a rock, the hair on your neck raise. You sense intelligence that you shouldnât. It doesnât move like a deer, it moves like a⌠oh god, what is that thing? Whatever that thing is, itâs not a deer and we need to leave. You hit the gas and get the hell out of there.
A group of my friends got lost on the Parkway once and reemerged with a chilling story. They arenât the kind of folks to lie or over exaggerate. Among other freaky stuff that happened, the driver claimed she saw a deer in the road. Then she noticed the deer was on two legs.Â
