June 23, 2010 Dolly
The Plenary sessions at the Centre Bell – home to Les Canadiens - are memorable and inspiring. A guy from the Philipines describes the school he has set up for street kids, complete with a photo of a once-seven year old street orphan who is now married with two kids, the family he never had. A Rotarian talks about his large network of schools across Afghanistan and Pakistan. He believes that if you don’t teach the girls then you can never change that society. The Canadian who is the medical head of Polio Plus tells us he has no good news, only great news: that horrible disease is now down to just a few new cases a year world-wide. But my favorite moment comes courtesy Dolly Parton.
For many years Dolly has headed “Imagination Library”, which has given out some 25 million books to young kids. She has some funny anecdotes about herself: “Have I had plastic surgery? Honey, if it flags, drags, sags or bags, I get it fixed.” She sings “Nine to Five”, and is just generally loveable. And then, in a gesture of appreciation for all she has done in partnership with Rotary, a fellow Southerner and top Rotarian comes on to present her with a Paul Harris Fellowship, Rotary’s equivalent of a honourary doctorate. As he starts a roar of commiseration goes up from the crowd as we all recognize that he is staring at both our wildest fantasy and greatest fear, something we have all faced with varying degrees of failure: Putting the pin on a woman. But of course, not just any woman. Dolly is dressed in 6″ heels and a spray-on mini dress with a spectacular decolltege. She must be the nicest person in the world, but she isn’t going to make it any easier for him. I can see the poor guy’s hands trembling from the balcony. To waves of appreciative laughter she says “Honey, you’d better just give me that thang. Because if you miss, I am gonna just take off around this arena like one of those big ol’ balloons!”
PS After writing this I go to the roof – my favorite place, hot hot hot – to drink my lunch pitcher of sangria, and there is an earthquake, the old hotel sways and shakes. The lovely little yellow T-shirted servers twitter like so many canaries.
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murraylott
said
Hi, Ro, thanks, I hope this works, this reply, I never did any of this before, never even read one, I am trying to get my Rotary friends to take a look bu I think they are afraid of getting sucked ino a world of Tweets and Texts and god only knows what! I’d love to see you sometime!