Driving to Dollywood

Family fights. Lies and power. Life is as peaceful as a vaccinated baby's sigh.

I spent my birthday in Dollywood. We rode Daredevil Falls, the glorious water flume ride, five times. Flume rides get the dust out.

Dollywood was the terminal point of our roadtrip. At Chocolate World in Hershey PA, we “stuffed our cup” at a make-your-own Reese’s stand. The resulting confection weighed 40 pounds and was revolting; as we lugged it around, my younger kid named it “the unspeakable.”

Then came Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, to take the healing mineral waters at America’s first spa. Then sublime Natural Bridge. My Appalachian mother and grandmother use to take my brother and me there. The gift shop is the first place I saw a “Virginia Is For Lovers” t-shirt, and my mom told me never, ever to wear that shirt because it would suggest I’m easy. We then spent two days in swinging Asheville, and on to Pigeon Forge.

Along the way, I didn’t avoid the news. On Tuesday, when we were in West Virginia, National Quack RFK, Jr. canceled half a billion dollars for work on mRNA vaccines—the kind that ended Covid. This wasn’t surprising. Kennedy spent the Covid years firehosing the world so much racist, lunatic gibberish about vaccines that more people died of Covid than should have. Bonus: he helped bring measles roaring back to the U.S..

On Friday, I got another alert: Patrick White, a Georgia man, believed RFK: the Covid vaccine had wrecked his health. He was seething. So he brought five guns, and shot up the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. He killed one cop. He died too.