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    Roni Stoneman, Country Music’s ‘First Lady of the Banjo,’ Dies at 85

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    A featured player on ‘Hee Haw’ and member of the famed Stoneman Family, she was the first woman to play modern bluegrass banjo on a phonograph record.Roni Stoneman, a virtuoso banjo player, mainstay of the country music television show “Hee Haw” and one of the last surviving members of the Stoneman Family, a renowned Appalachian string band, died on Thursday at her home in Murfreesboro, Tenn. She was 85.Her death was confirmed by Julie Harris, a family friend. No further details were available; a cause was not given.Ms. Stoneman made her mark in 1957 with her driving instrumental version of “Lonesome Road Blues,” which made her the first woman to play modern bluegrass banjo on a phonograph record. Also known as “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad” and often including lyrics, the song was included on a compilation album of three-finger, five-string banjo numbers in the style popularized by Earl Scruggs.Ms. Stoneman’s greatest claim to fame, though, came 16 years later, when she joined the cast of “Hee Haw,” entertaining millions while proving herself to be a rustic comedian on a par with Minnie Pearl and June Carter Cash.From left, Marianne Gordon, Roni Stoneman and Cathy Baker, from the cast of “Hee Haw” in 1978. Ms. Stoneman played the gaptoothed character Ida Lee Nagger on the show for almost two decades.CBS, via Everette CollectionHer most amusing, and enduring, character on the show was the gaptoothed “Ironing Board Lady,” Ida Lee Nagger, a beleaguered housewife whose feckless husband never lifted a finger to help her. A case of art imitating life, she said, the skit drew on a time in Ms. Stoneman’s life when, as a young housewife and mother of four children, she fell on hard times and had to take in washing to feed her family.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutors in Nashville Drop Charges Against Country Singer Chris Young

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      The country singer had been charged with disorderly conduct, assaulting an officer and resisting arrest after an altercation at a downtown bar.Prosecutors on Friday dropped all charges that had been brought against the country music singer Chris Young in connection with an altercation with an Alcoholic Beverage Commission agent at a Nashville bar.“After a review of all the evidence in this case, the Office of the District Attorney has determined that these charges will be dismissed,” Glenn R. Funk, the Nashville district attorney, said in a statement.Mr. Young, 38, had been charged with disorderly conduct, assaulting an officer and resisting arrest following the episode on Monday night.“Mr. Young and I are gratified with the D.A.’s decision clearing him of the charges and any wrongdoing,” Bill Ramsey, the musician’s lawyer, said in a statement.The episode that led to the charges occurred as Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents were checking IDs at the DawgHouse Saloon, a downtown bar. Mr. Young was accused of hitting one of the agents, according to an arrest affidavit filed with a criminal court in Nashville. Agents handcuffed Mr. Young after he did not comply with their orders, the affidavit says.Mr. Young’s representatives previously shared surveillance footage showing that the singer was standing by the bar when agents walked past him.In the video, as one of the agents walks by, Mr. Young places a hand on him, walks backward with the agent and apparently says something. The agent pushes Mr. Young with two hands, and Mr. Young staggers backward and hits his back on a corner of the bar table, causing him to briefly fall, the video shows.He then gets up, raises both of his hands in the air and walks backward away from the agents.Mr. Young rose to stardom after winning the country-music reality TV competition “Nashville Star” in 2006, and his second album, “The Man I Want to Be,” released in 2009, reached the platinum sales mark in the United States. He has been a familiar presence on the Billboard country charts since.John Yoon More

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      The History of the Lynching Site Where Jason Aldean Filmed ‘Try That in a Small Town’

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      Henry Choate, an 18-year-old Black man, was hanged outside the Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee in 1927 after he was falsely accused of attacking a white girl.The new video for the country singer Jason Aldean’s song “Try That in a Small Town” takes place outside a courthouse in Tennessee where, nearly a century ago, an 18-year-old Black man was attacked by a mob and lynched.Mr. Aldean was criticized after releasing the video, which included violent news footage of looting and unrest during protests in American cities. Country Music Television pulled the video this week after accusations surfaced on social media that its lyrics and message were offensive.“I think there is a lack of sensitivity using that courthouse as a prop,” said Cheryl L. Keyes, chair of the department of African American studies and a professor of ethnomusicology at U.C.L.A.The teenager who was lynched, Henry Choate, had traveled from his home in Coffee County, Tenn., where he worked in road construction, to visit his grandfather in nearby Maury County on Nov. 11, 1927 — Armistice Day, as it was known at the time, or Veterans Day today.While he was there, he was accused — falsely, historians now believe — of raping a 16-year-old white girl.According to an account in “Lynching and Frame-Up in Tennessee,” a book by Robert Minor that was published in 1946, the girl’s family called the county sheriff, who responded by rounding up a pack of bloodhounds to track down the girl’s attacker.Before the hounds arrived, however, a group of white people went to Mr. Choate’s grandfather’s house, “called out” Mr. Choate and took him to the girl, who did not identify him as her attacker, according to Mr. Minor’s book.Once the hounds were brought in, they were “given the scent” on a street called Hicks Lane, where the attack was alleged to have taken place. But the scent did not lead the dogs to Mr. Choate’s grandfather’s house.Instead, “the trail faded out in another direction,” Mr. Minor wrote, “and the girl again said she did not recognize Henry Choate as her assailant.”One man, however, announced that he had seen Mr. Choate returning to his grandfather’s home from the direction of Hicks Lane. Mr. Choate’s arms were tied with ropes and he was led away. Eventually, he was turned over to the sheriff, who arrested him.After Mr. Choate was brought to the jail, a cook there told him to pray because “the mob is coming to lynch you,” according to Mr. Minor’s book.The courthouse in Maury County, Tenn., in 1946.Associated Press“I know they are,” Mr. Choate said.According to Mr. Minor’s account, a mob of white men gathered outside the jail, demanding the keys. The sheriff’s wife, with whom the sheriff had left the keys, initially refused because she believed Mr. Choate was innocent, Mr. Minor wrote.The mob attempted to enter the jail twice, and failed, according to a contemporaneous account of the episode in The Tennessean.One member of the mob left and returned with a sledgehammer and began beating the jailhouse door with it, Mr. Minor wrote.Terrified that the mob would dynamite the jailhouse, the sheriff’s wife relented, and the first deputy sheriff unlocked the door. Mr. Choate was beaten with a sledgehammer and dragged out of the jail.The mob used a rope to tie him to the bumper of a car and dragged him to the Maury County courthouse in Columbia, Tenn., where they hanged him from a window, according to news reports.There were about 250 men in the mob, according to research from the University of North Carolina.Two pastors, two lawyers and James I. Finney, the editor of The Tennessean, had begged members of the mob to spare Mr. Choate’s life, but to no avail, the International News Service reported.Others denounced the actions of the mob.The executive committee of a body called the Tennessee Inter-Racial Commission later said in a statement that “all available information indicates that the sheriff of Maury County failed to meet his obligations as an officer,” The Tennessean reported a little over a week after the lynching.The Maury County sheriff, who was identified in news accounts at the time as Luther Wiley, said in a statement in the days after the lynching that he was honoring a promise.“I had an agreement with the mother, brothers and the little girl not to take the criminal away from our county, but to give him a speedy trial,” he said, according to a 1927 account in The Tennessean. “And I kept my promise steadfastly.”He added that he was “overpowered by all classes of weapons,” referring to members of the mob who had armed themselves with crowbars, sledgehammers and dynamite.Ultimately, a grand jury declined to indict anyone involved with the lynching, according to a wire article that was published in The Philadelphia Tribune in December 1927.As the details of Mr. Choate’s death resurfaced this week, Mr. Aldean responded on Twitter to the criticism of his music video by denying that he had released “a pro-lynching song.”“These references are not only meritless, but dangerous,” he wrote. “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it — and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage — and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music — this one goes too far.”TackleBox Films, the company that produced the video, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Alain Delaquérière More

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      A New Show Celebrates the Guitar and Its Symbolism

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      Opening in May at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, the exhibition will delve into the instrument’s myriad representations and stars who have played it.This article is part of our Museums special section about how art institutions are reaching out to new artists and attracting new audiences.Guitarists and their music — from folk singers to rock ’n’ roll stars and protest songs — figure prominently in American history and culture, but the instrument has a notable heritage of its own.“The guitar itself can have meaning, other than simply being beautiful or making music,” said Mark Scala, chief curator at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, where “Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art,” on view from May 26 to Aug. 13, will explore the guitar’s symbolism in American art, from late 18th-century parlor rooms to today’s concert halls.On display will be more than 165 works: paintings, sculpture, photography, works on paper, illustrations, videos, music in multimedia presentations and musical instruments, including a rare cittern, a popular string instrument in the 18th and 19th centuries, and seminal guitars by Fender, Gibson and C.F. Martin & Company.Twelve thematic sections, with names like “Cowboy Guitars,” “Iconic Women of Early Country Music” and “Hispanicization,” will weave in how artists and photographers have used the guitar as a visual motif to express the American experience and attitudes, from thorny issues like race and identity to the aesthetics of guitars themselves.The guitar was seen as a symbol of cultivation and sophistication, as used in Thomas Cantwell Healy’s portrait of Charlotte Davis Wylie (1853). Estate of Mary Swords BoehmerArtworks in “Leisure, Culture, and Comfort: 18th and 19th Century America,” including a painting by Charles Willson Peale from 1771, the earliest image in the exhibition, will show old-fashioned scenes of women playing for pleasure or holding guitars passively.“The guitar was seen as a symbol of cultivation and sophistication, a sign of domestic achievement, like needlework or writing poetry,” Mr. Scala said. But throughout the show, many images of guitar-playing women counter this gender stereotype, he said, by signaling self-confidence, independence, creativity and even sexual liberation.“Guitars are kind of equal-opportunity story facilitators,” said Leo Mazow, curator of American art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, who organized “Storied Strings, where it recently closed. (The exhibition will be adapted for the Frist, mainly to reflect Tennessee culture.)He attributes the instrument’s popularity to its portability, affordability, easy to learn repertoire and ability to host many different genres: “One of the reasons guitars appear frequently in American art is they fit neatly within the picture plane, especially on the diagonal and one’s lap.”William H. Johnson’s “Blind Musician” was painted around 1940.Smithsonian American Art MuseumThe section “Blues and Folk” will focus on the role of both idioms “in the formation of a voice that comes up from the people, music that has often been conflated to express identity or to encourage change,” Mr. Scala said. Works featuring figures like Lead Belly, Odetta, and Josh White appear here. Romare Bearden’s 1967 collage, “Three Folk Musicians,” a nod to Picasso’s “Three Musicians,” Dr. Mazow said, “is a powerful work because it contrasts the guitar with its Western European origins to the banjo with its West African origins, but carries little to none of the racially vexed baggage that the banjo does.”Dr. Mazow said that one of his favorite works was Thomas Hart Benton’s “Jessie with Guitar,” of the artist’s daughter, from 1957. “Every birthday he would make a drawing or a painting of her,” he explained, “and this painting is based on sketches completed the morning of her 18th birthday.” Based on conversations with Jessie, who died in February, he said, “this guitar provided a way for the older dad to bond with his young, hip daughter, who was something of a folk sensation.”This photograph of the folk and protest singer Woody Guthrie was taken in 1943. Jessie Benton Collection. T.H. and R.P. Benton Trusts / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York“A Change is Coming” will highlight the guitar as a vehicle of political change, with images and videos of musicians — like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez — who “protest the hypocrisy of America’s social and political systems,” Mr. Scala said. Dorothea Lange’s 1935 photograph “Coachella Valley” details a Mexican laborer playing a guitar at a camp in California, and Annie Leibovitz’s 1984 photo of Bruce Springsteen used to promote his “Born in the U.S.A.” tour will be on view.“Making a Living” will look at the role of money in music, “from historic paintings of blind street buskers to the ultrarich stars of today,” Mr. Scala said. Highlights include a 1912 oil painting by Robert Henri “Blind Singers,” a 1941 photograph by Walker Evans “Blind Man with Guitar,” and more recent images of Chet Atkins and the Carter Sisters performing at the Grand Ole Opry, and Dolly Parton on her tour bus.“Personification” will explore how the guitar is often associated with the human body, through words to describe it like “neck” and “waist” and at times, phallic connotations. A photograph of B.B. King hugging his guitar named Lucille reflects how the guitar can also be a kind of extension of, or an avatar for the human body, Mr. Scala said.“The Visual Culture of Early Rock and Roll” will feature electric guitars from the 1950s and ‘60s, including a 1959 Les Paul, instruments played by Eric Clapton, by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones and footage of Sister Rosetta Tharpe playing electric guitar, a musician who is credited with transforming Black church music. “Most of the guitars in this section were played by male rock ’n’ roll stars,” Mr. Scala said. “I wanted to show her influence on the early development of rock ’n’ roll, puncturing the gender-specific notion of the ‘guitar god.’”This Gibson Explorer guitar was played by Eric Clapton and dates back to 1958.Private collection, TexasSeveral design milestones have contributed to the guitar’s appeal as a visual icon. “The first American guitar manufacturer, C.F. Martin,” right after he arrived from Germany in 1833, Dr. Mazow said, “is very concerned with aesthetics. There are several parts of early Martins, like the ornate deck decorations around the sound hole, that are not structural at all.” More than a century later, a 1954 Fender Stratocaster, which will be on view, is believed to be the first custom-painted model, he said. “It takes us back to a moment when one of the premier electric guitar makers decided that aesthetics count.”Paul Polycarpou, a guitar collector, whose rare pink Stratocaster appears in the show, said, “It’s art you can play.” Mr. Polycarpou, former editor and publisher of Nashville Arts Magazine, arrived in Nashville in the 1980s from England to play guitar on tour with Tammy Wynette. “It really is ground zero for guitar players,” he said of Nashville. “Not just in country music, but in all genres, whether it’s jazz, rockabilly, rock ’n’ roll or bluegrass.”The Frist recently opened a companion exhibition, “Guitar Town: Picturing Performance Today,” on view through Aug. 20, featuring works by 10 local photographers who celebrate Nashville’s music scene, with images of guitar players performing in venues across the city. “Anywhere in America, if you’ve got a story to tell, the guitar will help you tell it,” Mr. Polycarpou said. “That’s what makes it such a powerful symbol. Who can forget Elvis Presley, rocking with that guitar? You can’t forget that image of a young Bob Dylan singing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ on a black-and-white television. You can’t forget that once you see it. It’s that powerful.” More

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      36 Hours in Nashville: Things to Do and See

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      1 p.m.
      Stroll the strip, then kick off your shoes
      Roughly a mile south of downtown is the 12South neighborhood, which includes a walkable corridor of shops, restaurants and cafes; it’s an easy excursion to grab a quick gift, a latte or lunch. Plunder the vintage goods at Savant, at the north end of the strip, and then swing by Draper James — the actor Reese Witherspoon’s brick-and-mortar salute to all that is Southern and genteel — which sells clothes, home goods and Ms. Witherspoon’s book club picks. For lunch, grab a few of Bartaco’s light-yet-satisfying roasted-cauliflower tacos ($3.25 each). At the corridor’s south end, White’s Mercantile sells everything from books to organic dog treats to candlewick trimmers. Finally, Sevier Park, next door, is where you can kick off your shoes and lie on the grass, but be wary of cold noses: This park is dog-friendly. More

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      in Theater

      Tennessee Law Limiting ‘Cabaret’ Shows Raises Uncertainty About Drag Events

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      The measure is part of a wave of legislation by conservative lawmakers across the country against drag performances. Many are wondering how it will be applied.NASHVILLE — A bill signed into law this week in Tennessee makes staging “adult cabaret” on public property or anywhere a child could see it a criminal offense. The law forbids performances in those places by topless, go-go or exotic dancers, strippers, or male or female impersonators who, as the law defines it, provides entertainment that is “harmful to minors.” The word “drag” does not appear in the legislation. And to some legal experts, the description provided in the letter of the law would not apply to drag as they know it. But many in the state are still trying to grasp how the measure will ultimately affect drag events, theater performances that involve drag, and even transgender and gender nonconforming people as they go about their lives.The law is part of a cascade of legislation across the country fueled by a conservative backlash to drag events, which has also spurred protests from far-right groups and threats directed at performers. Now that it is one of the first to succeed, with lawmakers in other states pursuing legislation with similarly ambiguous language, the law has prompted concerns about how it will be enforced and the implications it could have.“The murkiness of this law is causing a lot of people to be on edge,” said Micah Winter, a performer and board member of Friends of George’s, a theater company in Memphis whose shows are often centered on drag.Proponents of the legislation have described it as a way to safeguard children, asserting that drag events can have sexualized language and suggestive performances that may be too mature for younger viewers.“This bill gives confidence to parents that they can take their kids to a public or private show and will not be blindsided by a sexualized performance,” Jack Johnson, the Republican state senator who sponsored the legislation, said on Twitter.Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee giving his State of the State address in February. Mark Zaleski/Associated PressStill, the legislation figures into a campaign by conservative lawmakers across the country to curb the rights of people in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. In Tennessee, one proposal would block transgender people from changing the gender listed on their drivers’ licenses, and on Thursday, the same day Gov. Bill Lee signed the adult cabaret bill, he approved legislation that prevents all puberty-delaying treatment, hormone therapies and referrals for transgender children to receive gender-affirming medical care in the state.Drag has become more mainstream in Tennessee, as in much of the country. Performers in vibrant costumes that upend gender assumptions could simply be reading a book, promoting acceptance and literacy. Or they might be “reading” — that is, playfully mocking — tourists piled onto buses rolling through Nashville or lip-syncing in variety shows in boozy brunches in Memphis or Chattanooga.“Not one of our performers on this bus has ever shown more skin than a Titans’ cheerleader on a Sunday afternoon,” David Taylor, an owner of the Big Drag Bus Tour in Nashville and bars that host drag events, said in a hearing on the legislation.Legal experts said the equivocal wording meant that the adult cabaret law was not exactly a ban on drag but could still have consequences.“It’s an anti-drag law,” said Kathy Sinback, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, “because they passed it intentionally to try to chill and prevent people from doing drag, but that’s not really what the law says.”“It should not even touch any drag performances,” she added. But after watching public commentary and a series of legislative hearings debating the merits of the bill, she said, “it’s clear that some people think that drag in and of itself as an art form is obscene and that it should not be viewed by children.”But Ms. Sinback said the parameters set in the legislation should not apply to most drag performances, given that they would have to be considered extremely sexual or violent, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific values, and be considered broadly offensive and obscene to a child to warrant charging the performer with a crime.Mr. Johnson said that the law was not meant to target drag performances in general or discriminate against the L.G.B.T.Q. community. “It simply puts age restrictions in place to ensure that children are not present at sexually explicit performances,” he said in an interview with CNN.Critics said the legislation reflected what many in the gay and transgender community have described as a bleak and dangerous climate in Tennessee, threatening people who are often marginalized and already uniquely vulnerable. The law over medical care has provoked the most alarm. The Tennessee chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics opposed the law, saying in a statement that it will “significantly limit our ability to practice to the standard of care established by numerous national medical organizations.”Sruti Swaminathan, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal, which is working with other civil liberties groups in mounting a legal challenge to the legislation barring gender-affirming care, said, “This is clearly an effort to villainize us and isolate us because they fear our resilience and our self-love and our collective power.”People protesting against the bill on cabaret restrictions in Knoxville, Tenn., in February. Jamar Coach/News Sentinel, via ReutersTennessee is one of more than a dozen states where conservative lawmakers, focusing on issues of gender and identity, have pursued legislation that explicitly or otherwise seeks to impose restrictions on drag events.Some of the bills would require venues to register as adult entertainment spaces or “sexually oriented businesses,” and others would forbid performances at schools or libraries. A proposal in Arizona would outlaw drag performances within a quarter-mile of public playgrounds and schools.The law in Tennessee has not yet spurred a legal challenge, but activists and lawyers were prepared to start one as they watched to see how it is applied. Those who violate the law will be charged with a misdemeanor or a felony for continued offenses.The drag performer Poly Tics attending a rally in Kentucky on Thursday. Bruce Schreiner/Associated PressIn Kentucky, where the State Legislature has advanced a sprawling bill to curtail health care access for L.G.B.T.Q. children, lawmakers had also considered restrictions that included prohibiting what the state classifies as “adult performances” from operating within 1,000 feet of child care facilities, schools, public parks, homes or places of worship. The legislation was amended on Thursday to limit such performances from taking place in public places or a location where the performance could be viewed by a child — a step that critics of the legislation took as a victory.“This version is much more narrowly tailored to just explicit sexual content,” said Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in Kentucky, who acknowledged that much of his organization’s limited energy was focused on challenging the legislation on restricting gender-affirming health care.Compared with other proposals on L.G.B.T.Q. issues that advocates contend will have immediate and damaging impact, the ones that are tied to drag stir worries rooted more in uncertainty.For transgender and gender nonconforming people, who face a heightened threat of violence, some fear the law could be wielded as a tool to further discriminate against them.“The language is vague enough that it leaves it in the hands of each individual jurisdiction to define what counts as a ‘male or female impersonator,’” said Dahron Johnson, who works in community outreach with the Tennessee Equality Project. “They could say I, just going about my daily life, am an ‘impersonator.’”In theater, there is a long history of performance featuring cross-dressing and drag — Shakespeare famously employed male actors to play female roles — and many touring shows feature some variation on the practice: “The Lion King” (a male meerkat, Timon, dons a dress to dance the Charleston), “Hairspray” (the protagonist’s mother is often played by a man in drag) and “1776” (now touring with a new production in which all the male characters are played by female, transgender and nonbinary actors).“Hairspray” and many other theater productions feature drag performances.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“We’re absolutely opposed to any legislation that restricts the rights of our producers to present stories we’ve been presenting for 4,000 years,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade association representing producers and presenters around the country. Ms. Martin said the league is “very concerned” about the legislation under consideration in multiple states.Brett Batterson, the president and chief executive of the Orpheum Theatre Group in Memphis, said that on Friday, he paused conversations about bringing to Memphis a solo show, “Dixie’s Tupperware Party,” a small, long-running and popular touring production that has played all over America and is performed by a man in drag.“We decided we would pause our discussion to see how some of the language is interpreted,” Mr. Batterson said. “I think the law will be challenged, and we want to see how it plays out.”For now, Friends of George’s was not ready to change any of its plans. “We think it’s outrageous, but we’re forging ahead with our next production in spite of everything,” said Ty Phillips, the nonprofit’s vice president.Yet uncertainty remained. Mr. Winter noted that over the years he has played Mother Ginger in “The Nutcracker” and the mother in “Hairspray.”“Can I still do that?” he asked. More

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      The Real Story of ‘Cocaine Bear’

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      Nearly 40 years after a 175-pound black bear found and ingested cocaine in a Georgia forest, the drug binge has inspired a movie.The trailer for a new movie called “Cocaine Bear” was released on Wednesday, and the film’s title is not a metaphor or clever wordplay: The movie is about a bear high on cocaine.The bloody spree that follows the bear’s cocaine binge, as depicted in the trailer, is fictional, but the story about a high bear is very real. Its lore is likely to grow with the movie, which was directed by Elizabeth Banks and is set for a Feb. 24 release.“Cocaine Bear” stars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Ray Liotta, who died in May, in one of his final film roles. It depicts the bear’s drug-induced trail of terror and the victims he leaves behind.The real story is less bloody.It all began, as you might guess, in the 1980s. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced in December 1985 that a 175-pound black bear had “died of an overdose of cocaine after discovering a batch of the drug,” according to a three-sentence item from United Press International that appeared in The New York Times.A United Press International item on the cocaine bear appeared in The New York Times in December 1985.“The cocaine was apparently dropped from a plane piloted by Andrew Thornton, a convicted drug smuggler who died Sept. 11 in Knoxville, Tenn., because he was carrying too heavy a load while parachuting,” U.P.I. reported. “The bureau said the bear was found Friday in northern Georgia among 40 opened plastic containers with traces of cocaine.”The bear was found dead in the mountains of Fannin County, Ga., just south of the Tennessee border.“There’s nothing left but bones and a big hide,” Gary Garner of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation told The Associated Press at the time.Dr. Kenneth Alonso, the state’s chief medical examiner at the time, said after an autopsy in December 1985 that the bear had absorbed three or four grams of cocaine into its blood stream, although it may have eaten more, The Associated Press reported that month.Today, the very same bear is said to be on display in Lexington, Ky., at the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall. The mall said in an August 2015 blog post that workers there wanted to know what happened to the bear and found out it had been stuffed. The blog post says the stuffed bear was at one point owned by the country singer Waylon Jennings, who kept it in his home in Las Vegas, before it was delivered to the store. (The New York Times could not independently confirm this account.)What happened to the bear in its final days, or hours, after the cocaine binge is a mystery, but the origins of the cocaine are not.Mr. Thornton was a known drug smuggler and a former police officer. He was found dead the morning of Sept. 11, 1985, in the backyard of a house in Knoxville, Tenn., wearing a parachute and Gucci loafers. He also had several weapons and a bag containing about 35 kilograms of cocaine, The Knoxville News Sentinel reported.A key in Mr. Thornton’s pocket matched the tail number of a wrecked plane that was found in Clay County, N.C., and based on Mr. Thornton’s history of drug smuggling, investigators guessed there was more cocaine nearby, The News Sentinel reported. The investigators searched the surrounding area and found more than 300 pounds of cocaine in a search that lasted several months.They also found the dead bear. More

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      Dolly Parton Statue Has Tennessee’s Support, but Not Parton’s

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDolly Parton Statue Has Tennessee’s Support, but Not Parton’sThe state legislature was considering a bill that would kick off plans to erect the statue on Capitol grounds. She has asked that the bill be pulled.“Given all that is going on in the world, I don’t think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time,” Parton said in a statement.Credit…Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 18, 2021, 2:14 p.m. ETIt was something that Democrats and Republicans in Nashville could agree on: a statue of the country music legend Dolly Parton on the grounds of the State Capitol.The only problem? It doesn’t have Parton’s vote.The singer released a statement on Thursday asking the Tennessee General Assembly to pull a bill that would have started the process for commissioning a statue of her.“Given all that is going on in the world, I don’t think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time,” Parton said in the statement, which was posted on Twitter and Instagram.A monument to Parton gained support during a debate over whether to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former Confederate general, slave trader and leader of the Ku Klux Klan, from the Tennessee State Capitol. In 2019, a Republican House leader, Representative Jeremy Faison, suggested Parton as a potential replacement for the Forrest bronze; in January, a Democratic legislator, Representative John Mark Windle, introduced a bill to initiate plans for the statue on Capitol grounds. According to the bill, the statue would be positioned to face Ryman Auditorium, a storied country music venue.In her statement, Parton, 75, left the option open for a statue to be erected in the future, writing, “I hope, though, that somewhere down the road several years from now or perhaps after I’m gone if you still feel I deserve it, then I’m certain I will stand proud in our great State Capitol as a grateful Tennessean.”The singer was being considered for her role in country music history, her philanthropy and her strong Tennessee roots. (She was born in Sevierville, Tenn., or as she likes to say, “the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.”) It helped that Parton has long kept her political opinions to herself, saying in the 2019 podcast series “Dolly Parton’s America” that she avoided the subject because “I have too many fans on both sides of the fence.”Representative Windle’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether he planned to remove the bill from consideration. The bill was scheduled to be considered by a House committee on Tuesday.On social media, Parton’s statement asking for the monument plans to be put aside drew plaudits from fans and fellow musicians who called her a “national treasure,” making some even more confident that the singer was deserving of such a tribute.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More