On June 11, Alex Parsons created a petition to have all Confederate Monuments in Tennessee replaced with the beloved “9 to 5” hitmaker. He wrote to Governor Bill Lee and the Tennessee House and Senate to consider this switch. Parton, a Tennessee native and country music icon, feels like a good fit for the many monuments throughout the state. “While the idea of replacing all of those monuments with Dolly Parton may seem funny, the history of those monuments is anything but,” Parsons begins the petition posted on Change....

Chapel Hill’s center has been in the planning stages for more than a decade. It was proposed by Sonja Haynes Stone, an African-American-studies professor who helped integrate the UNC faculty in the 1970s. She hoped the center would not only nurture scholars of African-American culture but also foster better racial understanding on campus. The idea languished for years. Finally, in 1986, a university-appointed committee drew up plans for a spacious facility with a library, a lounge, an art gallery, a music room and a dance studio....

It’s a known fact that everyone in America is recovering from some-thing-bulimia, workaholism, childhood. Nearly all of us are ex-somethings. But thanks to the availability of support groups in every hamlet and trailer park in the land, few of us are forced to go it alone. And now, for those anxious moments when your support group is on vacation, there is a new variety of bedside bucker-uppers called affirmation books....

But the year-old eCompanies is known mainly for another breathless endeavor. Last December the company paid a whopping $7.5 million to a Houston entrepreneur for the Web address Business.com, more than double the previous ransom record, Compaq’s $3 million purchase of altavista.com. Winebaum, who left Michael Eisner’s side as head of Disney’s Internet group to start eCompanies, promises the investment will pay off. “As opposed to two spots on the Super Bowl, this is going to pay dividends forever,” he says....

Devil or angel, Maxwell at least represents a fresh start for a newspaper crippled by one of the meanest labor disputes of the decade. Since January, 1990 its owner, the Tribune Co., a Chicago-based media conglomerate, had vowed to break the power of the Daily News’s unions. Claiming that the paper had lost $115 million since 1980, management insisted on wage and manpower cuts that would have slashed operating costs from 50 to 25 percent of revenues....

This breast-beating, though, obscures one fact: Quayle is talking about federal regulators that his boss, George Bush, appointed. When Bush chose Quayle to chair the council in 1989, many pundits condescendingly viewed it as a harmless hobby to help the veep gain stature. But a year later, Bush empowered the Quayle Council to scrutinize regulations because he feared that his own administration was placing too many burdens on business. When the policy magazine National Journal recently hit the president’s desk with the cover headline THE REGULATORY PRESIDENT, Bush was heard to have said: I thought we solved this....

Now Somers is out with a new best seller, “Ageless,” in which she promotes the work of an “independent researcher” named T. S. Wiley who thinks menopausal women should have as much estrogen in their bodies as 20-year-olds. Wiley’s only academic credential is a degree in anthropology–which has outraged even the pro-bioidentical doctors Somers quotes in her book. In a recent letter to Somers, three of these doctors called “Ageless” “dangerous” because “the book freely and repeatedly blurs the line of medical ethics and science with hearsay....

The group stage certainly wasn’t all smooth sailing for the reigning champions. They got off to a dramatic start, needing two late goals to salvage victory at home versus Sporting and were also held to an equally thrilling 3-3 draw versus Legia on Matchday Four. Dropping points there meant the fate of the group would depend on their two matches versus Dortmund. Madrid’s UCL curtain-opener brought Cristiano Ronaldo’s former club, Sporting CP, to the Spanish capital, but things weren’t going to script as the game ticked into the final minute, with the visitors leading 0-1....

Before the Yankees’ game at Comerica Park on Wednesday, a Detroit reporter asserted to A-Rod that fans see him as a villain coming off his 162-game suspension because of his use of performance-enhancing drugs and the surrounding drama. MORE: Every MLB team’s most infamous moment According to NJ.com, Rodriguez questioned the thesis before saying he’s used to the boos. “It’s been one, long boo for 15 years,” he said, though he thinks fans on the road have been “really generous” despite some cold receptions he has gotten....

To make amends, Rodriguez is expected to issue a public apology when he reports to spring training in Tampa next month, according to USA Today. For exactly what he’ll apologize is unclear. Rodriguez is trying to mend fences with everyone. He met with new MLB commissioner Rob Manfred last week. He has tried to similarly meet with Yankees brass, but the team told him discussions will not take place until spring training....

You see, Doolittle lives in California, meaning he has to deal with awful traffic on a daily basis. But everyone knows eating a burrito can make even the longest waits in traffic seem like a breeze. MORE: Which active players are destined for the HOF? | A’s trade closer to Mets Yes. Doolittle keeps a burrito in his car. Sean Doolittle is a genius. Ever since Blake Griffin was asked by an Uber driver if he would like to eat a sandwich kept in the glove box of the Uber car, we’ve been wondering what the rest of the world felt about this tactic....

Some fans responded by saying they wouldn’t attend the game, and would rather sell their tickets. That’s when A’s pitcher Sean Doolittle and his girlfriend Eireann Dolan decided to take action. Dolan wrote a blog post on March 27 saying that she’ll purchase tickets from people who don’t want them. After her initial post received such positive feedback, Dolan set up a GoFundMe page for people to donate. The hope is to raise enough funds to purchase as many tickets as possible....

Problem is, it’s a really long way from the first base bag to the first base dugout at the Oakland Coliseum, so when Laureano charged toward his nemesis, Houston hitting coach Alex Cintron, after being challenged, other Astros were able to close the hole and make the tackle before Laureano could get to him. Give backup catcher Dustin Garneau credit for the stop. Laureano and A’s catcher Austin Allen were ejected in the seventh-inning incident....

Despite not even playing Houston on Friday night (Oakland faced the Angels), the club placed a cardboard cutout of Houston’s mascot, Orbit, in what appeared to be a trash can and stashed it in the bleachers. ESPN’s TV broadcast captured the troll job placed between other fan-created cutouts. Teams around the league are letting fans put images of themselves or loved ones in the stands during the COVID-19 pandemic....

Botha, 30, produced TV documentaries for the state-run South Africa Broadcasting Corp. Her uncle is Stoffel Botha, a former minister of Home Affairs who tried to withdraw Boesak’s passport after he organized a 1985 protest march against the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. Boesak was linked to another woman before. Five years ago, security police leaked reports that he was having an adulterous relationship with a woman staff member of the South African Council of Churches....

Data centers, servers and programs for building applications are the internet’s wood, nails and glue. They are the supplies needed to partake in democracy, be involved in community, engage in commerce and support a family. In short, they’re the necessary supplies for existence in the 21st century. Alas, they’re controlled by several powerful corporations bent on denying service to—in essence, exiling—half of the country. For more than a decade, big tech has been fashioning addictive echo chambers to sort us into easily marketable cohorts, corroding our relationships with friends and families in the process....

The staff man awaited his orders. “Find me something,” Teeter said. “What?” the staffer said. “Find me something that will win the election,” Teeter said, smiling wanly and walking away. The something they were looking for, by that stage, was the silver bullet that would bring down Clinton; it was a given among Bush’s men that he was not going to win a second term with advertisements for himself. He had spent a year shuffling identities like a pack of cards, from Lion of the Desert to Man With a Plan to Archdeacon of Family Values to Son of Harry Truman to Man With Another Plan, and none of them had worked....

What’s interesting about his words is how in some cases they could be applied to any civilian hospital worker in the country, and in others we see how his position as a soldier informs his experiences. As he is still on active duty in the Army, he’s asked for anonymity. Excerpts: On working as a stateside medic and nursing student: Personally I’d say that you get to see another side of the war from being on the health care side....

These are not new ideas. Price’s remedies have been an article of faith among well-intentioned liberals since the publication of William Julius Wilson’s “The Truly Disadvantaged.” Oversimplified – a temptation Price resisted – the argument becomes: if only black children had better schools and “role models,” and if only there were “good” jobs to replace the manufacturing work lost, blighted urban neighborhoods would bloom anew. Unfortunately, reality suggests otherwise....