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🌤️Some clouds, with highs in the 80s. Sunset is at 7:28 p.m.
Country music icon and philanthropist Dolly Parton died yesterday at age 80. GBH’s Jared Bowen got to interview her in 2019 about the musical “Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol,” a take on the Charles Dickens classic for which Parton wrote the music and lyrics.
She talked about putting herself in the shoes of her characters, and joked about having written “3, 4, 5 million songs by now, not all of them good.” “I just love to do it, because I’m from a musical family. All my mothers’ people were very musical,” she said. “So I grew up with everybody playing instruments and writing songs, singing in the church. So music is just a huge part of my whole being. It’s easy for me to write, and I love doing it. It’s not a hard process for someone who just loves doing it.” Watch the short clip above or the full interview here.
Four Things to Know
1. Federal immigration agents arrested 49,571 people nationwide in July, according to the Deportation Data Project based at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA — the highest monthly total since President Donald Trump took office for his second term. Massachusetts had 505 people arrested, fewer than were arrested during ICE operations in May and September 2025.
Now that the state has a new law banning immigration agents from schools, teachers’ unions and other advocates are working to make sure educators know what the law does and doesn’t allow before the school year starts. “If staff aren’t knowledgeable about what’s in the legislation and how to enact it in their schools as quickly as possible, then I think there might be a missed opportunity to ensure that our schools are the safe places they should be,” said Jessica Tang, the president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts chapter.
2. People have spent over $110 million on the Massachusetts Lottery’s online games since they launched at the end of July, less than a month ago.
“We surpassed $100 million in the first 26 days, which makes us faster than any other state when they launched iLottery,” said lottery Executive Director Mark William Bracken.
3. The leader of the state’s Department of Higher Education, Commissioner Noe Ortega, is leaving his job next month after almost four years in the role. Taking his place on an interim basis is Senior Deputy Commissioner José Luis Santos.
Santos has worked for the department since 2023. He’s been chief of staff, a senior adviser and chief innovation and strategy officer. “He’s helped turn an ambitious agenda into something that we’ve been able to accomplish,” Ortega said of his interim successor.
4. With less than a week to go until the Sept. 1 primary (and early voting already underway), here’s a look at one race that’s gotten a bit less statewide attention. In Western Massachusetts, voters are choosing between two candidates for the Governor’s Council, the group that confirms judges and approves pardons and commutations for people in prison.
It’s something of a rematch of the 2022 race, in which Tara Jacobs of North Adams beat Michael Fenton of Springfield and two other candidates by 2,300 votes. Jacobs said she looks at potential judges and evaluates “Things like specifically racial bias, but also how well informed they are on trauma and mental health challenges and substance use, reproductive justice issues and the list goes on.” Fenton said he wants to “rebuild the bridge that’s been broken between our region and the governor’s office by appropriately and effectively vetting nominees instead of applying unreasonable litmus tests.”
Boston Hunters pitcher balances passion for baseball with drive to fight Canadian wildfires
Meet Alli Schroder, a pitcher for the Boston Hunters, Boston’s Women’s Pro Baseball League team. She’s also a wildland firefighter and crew leader in Canada, where she grew up.
“I would say baseball, honestly — kind of funny — is like a hobby to me, and firefighting is my full-time job,” she told GBH’s Esteban Bustillos. (She’s been very successful at this hobby: Schroder was the first woman to play in the Canadian Collegiate Baseball Conference, is a nine-time member of Canada’s national baseball team and was selected with the fifth pick in the Women’s Pro Baseball League’s draft.)
Schroder, 24, started firefighting at 17. She grew up in British Columbia watching seasonal wildfires burn around her community.
“I saw it, around the time that I was graduating high school, escalate very, very fast. Every summer was worse than the one before,” Schroder told Bustillos. “You see it impacting your friends, your family — people that you know — in very real ways.”
You can hear more from Schroder and her mom, a planning officer and logistics chief for the BC Wildfire Service who has been watching her daughter’s games from fire camps.
⚾Play ball!
-Women’s Pro Baseball League brings hope for future of the game
-Bridgewater Little League balances fun with big business at Little League World Series
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