Country Life

Singing in the turnip fields of hope

WHEN the miracle arrived, I didn’t fall to my knees in prayerful gratitude. In my bewildered and relieved state, I burst into song: ‘Vaccine! Vaccine! Vaccine! Vaccine! Please take away this plague!’ My lyrics didn’t stretch beyond two lines, but I belted them out to the stunned audience of sheep munching on turnip greens. My improvised version of Dolly Parton’s Jolene, a song that’s made her millions, felt good because the singer gave a big wad of those millions to Vanderbilt University in Nashville to fund vaccine research.

Singing in a field of turnips requires as much

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