Episode notes
Dolly Parton's passing leaves a giant hole in the world — but before anything else, Iris and Cricket pay tribute to the legacy she said she wanted to be remembered for: not the queen of country music, but the book lady. They dig into the Imagination Library, which started in 1995 in her Tennessee home county as a tribute to her father who couldn't read, mailing one free book a month to children from birth to age five — and which, thanks to Governor Tina Kotek's 2024 statewide expansion and 2026 legislation, now reaches every Oregon child under five in all 36 counties. Cricket remembers the mail-order Pickle Things days of the Parents Magazine Press Read Aloud Originals, Iris gives a shout-out to Mrs. Munson at their hometown library and the Multnomah County Library, and both agree: being read to as a kid is part of why they're here.
Then: the first leg of the Prose City Portland bookstore tour, on the stretch of NE Alberta Street known as Alberta Street Book Row. Highlights include Green Bean Books (children's, in a converted house), Midslumber Media (queer, woman-owned horror, guarded by a life-size alien), Parallel Worlds Bookshop (small, tightly packed speculative fiction heaven — Klune, Anders, Le Guin), Monograph Bookwerks (art monographs and rarities, just steps off the row), Vivienne Culinary Books (cookbooks, vintage cookware, cooking classes — like visiting the home of a talented friend), and Melville Books (self-proclaimed Portland's smallest bookstore, easy to miss, impossible to forget). Plus Botanica La Sirena, stellar coffee, and more in the newsletter.
The big topic: a July 2026 study in Perspectives on Psychological Science found that between 2005 and 2019, we spoke an average of 338 fewer words per day each year — 28% fewer, or more than 120,000 words per year — with participants under 25 losing about 44% more than those over 25. Iris and Cricket connect the dots to the loneliness epidemic, screen time, and headphone-induced solitude, and share their own antidotes: Confluence Cafe, their monthly curated discussion groups, and the quarterly Undercurrent Salon. Want to join or start your own? Email [dear@prosecity.org](mailto:dear@prosecity.org).
Iris also recounts a moving Friday night at Interviewing the Audience with Leif Olsen of the Life Recording Company — four strangers, twenty-minute live interviews, and a potent reminder of what happens when we're in a room together.
And save the date: the Buckman Journal celebrates the launch of issue ***Shed*** on September 12, 3–7 p.m. at the PALS building — free, ADA accessible, complete with cake, crafts, a gallery, literary tarot, and the return of Up Up Books to brick and mortar. Iris and Cricket will be there — come say hey.
Links in the show notes on our website: the study and coverage, the Imagination Library, all the Book Row shops, Interviewing the Audience, Willamette Writers, Literary Arts, and more. Sign up for our newsletter at prosecity.org.
Keep the conversations going out there. Keep reading. We'll talk to you in about two weeks.