Beth Wanless

Zillow Government Relations | Proud @DenisonU & @NorthwesternU grad | Opinions are my own | #Midwestisthebest

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

“Those who died yesterday had plans for today. And those who died today had plans for tomorrow.

Do not take life for granted. In a blink of an eye, everything can change.

Forgive often and live with all of your heart. You may never know when you may not have the chance again.”

[Rolling Stone @RollingStone]

Dolly Parton's family asked that, in lieu of flowers, fans make a donation to the singer's Imagination Library.

Here's what the charity does ⬇️
https://t.co/wYj727Ao9I

[Beth Wanless @Beth_Wanless]

We were proud & grateful recipients of Dolly’s Imagination Library books. I still have all of them. What a wonderful gift and legacy she left to the world.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

The doctor who delivered Dolly Parton in a one-room Tennessee cabin in 1946 was paid with a sack of cornmeal. Her father farmed other people's land and could not read or write. Eighty years later, the reading program she built in his name has mailed more than 300 million books.

She wrote "I Will Always Love You" on the same afternoon she wrote "Jolene," as a goodbye to Porter Wagoner, and released it in 1974. Elvis wanted it. The night before the session, Colonel Tom Parker called and said Presley would only record it if they got half the publishing, meaning half of everything the song ever earned. She had been in Nashville ten years by then. She said no, and cried all night. Whitney Houston cut her version in 1992, held number one for fourteen weeks, and Forbes later put Parton's royalties from it near $10 million. She put some of that money into an office complex in Nashville and called the place the house that Whitney built.

Dollywood opened in Pigeon Forge in 1986 because she wanted paychecks in the county she came from. Around 4,000 people work there now. Three million visitors come every year. The University of Tennessee put its economic impact at $1.8 billion, and it is the largest employer in Sevier County. Since 2022 the company has paid tuition, fees, and books in full for every worker from their first day, seasonal hires included.

Wildfires tore through those mountains in November 2016, killing fourteen people and destroying more than 2,400 buildings. Her foundation was handing out money within 48 hours. Every family that lost a home got $1,000 a month for six months, regardless of income. The final check was $5,000. Total delivered: $8.9 million.

In April 2020 she sent $1 million to Vanderbilt for coronavirus research. When Moderna's vaccine results ran in the New England Journal of Medicine that November, her fund appeared in the footnotes.

Carl Dean, her husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025. The note she wrote to fans afterward ended with the same five words she wrote for Porter Wagoner back in 1974. She died in Nashville today. Her family asked that instead of flowers, people give to the Imagination Library, which still mails 3.4 million books a month to children who will never get to meet her.

[Beth Wanless @Beth_Wanless]

So sad. What a national treasure 💕

[ABC News @ABC]

BREAKING: Dolly Parton, a country music legend and cultural icon, has died. She was 80. https://t.co/OJYV6gAoAc

[The Internet Remains Undefeated @WebUndefeated]

This is why it’s important to let kids be bored.🏴‍☠️😁

[NBC Sports @NBCSports]

An ELECTRIC first pitch from Sister Mary Jo on Pope Hat Night in Chicago!

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

The first gift is life. The second gift is good health.

The third gift is to love and be loved. The fourth gift is peace of mind.

There are no other gifts that matter as much.

The fifth gift is having the wisdom to know what to appreciate most.

[Housing Affordability Institute @HousingInst]

Today via @HousingWire

Our executive director, @nserickson discusses the need for a new direction in building code development.

[HousingWire @HousingWire]

Congress didn’t create the private listings problem. We did. https://t.co/yKdq5SoocX

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

The star of the World Cup, Keyne, celebrating with his big brother Lamine Yamal

[Housing Affordability Institute @HousingInst]

ICYMI: Housing Affordability Institute on Missouri housing costs:

Missouri homebuilders report dwindling business amid national housing slump

https://t.co/8lm5CzA98g

[Housing Affordability Institute @HousingInst]

"Home prices have jumped about 50% just in the last six years, and rents are up nearly 30% nationally."
https://t.co/51hz8I7uKu

[Beth Wanless @Beth_Wanless]

Housing is ok. Modest density is ok. Today is a good day to build a home.

[Nathan Reeder @PropertyMan219]

Midwest growing slower than Kentucky, west Virginia, and Missouri last year.

This year, states across the Midwest, after much protest from baby boomer current homeowners, killed their statewide housing supply bills.

These two things are related.

[Beth Wanless @Beth_Wanless]

Rent control does not work. How much evidence (people not finding housing) do we need to believe it. There are better ways!

[Housing Affordability Institute @HousingInst]

St. Paul housing production fell 66% from 2023 to 2024 due to rent control, even with the Missing Middle surge

https://t.co/AxT12Rqtb5

[OFootball @ofootball__]

After the game ended, Japanese fans stayed in the stadium to collect paper and waste.

Respect, Japan. 🇯🇵

[Beth Wanless @Beth_Wanless]

Very, very, very grateful for my 2.75%.

[Ben Carlson @awealthofcs]

I still don't think ppl realize what an amazing deal locking in a 3% mortgage in 2020 has been for homeowners

Inflation has averaged 3.9% this decade

It's now back above 4%

You're basically borrowing for free

This was the deal of a lifetime

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @BarnabyHistory]

🇺🇸 Just a guy who flew 39 combat missions talking to a guy who was machine gunning on D-Day.

Greatest Generation. Built Different. 🫡🇺🇸

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This is real first-hand footage of D-Day.

On a single morning, on a fifty-mile stretch of French coast, the largest invasion in human history began...

It was the 6th of June, 1944. By the end of that one day, around 160,000 Allied soldiers had crossed the English Channel and landed in Normandy.

They were carried by more than 5,000 ships and supported by some 13,000 aircraft, a fleet so vast that, to the men who saw it from the water, the horizon itself seemed to be made of steel.

The plan was almost insane in its ambition...

In the darkness after midnight, 23,400 paratroopers were dropped behind enemy lines to seize bridges and roads. At dawn, after a bombardment from sea and air, the infantry went in across five beaches, code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.

What you are watching was filmed in those hours.

It is worth remembering what it actually shows. Each of those small landing craft held a few dozen men. When the ramps dropped, they stepped out into water and onto open sand, into machine-gun fire from concrete bunkers that had been built and ranged for exactly this.

On Omaha Beach, the worst of the five, the fighting was so severe that American forces alone suffered around 2,400 casualties in that single sector.

By the end of the day, at least 4,400 Allied soldiers were confirmed dead. Most of them were very young. Many had never been in combat before that morning, and would never see another.

What makes the day almost impossible to comprehend is not only its scale but its uncertainty. No one watching the boats go in knew it would work. Eisenhower had written a short note the night before, to be released if the invasion failed, taking the entire blame upon himself. He kept it folded in his wallet but he never had to use it...

Within a year, the war was over.

[Beth Wanless @Beth_Wanless]

Boys and then heroes.

[Walk Among Heroes @walkamongheroes]

Eighty-two years ago today, the fate of the free world turned on the courage of ordinary men asked to do the extraordinary.

On June 6, 1944, more than 156,000 Allied soldiers crossed the English Channel and stormed the beaches of Normandy — many knowing they might never return.

They came not for glory, but for something far greater: the liberation of a continent crushed under tyranny. D-Day was not simply a military operation — it was the moment the tide of history changed, purchased at an almost incomprehensible cost in blood and sacrifice.

As we mark the 82nd anniversary, we don’t simply remember a battle. We remember the men behind it — their fear, their faith, and their extraordinary willingness to give everything so that others could live free. That debt does not expire with time. It only deepens.

@Normandy @WW2Facts

#dday #normandy #dday82 #ww2 #ww2history

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

D-Day: Invasion of Normandy [Real Footage in Colour]