This week has lasted four fiscal quarters, and it’s only Wednesday.

Sarah Beth returns to the porch with world headlines, West Virginia fall fever, country music news, 86 rescued dogs, ungovernable tennis-court birds and a journey through the history of September 2.

Porch School explores 20 fascinating facts about guitars and pianos, including Willie Nelson’s Trigger, B.B. King’s Lucille, the mathematics hiding between guitar frets and the immense tension inside a concert grand.

Sarah Beth also shares updates from her weight-loss journey, the great closet purge, a frightening accident involving a still-missing Mittens and a new battle plan for the growing world of Cigarette Mom, Feral Christian, music, writing and porch life.

Finally, a thought for anyone enduring a quiet season: an instrument doesn’t stop being an instrument because no one is playing it. The music hasn’t left you. Sometimes the first note back is the bravest one you’ll ever play.

It’s September on the porch, and Sarah Beth has gathered the news so you don’t have to. This edition of the Porch Paper travels from serious headlines and West Virginia road safety to home-invading bears, a nine-pound flightless parrot, an adorable porcupette with an emotional-support log, the fight over AI-generated music, the Dolly Desk and a remarkable trip through September 1 history.

Then it’s time to become porch botanists with 20 strange and surprising flower facts—including deceptive orchids, color-changing hydrangeas, ancient magnolias and enormous blooms that smell like rotting meat.

Beneath all the jokes is a reminder for difficult seasons: blooming doesn’t look the same for everyone. Sometimes you spend a season underground—but being in the dirt doesn’t mean you’re buried. It may mean you’ve been planted.

Porch Report from Sarah Beth Terry | August 31, 2026

arah Beth Terry planned to sleep in. Her neighbor—and his 8 a.m. lawnmower—had other ideas.

What begins as an emergency meeting of the porch people becomes a gloriously unfiltered Friday-morning episode about aggravating neighbors, wet grass, prayer, patience, and handing your vengeance over to the Lord before breakfast.

Sarah Beth also opens the Porch Paper for national, international, West Virginia, and Kentucky headlines; celebrates a huge day for country, bluegrass, and Americana releases; returns to the Dolly desk; shares odd facts and a little porch scripture; and catches up with viewers from across the country and around the world.

The conversation wanders through faith, gardening, chickens, touring, the next album, Dolly memories, discerning God’s voice, and the grassroots community making the porch feel like home.

Contains adult language—and one extremely persistent lawnmower.

How do you forgive someone who refuses to apologize, accept responsibility, or even admit they hurt you?

In this episode of the Feral Christian Podcast, Sarah Beth Terry explores what biblical forgiveness really means—and what it doesn’t. Forgiveness does not require pretending the pain never happened, immediately restoring trust, or giving someone unlimited access to your life.

We’re talking about releasing the debt, establishing healthy boundaries, protecting your peace, and refusing to remain imprisoned by someone else’s lack of repentance. Bring your Bible, your questions, and your church hurt. Perfect people need not apply.

Sarah Beth Terry takes the Cigarette Mom Podcast live to the porch for a rapid-fire roundup of the news—from Dolly Parton tributes and the Kentucky State Fair cake controversy to Meta’s massive settlement, Flock surveillance cameras, Appalachian sheep-wool insulation, and trouble overseas.

Along the way, Sarah Beth battles Planet Fitness, questions how public money gets spent, checks the weather, and reminds us that forgiveness doesn’t always mean giving someone access to your life. Pour something in a cup, pull up a chair, and keep your Bible open.

On tonight’s porch, Sarah Beth Terry remembers Dolly Parton—the songwriter, mountain woman, philanthropist, businesswoman, and larger-than-life light who never made herself smaller to fit the room.

Sarah Beth reflects on Dolly’s East Tennessee beginnings, extraordinary songs, Imagination Library, devotion to home, and the permission she gave generations of women to be country, ambitious, funny, faithful, feminine, and fully themselves.

The episode also brings the day’s national, international, West Virginia, and Kentucky headlines; remembers Tim Curry; checks in on late-summer porch life and molting chickens; and serves up trivia, peculiar facts, and an Appalachian vocabulary lesson.

It’s an episode about grief, laughter, rhinestones, mountain pride, and carrying the voices we love forward.

“We will always love you.”

Cigarette Mom Live | Aug. 25, 2026