Nice chest X-ray film Old Scout! I personally shall cross the 80 year-old threshold later this week and thus join you and other elders in the octogenarian segment (buzzword alert) "going forward". I will however NOT be taking a sip of Scotch on 20 April as formerly threatened (by both of us). I am remaining strictly free of fermented beverage use for "the rest of the way". I like that phrase, "the rest of the way" and heard it first used by my former dentist Nervous Bob, a guy not necessarily the most smoothly loquacious person: He had installed a nice 900-dollar crown for me and at the final visit to check its status he peered into my mouth while wearing his giant magnifying spectacles that made him look like an insect, and he mumbled (with satisfaction), "That ought to do you The Rest Of The Way". I later figured out just what Nervous Bob was alluding to.
Hey! A New Hampshire date. If you don't get treated right let me know. I'll track the losers down and Sparky will drool them to submission. Your life is writing your script. Pig bits keeping you amidst us and privilege - a chance to rise above, Love it!
I love you Mr. Keillor. I was born on your birthday in 1950. While my mom (who just passed away in February at 101 years old) was resting, I hope you were wearing a pointy hat and blowing one of those unfurling paper things. We also have a mitral valve issue in common.
Thanks Garrison, I am just a few years younger than you but I remember the school desks and the barn for the horses that kids rode to school. Cheerfulness is the only way to live. When someone asks how I a, doing my favourite rely is “another day in paradise”.
Thank you for your lovely post about the privilege of survivorship. At 78, I am now four years older than my brother when he died. He was a wonderful human being, a talented blacksmith, poet, and lifetime canoeing partner who suffered gallantly with a debilitating illness his last 16 years. I, on the other hand, have had the extraordinary privilege of good health and vigor while continuing an enjoyment, similar to yours, of indulgent eating, all to the chagrin of a loving wife, who is compelled to assiduously monitor her cholesterol and blood pressure.
I especially enjoyed your recollection of mid-20th century schooling. Growing up in a small, working-class town on Lake Ontario in northern New York, I was uniquely privileged to spend my days from kindergarten through fifth grade in a stately stone mansion, salvaged and repurposed by frugal city fathers, and rightly called the Castle School. There, with a fireplace in every room, at wooden, cast-iron desks just as you describe, and with Miss Donovan (in our case being on the Irish side of town) at the chalkboard beside the pendulum clock, we looked wistfully out the mansion’s floor to ceiling windows as we were drilled in our numbers, learned to see Spot run, and assiduously dragged the Palmer Method out of our ink-dipped fountain pens. Like you, I am grateful to be among those who were privileged to grow up with such memories while still enjoying the gift of life with a loving wife and family and a close circle of friends.
I also wish to thank you for the PHC show you brought to Potsdam, New York more than twenty years ago. Your storytelling and humor brought a wonderful respite to a community still reeling from a devastating ice storm that had brought havoc to thousands of square miles of northern New York. We had been well prepared for your visit after decades as loyal fans of your show broadcast over our local North Country Public Radio. We had not quite anticipated, though, and therefore enjoyed all the more, your personalized monologue about the ”North Country” as we know it and the humor you were able to glean from our experience. We were especially grateful for the chance to meet you after the show with several close friends at a small Mexican restaurant in town. Time with you then was a privileged gift, as is our time with you now to savor your memorable writing.
And back here in your old town of Mpls, we have changed school names and lake names and some of my friends have changed their names.
The Minneapolis Park Board enlisted citizens to help with a "Master plan" to freshen up Lake of Isles and Cedar lake. That name was recently changed to simply the "Plan". We live in a time of great fluidity.
Those of us who answered surveys or attended meetings to push for restoring the water quality and habitat around the lakes vs adding vending machines (said to be "more welcoming") are "people with wealth and privilege perpetuating a destructive and collapsing status quo and demanding to control public land regardless of public good." (According to the City's Pedestrian Advisory Committee)
I'm 76 and in undeserved great health and that is indeed a privilege. If using that and any other privilege I was born with keeps vending machines from ringing Lake of the Isles, I'll use it like a cudgel.
But today, thanks to your piece, I'll use it like an x-ray to find gratitude, said to reside in or around the heart.
Hate to tell you this but you might become popular among cattle barons! From Sermons on resurrection and recycling to outliving brothers and sisters, it somehow seems appropriate to be full of gratitude for a cheeseburger and fried onion rings.
This is laugh-out-loud funny, profound, and beautiful.
Nice chest X-ray film Old Scout! I personally shall cross the 80 year-old threshold later this week and thus join you and other elders in the octogenarian segment (buzzword alert) "going forward". I will however NOT be taking a sip of Scotch on 20 April as formerly threatened (by both of us). I am remaining strictly free of fermented beverage use for "the rest of the way". I like that phrase, "the rest of the way" and heard it first used by my former dentist Nervous Bob, a guy not necessarily the most smoothly loquacious person: He had installed a nice 900-dollar crown for me and at the final visit to check its status he peered into my mouth while wearing his giant magnifying spectacles that made him look like an insect, and he mumbled (with satisfaction), "That ought to do you The Rest Of The Way". I later figured out just what Nervous Bob was alluding to.
Thanks, Garrison.
From the luckiest man alive.
ah, good old Hoppy and Bob...
I’m turning 65 in two weeks. Thanks for the perspective, humor and grace. Life is gift and task. Learning to focus more on the former.
Hey! A New Hampshire date. If you don't get treated right let me know. I'll track the losers down and Sparky will drool them to submission. Your life is writing your script. Pig bits keeping you amidst us and privilege - a chance to rise above, Love it!
Reading this felt like a warm bath. Thank you. I'm happy you are here and I feel privileged to read this. I mean that.
Thank you for brightening our Sunday mornings! A laugh a day...!
Thank you Mr. Keillor. I have been listening and reading you most of my adult life. You are doing what you want to be doing, very entertaining!
I love you Mr. Keillor. I was born on your birthday in 1950. While my mom (who just passed away in February at 101 years old) was resting, I hope you were wearing a pointy hat and blowing one of those unfurling paper things. We also have a mitral valve issue in common.
Take care of the mitral valve, kid. It's become a fairly routine operation. GK
Thanks Garrison, I am just a few years younger than you but I remember the school desks and the barn for the horses that kids rode to school. Cheerfulness is the only way to live. When someone asks how I a, doing my favourite rely is “another day in paradise”.
What a medical adventure story! I have nothing to match it except I frequently awake in a state of stupidity.
Gene Newman
DAMN that's good!
Dear Garrison,
Thank you for your lovely post about the privilege of survivorship. At 78, I am now four years older than my brother when he died. He was a wonderful human being, a talented blacksmith, poet, and lifetime canoeing partner who suffered gallantly with a debilitating illness his last 16 years. I, on the other hand, have had the extraordinary privilege of good health and vigor while continuing an enjoyment, similar to yours, of indulgent eating, all to the chagrin of a loving wife, who is compelled to assiduously monitor her cholesterol and blood pressure.
I especially enjoyed your recollection of mid-20th century schooling. Growing up in a small, working-class town on Lake Ontario in northern New York, I was uniquely privileged to spend my days from kindergarten through fifth grade in a stately stone mansion, salvaged and repurposed by frugal city fathers, and rightly called the Castle School. There, with a fireplace in every room, at wooden, cast-iron desks just as you describe, and with Miss Donovan (in our case being on the Irish side of town) at the chalkboard beside the pendulum clock, we looked wistfully out the mansion’s floor to ceiling windows as we were drilled in our numbers, learned to see Spot run, and assiduously dragged the Palmer Method out of our ink-dipped fountain pens. Like you, I am grateful to be among those who were privileged to grow up with such memories while still enjoying the gift of life with a loving wife and family and a close circle of friends.
I also wish to thank you for the PHC show you brought to Potsdam, New York more than twenty years ago. Your storytelling and humor brought a wonderful respite to a community still reeling from a devastating ice storm that had brought havoc to thousands of square miles of northern New York. We had been well prepared for your visit after decades as loyal fans of your show broadcast over our local North Country Public Radio. We had not quite anticipated, though, and therefore enjoyed all the more, your personalized monologue about the ”North Country” as we know it and the humor you were able to glean from our experience. We were especially grateful for the chance to meet you after the show with several close friends at a small Mexican restaurant in town. Time with you then was a privileged gift, as is our time with you now to savor your memorable writing.
Thank you,
Mark Scarlett
And back here in your old town of Mpls, we have changed school names and lake names and some of my friends have changed their names.
The Minneapolis Park Board enlisted citizens to help with a "Master plan" to freshen up Lake of Isles and Cedar lake. That name was recently changed to simply the "Plan". We live in a time of great fluidity.
Those of us who answered surveys or attended meetings to push for restoring the water quality and habitat around the lakes vs adding vending machines (said to be "more welcoming") are "people with wealth and privilege perpetuating a destructive and collapsing status quo and demanding to control public land regardless of public good." (According to the City's Pedestrian Advisory Committee)
I'm 76 and in undeserved great health and that is indeed a privilege. If using that and any other privilege I was born with keeps vending machines from ringing Lake of the Isles, I'll use it like a cudgel.
But today, thanks to your piece, I'll use it like an x-ray to find gratitude, said to reside in or around the heart.
Hate to tell you this but you might become popular among cattle barons! From Sermons on resurrection and recycling to outliving brothers and sisters, it somehow seems appropriate to be full of gratitude for a cheeseburger and fried onion rings.