We have long celebrated the burning of the winter witch with bonfires along the shore of the bay at the Fyr Bal festival in Ephraim, WI. It is a NORWEGIAN festival, with young girls dancing in Norwegian costume, a Fyr Bal Chieftain who arrives by water in a small Viking ship replica, and the fish boil for which Door County is famed. But it figures the Danes would try to steal it. I grew up in Racine, where we regularly had to suppress the Danish population in West Racine (but not too suppresively, for they knew the secrets of kringle).
Hi Garrison, I love your little vignettes or whatever they’re called. But now you’re going to have to explain what you mean by gay marriage being a “compromise.” I’m a lesbian who was happily married to a man although the sex was boring and only acceptable to keep him happy and have children. I was delighted to discover after 20 years and three children that sex was fun and felt good and I wasn’t “frigid”. So I kind of saw my marriage to my husband as a “compromise” although I was 17 and what the hell did I know at that age!!! At any rate, my bigger issue is with the burning 🔥 of witches. I’m probably witchish, but my daughter and my grandmother are definitely witches and pagan. The several thousand (who knows how many?) who were burned were probably lesbians, herbal medicine and tree huggers like me, isolates or maybe just different. So you gotta say something nice about witches now. Also, my birthday is august 2, which is on or about the real mid-summer, a pagan holiday. So keep writing. Don’t be discouraged by my comments. I still love you anyway. 😊❤️😊❤️ Karen cathers. Born as Karen Ingrid Antonsen, a Dane.
i feel the need to add that there have been plenty of geniuses whose genius was drug-induced and plenty of Deadheads who never took a drug in their lives. i saw a few Dead shows in my day , the last one being at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin in the '80's. I was not on drugs or drunk, but the guy behind us was and he puked on the back of our chairs. I never wanted to see the Dead again, although I love their music and it always brings me back to the 70's which where such memorable years for me and many of my friends. I'll always be an aging hippie.
Why oh why did it take me so long to find you in the morning message here now received. My day will be measurably finer because of this reading. So simple and so correct is many ways. Thanks Garrison.
We do a fire on midsummer but since my wife is a witch we refrain from the burning. I fear our holidays are starting to be a day of dividing instead of bringing together.
We need another holiday like we need a hole in the head, another hole that is. Have you ever glanced at the National Days Calendar? It is insane. https://nationaldaycalendar.com/calendar-at-a-glance/ Did you know there is a National Accordion Awareness Day? Do we have to be aware of accordions? Is accordion player abuse rampant in our nation? Likely not, but they got a National Day anyway.
Personally I'm opposed to adding holidays to the calendar to make people or groups feel good or that they matter in the grand scheme of things. It has gotten out of hand. Presidents Day is even too far. Washington's birthday and leave it at that. Considering that the vast majority of Americans do not get most of these holidays off from their employment, except of course the feds (but when do they work anyway?), so to most of us these secondary "holidays" and national days, don't really mean anything except to the people they are meant to pander to.
New Year's Day, Washington's Birthday, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Done. Midsummer's Day? Hmm.... Well, I suspect that in many parts of the country you "might" get away with it, but it is likely that any place you start a bonfire on the beach will result in police, fireman and insurance underwriters showing up to put out fires, arrest people and laws being written to prevent such a thing from happening ever again. Bonfires will be reduced to sanctioned events held by townships and no one will be allowed to get closer than 300 feet to it.
Now a bonfire on private open farmland in rural areas would go off without a hitch. We know how to do these kind of things and can take care of our own. You city & suburban folk are just loose cannons and just one match and gas can from setting yourselves on fire. Could you imagine a Midsummer's Day celebration happening in the Serenity Hills HOA development with the cookie cutter homes? No, that's right... the HOA wouldn't allow it. But I could see bonfires on every lawn getting out of hand and vinyl siding melting down the front's of $500K homes and garden Gnomes turning black from fire soot and SUV's burning in driveways.
No, we don't need another Holiday. We need the world to lighten up and take in a concert of a Grateful Dead Tribute band and chill out. Celebrate being alive.
Agreed. And it doesn’t hurt that it also happens to be the anniversary of my debut on the planet. I knew the English keep it - or did when Bill S. wrote that comedy about it a while back - but it’s great to hear that scandi-hoovians are still doing their part. But to set the stage properly we’ll need a sizable NEH grant to educate the populace, now that our literal-minded fellow citizens have decided to miss the point of immolating an effigy at the climactic moment. Drop me a line when you’ve made some progress on that and I’ll join your barnstorming advocacy tour. Come to think of it, there’s potential there as part of the plank of that new political party I’m planning to start, since it obviously has wide appeal. But more on that some other time. Meanwhile keep up the good work!
I am so grateful you retook the test-after all the point is learning “the material”, not whether you know it in a given time without an open book option and copious notes. Most of us don’t. I am grateful that Jenny, your most “knowledgeable critic”, asks to hear your writing. I agree with her and now feel some relief and hope that, when in the midst of reading your wonderful essays I read sentences which include the “compromise”, she may have suggested you take it out. Thanks, blessings abounding, and many glorious midsummer nights.❤️
I celebrated Midsummer’s with friends in rural Vasterjutland, Sweden. One farmer hosted. Decorated the interior of his barn with birch boughs and wildflowers. Set up a sound system for dancing. Guests/neighbors arrived in cars with wreaths of wildflowers on the front grilles. Picnic items included thermoses of coffee and brown paper bags holding bottles of schnapps. We sat at long wooden tables as you describe, frequently reaching down under the table to replenish our coffee cups from the paper bags. We danced much of the night, more and more drunkenly. The following morning church was held outdoors, stern wives holding up their hungover husbands while we listened to a sermon about St Joyn (it having been his Eve, Jonsoksnatt).
I love your columns. My family loved listening to PHC for many years. However (you knew that was coming, right?), when you suggest that Grateful Dead concerts and tribal adherents are exclusive , I have to imagine that you have never been to one of their concerts. I don't know of any group that is more inclusive, and you will find Dead Heads in every avenue of life. I was stopped at a red light recently in my Toyota Prius (with my Jerry Garcia sticker on the bumper) when a 30-something young man drove up next to me in a Lexus, motioned to me to roll down my window, and indicated that he was listening to The Dead at Winterland '77. We enjoyed a communal moment when we were very likely from radically different communities. That is the continued message of the Grateful Dead (now Dead and Company).
Two things; one, it's sad that, being a violent bloody people who hate each other, we Americans could never have a beautiful holiday like Midsummer's Day. Our holidays must involve the blowing up of stuff and people, torturing a person within an inch of his life until nailing him to a cross seems like an act of mercy, or inflicting unspeakable horrors on a newly discovered indigenous people. Eventually there will be a holiday to celebrate the most heinous mass shooting we can perpetrate. Don't forget, the DNA of Americans was that of convicts, criminals, street urchins - basically the dregs of society to navigate those ships. and worse, religious zealots.
Two, If you have in fact attended a Grateful dead show you completely got it wrong in labeling it as being so exclusive. That's probably something you carried there with you, either a preconceived notion or the Norwegian stoic element you frequently site for your views and reaction to situations. I doubt it was them. I've never seen so many unlikely bedfellows enjoy one thing together as when attending these events.
I'm pretty sure one can marry a member of "the other team" even if one is not marrying the opposite sex. Ever noticed how different blues and reds are? Those are teams. Reds could point to any number of other teams. Gender is only one dimension of that.
There might be a problem with making Midsummer Day a national holiday: a little thing called "
"Latitude." Midsummer Day in Hawaii or Puerto Rico might be seen as "No Big Deal," with sunset not much different than most other days. Then again, there's Alaska. I recall being in Fairbanks with my father on a Midsummer Day, several decades ago. The hotel room had especially thick drapes, in an attempt to recreate the sensation of darkness. Through the dimness, though, we could hear the car radio blaring outside. a neighbor was washing his car at two o'clock in the morning, acting as if it were close to midday. The next day, we were in a travel agent's office. "How do you deal with it?" we asked. "We take advantage of it while we have the light. We know there will be a time when it hardly "dawns" at all, " she replied.
"Different strokes for different folks..." as the saying goes. It seems to me, Our Well-Traveled Host was very lucky to have an opportunity to be "embedded" in a truly different culture. It can open the mind to the concept that "That's the way things are done," isn't necessarily "Universal."
Just writing that, I recall being in the house my Ukrainian pastor built in the Ukraine. When his family immigrated to America, he left the house to the next pastor of the local Ukrainian Pentecostal church. When Katya, my pastor's wife, and the former mistress of the house, saw the second floor, she had to "bite her tongue" to be polite. The new occupants were raising chickens upstairs! The smell of chicken poop was acrid, there were feathers all over the place, and the humans had virtually deserted that portion of the home. "But it's warm all year long," the new residents explained, as if that was all that mattered.
I get the feeling, listening to, and reading the thoughts of our Gentle Host, that he would have had "accommodating" thoughts about the change to "the House Katya and her husband had built." "Let It Be," and all that. It takes a special mental openness to adapt to changing environments. I think that's one of the qualities of "A Prairie Home Companion" that I've valued from the first time I heard the show. If I recall, there was a Moldovian, or some such, women's singing group on the program. Their songs consisted mostly of "Yip! Yip! Yip!" For someone who had been listening to Russian Orthodox tapes all day, I felt an immediate sense of "community" - "companionship." Here was someone who could cut loose from local cultural traditions, and feel free to accept the efforts of "The Whole World" nonjudgmentally! Yup! Yip, Yip, Yip! APHC was obviously my new home - on the radio dial!
We have long celebrated the burning of the winter witch with bonfires along the shore of the bay at the Fyr Bal festival in Ephraim, WI. It is a NORWEGIAN festival, with young girls dancing in Norwegian costume, a Fyr Bal Chieftain who arrives by water in a small Viking ship replica, and the fish boil for which Door County is famed. But it figures the Danes would try to steal it. I grew up in Racine, where we regularly had to suppress the Danish population in West Racine (but not too suppresively, for they knew the secrets of kringle).
Hi Garrison, I love your little vignettes or whatever they’re called. But now you’re going to have to explain what you mean by gay marriage being a “compromise.” I’m a lesbian who was happily married to a man although the sex was boring and only acceptable to keep him happy and have children. I was delighted to discover after 20 years and three children that sex was fun and felt good and I wasn’t “frigid”. So I kind of saw my marriage to my husband as a “compromise” although I was 17 and what the hell did I know at that age!!! At any rate, my bigger issue is with the burning 🔥 of witches. I’m probably witchish, but my daughter and my grandmother are definitely witches and pagan. The several thousand (who knows how many?) who were burned were probably lesbians, herbal medicine and tree huggers like me, isolates or maybe just different. So you gotta say something nice about witches now. Also, my birthday is august 2, which is on or about the real mid-summer, a pagan holiday. So keep writing. Don’t be discouraged by my comments. I still love you anyway. 😊❤️😊❤️ Karen cathers. Born as Karen Ingrid Antonsen, a Dane.
i feel the need to add that there have been plenty of geniuses whose genius was drug-induced and plenty of Deadheads who never took a drug in their lives. i saw a few Dead shows in my day , the last one being at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin in the '80's. I was not on drugs or drunk, but the guy behind us was and he puked on the back of our chairs. I never wanted to see the Dead again, although I love their music and it always brings me back to the 70's which where such memorable years for me and many of my friends. I'll always be an aging hippie.
"Love ye one another" doesn't discriminate, no matter.
Why oh why did it take me so long to find you in the morning message here now received. My day will be measurably finer because of this reading. So simple and so correct is many ways. Thanks Garrison.
We do a fire on midsummer but since my wife is a witch we refrain from the burning. I fear our holidays are starting to be a day of dividing instead of bringing together.
We need another holiday like we need a hole in the head, another hole that is. Have you ever glanced at the National Days Calendar? It is insane. https://nationaldaycalendar.com/calendar-at-a-glance/ Did you know there is a National Accordion Awareness Day? Do we have to be aware of accordions? Is accordion player abuse rampant in our nation? Likely not, but they got a National Day anyway.
Personally I'm opposed to adding holidays to the calendar to make people or groups feel good or that they matter in the grand scheme of things. It has gotten out of hand. Presidents Day is even too far. Washington's birthday and leave it at that. Considering that the vast majority of Americans do not get most of these holidays off from their employment, except of course the feds (but when do they work anyway?), so to most of us these secondary "holidays" and national days, don't really mean anything except to the people they are meant to pander to.
New Year's Day, Washington's Birthday, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Done. Midsummer's Day? Hmm.... Well, I suspect that in many parts of the country you "might" get away with it, but it is likely that any place you start a bonfire on the beach will result in police, fireman and insurance underwriters showing up to put out fires, arrest people and laws being written to prevent such a thing from happening ever again. Bonfires will be reduced to sanctioned events held by townships and no one will be allowed to get closer than 300 feet to it.
Now a bonfire on private open farmland in rural areas would go off without a hitch. We know how to do these kind of things and can take care of our own. You city & suburban folk are just loose cannons and just one match and gas can from setting yourselves on fire. Could you imagine a Midsummer's Day celebration happening in the Serenity Hills HOA development with the cookie cutter homes? No, that's right... the HOA wouldn't allow it. But I could see bonfires on every lawn getting out of hand and vinyl siding melting down the front's of $500K homes and garden Gnomes turning black from fire soot and SUV's burning in driveways.
No, we don't need another Holiday. We need the world to lighten up and take in a concert of a Grateful Dead Tribute band and chill out. Celebrate being alive.
Agreed. And it doesn’t hurt that it also happens to be the anniversary of my debut on the planet. I knew the English keep it - or did when Bill S. wrote that comedy about it a while back - but it’s great to hear that scandi-hoovians are still doing their part. But to set the stage properly we’ll need a sizable NEH grant to educate the populace, now that our literal-minded fellow citizens have decided to miss the point of immolating an effigy at the climactic moment. Drop me a line when you’ve made some progress on that and I’ll join your barnstorming advocacy tour. Come to think of it, there’s potential there as part of the plank of that new political party I’m planning to start, since it obviously has wide appeal. But more on that some other time. Meanwhile keep up the good work!
I am so grateful you retook the test-after all the point is learning “the material”, not whether you know it in a given time without an open book option and copious notes. Most of us don’t. I am grateful that Jenny, your most “knowledgeable critic”, asks to hear your writing. I agree with her and now feel some relief and hope that, when in the midst of reading your wonderful essays I read sentences which include the “compromise”, she may have suggested you take it out. Thanks, blessings abounding, and many glorious midsummer nights.❤️
I celebrated Midsummer’s with friends in rural Vasterjutland, Sweden. One farmer hosted. Decorated the interior of his barn with birch boughs and wildflowers. Set up a sound system for dancing. Guests/neighbors arrived in cars with wreaths of wildflowers on the front grilles. Picnic items included thermoses of coffee and brown paper bags holding bottles of schnapps. We sat at long wooden tables as you describe, frequently reaching down under the table to replenish our coffee cups from the paper bags. We danced much of the night, more and more drunkenly. The following morning church was held outdoors, stern wives holding up their hungover husbands while we listened to a sermon about St Joyn (it having been his Eve, Jonsoksnatt).
Yes to more community Fests and get-togethers. And no to more commercially driven events! 👍👍👍
Dear Garrison,
I love your columns. My family loved listening to PHC for many years. However (you knew that was coming, right?), when you suggest that Grateful Dead concerts and tribal adherents are exclusive , I have to imagine that you have never been to one of their concerts. I don't know of any group that is more inclusive, and you will find Dead Heads in every avenue of life. I was stopped at a red light recently in my Toyota Prius (with my Jerry Garcia sticker on the bumper) when a 30-something young man drove up next to me in a Lexus, motioned to me to roll down my window, and indicated that he was listening to The Dead at Winterland '77. We enjoyed a communal moment when we were very likely from radically different communities. That is the continued message of the Grateful Dead (now Dead and Company).
Keep on Truckin',
Damon White
Two things; one, it's sad that, being a violent bloody people who hate each other, we Americans could never have a beautiful holiday like Midsummer's Day. Our holidays must involve the blowing up of stuff and people, torturing a person within an inch of his life until nailing him to a cross seems like an act of mercy, or inflicting unspeakable horrors on a newly discovered indigenous people. Eventually there will be a holiday to celebrate the most heinous mass shooting we can perpetrate. Don't forget, the DNA of Americans was that of convicts, criminals, street urchins - basically the dregs of society to navigate those ships. and worse, religious zealots.
Two, If you have in fact attended a Grateful dead show you completely got it wrong in labeling it as being so exclusive. That's probably something you carried there with you, either a preconceived notion or the Norwegian stoic element you frequently site for your views and reaction to situations. I doubt it was them. I've never seen so many unlikely bedfellows enjoy one thing together as when attending these events.
I'm pretty sure one can marry a member of "the other team" even if one is not marrying the opposite sex. Ever noticed how different blues and reds are? Those are teams. Reds could point to any number of other teams. Gender is only one dimension of that.
Thanks for the Live Stream - I already bought a ticket!
There might be a problem with making Midsummer Day a national holiday: a little thing called "
"Latitude." Midsummer Day in Hawaii or Puerto Rico might be seen as "No Big Deal," with sunset not much different than most other days. Then again, there's Alaska. I recall being in Fairbanks with my father on a Midsummer Day, several decades ago. The hotel room had especially thick drapes, in an attempt to recreate the sensation of darkness. Through the dimness, though, we could hear the car radio blaring outside. a neighbor was washing his car at two o'clock in the morning, acting as if it were close to midday. The next day, we were in a travel agent's office. "How do you deal with it?" we asked. "We take advantage of it while we have the light. We know there will be a time when it hardly "dawns" at all, " she replied.
"Different strokes for different folks..." as the saying goes. It seems to me, Our Well-Traveled Host was very lucky to have an opportunity to be "embedded" in a truly different culture. It can open the mind to the concept that "That's the way things are done," isn't necessarily "Universal."
Just writing that, I recall being in the house my Ukrainian pastor built in the Ukraine. When his family immigrated to America, he left the house to the next pastor of the local Ukrainian Pentecostal church. When Katya, my pastor's wife, and the former mistress of the house, saw the second floor, she had to "bite her tongue" to be polite. The new occupants were raising chickens upstairs! The smell of chicken poop was acrid, there were feathers all over the place, and the humans had virtually deserted that portion of the home. "But it's warm all year long," the new residents explained, as if that was all that mattered.
I get the feeling, listening to, and reading the thoughts of our Gentle Host, that he would have had "accommodating" thoughts about the change to "the House Katya and her husband had built." "Let It Be," and all that. It takes a special mental openness to adapt to changing environments. I think that's one of the qualities of "A Prairie Home Companion" that I've valued from the first time I heard the show. If I recall, there was a Moldovian, or some such, women's singing group on the program. Their songs consisted mostly of "Yip! Yip! Yip!" For someone who had been listening to Russian Orthodox tapes all day, I felt an immediate sense of "community" - "companionship." Here was someone who could cut loose from local cultural traditions, and feel free to accept the efforts of "The Whole World" nonjudgmentally! Yup! Yip, Yip, Yip! APHC was obviously my new home - on the radio dial!