GK: Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 07.04.21

GK,

I hope you have actually seen — and/or will see — a male scarlet tanager. They are spectacular. They look like they have a red light burning inside them. We’ll make a birder of you yet!

Elizabeth Block, Toronto, Canada

A birder sent me a photo of a male S.T. and it’s a notable creature. I assume the bright red is intended to attract the female but it does expose the guy to predators, assuming there are some who find the tanager appealing. We had a mockingbird couple raising a family on our terrace in New York and we enjoyed keeping track of them and tried to alleviate the male’s anxiety about us eating supper out there. I liked watching those birds who made a home in our backyard. I hope they come back next year.

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Dear Garrison,

I had to laugh at you watching the scarlet tanagers … so close to teenagers. Now really, the guitar has as many faces as the people of this world: no other instrument is so varied and distinct from country to country. It records our many strains of DNA. I play (badly) Spanish, Latin, Baroque, Elizabethan, a tune by Galileo’s father (an Italian lutenist), and very modern atonal music. I just dug out of my reptilian memory a tune learned in one evening from a Brazilian friend … back when I could memorize anything. I love it and him. The guitar may become a battle-axe in the online world but try the quiet nylon-string acoustic or folky steel-string music that you drowned out with Bobby Zimmerman. It connects us, but more gently. 

Peter Rhines, Port Townsend, Washington

I’m happy you love your music so extensively. What a blessing to have that in your life. And glad you didn’t take offense at my rant. I love the two guitars of Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, the guitars of Robin and Linda Williams, and Paul Simon and Edie Brickell. And Ed Trickett and Gordon Bok.

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Garrison,

I am in your demographic (one year old on D-Day, came of age in rural central Kansas on a then second-generation farm with wheat as a main crop, a small cattle herd descended from 13 bred Hereford heifers chosen in 1942 by a Bohemian relative working at a local cattle auction. Did I mention we did not get power until 1948? And when I left the farm for college in 1961, we still used a WPA outhouse. The Dakota water sourced windmill was too saline for humans to drink necessitating us to go to town for potable water. Mother washed dishes and did clothes in a Maytag wringer machine with water carried in buckets from open stock tanks of rainwater collected from the metal roofed barn or machine shed, heated on a wood stove fed by cut up salvaged lumber. My sister and I both came back to Kansas with graduate degrees.

Wallace N. Weber, M.D.
Col. US Army (Ret.)

You’re a fortunate man, Dr. Weber, in your choice of origin, as am I, and I’m going to guess that you’re leaving out some crucial details about family love and companionship. I’m imagining your parents loved each other. I know people who grew up in straitened circumstances who hit crises (alcohol, mental illness, tragic accidents) that wreaked terribly damage. I’m glad you came through whole and strong.

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Dear Garrison,

Have you noticed that some correspondents addressing you in this forum seem to adopt a particular element of your writing style, which is to say that traditional rules of English are more guidelines really and secondary to the pace of an idea a sentence a paragraph a story, which is one of many reasons you are great fun to read or is it just me? 

Jeff Sawyer, The White Mountains, NH

I like long sentences too. Good for you.

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Hi,

It was fun getting two versions of the “Sticking my neck out, talking to myself” post today. I read one. Then I read the other. Then I put them each in their own Word doc and read them again, side by side, to see the differences. It’s always interesting to watch the editing take place. The second one was better … you were right. Though I think you cut too much of that last paragraph. I missed the reference to Daisy, but maybe that’s just because I’m so old it actually made sense to me. Anyway, thanks for an entertaining, illuminating, hour.

Debi in PA

Debi, I thought I’d finished my new novel, Boom Year, and I even printed up some advance copies and sent them out to millennials for comment but when I took a closer look I shuddered and went back to work. I’m on page 87 now with 200 pages to go, making lots of scratch marks and additions and extensions. Nothing is ever done, you just run out of patience and close up shop.

GK:

In your piece “Sticking my neck out, talking to myself” (about guitars vs. pianos), you said something both untrue and wrong. You said, “Alienation didn’t win the White House until the guy with monumental hair who put together a winning majority of alienated voters.” I must remind you that that guy NEVER had a majority of voters. He had only a majority of electoral votes.

To err is human. Thanks for what you do!

Gordon 

You’re right. Hillary Clinton got more votes, but the Republican got more states and more electoral votes and that’s the system we have. My question is: if half the voters feel alienated from the other half, then what does “alienation” mean? We’re living with insane phenomena we’ve never seen before.

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Dear Garrison,

If you feel bad that the piano was superseded by the twangy guitar wielded by long-haired nasal singers, then consider the plight of the trombone player. We rarely make it into bands that top the charts, let alone as soloists. No one listens to us, even when we force them to.

After 60-some years playing trombone (because my dad wanted to see his son in the front row of the marching band), I never learned how to remember lyrics, only countermelodies.

Pity the poor trombone player. 
John Taylor, Pendleton, OR

John, you’re right, of course. The trombone is not accorded the respect it deserves and I know string players in orchestras who secretly loathe the horns behind them. But surely the marching makes up for it, the uniforms, the excitement of the crowds along the street. What we need to do is restore the tradition of parades. The Fourth of July has become a picnic day, parades are dying left and right. At my alma mater, the University of Minnesota, the band still marches down University Avenue on football Saturdays and it is THRILLING. It is GLORIOUS, John. And how often do we get to experience GLORIOUS? Not often enough. And as horn players get older, we need to bring back the BANDWAGON, which allows a band to play rags and blues and not have to march. Let’s work on this.

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Garrison:
I enjoyed the takeoffs on the way famous and talented authors may have written about the flag that F.S. Key viewed in the morning after the great battle. How about one in your style?

Darel Leipold

I’m an imitator, Darel. I’m a derivative. No style here to speak of.

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Garrison,
After having read your memoir, it seemed to me that you must have a pretty good habit of journaling. Is that true? If so, when did you start that and do you still keep it up on a regular basis? Or is a good imagination at work here again?

Doug
Rockport, TX

I never kept a diary or journal, never saw a reason to. I wrote the memoir from memory. I didn’t even go back and read old correspondence or write a timeline; I didn’t want to get swamped by detail. Some stories are very clear in my mind — the stolen money when I was four years old and wanted to go to downtown Minneapolis, the swimming lessons at the Y that I couldn’t bear, my trip with Dad to New York when I was 11, and so forth. The paperback of the memoir should come out next summer and for that, I do intend to make some revisions. I left some people out who should be in it. I gloss over some dreadful mistakes I made and I want to come clean.

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Garrison:

Please schedule another cruise or have a dry cruise (in a resort). We and many others are looking forward to a celebration of your next birthday and amazing career.

Thanks,
Steve Eraker
Glenn Ohrlin’s cousin

I miss Glenn the old cowboy singer and if he were conducting a cruise, perhaps on a cattle boat, I’d sign up in a minute. As you probably know, we had a cruise scheduled for 2019 when the plague hit and it had to be canceled at the last minute. How about a cruise of the Great Lakes? I’d happily go to Norway again — that moment when the ship squeezed into that narrow fjord with a few feet to spare was memorable. I never heard the term “dry cruise” before. But now you’ve got me thinking.

GK:

Unfortunately, today’s essay was nothing but passing judgment. And let DT go. It’s like the so-called squad. Ignore them and they will go away, like stray dogs.

David Miller, Westerville, OH

Passing judgment is what’s fun about writing humorous essays, sir.

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Hi, Mr. Keillor!

I enjoyed your rock ’n’ roll musings today. I was reminiscing with a girlfriend about boys and drugs in the early ’70s and how wild we were to the tunes you mentioned in today’s column, and that got me wondering, where were you in those days and what were you doing at that time (say, 1970–1976)?

Beth

I went to work in radio in 1969, was married with a son, lived on a farm out in the country, wrote for magazines, started PHC in 1974, and the marriage broke up in 1976. No drugs, just beer.

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

In regard to “Tutti Frutti,” we take pen in hand on behalf of Daisy. Contrary to your recent column and your claim that she “drove you crazy,” be advised that the truth is “she ALMOST drives you crazy.” There is a significant difference, as you can imagine. We will have additional commentary on “A womp bobaloo bop, a womp bam boo” in coming days.

Regards,
Clay Blasdel

Thank you for the correction. I heard that “womp” as “lop” but my hearing isn’t as acute as yours, I’m sure. But I still love going to YouTube and finding Little Richard’s version at the piano with the big band and the saxophones rocking.

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I am a member of the Unitarian Church in Underwood, Minnesota. You have mentioned us in at least one of your monologues. Most of them think you dislike us and are making fun of us, but I think you secretly love us. Which is it?

Ron Graham, Fergus Falls, Minnesota

All the best Unitarian jokes I’ve heard were told to me by Unitarians. I don’t have enough experience with Unitarianism to be able to talk about it though I’ve certainly used it as a foil, telling stories about Lutherans who left Lake Wobegon for the big city and joined the Church of the Blessed Whatever, making fun of a stereotype and not the reality. At this point, I’m an old Episcopalian and happy to talk about that, but my telling of Unitarian jokes is far far behind me.

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So Garrison, I gave up piano lessons when I was 8 years old and electric guitar as a teenager because of my impatience and then took up harmonica. Blowing on a harp was like doing a deep breathing meditation because we saw a beautiful future dawning on the horizon and thought we could breathe it into existence.

I stuck the thumb out and soloed it across the US and headed out to India and found joy in embracing the East with tingling cymbals and chants. And there was the companionship with all those we met along the way and after a “back to the land” experience I’ve spent the past 40 years in Detroit tuning the instrument for what is likely to be the last chapter! Got on my dancin’ shoes on and dialed up Motown and the Blues for some heavy hoofin’ in my kitchen! 

Bart

I got to hear three of the great harpists, Soupy Schindler and Howard Levy and Sonny Terry, and there’s something so spooky and moving about blues harp, like hearing a child crying, it stops you in your tracks. Thank God for YouTube, it’s all there, sitting and waiting.

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GK:

Is your cheerfulness for real? Or is it for effect?

F.P.

I’m a happy old man, F.P., and if it has some effect, I’m glad for it.

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GK:

I enjoyed your column today as I almost always do. I thought you might enjoy this short anecdote.

My mother, who grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, went to school with Elvis. (She is one of the tall girls on the back row in several of the elementary school class pictures that show up in various documentaries about him.) One day when she was around twelve, she was telling her mother about a guitar, which she pronounced “GIT tar.” My grandmother corrected her and said, “Honey, it’s pronounced ‘guh TAR.’” My mother pushed back saying “Elvis calls it a GIT tar.” I heard the story growing up and my grandmother later saying, “Well, I guess he would know.”

Interestingly, neither my mother nor any of her childhood friends ever became fans of his. I’ve always wondered why.

Mary Beth Hebert

Elvis had to get out of Tupelo to become Elvis. He couldn’t be himself in Nashville either; he had to go to Memphis and build his Graceland and hide out in it and then he had the bad luck to get hooked up with the Colonel who made him do a bunch of lousy movies and wouldn’t let him go to Europe. In London and Paris and Rome, that’s where he would’ve been in his glory.

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Dear Garrison,
I read your column championing the piano. Thank you for this line: “I feel the nation needs more pianists.”

Please accept the gratitude of this pianist, an American currently sitting out the pandemic in blissfully normal New Zealand.

With warmest regards,
Aaron

I wrote the column while rehearsing with the pianist Dan Chouinard who covers all the bases, classical and sacred and old pop, and also pitches and plays outfield.

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Dear Garrison,

I was introduced to PHC back in the ’70s by an apostate nun named JC who had spent many years in the Philippines under a Cardinal named Sin. Her opinion was that he truly deserved the name. When she could no longer abide Cardinal Sin, she quit and returned to the USA. She was an excellent English teacher and attracted friends like a magnet. A good number of them used to gather in her apartment every Saturday, eat her excellent fried chicken and carrot cake and listen to Prairie Home Companion. We did that for many years until she began to lose her sight. She retired to Durango, Colorado, where she passed away a couple of years ago. Just thinking of her while reading your thoughts.

Dave Axtell, Edwardsville, Illinois

I wish I’d met her but it would’ve terrified me to see the intensity of some of the listenership so maybe it’s better I didn’t. The show was an awfully casual operation back then, everything was last-minute, lots of improv, never much rehearsal, and I had a wonderful time hanging out with those musicians. I was an amateur, I didn’t have the discipline or the smarts, and so if I’d started taking the show seriously, it probably would’ve been a disaster. So odd to think of it now. God bless her loyalty. We didn’t deserve it and it’ll be a mystery to me for the rest of my life.

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Many years ago, on a Saturday night, I was browsing through the radio stations. I came upon a program featuring a belly dancer. I figured anyone who has a belly dancer on the radio can’t be all bad. I’ve been a fan ever since.
Janet

I remember her. She was Turkish, I believe, and was a serious dancer and the percussion accompanying her was rather hypnotic, not erotic. I think she did one long dance and that was enough.

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Dear Mr. Keillor,
I’m amazed that you represent the 1950s surge in the guitar’s popularity as due to Elvis who barely played it and to Bob Dylan who left Minnesota only in 1961. Also, at the silly mockery of Dylan “decid(ing) to be an alienated loner cowboy poet” — what cowboy songs did this 20-year-old’s crafty PR firm have him sing?

Worse, despite their being a backbone of your show, you ignored folk songs, most of which were NOT “about being misunderstood and mistreated and hoping to find a woman to leave this town with and head down the highway.” The guitar’s surge was primarily due to that genre, and many of its songs were for children or about politics, community, work, or the experience of genuine physical hardship.

You missed an easy opening to some neglected American history. One component of the surge was the Red Scare blacklisting of the Weavers in 1952, after years of denunciation, harassment, and violence. (The Peekskill riots targeted Paul Robeson, but also threatened the lives of Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, Seeger’s wife, Toshi, and his infant children, as police stood by or joined in. It reads like a rehearsal for January 6 — and the cover-ups afterward.)

The blacklist forced the Weavers, especially Pete Seeger, to depend on concerts and teaching, often for children. I’m not expert but I’ll bet a little due diligence would have shown that several of the major guitar-based singers and groups of the 1950s and 1960s, not all of them folk, arose in part from their work.

Surely this was an oversight, not ignorance or a deliberate choice. Still, as your teachers must have said, “can do better.”

(Very) Sincerely Yours,
Allan Stewart-Oaten

You’ve outlined a book, sir, and what I wrote was 750 words meant to be provocative, which clearly succeeded.

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I was pleased to see your mention of Mel Bay in your recent column. I grew up in Kirkwood, MO, in the ’60s and ’70s where Mel Bay owned the local music store and gave music lessons to aspiring rock stars like me. Real rock stars like members of the Rolling Stones would stop by his shop and pay homage when their tours brought them to St. Louis. Once when my son was in high school, your very own U of Minnesota Jazz Band played a concert at my son’s school, and we put a few of them up overnight. They were awed to discover that Mel Bay lived in town. As a kid, I wasn’t aware of his international reputation. He was just a guy who taught me guitar chords and sold me sheet music. And occasionally jam with Stan Musial who would accompany Mel’s jazz guitar with his harmonica. His shop should have been made a historic landmark; instead, it’s a parking lot. Thanks for your work. It has been brightening my weeks for several decades.

Robert Weaver, Glendale, MO 

Thanks for the history, sir, and it’s lovely to think of Stan Musial playing harmonica.

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

You wrote: “Luckily, we writers get to discard our mistakes, unlike doctors. In this line of work, there are no autopsies.”

Au contraire, editors and reviewers often find themselves in the necropsy business.

Cordially,
Steve Price

I’m sorry you had to bring it up and remind me.

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Hi, GK.

Love the blog — so glad you are OK and have found your Emily realization!

Want to hear your take on the cheerleader wannabe free speech victory. Everyone is touting her on every talk show. But no one has been talking about her throwing away her future. What school club, college admissions officer, or employer will want anything to do with this young woman whose response to being told she is not good enough for the squad is to f*** everyone involved? Every job requires evaluations; every college course requires grading. If she dislikes anyone’s opinion of her, she will not take the adult role and say, “Thanks for the advice. How can I become better?” but rather take to social media and publicly trash anyone who crosses her. Sad.

Khrystle

I’m sure she is thinking the same thing. My guess is that she got tired of this argument a long time ago and wishes it would all go away. I’ll bet she has learned her lesson and is ready to change her name if necessary.

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