Post to the Host

Comments from the Week of 12.11.22

Mr. Keillor,

I followed you on the radio for many years. The other radio voice I rarely missed when he was broadcasting was Paul Harvey. 

I am wondering if taking over his spot after his passing was ever proposed to you. I think your doing something similar in a 15-minute daily “news and comment” format would have been a big success on AM radio.

Thanks and good health to you,

Henry Bruce Finer

Tampa, Florida

I was not a fan of Paul Harvey, sorry to say, and when it comes to political commentary, I am just a standard old Minnesota Democrat and who needs more of that? We were outmoded long ago. So I just write about ordinary life, which is interesting enough. GK

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GK,

Another 40-plus-year fan. Saw PHC in Austin at Bass Hall when I lived there, then saw you recently at McCallum in SoCal. Loved the limericks. The brass balls one has me laughing every time I see it or say it. Saw a post to you where some misguided prude was offended. Well, good. You had a limerick about Sylvia Plath, and I can’t find it in print. Might you please assist. Many thanks for all your entertaining years. I’m only 77 but hope to be 80.

Ralph Webb

The poet named Sylvia Plath
Was full of sorrow and wrath.
The day that she dove
Headfirst in the stove,
She should've just had a hot bath.

GK

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Garrison,

Sorry to hear about the COVID. My wife and I live in Florida now, but visiting our only grandchild in Elk River in late October turned into our first COVID event. So instead of flying home we were forced to rent a car, COVID wife in back seat, and soon-to-get-COVID driver anxious to get home. Does your cardiologist know you are taking Paxlovid? I have had mitral valve repair and was not allowed to start the Paxlovid. I hope you recover soon, the COVID just wants to linger even after you test negative. Best wishes!

Dave and Lynn

Sorry to hear about your COVID encounter. Being sick away from home is a real trial. I recovered just in time to do a Christmas show in St. Louis on the 15th and now am home, tending to my wife who has had a rebound case. I’m working on a book about cheerfulness, which actually cheers me up so all is well for now. The Paxlovid was prescribed by a doctor who knows about my heart troubles, so I’m trusting it’s okay. GK

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GK,

Re: “I cannot hear John Wayne say, “I’d like a double latte.”

A favourite New Yorker cartoon: Cowboys around a campfire, on which are two of those old metal coffeepots. Across from them is the cook, in apron and tall hat. One cowboy is saying, “Cookie, we pay you good money to remember which one is the decaf!”

Hoping you are all better very very soon.

Elizabeth Block

Toronto

Feeling better right now, and thanks for the joke. GK

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Garrison,

I recently finished A Christmas Blizzard, one of many novels I’ve been putting off for too long. I found it both hilarious and seriously thought provoking: relax, make time for those you love, find joy in the mundane, etc. Do you set out to wrap deep ideas within a good story or do they come to you as the plot unravels? Just asking as an unreconstructed English minor. 

A Merry Christmas to you, sir,

Iain Montgomery 

And also to you, sir. I’ll have to go back and read that book. I don’t remember any serious ideas in it. I don’t read my own books but you’ve aroused my curiosity. Now I just have to look around for a copy. GK

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Garrison, here is some Christmas snow from Montana. Just in time for the holidays. Merry Christmas.

B. Hall

Thanks. I’m in New York where, at the moment, it’s raining. I flew here from St. Louis where it was bitterly cold but snowless. The thought of Montana snow is very cheerful. GK

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Garrison,

I’m an old Minnesota girl, now in my mid-70s and living in Maine. Grew up in Minneapolis and went to the U. I had to sing Minnesota, Hats Off to Thee in my head to be sure I remembered it, but I got all the way through. I drove my dad’s stick shift and typed many a word on a manual typewriter. I went ice skating all the time and warmed up in the warming house, with steam coming off the old stove, and one time I totally ruined my plasticized winter jacket by leaning on the burning rail. I don’t remember going ice fishing, but you brought back a lot of great memories. Thanks and Merry Christmas.

June Gagnon

You and I are from the same fortunate generation and if we ever meet, we’ll have plenty to talk about. GK

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GK,

I started listening to you in 1987. PHC was the Saturday afternoon break from my law school studies. Eventually I got my wife to listen. My daughters remember catching the show fifteen years ago. I did turn it off a few times in later years when I thought the show was off-kilter, but I still tuned the radio to the station the following Saturday. 

I twice lamented your departure, first for Denmark and then for retirement. Then 2017 came. I thought the accusations were a scandal and the treatment of you worse. 

Thanks for bringing the prairie out west to a law student studying in rainy Portland. I am better for having caught your show all those years.

Mark Holady

I can understand that a law student needs a break and I guess PHC was as far away from law school as a show could be. I regret the two departures, but I stay busy and in my retirement it’s a pleasure to run into old listeners and hear about their lives. Maybe we’ll meet and you can tell me how the show went off-kilter. GK

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My own valve repairs were completed last Thursday, and I am home in time to enjoy the live feed of your show in St. Louis tomorrow night.

Bill Johnston

St. Paul

P.S. Everything wonderful you said in your posts about the cardiac nurses, exercise physiologists, doctors, and other staff in the cardiac unit at Mayo can be extended to those in St. Paul. We are lucky indeed.

Glad your heart got fixed and don’t forget to follow directions and do your exercises. The heart is a muscle, as you know. GK

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Mr. Keillor,

As I’m approaching old age, I find myself feeling nostalgic for the Christmases of my childhood. My dad would distribute our gifts one at a time, and each of us would open our gifts with care, making the morning last as long as possible. Now we sit around the tree with my children and grandchildren and watch them open gifts all at once in a frenzy, and it’s done in about 15 minutes. They don’t seem to know how to make the moments last, to savor the joy of giving and receiving. Am I being too old-fashioned?

Sally C.

Rockton, Illinois

I know the feeling but the answer is simply to hand out gifts one gift at a time and make the most of each one. Put your foot down. GK

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Hello, Mr. Keillor.

Have it on firsthand information that your Fox Theatre performance was a reunion featuring sound by Mr. Buzz Kemper. Didn’t he work with you back in the 1980s? 1990s? On APHC?

I’ve worked with Buzz in his studio here in Madison, Wisconsin, and know him to be a sound savant. Hope all went well last night and you’re back to best health.

A fan from the early days,

Kari

Yes, indeed. Mr. Kemper worked sound at the Fox and we were lucky to have him, given his busy schedule back in Madison. He was a teenager back in the ’80s and now he’s a savant. Good to see him succeed. GK

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My wife and I are forever Minnesotans who have not lived there since 1972. We are both graduates of the U and used to drive a stick shift. We lived in Denver, Rapid City, and came to Saint Louis in 1975 for a couple years and have been here ever since. Our Minnesota friends only recently stopped asking when we’re moving back. Some of them gave up, and others, sadly, have passed on.

Last night’s show at the Fabulous Fox truly was a gift. I was especially moved by your description of life at age 80, for I am only a couple years away.

Keep it going.

Best wishes,
Mike Wolff

Glad you made it to the Fox. It was a wonderful singing audience and I was impressed that they knew all three verses of “Silent Night.” St. Louis was where I traveled by train, alone, when I was 15, my first trip without parents. I went to visit a family with four beautiful daughters, all of whom I had a crush on. I spent the weekend in stunned silence and then returned home. GK

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Mr. Keillor,

What a fabulous show at the Fox last night! My girlfriend is a fan (she used to live in Minnesota), but I’d never heard of you before — I moved here from Liverpool two years ago. We wondered how you put a show like that together. Do you practice the whole show in order? It seems so seamless that we imagine hours of practice. The only thing that would have made the night even more special would be to have the Christmas lights around the theater come on during “Silent Night.” Other than that, a spectacular night. Thank you.

Keith Cornwall

Glad you liked it, sir, and welcome to America. I wrote the show in a couple days, we rehearsed it that Wednesday afternoon in bits and pieces, I rewrote that night, and then we did it on Thursday. A piece of cake. GK