Olaf's letter and your response reminded me of one of the first episodes of PHC I ever listened to. My family is now proudly from what has become Germany. Our first members to reach New York were from Prussia, Bavaria, and other German speaking areas and all settled in what is now the Lower East Side. They were Catholic and Lutheran and intermarried, as one does when you meet the girl or boy of your dreams. That being said, your report was from Lake Woebegone about a family that felt it had to change their name during World War I. (My family did not, but they stopped speaking German. It was a great loss to us and is felt even now, more than 100 years later. High school and college classes do not make up for sitting with your grandmother listening to fairy tales told in their original language.) In Lake Woebegone there was also a parting of ways between a father and daughter. I cried and sobbed listening to the tale of this family that could have been my own. It started my years-long devotion to your work. Thank you.
There comes a tide in the lives of us all which taken at our own floods leads on to our own fortunes, wherein follows why our own lives are here. Grab on and do!
I love Ms. Harvey's new word! The way to get a newly coined word into the dictionary is use it - when enough people are describing Wobegonian moments, it will become immortalized in the dictionary. 😁
And why do you say medical professionals aren't allowed to be funny? Comedy routines between the various doctors and nurses often make hospital visits easier to tolerate.
Mark Twain also published 'Eve's Diary' and 'Extracts from Adam's Diary'. Both are Twain's transcriptions of the original diaries and offer very interesting perspectives on how we got here.
If you're taking Jenny to Vienna by all means include Salzburg, just a short train ride south, along the Danube!
Sleep in a 300-year-old room at the "Golden Hersch" and, if you can, take in a performance at the "Marionetten Theatre," where I once attended the best performance of "Die Fledermaus" I've ever seen.
While you're in the neighborhood, a visit to Fussen, Bavaria, is worthwhile. Lying in bed in the corner room at our hotel, we could see "Hohenschangau," Mad Ludvig's mother's castle, over our shoulder while we stared over our toes at "Neuschweinstein," his (Disneyland) castle, nearby. If you do NOT join a bus tour group, the whole place is wide open to visitors and English is widely spoken in most places.
Dresden and Leipzig are great music destinations as well. When we went to a concert in the Gewandhaus in 2018 we were surprised and delighted to see a gigantic poster of our own BSO conductor, Andris Nelsons, in the windows. He also conducts there and every year they exchange musicians with the BSO during "Leipzig Week". Below is a link to the brochure for the wonderful tour we went on. Maybe it will give Jenny some ideas.
1) Enough of using "woke" as a catch-all for anything one doesn't like or disagrees with! Most people who accuse someone of being woke can't even define it when asked.
2) Anyone defending the AR-15 or the .223 cartridge needs to look at some videos of the damage they cause. To paraphrase an old saying, "it ain't the power, it's the velocity."
Like what you are doing about the subject of comedy. It deserves some attention because of the sad state of comedy today.
Several years ago, I saw an interview with Danny Thomas. He said that the reasons we don't have the excellent comedians of the past is that there is no room to fail anymore. He explained that in the old days, a comic would take his act on the road and hone it, taking out the things that didn't work and adding new jokes that did. Once a success, he could add writers and expand into other areas. Now, a would -be comic goes on TV and may be watched by millions. If he flops, it's all over for him in a matter of minutes.
I assume you were not an instant success at this. Would like to hear your experience, coming up to be the very amusing personality you are today.
You have to be joking about nobody liking “A Prairie Home Companion” the movie. I happen to be one of those classic movie fans who will watch a 30s or 40s movie repeatedly. And I much prefer older movies of any age as long as they don’t have all the violence, sex and noise that seems to be required in most modern films. So 2006 is new enough for me. I loved that film.
Dear Mr. Keillor, just read your comment re humor in medicine. It is not banned, it is highly encouraged! How do you think nurses and Drs survive what they have to do for people? We'd all lose our minds without our inside jokes.
You are wrong in thinking that Cathy Walker is the only person who liked your book "That Time of Year." I write to add my voice to her praise of it. Having obtained a hard copy of the book at my local library, I am enjoying reading it so much that I have to work hard to put it down. There is a family tree to help readers keep track of your most immediate relatives, the stories are very well told, and to me they are spellbinding. I am the granddaughter of a Swedish-German couple from Marinette, Wisconsin who moved out west to Seattle in 1927; the adult child of their eldest daughter, who died before she got a chance to take me and my siblings to meet the many Wisconsin aunts and cousins who meant so much to her; the granddaughter of a Norwegian-Danish Baptist who at age 14 left his family in Minnesota to go central Alberta to homestead; the adult child of his eldest son, who never had lived in a home with running water or electricity, and never had left the prairie, until he went to Seattle at age 21 to go to college; and the recent widow of a wonderful man who was raised by his Dutch Reformed family in a small Dutch town in Minnesota; Those grandparents and parents, and my husband, are all dead now, and your stories remind me of stories I heard or might have heard from them. I am now at page 97 of "That Time of Year" and looking forward to reading the rest of it and your other books.
Olaf's letter and your response reminded me of one of the first episodes of PHC I ever listened to. My family is now proudly from what has become Germany. Our first members to reach New York were from Prussia, Bavaria, and other German speaking areas and all settled in what is now the Lower East Side. They were Catholic and Lutheran and intermarried, as one does when you meet the girl or boy of your dreams. That being said, your report was from Lake Woebegone about a family that felt it had to change their name during World War I. (My family did not, but they stopped speaking German. It was a great loss to us and is felt even now, more than 100 years later. High school and college classes do not make up for sitting with your grandmother listening to fairy tales told in their original language.) In Lake Woebegone there was also a parting of ways between a father and daughter. I cried and sobbed listening to the tale of this family that could have been my own. It started my years-long devotion to your work. Thank you.
There comes a tide in the lives of us all which taken at our own floods leads on to our own fortunes, wherein follows why our own lives are here. Grab on and do!
I love Ms. Harvey's new word! The way to get a newly coined word into the dictionary is use it - when enough people are describing Wobegonian moments, it will become immortalized in the dictionary. 😁
And why do you say medical professionals aren't allowed to be funny? Comedy routines between the various doctors and nurses often make hospital visits easier to tolerate.
"What a world"! by Satchmo, and "Que sera" sung by the lovely Doris Day of yesteryear. Yes! It is up to us to reach out and make it better.....
Mark Twain also published 'Eve's Diary' and 'Extracts from Adam's Diary'. Both are Twain's transcriptions of the original diaries and offer very interesting perspectives on how we got here.
GK,
If you're taking Jenny to Vienna by all means include Salzburg, just a short train ride south, along the Danube!
Sleep in a 300-year-old room at the "Golden Hersch" and, if you can, take in a performance at the "Marionetten Theatre," where I once attended the best performance of "Die Fledermaus" I've ever seen.
While you're in the neighborhood, a visit to Fussen, Bavaria, is worthwhile. Lying in bed in the corner room at our hotel, we could see "Hohenschangau," Mad Ludvig's mother's castle, over our shoulder while we stared over our toes at "Neuschweinstein," his (Disneyland) castle, nearby. If you do NOT join a bus tour group, the whole place is wide open to visitors and English is widely spoken in most places.
Dresden and Leipzig are great music destinations as well. When we went to a concert in the Gewandhaus in 2018 we were surprised and delighted to see a gigantic poster of our own BSO conductor, Andris Nelsons, in the windows. He also conducts there and every year they exchange musicians with the BSO during "Leipzig Week". Below is a link to the brochure for the wonderful tour we went on. Maybe it will give Jenny some ideas.
https://app.wdav.org/files/pdfs/wdav-spirit-of-bach-tour-brochure.pdf
1) Enough of using "woke" as a catch-all for anything one doesn't like or disagrees with! Most people who accuse someone of being woke can't even define it when asked.
2) Anyone defending the AR-15 or the .223 cartridge needs to look at some videos of the damage they cause. To paraphrase an old saying, "it ain't the power, it's the velocity."
I think "woke" is a perfectly good word, more accurate than "left" or "right," and I intend to keep using it.
I agree if you're talking about the end of sleeping. But in the context most politicians use today, not so much.
Dead is dead.
Your math and ballistics charts are irrelevant to the children and adults who were destroyed by a person with a gun.
Another excellent piece
Like what you are doing about the subject of comedy. It deserves some attention because of the sad state of comedy today.
Several years ago, I saw an interview with Danny Thomas. He said that the reasons we don't have the excellent comedians of the past is that there is no room to fail anymore. He explained that in the old days, a comic would take his act on the road and hone it, taking out the things that didn't work and adding new jokes that did. Once a success, he could add writers and expand into other areas. Now, a would -be comic goes on TV and may be watched by millions. If he flops, it's all over for him in a matter of minutes.
I assume you were not an instant success at this. Would like to hear your experience, coming up to be the very amusing personality you are today.
Mr. Thomas was wrong. Everybody start out on the road or working in a small corner and gradually working their way out.
I must second the Claire Keegan recommendation. Good writing there.
You have to be joking about nobody liking “A Prairie Home Companion” the movie. I happen to be one of those classic movie fans who will watch a 30s or 40s movie repeatedly. And I much prefer older movies of any age as long as they don’t have all the violence, sex and noise that seems to be required in most modern films. So 2006 is new enough for me. I loved that film.
Dear Mr. Keillor, just read your comment re humor in medicine. It is not banned, it is highly encouraged! How do you think nurses and Drs survive what they have to do for people? We'd all lose our minds without our inside jokes.
Dear Mr. Keillor,
You are wrong in thinking that Cathy Walker is the only person who liked your book "That Time of Year." I write to add my voice to her praise of it. Having obtained a hard copy of the book at my local library, I am enjoying reading it so much that I have to work hard to put it down. There is a family tree to help readers keep track of your most immediate relatives, the stories are very well told, and to me they are spellbinding. I am the granddaughter of a Swedish-German couple from Marinette, Wisconsin who moved out west to Seattle in 1927; the adult child of their eldest daughter, who died before she got a chance to take me and my siblings to meet the many Wisconsin aunts and cousins who meant so much to her; the granddaughter of a Norwegian-Danish Baptist who at age 14 left his family in Minnesota to go central Alberta to homestead; the adult child of his eldest son, who never had lived in a home with running water or electricity, and never had left the prairie, until he went to Seattle at age 21 to go to college; and the recent widow of a wonderful man who was raised by his Dutch Reformed family in a small Dutch town in Minnesota; Those grandparents and parents, and my husband, are all dead now, and your stories remind me of stories I heard or might have heard from them. I am now at page 97 of "That Time of Year" and looking forward to reading the rest of it and your other books.
Sincerely,
Leslie from Oregon (who once lived in Manhattan)