Post to the Host

Comments from the Week of 02.12.23

Feb 20, 2023

GK,

Your wife is one lucky lady to have you move away from your home in Minnesota to live in New York City with her. Was this a difficult decision?

I hope you don’t forget about us here in St. Paul. What do you miss about your hometown? And are you holding a grudge about how you were treated? I wouldn’t blame you.

Betty

St. Paul, Minnesota

I like it living here, Betty. Saturday, I worked on a book and Jenny walked around Central Park and came across Flaco the owl who escaped from the zoo, who was sitting high up in an elm tree with about fifty birdwatchers with their binocs and cameras below. That night we went to the Philharmonic and heard a terrific new piece by Thomas Adès (“In Seven Days”) and a Dvoràk symphony conducted by a phenomenal young woman, Ruth Reinhardt. Sunday morning I walked to church. It’s a good place for an old man because you don’t need a car at all. I miss old friends in St. Paul but I’m pretty busy these days, flying around and doing shows and I want to work up a Lake Wobegon series for streaming cable. And I like hanging out with my wife. I left St. Paul because I wanted to put the past behind me and I’ve done that. It’s a healthy thing to do at any age but especially at 80. Put your blunders and wront turns and regrets behind you and start fresh. I’m writing a book about this, called Cheerfulness. I believe in it. GK

GK,

As a septuagenarian I am more optimistic than you about the use of artificial intellect software to be of real benefit to humanity. Yes, there are definitely many bugs showing up in the current applications of this technology and many humbuggers who worry about everything from intellectual atrophy to cultural irrelevance with the use of this technology. Just consider, however, the lack of political outrage that could have resulted from Rep. George Santos and Rep. Anna Luna using this AI platform to help construct their résumés rather than fabricating stuff on their own. With a little help from this emerging technology, even our own imbecile Senator Ted Cruz might start sounding like a rational person with integrity. As an experiment to determine actual capabilities of this AI technology I plan to ask ChatGPT to generate a pretrained composition about a mythical town in Minnesota filled with subtle humor and reminiscences from the 1960s. It will be telling what this robotic wonder might produce. I will take this one step further and ask it to provide this as a limerick.

Barry Page

Athens, Texas

Glad you disagree, sir, but I know that Lake Wobegon has a definite verbal style and we can recognize outsiders instantly even if they are intelligent. GK

Garrison,

I read with considerable amusement your account of losing your pants in today’s post. It occurred to me that you may suffer from DTS or disappearing tush syndrome, which Calvin Trillin describes in the NY Times. I, born on 7/31/42 (in St. Paul), now worry about pants around the ankles. Keep up the good work and stay well.

Jerry Peterson

Trillin wrote about DTS ten years ago and I’ve had lunch with him since then and he’s even more svelte and I noticed that he goes around with his hands in his pockets as a safety measure. My wife said to me the other day, “You don’t have a butt anymore.” I think it’s been flattened by years of sitting and writing. Anyway, my trouser drop was intentional, a joke to amuse my wife, and it worked. GK

Garrison,

As someone who attends church regularly, do you see many young people in attendance with their families? Our pastor’s sermon last week focused on the unhappy fact that mainline Protestantism is on the decline. I fear that progressive Christianity is being taken over by conservative Evangelicals and megachurches with coffee shops, movie theaters, and rock bands. It’s all just entertainment. Do you think that the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran churches will survive the next couple of decades in their current form? What can save them?

Susie E.

Good preaching and good music and Bible study that welcomes skeptics. It’s not enough to write an essay and read it aloud: the preacher needs to come down out of the pulpit and talk to the people from the heart. “Good music” includes congregational singing and for that you need to program hymns that most people know. Church is the only chance most people have to sing in harmony with others, which is a profound pleasure. At my church, I see a broad range of ages, from Gen Z on up to us geezers. I always come away moved by it, the feeling that God is here with us in this big city and that we are loved by our creator. GK

Mr. Keillor,

Some years ago — many years ago, actually — someone opined that health is largely a matter of personal choice. “Yes,” I said, “and the first and most important choice is the careful selection of your parents.”

One of my grandmothers lived to 99 years and 9 months. She told my cousin, who was visiting her, that she wasn’t going to reach 100, because if she did, she would get a congratulatory letter from President Reagan. A tough broad. I hope I take after her.

Elizabeth Block

Toronto, Canada [dual citizen]

I admire tough broads, the grandmothers of feminists, and I put one in Lake Wobegon, Myrtle Krebsbach, and I often hear my wife reminisce about her grandma Orrell who was a tough one. I hope they still exist somewhere. GK

Dear Garrison:

I sure enjoyed seeing you in Kansas City on Feb. 8! Great old theater! Great old you!

I did wonder how you stayed on your feet for two hours! I can’t do that at 75!

With prayer,

Msgr. Bob Murphy

Thanks for coming to the Uptown, Monsignor. Feel free to borrow any good lines for your homilies. I did manage to stay upright for two hours but when I got back to the hotel, I went directly to bed and awoke nine hours later, feeling a little stiff. But the audience was having a good time so I couldn’t quit early. GK

Hello, Mr. Keillor.

I will be 69 years old this year. I’m an absolute nobody.

I have one short question: How did you do it? This question is about actual beginnings. For example, in the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer, Jess (Neil Diamond) wants to make it big in show biz. In the very next scene, he’s in L.A. rehearsing with his band. I thought to myself, “Wait a minute! Missing information!” I’ve been trying to get a band together for years. They don’t just magically appear.” (Incidentally, still at my age, I’m trying to figure out how to get a band together.) I looked at your website and here’s what I read: “If you showed up on July 6, 1974, at the Janet Wallace Auditorium ...” etc. You know the rest. Well, once again, I immediately thought to myself, “Wait a minute! Missing information!” Personally, I’ve never heard of just showing up at a performance venue and doing your thing. There must be more to the story than that.

That’s why I ask: ”How did you do it?” I mean, in the beginning — before you opened on July 6, 1974?

Thank you,

Monty Dicksion

I wrote a magazine piece about the Grand Ole Opry in 1974 and set out to imitate it in Minnesota and talked to Bill Kling at Minnesota Public Radio who said, “Go ahead,” so we did. I knew some acoustic musicians, Bill Hinkley and Judy Larson, Cal Hand, Rudy Darling, and they knew some others and we pulled it together and did a 90-minute show at a little theater in the St. Paul Arts & Science Center before an audience of a couple dozen people, and slowly it grew. The theme song was Hello Love, a Hank Snow hit, and I sang it and invented sponsors such as Powdermilk Biscuits to give it some commercial flair and that’s how it started. GK

GK,

It is negative cable first, and then positive. Or you could, as I did when I was a teenager, blow the battery up (the spark from hooking up positive first).

James in Minnesota … jump-starting cars for 60 years.

Ignorance, corrected. Thank you. As you may have guessed, I don’t drive anymore and my wife parks the car in an indoor garage. My dad grew up with the Model T and he continued doing his own auto repairs into the ’60s and ’70s and then it got too complex. Advancing technology has left me pretty much helpless so I just take the subway in New York or hail a cab. Much easier. GK

Dear Garrison,

I’m trailing you by almost two decades, but your most recent column about the Midwest made my heart swell with pride. I saw you years ago at the Fox in St Louis. My son was the youngest member of the audience and I still have a picture of you bending at the waist to shake his hand and talk to him.

I’ve taught college-level music all my life in Kansas and now in Missouri. For the most part, we have been connected to the land and the weather all our lives. We now look at the culture changing so quickly that it doesn’t make sense anymore.

My students today are mostly confused about who they are or what they’re supposed to do. They’ve been fed the lie that passing tests means you’re smart and will be successful. They’re not excited about the future, working at jobs they hate, and hardly ever dance. I rarely see them on campus having fun. I haven’t heard a college student use the word beautiful in a long time.

Like you, I have mostly given up keeping up with the headlines, an activity that used to keep me engaged, but now just makes me feel like I’m living in a world that has gone nuts.

I think you must be wrong about college kids not having fun. I hope you are. I was gloomy at that age myself, but it was a put-on for effect, not genuine. The kids are graduating into a more difficult business culture than what I knew in the Sixties. Digital and social media have turned the world on its ear and I think that the schools have failed them when it comes to English composition, which is as important today as it ever was. Clear writing demands clear thinking. As for the news headlines, I’m with you. I do not wish to anguish over things I have no power to affect. I’d rather be useful to friends and family and let Congress fend for itself. GK

Hello,

Have you traveled to the United Kingdom?

Here I found people using knife and fork to eat not only burgers, with and without cheese, but also pizza!

They have utensils in the wrong hands, of course, knife in the right, fork in the left.

All best wishes,
Debbie Lawther

I have been there and eaten with my London family and I don’t recall them eating cheeseburgers with knife and fork but I’ll watch them carefully when I go back. GK

Hi, Garrison.

You obviously have a wife who loves you, and that is truly a blessing. However, your devotion is even more miraculous — anyone who eats white Jell-O (a.k.a. tofu) to please a partner is approaching sainthood!

Pat McC.

She cuts it into little cubes and spreads it in a green salad and it’s hardly noticeable. Anyway, it’s not the road to sainthood. Forgiveness is and love of enemies and immaterialism. GK

Dear Garrison,

I am thrilled that I will see you in Ft. Lauderdale next week. I do have a request. Will you sing “How Great Thou Art” for us? I used to gather at the rectory of St. Michael’s in Auburn, AL, with the nuns and priests for morning prayers when I was in college and it was a favorite of mine, so beautiful when sung a cappella by faithful hearts. My heart needs that.

Safe travels and good health,
Richard’s Wife

Yes, of course. During intermission, right after the “Battle Hymn” and before “I Saw Her Standing There.” GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

Many years ago I heard you read the poem “Music” by Anne Porter on The Writer’s Almanac. That poem never left me. Lately I have had the opportunity to set it to music. Hope you enjoy the choral setting.

All the best,

Marc-Andre Bougie

Texarkana, Arkansas

Dear Garrison,

What sets your old next-door neighbor to the east, Wisconsin, apart from other states? Cheese, beer, Badgers, well yes, but it’s also home to an awful lot of interesting and delightful Supper Clubs. Yesterday I picked up a copy of the 2013 The Supper Club Book by Dave Hoekstra and the forward by none other than yourself. The very first Supper Club listed was Turk’s Inn in Hayward, 145 miles east of the Cities. First opened in 1934, but when the original owner’s daughter died in 2015 there was no one left to run it so a couple of longtime patrons, wanting to keep the Turks’ spirit alive, moved it all to Brooklyn.

Don’t know if you ever made it their location in Hayward, but now you can visit its reincarnation a mere eight miles from your Central Park home.

Very much enjoy your columns and postings.

Leif Salvesen

Plano, Texas

Garrison,

You wrote, “I shall leave politics to people smarter than I, and keep my distance from anguish, at least until next summer when I may exercise my right to be righteous.”

May I ask that you consider that the politicians who you regard as people smarter than yourself are people like the DEMOCRATS Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, etc., who are actively busy each and every day to take away your right to be righteous. And, yes, sure, there are those on the other side of the aisle who were in league with those robbers-of-your-rights. But may I say to you that who cares if the Republican guy has a dopey hairdo and doesn’t know a hymn from a hen? Though you may be rowing your boat into the serene sunset and are happy to pack away your troubles in your Old Kit Bag and “smile, brother, smile,” don’t you think that you — who is someone with a microphone (metaphorically speaking, as well as literally) — would not leave life, when newer generations ask you, “Pops, when the world was being overrun with cockroaches, what did you do?” and in reply, answer them, “I just left it up to you to worry about it, and went off singing a happy song.”

Monty Dicksion

I should’ve been more specific and said “writers smarter than I,” a large group that includes a good many conservatives. I don’t write about politics for the same reason I don’t write romance novels: other people do it better. GK

GK,

A follow-up note about your mitral valve surgery last summer. I was able to resonate with that whole series on this from you and have just been discharged here yesterday in Seattle for a mitral valve repair. Your description about that experience was most helpful in my prep for my own repair job and for anticipating specific little moments, including the fecal trail from the bed to the bathroom. Fortunately (but not surprisingly) the hospital staff here were equally hospitable and merciful. Lovely to have that specific account to relate to and ease my moment of shame.

Keep on keeping on. Rejoiced that both of us are now on “the other side,” at least of this major event.

DWB