Keep your eye on the prize ahead, and choose a walkway free of broken stones. Your chances of getting there are far better. Another song that tears me up, aside some gospel you sing is Elvis' "How Great Thou Art." It still gives me a soft shiver, especially when that bass voice comes in and covers the rest of us. Look at you! You can surely dip and sing that bass part which J.D. Sumner sang so deep.
There are places for all of us Sing!. Especially during those walks in the woods when we're not sure which road we should take. Then it's time to redirect, to return and find the one needed.
Hi Garrison! I recommend two books that I think you would appreciate: THE DEATH OF TRUTH by Michiko Kakutani, and THE POWER OF LOVE by Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry - if you haven't already discovered them! Barbara F. Schutz (I am 90 years old and still learning!)
And impressed you’d tryout Ft. Lauderdale again, after last time. You are a trooper. Me, I rarely go south of here (Vero Beach) but think I should encourage booking agents to sign you up here. Much friendlier hotels. 😁❤️
Could be a problem with giving the wrong battery jumping advice given, although I doubt many in our cohort might be tempted. Easy to Google the correct procedure, but ALWAYS positive cable first at battery terminal, then negative cable to any part of the metal frame (not to the negative terminal) with now-universal 12 volt automotive systems. He may have easily exploded a battery in the 1950s when the polarity of 6 volt batteries was reversed.
I have waded into dangerous waters with the jumper cable business and I shall avoid any and all mechanical subjects in the future. I shall limit myself to the spiritual and artistic. GK
Jumper cables! Ah, YES! My pickup truck's battery went dead one late night, while I was mostly coasting down from a pass on the Pacific Coast Highway in California. I had jumper cables, but I had never used them - and most definitely wasn't going to try it just then! I was lucky on two accounts! First, a "Good Samaritan" (there's a "Good Sam Club" whose members have committed themselves to stopping by the wayside for stranded folks like me!) with a cell phone called in an AAA roadside service vehicle for me. Fortunately, I had coasted close to an on/off ramp, so the repair woman got there within ten minutes. Even that's a long wait when cars are zipping by you at up to 80-90MPH (it was a rarely patrolled section of the highway). The AAA servicewoman got out her flashlight, took my never-used jumper cables, attached them properly, and had my vehicle running again in five minutes or less.! What a relief that was!
I was able to provide "partial relief" of a similar sort in the daytime, just a few months later. I was driving in a lonely section of the southern California desert when I came across a car in the sand by the side of the road. The blue on yellow New York state license plates caught my attention, since I had recently changed my own ones in for the California red on white. These New York City folk - Yonkers, if I recall, told me their battery had died. I mentioned that I had a pair of jumper cables in my truck, but that I didn't know how to use them. The husband grinned broadly! "Piece of Cake!" he said, as he directed me how to park, then did all the necessary voodoo. He had his car running again in a snap! "How much do I owe you?" he asked me. "You're a fellow New Yorker! I just moved out here fairly recently, and it's good to see "neighbors" again! I'm glad to help! Have a nice visit - and Give My Regards to Broadway!" I added, as we started off on our own ways.
Awhile back, you mentioned a New Orleans-based jazz combo called "Tuba Skinny," and said that they were really good. I had heard the name before but I kept getting if confused with Trombone Shorty. After your recommendation I looked them up on YouTube and have been a big fan ever since. Thanks for that. I can't just listen to them, I end up watching the videos because I am fascinated by the interaction of the musicians and how the leader, Shaye Cohn, directs the group with a turn of her head or subtle hand signals while she is playing her cornet. Most of all, they look like they are having a great time. Going to see them up here in Des Moines and maybe even at Jazz Fest in New Orleans (my home town).
Tuba Skinny is great, hands down. I'd gladly see them again. Meanwhile, I'm going to see Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks next week. Great bass sax playing.
Unless I miss my guess, that's the National Cathedral nave in Washington, DC! What a setting for APHC that was! I remember being in the audience for a Saturday night performance, oh, a decade or more ago! What a fantastic setting it made for the show! Whether we, your loyal fans, sit there and count ourselves among the folks in Lake Woebegon who attend a Christian church or not, the fact is - religious ties have been definitely a part of Life in the Town that Time Forgot!
On the day I visited the cathedral, there was a woman in a front row who stood up when the performance was thrown open to audience participation. She proclaimed that, for her, Saturday evenings with APHC were the equivalent of being in church! I heard a murmur in the audience - so many of us were turning to our companions and agreeing that we also feel as if we're going to church, while we're in Lake Woebegon, too!
One delightful part of this "attendance at APHC religious services" is that APHC has been soooo ecumenical! Sure, the Catholics and the Protestants don't go to the same building, but there's a sense of "equality - that our denomination, and whether we look to the Pope in Rome or have some sense of roots with Martin Luther of Wittenberg or not, those things are as much a matter of our personal heritage as anything else. I especially remember one APHC show in Detroit, Michigan. There was a young pianist who performed there who was a Moslem. Our Blessed Host was just as respectful of his family's heritage as he has consistently been to "Sister Arvone" or "Pastor Inqvist!"
Of the many, many things I 've always admired about "A Prairie Home Companion" - this spirit of inclusion comes out very high on my list! Recently, I've been some books that were discarded from a local library on the topic of "Poverty in America." President Johnson's "War on Poverty" might not seem that crucial to those of us who are at lest comfortable "Middle Class Citizens." However, since the days when I wanted to wander over "every road in California" - and then, Nevada, Utah and Arizona too... I've picked up hitch-hikers along the side of the road. One of them was a University professor who was placing caches along the Pacific Rim Trail, in preparation for a full north to south state hike through California from Oregon to Mexico. For him, it was just a pragmatic thing to come down to the main road, purchase the next cache full of dried fruits, jerky and pancake mix, etc., grab a ride to the next trail head, and head back to the heights again. But he was at one end of the roadside spectrum. In Utah, in the true "Boonies", I picked up a teen aged student who lived so far away from an adequate school that he hitchhiked to and from school every day! For your neighbors in New York City, for example, some of them might find it hard to imagine, that rural America could be so isolated, and truly out of touch with this century - or even most of the last one!
To others, many of the sketches you created probably just seemed like "comedy." But to me, there were times when it seemed to me that you were doing an IMMENSE PUBLIC SERVICE by helping your listeners to imagine different walks of life, different concerns, different existences, even! I especially remember a scene that took place in the Inqvist parsonage. Pastor Inqvist is rather straight laced, but Mrs. Inqvist "Takes life as it comes." As a joke, one of the kids brought a cow in, and guided it up to the second floor of the house. Fine! It was warm, fresh milk, straight from the source for folks in their bedrooms! But then, what? That cow had a visual perception problem with going down stairs! EWhat they went through, trying to get that cow to step down on a riser that she couldn't see! I laughed so hard, and that image stayed with me so long, I still wasn't sure how they finally got the cow down as I'd wake up at night and do rerun after rerun! You were broadening our perspective on life! I'd been to the dairy of a friend, and seen milking machines, etc. But as far as "cow psychology" I'm as ignorant as the next city slicker! I appreciated our dairyman friend's situation a whole lot more, with just that one "visual/verbal experience!"
And you, Dear Friend, had the benefit of a semi-rural Minnesotan upbringing - so you could Broaden our Horizons exponentially! If I were in the National Cathedral right now, I'd almost shout out "Thank God for Garrison Keillor!", just as the woman in the National Cathedral proclaimed that evening, long ago!
I "Double Liked" your reply to Suzie E's query about preserving Protestantism.... "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?
You said:
"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."
It's the "Bible Study That Welcomes Skeptics" part I appreciated the most. Forty-five years ago, I rejoined our local Christian Church as a tightly-closeted agnostic. One of the activities I yearned for was that ability to debate scriptures in an open-minded Bible study setting. I appealed and lobbied for it, but was pretty well smacked down. I left the church after a couple more years as my skepticism morphed to agnosticism leaning toward atheism. It was not out of bitterness, but rather resignation to a view of Christianity, as well as all other religions, as being purely the fabrication of the creative, yearning minds of mankind.
A few years ago, you wrote a little poem to my grandparents for their 70th wedding anniversary. It is with great sadness that I tell you both of them are deceased. My grandfather died on May 3, 2016( A week before my birthday). My grandmother died yesterday. She was 98. Please keep me & my family in your prayers. Thank you. Scott Thomas
Suspenders are a good treatment for DTS... you can skip them when you want to make Jenny laugh. Have a good week! 😊
Keep your eye on the prize ahead, and choose a walkway free of broken stones. Your chances of getting there are far better. Another song that tears me up, aside some gospel you sing is Elvis' "How Great Thou Art." It still gives me a soft shiver, especially when that bass voice comes in and covers the rest of us. Look at you! You can surely dip and sing that bass part which J.D. Sumner sang so deep.
There are places for all of us Sing!. Especially during those walks in the woods when we're not sure which road we should take. Then it's time to redirect, to return and find the one needed.
Be well!
Hi Garrison! I recommend two books that I think you would appreciate: THE DEATH OF TRUTH by Michiko Kakutani, and THE POWER OF LOVE by Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry - if you haven't already discovered them! Barbara F. Schutz (I am 90 years old and still learning!)
Just to remark on the joy of seeing Flaco in “the wild.” Teaching humans a thing or two about choosing what’s best for animals.
And impressed you’d tryout Ft. Lauderdale again, after last time. You are a trooper. Me, I rarely go south of here (Vero Beach) but think I should encourage booking agents to sign you up here. Much friendlier hotels. 😁❤️
Could be a problem with giving the wrong battery jumping advice given, although I doubt many in our cohort might be tempted. Easy to Google the correct procedure, but ALWAYS positive cable first at battery terminal, then negative cable to any part of the metal frame (not to the negative terminal) with now-universal 12 volt automotive systems. He may have easily exploded a battery in the 1950s when the polarity of 6 volt batteries was reversed.
I have waded into dangerous waters with the jumper cable business and I shall avoid any and all mechanical subjects in the future. I shall limit myself to the spiritual and artistic. GK
Jumper cables! Ah, YES! My pickup truck's battery went dead one late night, while I was mostly coasting down from a pass on the Pacific Coast Highway in California. I had jumper cables, but I had never used them - and most definitely wasn't going to try it just then! I was lucky on two accounts! First, a "Good Samaritan" (there's a "Good Sam Club" whose members have committed themselves to stopping by the wayside for stranded folks like me!) with a cell phone called in an AAA roadside service vehicle for me. Fortunately, I had coasted close to an on/off ramp, so the repair woman got there within ten minutes. Even that's a long wait when cars are zipping by you at up to 80-90MPH (it was a rarely patrolled section of the highway). The AAA servicewoman got out her flashlight, took my never-used jumper cables, attached them properly, and had my vehicle running again in five minutes or less.! What a relief that was!
I was able to provide "partial relief" of a similar sort in the daytime, just a few months later. I was driving in a lonely section of the southern California desert when I came across a car in the sand by the side of the road. The blue on yellow New York state license plates caught my attention, since I had recently changed my own ones in for the California red on white. These New York City folk - Yonkers, if I recall, told me their battery had died. I mentioned that I had a pair of jumper cables in my truck, but that I didn't know how to use them. The husband grinned broadly! "Piece of Cake!" he said, as he directed me how to park, then did all the necessary voodoo. He had his car running again in a snap! "How much do I owe you?" he asked me. "You're a fellow New Yorker! I just moved out here fairly recently, and it's good to see "neighbors" again! I'm glad to help! Have a nice visit - and Give My Regards to Broadway!" I added, as we started off on our own ways.
Awhile back, you mentioned a New Orleans-based jazz combo called "Tuba Skinny," and said that they were really good. I had heard the name before but I kept getting if confused with Trombone Shorty. After your recommendation I looked them up on YouTube and have been a big fan ever since. Thanks for that. I can't just listen to them, I end up watching the videos because I am fascinated by the interaction of the musicians and how the leader, Shaye Cohn, directs the group with a turn of her head or subtle hand signals while she is playing her cornet. Most of all, they look like they are having a great time. Going to see them up here in Des Moines and maybe even at Jazz Fest in New Orleans (my home town).
Tuba Skinny is great, hands down. I'd gladly see them again. Meanwhile, I'm going to see Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks next week. Great bass sax playing.
I had to do it!! Listen to Mr. Keillor's rendering of Music by Anne Porter: https://www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=9278.html
Unless I miss my guess, that's the National Cathedral nave in Washington, DC! What a setting for APHC that was! I remember being in the audience for a Saturday night performance, oh, a decade or more ago! What a fantastic setting it made for the show! Whether we, your loyal fans, sit there and count ourselves among the folks in Lake Woebegon who attend a Christian church or not, the fact is - religious ties have been definitely a part of Life in the Town that Time Forgot!
On the day I visited the cathedral, there was a woman in a front row who stood up when the performance was thrown open to audience participation. She proclaimed that, for her, Saturday evenings with APHC were the equivalent of being in church! I heard a murmur in the audience - so many of us were turning to our companions and agreeing that we also feel as if we're going to church, while we're in Lake Woebegon, too!
One delightful part of this "attendance at APHC religious services" is that APHC has been soooo ecumenical! Sure, the Catholics and the Protestants don't go to the same building, but there's a sense of "equality - that our denomination, and whether we look to the Pope in Rome or have some sense of roots with Martin Luther of Wittenberg or not, those things are as much a matter of our personal heritage as anything else. I especially remember one APHC show in Detroit, Michigan. There was a young pianist who performed there who was a Moslem. Our Blessed Host was just as respectful of his family's heritage as he has consistently been to "Sister Arvone" or "Pastor Inqvist!"
Of the many, many things I 've always admired about "A Prairie Home Companion" - this spirit of inclusion comes out very high on my list! Recently, I've been some books that were discarded from a local library on the topic of "Poverty in America." President Johnson's "War on Poverty" might not seem that crucial to those of us who are at lest comfortable "Middle Class Citizens." However, since the days when I wanted to wander over "every road in California" - and then, Nevada, Utah and Arizona too... I've picked up hitch-hikers along the side of the road. One of them was a University professor who was placing caches along the Pacific Rim Trail, in preparation for a full north to south state hike through California from Oregon to Mexico. For him, it was just a pragmatic thing to come down to the main road, purchase the next cache full of dried fruits, jerky and pancake mix, etc., grab a ride to the next trail head, and head back to the heights again. But he was at one end of the roadside spectrum. In Utah, in the true "Boonies", I picked up a teen aged student who lived so far away from an adequate school that he hitchhiked to and from school every day! For your neighbors in New York City, for example, some of them might find it hard to imagine, that rural America could be so isolated, and truly out of touch with this century - or even most of the last one!
To others, many of the sketches you created probably just seemed like "comedy." But to me, there were times when it seemed to me that you were doing an IMMENSE PUBLIC SERVICE by helping your listeners to imagine different walks of life, different concerns, different existences, even! I especially remember a scene that took place in the Inqvist parsonage. Pastor Inqvist is rather straight laced, but Mrs. Inqvist "Takes life as it comes." As a joke, one of the kids brought a cow in, and guided it up to the second floor of the house. Fine! It was warm, fresh milk, straight from the source for folks in their bedrooms! But then, what? That cow had a visual perception problem with going down stairs! EWhat they went through, trying to get that cow to step down on a riser that she couldn't see! I laughed so hard, and that image stayed with me so long, I still wasn't sure how they finally got the cow down as I'd wake up at night and do rerun after rerun! You were broadening our perspective on life! I'd been to the dairy of a friend, and seen milking machines, etc. But as far as "cow psychology" I'm as ignorant as the next city slicker! I appreciated our dairyman friend's situation a whole lot more, with just that one "visual/verbal experience!"
And you, Dear Friend, had the benefit of a semi-rural Minnesotan upbringing - so you could Broaden our Horizons exponentially! If I were in the National Cathedral right now, I'd almost shout out "Thank God for Garrison Keillor!", just as the woman in the National Cathedral proclaimed that evening, long ago!
Hi Garrison,
I "Double Liked" your reply to Suzie E's query about preserving Protestantism.... "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?
You said:
"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."
It's the "Bible Study That Welcomes Skeptics" part I appreciated the most. Forty-five years ago, I rejoined our local Christian Church as a tightly-closeted agnostic. One of the activities I yearned for was that ability to debate scriptures in an open-minded Bible study setting. I appealed and lobbied for it, but was pretty well smacked down. I left the church after a couple more years as my skepticism morphed to agnosticism leaning toward atheism. It was not out of bitterness, but rather resignation to a view of Christianity, as well as all other religions, as being purely the fabrication of the creative, yearning minds of mankind.
Roger Krenkler L.A.
Dear Mr. Keillor,
A few years ago, you wrote a little poem to my grandparents for their 70th wedding anniversary. It is with great sadness that I tell you both of them are deceased. My grandfather died on May 3, 2016( A week before my birthday). My grandmother died yesterday. She was 98. Please keep me & my family in your prayers. Thank you. Scott Thomas