Post to the Host

Comments from the Week of 08.06.23

Thank you, Garrison Keillor, for the magical show last night in Boothbay Harbor. My husband and I were so enthralled, and I am so grateful for all you have done for us.

Dina

I was enthralled by the hall, the warm feeling of it, very plain and elegant, the slender balcony around three-fourths of it. I walked out and felt the crowd immediately. At my age, success isn’t so important — I did Tanglewood and the Hollywood Bowl and those big venues that were such a challenge back in my 50s and 60s, but the 350-seater like that one in Maine or the Kate in Old Saybrook are dear to my heart. I’ll be back there next summer. GK

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Dear Garrison,

In 2021 I wrote you a post. I had lost a PHC cap in Brunswick, ME. I hoped another fan from Maine might have found it. You wrote me a limerick:

Catherine was visiting Maine
And lost her hat, what a pain,
But then she felt free
To live wildly
And not mind the sun and the rain.

On my birthday this week, I found a message from a stranger written 5 months ago and I was curious. It was from Trisha Welsch, a professor at Bowdoin College, and she went looking for, and found, my hat! Today, I received my hat back, as well as one from Bowdoin. I am thrilled!

She is a fan of yours, but was a little miffed when you originally wrote, “finders/keepers is the rule in Maine and so I suggest you reconcile yourself to the loss.” She says that in her experience people there go out of their way for others. I just thought since you are doing a show in Boothbay, Maine, maybe you could go out of your way and visit her in Brunswick 43 minutes away. She didn’t ask, but I just want to show my appreciation to her by suggesting it.

Thanks for being the conduit to helping me find my favorite hat. I can’t stop feeling cheerful!

Catherine Smith-DuGay from Florida

What got into me to make a callous remark like that? I don’t know. Sometimes the urge to be humorous leads in the wrong direction. Glad you got a new friend out of the deal.

A professor named Trisha at Bowdoin

Dreads the days she is snowed in

And hopes that a moose

Out on the loose

Will not lie down blocking the road in.

Apologies. GK

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Dear Garrison Keillor,

I turned 90 years old this past March, and these days, all I seem to do is go to the doctor. I use a walker and have a hard time catching my breath these days. I’m getting so weary of all of this, and my poor son is taking me to doctors several times per week. I’m not sure what I’m asking, but I wonder if the rest of my life will be this miserable. You seem to be happy at 81 but wait until you’re 90. I hope it’s better for you than for me.

Calista Slater

I think your doctor owes you a heart-to-heart talk, with your son present, about your prospects and what the goal of treatment is. Doctors are overworked and exhausted and some doctors dread this sort of conversation but you need to be told the truth about what medical science can and cannot do. Bless your heart for writing. Lord, have mercy on Calista and bring her some cheerful days. GK

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GK,

C’mon man, I can’t believe you’re as eternally cheerful and optimistic as you claim to be. Aren’t there things that make you angry or get you down? Please tell the truth.

Glenn Taber

It’s a new development, sir. I wasn’t always cheerful. I used to be angry about betrayal, the knife in the back from people I’d been good to, but now I only feel sorry for them. Betrayal is poisonous and I see it in the lives of people I once was angry at. But 81 is too old for anger. The prevailing mood is gratitude. As I write this, I’m looking out the window of a train at the grasslands and high plateau of Colorado, on my way to the Grand Canyon. The dining car is high-class with tablecloths and flowers and the food is cooked, not microwaved. I had scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast and very good coffee. Praise the Lord. GK

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Dear Garrison,

I am delighted to see that you are coming to Sacramento on September 28 for a solo show at the Crest Theatre. I’ve bought my ticket. If you fancy some sightseeing while in California, the California State Railroad Museum and the California Automobile Museum are within a few blocks of the Crest. The California State Archive has an amazing collection of literary memorabilia. You can visit Jack London’s cabin in Glen Ellen, or Mark Twain’s cabin in Sonora, each a scenic two-hour drive away. Please let me know what I can do to help. 

Sincerely,
Raoul Renaud (a Back Room founding member)

It’s a quick tour of one-nighters, Raoul, and Mr. Hudson the manager is in charge, I am only the talent, such as it is. If my wife decides to come with me, I’ll bet she’d go to the Archive and maybe to Jack London’s cabin. She’s a great sightseer. I don’t want to spend a day sightseeing and then be weary and dull for the show. A very boring day is the best preparation for performance. GK

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I’m away from home, since I went to my 49th high school reunion here on the Oregon coast. I read your first chapter of Cheerfulness before the banquet down at the Moose Hall Saturday night, and it set the tone for a decidedly nostalgic and cheerful event. Tomorrow, I’ll return home, where I sincerely want to remain cheerful in the face of some of life’s toughest challenges. Thank you for helping me do that!

Clancy

My pleasure. I hope some younger people look at the book. I worry about the glumness of so many young. I was like that when I was their age, felt that misery was cool, a sign of intelligence, but it’s a mistake to waste those years. I’m so happy that my grandson is an outdoorsman, a hiker, canoeist, ambitious to set foot in wilderness areas. Nature is inherently cheerful, I believe. Botanists I know think so too. GK

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Garrison,

A question popped into my mind, and since I can’t shake it, I’ll ask it. What is your bedtime routine? Do you go to bed, and do you arise, on a regular schedule, and if so, at what times? If you awake during the night, do you simply lie in bed until you fall back to sleep, or do you get up to read or write? I see that I have asked more than one question, so I’ll leave it at that.

Remember, our destination in death is certain. The mystery is in the journey, and what we make of it. Happy trails!

Coleman Hood

Bishop, Georgia

I’m early to bed, early to rise, especially since I quit alcohol twenty years ago. My mate is a restless sleeper but I tend not to be other than for the usual two rest stops and I feel very lucky if I wake up at 4 a.m. It’s my best time to write. Up and at ’em. GK

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Your “audience test” of starting America and seeing whether the response is there, is quite interesting in view of your kind words about monarchy in another comment this week. So what is your feeling if the audience comes back with God Save the King?

Jim Katz

I give them the phrase, “My country, ’tis” and that cues America. Americans don’t know God Save the King, the lines about “reign over us” and “victorious,” but they do know the Battle Hymn of the Republic, even the lines about the watchfires of a hundred circling camps, evening dews and damps, and dim and flaring lamps. They don’t know they do but they do. GK

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GK,

Re: “Be prepared to accept good luck.” I like it. I like it very much. I may use it as the Quote of the Month for the monthly newsletter of the Toronto Quaker meeting. With attribution, of course.

Constitutional monarchies: Yes. Of course. A country that still has a monarchy means that when the people demanded political rights (1688, 1848 or some other time), the king gave in and gave them. So, there wasn’t a revolution, just a regime change — from within, not imposed by some other country’s army — and the country carried on.

Re: establishing a monarchy? Remember Andy Borowitz’s column a few years ago, in which Queen Elizabeth II offered to take back the US, since its experiment in self-government was clearly a failure.

Elizabeth Block

Toronto

We’ll just have to struggle through as best we can and hope our descendants hew to the straight and narrow. It’s not possible to divide this country in any reasonable way, we’re all mixed in together, no way to draw a boundary. Anyway, it’s not my problem. I’m old. GK

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Dear GK,

I loved your response to the letter writer on cheerfulness who quoted George Carlin’s “Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do.” 

You replied: “I don’t detect anything cheerful in the quote from Carlin, I only detect deliberate misunderstanding.”

I love “deliberate misunderstanding” because that’s frequently how anti-religion people engage. Do you know the type I mean? They describe religion with a kindergartner’s understanding of God, except that most kindergartners are far wiser. 

From now on, my response to the knee-jerk religion-haters is going to be, “You are deliberately misunderstanding. Shalom.” 

Thank you from Maria in DeKalb, Illinois 

I walk out of church on Sunday morning feeling happy and walk through a crowd of Catholics emerging from a Hispanic church and maybe some Korean Baptists and then I join a mob of non-churchgoers (probably) at Trader Joe’s and head for home, feeling no need to explain myself, simply the obligation of kindness. It’s New York. Jews, Unitarians, skeptics, Methodists, narcissists, all mingled together. It’s a blessing to walk the streets and I hope others feel likewise. GK

Dear Garrison,

In the early eighties I left Florida and moved to NYC to pursue my dream of being a stage actor. I spent years doing what I loved, acting. Becoming rich or famous was never my goal. Only getting up in the morning knowing in the evening I would be on stage. I recently read your autobiography and it was marvelous. Uplifting and beautiful. You have touched my life with your stories, songs, sonnets, and limericks, and gave a young country boy the courage to chase a dream all the way from the cornfields of northwest Florida to the bright lights of Broadway. 

Respectfully,

Tim Bass

You were braver than I, Mister. You went straight to the bright lights at the top and I snuck into the biz from a dark corner. It was a struggle doing that variety show live on the radio, and I lost heart many times, quit a couple times, went through droughts, and now, oddly, I’m having more fun than I did back in the “golden” years. I was never a good manager, had no mind for advance planning, but I do seem to have an odd gift for impersonating a stand-up comic. Crazy, no? I lacked the discipline to be an actor, which forced me to write my way into performing. Good luck to both of us. GK

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Saw your delightful show in Boothbay Harbor the other night. Have only two regrets: Forgot to bring the book That Time of Year to sign and wish we’d sung Happy Birthday to You! So now: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I’m a writer, too, published my first book at 85. Now I’m headed for 89. It’s fun! GO FOR IT!

Marilyn Heise

I’m going for it, Marilyn, and I’m avoiding looking ahead. Thinking about September but beyond that, it’s all mysterious. GK

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GK,

I had the great pleasure of seeing you last night in Boothbay Harbor where I now live. I, too, am a great admirer of Mary Oliver. Thanks for being you!

Diana Arney

I wish I’d gotten to see Mary Oliver read her poems. She is endlessly surprising. I guess she was once an assistant to Edna St. Vincent Millay. I hope somebody is writing a biography of her. GK

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What are your thoughts on the Florida moron who must censor Shakespeare’s plays? After all, they were written to be performed by men for adults in the 16th century, not for elementary students to parse in the 21st. And the poetry is beautiful, in classics that time and English majors will not forget.

English Teacher

Shakespeare has done pretty well for himself all these years without help from me and despite various morons. My high school English teacher Helen Story was completely devoted to his work and she drove miles to see any production of his, visited the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, never got enough of him. I failed to catch her enthusiasm. She grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota, went to college, remained single all her life, was a great teacher and a beautiful human being, and I miss her dearly. Her love of Shakespeare clearly was a formative aspect of her lifelong education. I saw Hamlet and frankly I was relieved when Laertes stabbed him and he died. GK

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Dear Garrison,

Months ago, I pleaded for you to bring your show back to Texas one more time. You said no. Too many gun nuts. You are right, of course.

Tonight, I am rejoicing to know you’ll be in Galveston next February. My tickets are in hand. It’s a nine-hour drive from our home on the plains to your seaside stage. Thank you for reconsidering.

As a longtime fan, I want to pitch a couple of ideas for your show. First, Texans still love Bob Wills. His “San Antonio Rose” is, of course, our national anthem. I want you to compose new lyrics for another Wills classic, “Right or Wrong.” So many options to tackle.

Second, please compose original lyrics for an old tune, “Blues, Stay Away from Me.” Plenty of stay-away topics here to substitute for the blues.

Years ago, you and I sang “Abilene” at my old alma mater. For a retired country newspaper editor, I find no better entertainment these days than your sophisticated columns and observations. In age, I am a year behind you and gaining fast. Please don’t stop bringing cheerfulness and sanity to this dizzy world.

Cordially yours,

Perry Flippin

San Angelo, Texas

I’m happy to do “Blues, Stay Away from Me” but I won’t touch “Abilene” for fear someone might shoot me. And when I’m in Galveston, when it comes to politics, I will stifle myself completely. We’ll do a “Dusty and Lefty” sketch but it’ll be very very respectful, maybe even Shakespearean. GK

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Recently I went downtown Chicago to Pizzeria Uno, directly across the street from Medina Temple. Saw the show there several times years ago. I was reminded of the changes that building went through over time. For years it hosted the Shrine Circus, not to mention an occasional episode of PHC. Then it spent a decade or so as a Bloomingdale’s housewares store. Now it is being transformed into a temporary casino, until the new permanent Bally’s a mile away opens circa 2026.

Wondering if you have any thoughts on the growth of the gambling/gaming industry.

Steven Cornwell

Berkeley, Illinois

I grew up evangelical and never played poker, never gambled, no lottery tickets, nothing of the sort. Did a show in Las Vegas once and walked through a casino to get to the elevators to go up to my hotel room and was sort of astonished to see the elderly women playing the slot machines. There was no gaiety about it, no conversation, no whooping and yelling, just mechanical pulling of levers. So is the Mystic Shrine brotherhood also gone? GK

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