Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 12.13.21

Hi, GK.

John Nagle is not the first nor the only physicist to write to you. Your wordplay, wry sense of humor, and intelligent brand of spinning the world’s events are exactly how physicists like to think. Yes, I am one too. Thought you’d enjoy this:

Add some powder like cocoa or sugar to heated water or coffee. As the bubbles form on the small particles of powder, start tapping your spoon against the bottom of the cup in the fluid before stirring. No matter how fast or slow you tap, the pitch slowly goes up. Sound travels more slowly in the air bubbles and as they dissipate, sound can travel more quickly and the pitch increases. Sometimes you can repeat a few times with a fresh stir to release more bubbles. It’s called the “hot chocolate effect” and is an amusing way to enjoy your coffee.

Who says we can’t talk about physics over lunch?

Khrystle

This is an approach to physics that Mr. James Swenson, my high school physics teacher, did not offer us. Maybe that’s why Anoka High School produced no noteworthy physicists. It didn’t produce any great writers either but I’m still in the game and doing my best.

GK

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Just wanted to applaud your recent answer to an unreconstructed Southerner about Jackson and Lee. I am a reconstructed Southerner whose non-slave-owning great-grandfather was drafted out of Union County, N.C., in the closing days of the Civil War. Captured less than a week before Lee’s surrender, he subsequently died of typhoid in a POW camp on Hart Island, NYC. In the 1890s, he was reinterred at Cypress Hills National Cemetery in Brooklyn among the fallen on both sides, all victims of the aristocratic traitors you mentioned. 

Wes Gordon

The histories of wars including that one have focused on the men on horseback and neglected stories like that of your great-grandfather. Someone should do this, if it hasn’t already been done: tell a ground-level story of the suffering of ordinary people. When I was a boy, I got to see the Last Surviving Veteran of the Civil War, Albert Woolson of Duluth, riding in a convertible in parades, holding a flag, and we all clapped and cheered, but he survived by the fact that he was a young drummer and the band was well behind the lines, playing martial music for the troops rushing to the front to die. Your story says more than Mr. Woolson’s did.

GK

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I wouldn’t miss one of your books. Love your play on words, poking fun at Lutherans, et cetera. In at least several of your books (Pontoon, Christmas Blizzard, and Pilgrims come to mind, although I’m not sure), often words were split — e.g., “Christ mas,” “to day,” and many other such examples.

Were these editorial typos or intentional?

George Berglund

I never read my books after they were in print for fear I’d discover just such typos and now I can see that I was right. I have a good copy editor now, Ms. Beck, and she doesn’t toler ate this sort of thing.

GK

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Hello, Garrison.

Just thought I would let you know that the photo in your column from December 10 was of the town of Seaside, Florida, which is in the Panhandle area about 40 miles west of Panama City Beach.

Seaside has a wonderful independent bookstore called Sundog: you had said there are no bookstores in said state. Go visit it.

Best to you and your continuing curmudgeonliness. I rather understand it, and a trip to that bookstore might just make your vacation.

Best,
Vaughan Greene, curmudgeon-in-training

Due to my poor vision, I am not allowed to drive anymore, so I am my wife’s passenger and I go wherever she takes me. And I don’t read as many books as I used to, due to eyesight and also the fact that my favorite authors are all dead. But if by accident we should drive through Seaside, I will think of you. I am, however, no curmudgeon. I know several of them and compared to them I am a naïve romantic plucking a harp.

GK

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Hi, Garrison.

Any suggestions on how to communicate with 7 grandchildren ages 14 to 22? Should I tell them just how dangerous things are getting? They deserve their innocence. Several are vegetarian with plans to save the planet. One has been in trouble for defending his right not to be a church-attending “Christian.” I don’t seem to have much knowledge to pass on. I am sad … what is happening to this world. 

Pat Hall, now in Madison, Wisconsin

I think you talk to your grandkids by asking them questions about themselves and listening to them and sparing them your judgment. Interviewing, in other words. It’s their world now and we should be curious about where it’s headed. I wouldn’t unload your fears about the world on them; they’ll find out soon enough on their own.

GK

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Dear GK,

Young couples used to stop me in the mall — “Hey! Remember us? You’re the reason we got married! Your music brought us together!”

Yes, I was a singer by trade, full time, for thirty years, playing popular songs in the pubs and in “your better restaurants” around Cincinnati. I’m elderly now, though, and those kind people who once threw me a dollar to sing their favorite tune, well, they want to dine early, nurse one drink, and then go home to bed at ten o’clock. Demand for my services has dwindled accordingly.

I played as many as 320 gigs a year, and probably sang a good many tunes on autopilot. Sometimes I would attain a sort of music-induced alpha state, a blond Harry Nilsson purity of tone, hitting all those high notes, perfectly in tune, with tear-welling, fearless fervor. And sometimes, in my lectures on pop music at the university, right there in front of the class, I suddenly heard your voice coming out of my own mouth! 

Well, I suppose this note is to say thank you. For sharing your mellifluous voice. I won’t say you’re the reason we got married forty-eight years ago, but thanks for everything else, Mr. K. Thank you very much. Bravo!

Cordially,

Cliff Adams

Fort Mitchell, Kentucky

Wonderful to hear from you, Mr. Adams, a real working musician, not a dilettante like me, and these days I’m getting a taste of the working life, doing small shows in small towns for people who’re anxious to have a good time after the long lockdown (although maybe the lockdown is about to resume). I played the big venues for a while and now I’m back to Ottumwa, Joliet, Holland, High Point, Carrollton, and shows where I can look them in the eye. Such a privilege. I didn’t appreciate it as much when I was flying high as I do now. We’re both lucky guys.

GK

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Mr. Keillor,

I’ve lost a dear, longtime friend — you — and it’ll take me awhile to come to terms with my loss. Somehow, I’ll put it in with the other “pandemic trash,” accept the “New Norm,” and go on to another way of looking at the world. Certainly, NPR and I will survive your meanness and lack of soul. You’ve completely forgotten what it’s like to be “a little person” in this country — in this era. NPR stiffens its spine each hour of every day and brings me — brings us — a view of our world that no one else is brave enough to even look at, much less dig into and take apart. So sad. Good-bye.

Rita Wells Clarke

Goodbye, Rita. Wish you all the best. I spent many years in public radio and felt it had great possibilities, but the world has changed and like a good many other people I’ve come to realize that there is evil in the world, not just misinformation, and that journalists must deal with this. The old on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand mode of reporting is not up to the challenge. I’m an old man and the world belongs to the young, which leaves me free to be a humorist, insofar as I’m able, but NPR has a greater responsibility.

GK

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Several holiday seasons ago, you introduced a song on PHC by saying that it was “in the spirit of Tammy Wynette” — and it was. The singer was female and the recurring lyric in the chorus of the song was “Could it be this joyous season is the reason we are through.” I have searched but cannot find the song. You helped Jay find “Nitey Night” and if you can assist me in finding this one, I will be greatly appreciative.

Dan Schadler

Chamblee, Georgia

Dan, you’re asking a man with a dimming memory of the PHC years, and this reference rings no bells at all. I’ll turn this over to our archivist. Don’t hold your breath.

GK

Ed. note: The song was written in the early 1980s by one of PHC’s frequent performers and sung as a duet on a mid-December show.

The lyrics:

The holidays are here again; I’m blue as I can be

Christmastime is more than I can bear

[He:] My folks are expecting us in time to trim the tree

[She:] My folks feel left out if we’re not there

[He:] My mom is cooking today — she wants us there by noon

To eat till we can’t down another bite

[She:] My mama’s making kugel and a batch of latkes too

We’ll eat at her house later on tonight

Chorus:

We can’t say no to your folks; we can’t say no to mine

Our waists have both expanded; our homelife’s in decline

We argue all December; there’s no time for me and you

Can it be this joyous season is the reason we are through?

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Hi! 

By chance, would you and your wife be coming to Naples, Florida, in January? If so, please contact us as we’d love to take you out on our pontoon for a sunset cruise on the Gulf. My husband, Rich, and I have been longtime fans of yours and it would be a real treat to meet you two in person. We lived in Minnesota for 30 years, so we would have a lot to talk about!

Nancy Pointer

Thanks for the invite, Nancy, but we’re coming to Florida in December and will be nowhere near Naples. Watch out for alligators and make sure you bring paddles to ward off the water moccasins.

GK

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I enjoy your “posts to the host” but I am not sure why I should pay for more. I am going to donate the amount I would pay to an organization that helps the homeless.

Bill G.

A wise choice, sir. Merry Christmas.

GK

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You wrote that you can’t think of anyone in public radio you would want to talk with. May I suggest the host of American Routes? You could talk about the sources and influence of traditional American music. I believe his name is Nick Spitzer. I also would suggest Ira Glass. I think it would be worth broadcasting that talk to those of us who love you both.

Michael Griffith

Rockford, IL

Ah, Michael, my radio days are long gone. Life gets smaller as you head toward eighty. I dropped football and basketball decades ago, attend a hockey game now and then, watch no TV, get my news from the Times and the Post, and as for discussing the sources of traditional music, I’ll leave that to my friend Joe Newberry.

GK

Ed. note: Ira Glass appeared on Prairie Home 9/15/12

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You’ve probably heard the expression “He could poop in a swinging bucket.” It is often used with the more common Anglo-Saxon word (“shit”) and applied to a lucky person. (Not sure why this latter is). My question is this: I’ve read your recent memoir and I don’t know how you do it. Not the luck part, for which I believe you substitute hard work. But all those days on buses and airplanes and in strange hotels with unfamiliar plumbing. How do you deal with common bodily functions? Approaching your age, I find long car trips stressful unless I have an empty Gatorade bottle aboard. You must have a constitution as regular as a train schedule and as durable as steel.

Admiringly,

Paul Many

Toledo OH

You have a lively imagination, Paul, and you should hang onto that, but the truth is that I’ve had an easy life and that includes bodily functions and long days on the road, and I thank you for introducing me to that saying. Never heard it before. Not sure when I should use it now but I’m waiting.

GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor:

I like your writing but am so busy that your free e-newsletter is more than enough to fulfill my needs. I’m sure there’s an economic concept describing how free services can crowd out paid ones. Have you considered charging $20/year? On the other hand, it may be considered a promotional service designed to lure more customers into your higher-priced web on Substack. Whatever the reason, thanks for sharing!

Andrew Levine

I’m not the money guy in this operation. It’s the writing that I love, and I can’t write without having a few readers, so there you are. Glad to have you visiting the website.

GK

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Dear GK,

I suppose you’re following your own advice to Frank Assisi that humorists be “bold and adventurous.” I suspect most of your readers first met you on NPR so your scornful remarks about it to Drew Bomar were surely bold.

But they were also shrill and exaggerated. You told Michael Finity that you are honored by having readers on both sides of the aisle. I guess NPR isn’t on either of these sides, though they have listeners on both. Maybe you don’t “censor people you disagree with,” but you do seem willing to trash people you used work with.

NPR is a “prison ... devoted to pretentiousness, without an ounce of the genuine.” Does that describe your 40 years there? Or Tom and Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk? Did it go downhill only when you left and Tom died? (Well, comedy did: Wait, Wait doesn’t fill the gap.)

“There is nobody in public radio I’d want to talk to for five minutes.” Your bar must be higher than mine. I’d be happy to talk with many of them, starting with Terry Gross, Kai Ryssdal, Ira Glass, Shankar Vedantam, Melissa Block. They are all “public radio” — some are NPR or affiliated station hosts, and others appear there often, though several have podcasts as well: does that rule them out?

You told Whitney public radio is “a bunch of Americans trying to be British.” You gave no examples. But for news and reporting in general, maybe that’s not so bad: few (any?) American media have the worldwide scope or the reliability of the best of the Brits, like the BBC, Guardian, and Economist.

I understand anger at the refusal to be vaccinated, or at violent promotion of alternative reality, but I do not understand this vitriol for people who seem to try to understand the issues and books they cover and arrive at fair assessments, carefully explained. What’s pretentious or not genuine here?

Allan Stewart-Oaten

Santa Barbara, CA.

Allan, you see public radio as a listener, I saw it as an employee. I worked hard for them for years, did benefits, receptions, whatever, and stations did very well by PHC but when MPR threw me under the bus four years ago, only four people in all of public radio bothered to talk to me and hear my side of the story. That told me a lot. I’ve never been busier or happier but I’ve now learned something unforgettable about loyalty. Tom and Ray were a great act all their own, nothing to do with public radio, and I was a fan. I did Terry Gross’s show several times and liked her a lot. I wish she had called me up and asked me to talk about what happened. That was a story she didn’t want to hear about.

GK

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I recently bought The Book of Guys at the Newburyport, MA, library book sale and when I got home and opened the front cover, I discovered a program guide for “A Lake Wobegon Scandinavian Christmas with Garrison Keillor” (1993) that you apparently signed to “Uncle Jim.” Either that, or my doctor signed it. I can’t read his writing either.

In the recent Post to the Host, Sigrid (Germany) said that they were unable to get your signature after a show back in 2011. I would be happy to mail the signed program to Sigrid if they are interested. Or I can mail it to you, and you can mail it, resigned, to Sigrid.

Happy/Merry/Joy/Peace to you and your loved ones!

Be careful out there!
Chris

Chris, sorry my handwriting was illegible — I was under the impression that illegibility was a sign of distinction. It has improved greatly since. But this transfer to Sigrid is just too complicated for me. How about you send me your address and I’ll mail a copy of my new book, Serenity at 70, signed to your doctor?

GK

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Wow, what timing for this piece! My son just passed his ATP license yesterday, which means he’ll be piloting a plane full of passengers on a jet in the next couple of weeks. If GK flies on my son’s plane he’ll be angry or scared, because my son isn’t a Republican or former military pilot. He went the civilian route for training and is a good Democrat. Fortunately for Garrison, my son reports that most pilots are conservative Republicans, which also means many are anti-vaxxers and also hold dear to traditional treatment of women in the workforce, i.e., “flight attendants.” My son is an excellent pilot, but if GK prefers R Pilots, he’s welcome to his opinion.

Erik Bell

Erik, congratulations on raising that good son. I think I was joking when I wrote that about pilots –– I used the line in a show in Holland, MI, a good Republican town, and the audience laughed hard and also at the line — “I don’t want a progressive Democrat who’s so worried about air pollution he’d hesitate to use full power on takeoff.” That was a joke. I guess I should be clearer.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

Just read this column and I had to tell you that my uncle by marriage invented the curly telephone cord. He did not make a penny from it as the company for whom he was working at the time took the patent.

He wanted to test it on my grandparents’ phone in their small grocery store in a little town in New Jersey. However, my grandmother refused to allow him to do this as she disapproved of him marrying her daughter (Grandmom was a snob though my uncle’s ancestors were descended from the Mayflower!)

Thank you for your books, columns, and programs.

Yours sincerely,
Lois Pratt

Lois, thanks for the story. I don’t miss the curly cord, but that’s very interesting about the patent and about the grandmom.

GK

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Dear GK,

Your show exactly captures and delivers what is needed now, for many. The fellowship, joy, singing, et al. I see you will be in Waynesboro, VA, a few hours from Roanoke where friends and family have seen you several times. Why not [stop] during this tour, you’re so close by?

Virginia

Looking forward to Waynesboro, Virginia, and joining Robin and Linda Williams and Prudence Johnson. Hoping the COVID calms down before February.

GK

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A keeper of hounds in Wiscasset
Never choked when he dined on raw basset;
But he gave cause for fear
When he bolted an ear:
“Jesus wept,” cried his wife, “can he pass it?”

Dr. Richard Friary

There was a young doctor named Friary
Whose innards felt restless and fiery.
"I have an idea
It's just diarrhea"
He decided and wrote in his diary.

GK

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Hi Garrison,

I wrote a Christmas letter this year after not writing one for several years. Then decided not to include it with the Christmas cards as friends and family would want to set me up with therapy sessions, immediately. 

While talking to a friend today, she encouraged me to email a copy to her. After reading it, she said that was my therapy. But she thought I should share it with more people. Your email arrived shortly after and I decided, let’s see what Garrison might think? Attached is the Christmas Letter.

Peace, love and blessings,

“Three Words of Advice: 1. Be Kind, 2. Be Kind, 3. Be Kind” . . . Bob Hult

Gracie

Gracie, I agree with what you wrote, as does my wife and most of my friends, but I would be careful about such boldness in a Christmas letter. It’s a sweet time of year. I’ve offended a good many people in my time (see the post about NPR above) and, speaking as a Midwesterner, I’m not proud of it. New Yorkers are better at it. I love the Comments section of our neighborhood rag, the ridicule and hostility, they’re works of art.

GK