Post to the Host

Comments from the Week of 03.19.23

Garrison, 

You have traveled all around this country doing shows and only a few vacations. Even on vacations, you talk about staying in the hotel room to write. Don’t you feel you have missed out on the sights, sounds and people that these places have to offer?

Sally Jo

I have missed out on a great deal; I don’t even want to think about it. But my ambition was to be a writer and I’ve been that and then on top of it I got to do a radio show for decades and that included singing duets with women and the Hopeful Gospel Quartet and doing stand-up comedy, plus which I was in love with a number of women and now have been married to one of them for 27 years, which is the best education of all. GK

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GK,

Your last post brought back so many memories from places distant in both time and place — I found it both surprising and uncanny that I’ve experienced all of the musical entertainments you mentioned.

My wife and I saw Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks at the only APHC we’ve seen live, at Wolf Trap in May 2016. We want to get to New York sometime soon, and if they’re playing somewhere it will definitely be on our itinerary between seeing the Klimt Woman in Gold and walking the ramp at the Guggenheim again.

When I was in my late teens I had tickets to the Pittsburgh Symphony and sat in the high gallery at Heinz Hall with my girlfriend while André Previn worked the PSO through the Turangalîla-Symphonie. Between intermittent catnaps I observed several patrons departing early — it has been said that Previn’s oversight of the orchestra was marked by audience resistance to more contemporary works that he wanted to program.

I also played the horn back then — yes, it was almost a religion in itself, but luckily did not render me celibate. One of my favorite pieces was Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral from Lohengrin. I was in a state honors concert band and the 12 or so horn players had much fun with the band transcription, now a standard with several performances preserved on YouTube.

Time to get back to what needs done before I get visited by that eye roll. Thanks as always.

John Linko

John, we’ve been living parallel lives. You simply must see Vince and the Nighthawks at Birdland and get your tickets early because they’re selling out. Starting in May they do two shows every Monday night in the Birdland Theater on 44^th Street. They’re phenomenal. Hundred-year-old American jazz and it rocks the house just as it did in the Jazz Age. This was the explosion of creative juice after the horror of WWI. GK

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I’ve been following PHC ever since it first appeared on WOI radio (now part of Iowa Public Radio). Except for the occasional show that gets streamed on Mandolin, those of us who cannot make it to your performances don’t get to keep up on the News from Lake Wobegon. How about a weekly podcast of NFLW?

Bill Snyder

It’s a fine idea but I’m not as ambitious as I once was and I’m not eager to have deadlines. I like to get up in the morning and go to my desk and work at whatever is in my mind, which for the past six months has been a book about cheerfulness and now I’m working on a Lake Wobegon TV series pilot and there’s a novella lurking around the corner and I’m planning some 50^th anniversary PHCs. Plus the two columns a week. So I’m slacking off and when you hit 80 I expect you’ll do the same. But I’m grateful for your interest. GK

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Good morning, Garrison,

I saw your mention of George today. I’m guessing it’s our mutual friend, George Latimer, the exceptional former mayor of St. Paul. 

Back in the summer of 1984 during a board meeting of the National League of Cities (George was the president of NLC then) he invited you and Butch to stop by the cocktail hour in St. Paul and I stood in the corner with you to talk for a while about the fundamentalist upbrings we both had “survived.” While I describe myself as a “progressive” Christian … I’m still anchored in many of the old hymns of my childhood … and memories of my grandfather’s favorite hymn, Wonderful Words of Life.

Keep on your path of Cheerfulness … it’s fuel for a fuller life!

Daniel E. Griset

Mayor Emeritus, City of Santa Ana

George, as you know, is a registered unbeliever who’s switched to agnosticism so he can legitimately pray for his grandchildren. I wish he’d come a little way farther down the trail of faith and at least become an Episcopalian. I go to church to get away from the clutter and trivia of the world and to meditate on my sins and be grateful for God’s mercy and when Brother Cantrell our organist strikes up It Is Well With My Soul or Standing On The Promises or Amazing Grace or another of the hymns of my upbringing, I fall apart. It’s good to do it. Stand in the midst of stockbrokers and therapists and weep. GK

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This phrase appeared, “... his horse-drawn hayrack ...”

Horses don’t draw hayracks. They did pull hay rakes, however. 

John Blakeman

Call it a hayrack or a hayrick or a hay wagon, it was pulled by horses. I know, I was there, I got to hold the reins. GK

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And I’m glad you have no back problems. But “Germany, countries that were never great colonial powers and didn’t grab big chunks of Africa” — nope. If Germany wasn’t a great colonial power, it wasn’t for want of trying. And in the chunk of Africa, it did grab — German Southwest Africa — it committed genocide. Converting the people to Lutheranism would have been better.

Elizabeth Block, Toronto

P.S.

Said Mr. Keillor to Ms. E. Block,

“Here’s a little verse ad hoc.”

Said Ms. E. Block to Mr. Keillor,

“You really are a first-rate spieler.”

Of course you’re right, Ms. Block, but compared to the English and Spanish and French and Portuguese, Germany runs a poor fifth in the colonizing sweepstakes. Thus the shortage of African faces in Lutheran churches. GK

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I have been listening to A Prairie Home Companion since I was in college — almost 40 years now. I teach English and Speech and Debate, and I am working with the kids on different occasions to give speeches. I remember one of the episodes of PHC had a graduation speech that was made up of almost all clichés strung together. The “graduation speaker” had not been the original choice for the speech but was a second/alternate choice and that is what he came up with. I have looked for it over the years but have not been able to find it. Do you have a link or anything like that where I could find it and share it with my students?

Thank you!
Susan Causey

Susan, you can come up with all those clichés yourself without any help from me. They’re still in use. They’re ubiquitous. Graduation and death are the Niagara of clichés and what can one do? I’m so glad that at my brother’s funeral, three people elegized him and each one was funny and each captured some of the man. (I was not one of them.) It’s a beautiful gift to speak truthfully to the occasion. And it’s rare. GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor, 

You mildly suggested it was embarrassing not to have read Charles Dickens, especially as an English major, writer, and performer. In case others feel head-bowing shame over gaps in their reading, please assure them no one should feel ashamed about any classics they’ve yet to read, be it Moby-Dick or The Arabian Nights or Treasure Island or whatever. Everyone has those holes and the more you read, the more you realize how many really great books are out there. You’ll never read them all. Professors of English lit cry themselves to sleep at night thinking about all the marvelous books they’ll never get to — when they’re not sitting up bleary-eyed reading Middlemarch or The Tale of Genji or good ol’ Proust, that is. 

Classics you haven’t read yet aren’t a source of shame. They’re treats, just waiting for you. I’ll echo one reader’s suggestion that you (or anyone tackling Dickens for the first time) start with Great Expectations. But please hold off on The Pickwick Papers; it’s his first book and Dickens was just finding his way. That one is best appreciated long after you’ve enjoyed a handful of his classics and are thoroughly addicted. Great Expectations and then David Copperfield and then A Christmas Carol and then, oh, A Tale of Two Cities (not my favorite, but it is his most popular) and Our Mutual Friend and on and on is a good path to trod. Me, I’ve just started Little Dorrit. 

Start with the wrong book and you may never come back to an author you might have loved. Feel free to ask me for tips on any other writers you’re considering. Or ask any employee at any indie bookstore or your favorite local librarian. They love to share suggestions!

Sincerely, 

Michael Giltz

P.S. If your wife hasn’t purchased that iPad yet, I’d strongly suggest an e-reader. The iPads tend to be a little heavier and typically cause a lot more eyestrain for most people. E-readers like Kindle are lighter and really as darn good as print and, yes, you can bump up the font size to enjoy a novel without having to squint. When it comes to big, thick books I can’t imagine bothering with a print edition. Who needs the back pain? 

Plus, it’s comforting to know you always have hundreds of titles on hand no matter where you go. I long suffered from timor defectus librorum, which is Latin for the fear of running out of reading material. (I coined it myself, so don’t bother looking it up). I would board the subway in NYC each morning with my latest book and — if I was near the end of it — a second book to start right away and a newspaper or two … and a magazine, just in case. 

Michael Giltz

Thanks for the advice. I’m going to get the larger Kindle, which has the capacity to switch shade and do white on black, which is helpful for my ailing aging eyesight. I keep looking for an eye wizard to come up with the magical solution and maybe there isn’t one and maybe I’m descending into twilight and if so, make the best of it. But there are books I really want to read before the lights go out. GK

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Dear GK,

Now that you are a big shot New Yorker, does that mean you’re no longer a loyal Minnesota Twins fan? You already deserted us by moving to New York, and now I’m worried you’ll be a Yankees fan. And who are the new players on the Whippets’ team this spring? Is there anyone who could make it big?

Shondra

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Shondra, I was a big shot in Minnesota but in New York I’m a nobody and I’m okay with that. As for the Twins, I see them on TV, which it easier for a guy with bad eyesight. I was having a hard time following the ball at Target Field. I only went to Yankee stadium once and I hated it, sitting in a bunch of well-dressed drunks, and I haven’t gone back. I’ll try to find out about the Whippets. They’ve picked up some excellent infielders from the Mexicans who moved in to work the tomato fields. There really are not many good German or Norwegian shortstops. We appreciate the new arrivals. GK

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Garrison, 

In your columns you almost write weekly about your wife — lots of adoration and simple moments of the day. What does she think of being an ongoing thread in your weekly musings? 

Just curious, 

Amy S. 

I’ve cut back on the adoration a good deal so as not to create an issue. Mostly I just steal from her — things she sees and hears I report as my own experience. Larceny begins at home. She is amused by that. GK