Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 08.25.22

GK,

With all due respect, I must say that these new “requirements” rubbed me the wrong way. If this new directive stems from a Midwestern Lutheran discomfort over accepting affirmation, I have no sympathy for it: receive your compliments, sir. If this is some staffer’s idea to make the column “edgier” by changing the tone of your interactions, I object. I can find bicker-fests on any number of inferior online forums, and I implore you not to lower your standards for so-called “spice.”

Cory

“Requirements” is the wrong word. You’re free to write what you want to write. Some readers were offended by a worshipful tone they detected and so we wanted to encourage people to take issue and point out mistakes in the posts here. I’m grateful to have readers, whether they agree with me or not. Thanks for taking issue with the notice.

GK

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Hi, Garrison.

If you ever write about people’s end-of-life wishes and you’d like to include a suitable YouTube song, I have two suggestions: 1. Willie Nelson’s “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” and 2. John Prine’s “When I Get to Heaven.” I’m looking forward to seeing you next year when you come to Torrance, CA! 

Lillian McCain

Neither of those for me, thank you. I choose “Abide With Me” and “How Great Thou Art,” which I think my people would enjoy singing. John is gone, bless his heart, and Willie has given up weed on the advice of his physician. He’d rather sing than smoke.

GK

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Hey, GK.

I’ve got a thing I need to say, pal. I’ve been an active firearms enthusiast since 1965 (I am 67 years old), and I resent your “general, for the media masses” comments about guns. I was raised by a War 2 survivor who loved the discipline and self-control that target shooting installs in one.

I have hunted with rifle and shotgun and have never gloated over the animals that I killed. Yes, I bought a .44 magnum pistol and an AR-15 pseudo assault rifle, because they are cool. You don’t drive any more, but think 1968 Ford Mustang or even a ’57 Chevy.

Dude, I am so blue in political terms that I can’t take a selfie if the clear sky is in the background.

The fireflies have subsided here in Topeka but the cicadas are just warming up. Think about that, big brain, they are growing on xylem.

Daedalus

I’m glad you’re so defensive, it means you’re thinking. Given what’s happening in our country every other week or so, you might take care in describing yourself as a “gun enthusiast.” I imagine there are explosives enthusiasts who love to blow up things, but they stick to their own and don’t broadcast it. Same with napalm hobbyists and hangmen. The boy in Uvalde certainly felt the AR-15 is cool since it enabled him to hold fifty cops at bay for more than an hour, much more effectively than if he’d had a .22 or a shotgun, so he was able to get his killing accomplished fully. I honestly don’t care what you do with your guns in Topeka, you can sleep with them, talk to them, whatever, but “gun enthusiast” tells me you and I aren’t going to be close friends.

GK

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GK,

Think we need some investigative journalism into why the mellowing agents in ketchup were not working in the Trump White House.

Thank you.
Leila Zogby

Were there world enough and time.

GK

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GK,

Suggestion: write something about your Royal Academy of Radio Actors.

In early July, I went to a James Taylor concert in Providence. His voice was as good as ever. A great show — and I especially liked how he paused at various points throughout the show to individually introduce his band members and backup singers, saying something nice about them, giving them a moment in the spotlight for appreciative applause. An expression of generosity in a world that sees too little of it. About a decade ago, I went to a Paul McCartney concert. The music was terrific, but he only barely mentioned “his band,” and didn’t let the crowd show its appreciation for these skilled musicians.

Many of us loved the skits and fake commercials of PHC. Whenever you mention the show, you refer to the duets and the audience sing-alongs. In your memoir, you discuss the challenge of writing the show, and a bit about your sound effects men (Tom and Fred). But the talents of Tim Russell and Sue Scott really brought your words to life in performance. Comedy sketches on the radio were a rare thing by the late 20th and early 21st century and helped make PHC a distinctive pleasure. It would be interesting to hear your reflections on the creative process that doesn’t end with the script but with the performance. (I can still hear Tim Russell doing his Jesse Ventura impression …).

CG

Tim and Sue were naturals and never needed any direction by me or anyone else. They took the scriptage and made it fly. Tim could do great impressions of Reagan, Obama, George W., George H.W., and everyone else. His Churchill was classic, so I wrote, “We will fight them on the beaches and in the forests, we will hit them with sharp sticks, we shall throw stones ….” Sue was a great shrew, a pesky Mom, a ditzy chantoosie, a stern first-grade teacher, a teenybopper, anything that was needed. When Meryl Streep and Martin Sheen and Lily Tomlin and other actors guested, Tim and Sue coached them. I never said a word. It was the easiest job I ever had. I didn’t praise them on the show because they were the characters they portrayed and how do you compliment someone on being who he or she is?

GK 

GK,

I love many things about the British, including their use of the English language, their coverage of global news, and their TV shows that appear on Masterpiece. But, like you, their devotion to a monarchy, to drinking hot tea and warm beer, and their fondness for kidney pie suggests to me that a love for tradition is often based on misguided national hubris. History seems to indicate that such hubris tends to eventually undermine empire-building aspirations, as we can now see in the mistaken foreign policy attitudes that our own country has embraced over the past 50 years or more. Of course, it is always easier for us to see self-destructive hubris in others rather than in ourselves. So I have forgiven the British for burning our U.S. Capitol in 1814 after watching Proud Boy Americans and other nationalistic fanatics assault our symbol of democracy in January of 2021. Now I am working on respecting and being tolerant of my fellow citizens who claim to love America so much that they must defend her from socialists like me who welcome universal health care, and who want to make room at the table for immigrants and gay people, and who are not apoplectic about teaching honest history to school children. When I can forgive them, I will start working on those who dismiss any personal responsibility for addressing the perils of global warming because they can enjoy summer nights on the coast with a Blizzard from Dairy Queen. Any suggestions about how to go about addressing this form of hubris? The challenges I am facing today are as self-evident to me as the truths stated in our country’s Declaration of Independence from King George III were in the 18th century.

Edmund Armbruster Jr.

Denison, Texas 

You’re on the right track, sir, and it is I who should be asking counsel from you, not the other way around. I am, as you may have noticed from this column, intolerant of the censoriousness of friends on the left and of the platitudes of the woke. I share your feeling about welcoming outsiders to the table and making it easier for the ambitious to rise to find their vocation. I am horrified by the cost of higher education compared to when I was in college, when I paid by own tuition and living expenses by part-time work. Student debt is a scandal. The decline of the humanities, the narrowing of the academic mind, is another scandal. But I’m 80 and my vocation is to write a certain kind of short essay, and I intend to keep trying.

GK 

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Garrison,

I’d like to sing your praises, but you said not to, so my question is (and I have been wondering this for years): How on earth are you able to remember all those names and complicated relationships in your Lake Wobegon stories? It’s amazing to me! Thanks for all those years of delightful and insightful stories. Sorry, I had to sing your praises!

Ann A.

The answer, Ann, is that I can’t. I keep having to look up the genealogy of Lake Wobegon in my hard drive. People often come up to me after a show and correct me and I say, “Thank you.” You give me too much credit. I will say, however, that I did a two-hour show in four cities last week and did the whole thing, monologues, songs, poems, without paper. But I had a good case of stage fright.

GK

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Mr. Keillor,

I’ll gladly join you for a ride down the Q. It will take us to Coney Island, where we can feast on a Nathan’s Hot Dog. They are better from the original place; something about the salt air does something to the hot dogs there.

Charles

This sounds like a good idea, though I am not a beach person. But I’m up for a hot dog and hope there’d be onion rings too and a Coke and my wife would like a lobster roll and a Sauvignon Blanc.

GK

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Good morning,

I had excellent English teachers in junior high and their precision has never left me. The newer style manuals of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal really aggravate! And editors permitting the use of hopefully, gratefully, thankfully and such other adverbs with no adjective or verb to modify is just lazy!

The conditional would, could and should permit a writer to avoid simple declarations. Shameful!

Like and you know in conversation assault my ears daily, without ceasing. Eavesdropping has ceased to entertain.

I am unable to unhear these assaults when they surround me. Is there any solution? Modern conversation and reading can be pleasant, but so often disappoints.

Keep calm and carry on.

Larkin Matthews

Should you wish to converse with me, Larkin, hopefully I will avoid saying “like” or “you know” unless, you know, I forget. Anyhow, I’ll not say “like.”

GK

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As a fan of both Peanuts and A Prairie Home Companion, this morning’s Peanuts strip, originally from 1975, naturally reminded me of Guy Noir. Here’s a link to the strip: Peanuts by Charles Schulz for July 26, 2022 | GoComics.com

This CAN’T be a coincidence, can it?

Sincerely,

John

Moorpark, California

Did I ever say that Guy Noir was based in Minneapolis? I thought the Acme Building was generic and not planted anywhere, but it’s hard to remember a negative. Readers? Help me.

GK

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Well, not being your biggest fan, I say good for you, Gary! Enjoy the hustle and bustle of NYC and the trash and the smell and the traffic and the dog poop on the streets and the impersonal way everyone reacts to your smile or the tip of your hat. Yes, the winters will be milder, but the snow will be dirtier and the summers will be hot as Hell, but hey, it is the Big Apple and then there is the culture and does that really make up for the sounds of skates on ice and the sound of the puck hitting the back of the net? I do not think so! I came here from Boston just a short 18 months ago, and you know what? I really like it here and, yes, there are major differences, but after spending 73 years in Beantown, coming here has been a nice relief. Love takes us to many places, but sometimes, well, I am not sure that its power is sufficient enough to lure me back to either Boston or NYC.

Rob Klein

Glad you like it there.

GK

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Dear GK,

I know you were here in Indiana recently. And I would like to have attended. It’s not terribly far from my home. But the good seats were all gone, and I’ve, again, become paranoid about crowd diseases. So, sorry I wasn’t there.

How did that go? How was this red state in tune with you?

Did you get to walk around Nashville (Ind.)? If so, how did it strike you?

You are welcome on my farm anytime.

Stay well, Stay safe,

Buz

I loved the audience and they sang like angels during the intermission sing-along, especially on “My Country ’Tis of Thee” and “How Great Thou Art.” We didn’t get into politics much. The singing said it all.

GK

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Goodbye, goodbye, my friend,
I thought your show would never end.
You are a Minnesotan, We believe,
But now you just want to leave.

So take care, and walk the line,
Look ahead, you will be fine.
Keep your memories on the way,
Remember us each coming day.

So once again, goodbye my friend,
Good tidings to you we do send.

Darel Leipold

That’s very sweet. Happy to talk about Minnesota should we run into each other someday.

GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

That “granite” that men should have, which you spoke of in a recent column, is the same inner rock “liquified” men have who learn to integrate their deeper emotional lives — all of them. Try accessing this deeper part of yourself outside of church, as well, where you say that you openly weep. Then you’ll learn that water is ultimately stronger than that rock face, as bravely vulnerable people demonstrate all the time.

Since we’re on the topic of gendered growth (Don’t worry, I’m not going to go all Minnesota on you), it’s wonderful that you had so many aunts and now a wife who provide you with the emotional succor all boys, eventually men, need. Your recollections of this remind me of the reasons so very many men are viscerally, often violently, protective of their mothers (sometimes wives) even into adulthood: Boys of the past were far more likely to get deeper emotional needs met from their mothers, rarely from their fathers.

The good news:

There is a new crop of fathers out there, a slow-growing number of us, who meet our children’s (especially our sons’) emotional needs every bit as well as do their mothers. Given the extent to which many women now embrace the hypermasculine “strength” other women complained about in men a generation ago, many men meet their children’s emotional needs even more so.

Hopefully, in the not-so-distant future, some water-strong fathers will be placed on pedestals alongside mothers.

Let’s stay well and keep doing our good work,

Andrew Reiner

I hope you’re right about the young fathers and I’d only suggest that even devoted parents can’t be sure what the outcome will be.

GK

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I appreciated your Prairie Home Companion “American Revival” show in Denver and livestreamed the Nashville one. As a music director and pianist for two Methodist churches, the singing intermission in particular is an absolutely heartwarming, magical moment. Just writing to give my appreciation and express my hope that these new Prairie Home Companion shows will be an ongoing thing. You have many fans who are so glad this wonderful American institution has come back to gift us with more entertainment, humor, and friendliness.

Michael Salley

There were a lot of Prots in both audiences, Michael, and the singing in Nashville of “How Great Thou Art” in that old gospel tabernacle was a sound I’ll never forget. I hummed the note and they took hold of it and raised a great noise that the old evangelist Sam Jones who preached there would’ve appreciated. As for the future, it really depends on what Mayo can do for my heart in August. They’re great at cardiology and I hope they can mend me to give me a few more good years. I want the show to go on. I tried “How Great” the other night in Kent, Ohio, and they did better on “Going to the Chapel.” Oh well.

GK

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Mr. K,

I imagine you might alienate some of your readers, but in all honesty, what do you think should happen to Donald J. Trump after hearing evidence presented during the hearings? I’m worried that as usual, he’ll manage to walk away unharmed.

Lia Z.

I don’t have an opinion on his legal situation but I am hopeful that Republicans will give up on the lie of the stolen election. It’s a hole they’ve dug for their candidates and it doesn’t work to their benefit, as lies never do. The vast majority of Republicans know that it’s a lie. It’s dangerous to support a narcissist in politics.

GK