Post to the Host

Comments from 11.28.21

A fastidious virgin named Sybil
Kept chaste not for God but a quibble;
And once leapt out of bed
When she saw on the head
Of an organ a premature dribble.

Dr. Richard Friary

This is a very respectable limerick, Dr. Friary. I assume “Friary” is a pen name because I have a feeling, a feeling shared by many others, that I would shy away from a physician who writes limericks. I want my physician to be a scientist, not a humorist. But thanks for the limerick, and if you’re a Doctor of Chemistry or Forestry or Psychiatry, okay, ignore what I said.

GK

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I enjoy your use of words and noticed your “lawn order” in your 11.19.21 post. How long ago have you used that expression that so nicely correlates those who voted for Nixon with those who keep immaculate lawns? For what little it’s worth, I extended the term in the early ’70s into a triple entendre in a physics talk that dealt with scientific law and molecular order. Some of the scientists in the audience actually got it. Word play can be fun for all and need not be just the purview of English majors.

John Nagle

You are the first physicist to ever write me about a column, John, and I am speechless. I thought we traveled in two separate worlds but perhaps not. I’m stunned. If we had lunch together, what would we ever talk about? Not physics.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

I was a morning comedy DJ back in the 1970s — my partner and I did a daily satirical news feature called “The Nude Nooze.” That was 44 years ago, and when I hear something idiotic/offbeat/outrageous on the news, my brain still flags it. “Hey, that’d be great for ... oh wait a minute ....” Does your brain operate this way? Do you still flag things that come your way, and then think, “Hold on, I’m not on the radio anymore ...”?

R. Lee Procter

I’m not on the radio anymore, R. Lee, but I’m still writing and so, yes, I do flag it and then I find a way to use it. A friend told me on the phone yesterday that his uncle had said to him, “I’m losing my mind and I’m happy.” I’ll find a way to use it eventually.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

Post to the Host the week of 29 November mentioned a Lake Wobegon monologue you did about hog-slaughtering.

I listened to it and was reminded of a story about my wife’s family in Quebec. 

Louise’s father, Pierre, and her uncle Alfred raised a few turkeys during the depression. One year as Christmas approached, they had twenty birds they wanted to sell to a market in Hull or Ottawa. They had done this before but twenty in one day was close to a record.

Early on a very cold December day, they caught the first one, killed it and then plucked and cleaned it. At least the viscera were taken out. Pierre and Alfred each had a small glass of red wine after each turkey until the nineteenth one was dispatched, leaving one lonely bird who had been watching his fellows disappear with growing unease. By now, both men were thoroughly drunk. The turkey had had no wine and was wise to what was going on. He was the smartest of the turkeys, a 95th percentile turkey who had evaded attempts to grab him, his less skilled fellows falling first. What followed was a fight on even terms — the turkey was sober and his assailants were far from it. Alas, after a fierce battle, he was caught, and dispatched without mercy, but he had fought valiantly and had made a place for himself in the memory of both men and their kin.

Steve Turner

Fairfax, Virginia

I can tell this was a true story, Steve, by the ending. Had I told it on the radio, I’d have had that turkey fly over the fence and head for the woods. Small children listened to the show, and I would’ve rescued the turkey for their sake. I might’ve had the turkey return and exact some revenge, maybe attacking Alfred in the outhouse one night, terrifying him, causing a fatal heart attack. A posse would’ve gone in search of the killer bird, and he would’ve led them on a fast chase across a frozen pond and onto thin ice where the turkey would’ve watched his hunters fall into freezing water. I respect you for telling the truth.

GK

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Mr. Keillor,

I’m writing in response to your Post To The Host of today, November 29, wherein a Mr. Rockdale, a self-described “cultural conformist” wrote bewailing “today’s socialist and grievance politics.”

His posting is a prime example of the face of systemic racism that’s festering in our society. Your empty response, moreover, is an exemplar of enabling this systemic racism to continue: allowing it to be said; failing to call out the ugliness of his “conformance” — conforming to — what exactly? — he spells it right out: “We long for the simpler days of the past when we didn’t have to worry about the planet bursting into flames or white supremacy being challenged ... and there are no suspicious-looking Black guys to chase down and shoot ...”

When I read his words I just about upchucked my porridge.

You respond, “Thanks for the post though I’m not sure I follow it ... I wish more civil tranquility for us all ...” Excuse me? Not sure you follow it? What color of nothing response is that?? “Not sure” you follow white supremacy?

Elsewhere in your post you write of your decision to write not of politics but of what we have in common, daily life in America. Well, as you must be abundantly aware, daily life in America, for folks that are not lily-white like you and me and Mr. Rockdale is: fear for their lives, because of the simple fact that some lily-white folks see them as “suspicious” for the simple fact of their brown or black skin.

He further says, “Many of us in our generation would like to enjoy a White Christmas without hearing about America’s ugly racist history” — well, our ugly racist history isn’t over with, and millions of Americans’ daily lives are immersed in its manifold threats.

You have allowed this guy to come and dump his trash in your living room and you’re just going to pretend that it’s not stinking up the room?? Or perhaps you really do feel you have some things in common with this guy that you don’t want to elaborate on?

If racism doesn’t rile one up, what does?

Sincerely,
Michael Finity

Tum Tum, Washington

Michael, the letter you read that made you angry was over-the-top lunatic meandering and my soft answer was meant to be ironic and was written out of respect for the reader’s ability to read.

GK

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Garrison,

On occasion  fairly infrequent occasions  I’ll pull a slim volume off my bookshelf and do a bit of browsing in it to refresh my memory. It’s a collection of poems by Louis L’Amour, Smoke From This Altar. I’ve only read one or two L’Amour novels. Apparently, that was enough for my taste buds. But I have a recurring affinity for his poetry. So, got to wondering if you’ve ever sampled his verse. I’ve got all three of your Good Poems collections, and it seems like a little of L’Amour’s work would’ve fit in quite well.

Regards,

Jerry Berg
U of M Murphy Hall student, ’63–’68

Thanks for the tip and my poetry team will have a close look.

GK

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GK,

Your post about relishing the Minnesota football team’s recent win over Wisconsin really restored my hopes about the possibilities of underdog victories on the gridiron. I am now having fantasies about my Slippery Rock Greens ending up playing one day the Michigan Wolverines in the Rose Bowl. As every religious zealot and disappointed Democrat knows, it only takes a periodic miracle to launch us into cosmic euphoria. This has to be why so many of us are drawn here in the holiday season to movies like Miracle on 34th Street. Look what the folks in Baltimore have done with this endearing belief that unexpected and even fanciful miracles can and do come true. In the spirit of this season of light and hope, please offer me some reassuring words that my Slippery Rock team will one day “Rock” the Michigan Wolverines on the football field. My wife thinks I’m nuts when I say things like this, and this depresses me.

Clint Coffman

Beaver Falls, Texas 

I want to admire your post, Clint, but I do not want to disagree with your wife. She lives with you and observes you on a daily basis, and she imagines, as I do, that the Greens, if they made it to the Rose Bowl, would be so dazed and dazzled by their good fortune that the Wolverines would eat them alive, and the Greens would become a national joke and this trauma in their youth would follow them for decades with dreadful consequences. I do not wish this for young men. I want them to be happy and productive and not be ashamed of being Green. Calm down.

GK

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I would suggest that instead of removing all of these statues, keep them where they are but add a sculpture of a cowering victim, slave family, indigenous family, child. The absence of these statues is no more a true representation of our history than their current presence.

Thank you.
Barbara

Many of these statues are in small parks, some in tiny triangles, and there isn’t room for all the victims. I say, make your choices, live with them, and let’s move on to crucial issues, such as the survival of the planet.

GK

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Mr. Keillor:

Your prose is fascinating. It flows without interruptions, I don’t have to stop to analyze what I’m reading.

Yes, I want to learn how to write like you, without having to think — I would just like to write flowing the words like a singing stream of clear waters.

Respectfully,
Yvonne Daugherty

Yvonne, you’re too kind, and if my prose flows, it may be due to my boyhood experience of watering the garden with a hose, my thumb over the end to adjust the spray, misting the tomatoes and lettuce, irrigating the rows of beets and potatoes, flooding the hills of corn and the raspberry bushes and asparagus crop. I loved doing it and the process seemed to me to have a certain artistic integrity that resulted in greater productivity, that beautiful watering led to vegetable truth that fed the family. I haven’t watered anything in decades, and maybe that old pleasure has found its way into a new form. One can only hope.

GK

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I just finished “The Darkness Descends and I Talk to Friends,” which I enjoyed very much. But if Swedes attacking to take advantage of Danes who have had too much glögg are doing so via the Storebælt, they’ve obviously had a snort or two themselves. It would be much quicker and simpler to cross Øresund (“the Sound”), especially now that there’s a tunnel between Copenhagen and Malmö. I hope your Christmas plans with your Danish relatives will include some flæskesteg, too.

God Jul!
Mary Slind

Mary, thanks for correcting my geography. My Danes have agreed to a minimal Yule, but of course they’re independent and free to change their minds and introduce some pork.

GK

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Hi, Garrison.

Why, oh why, that picture of rhubarb pie … our farmers market is closed till next July, so no more rhubarb pie (the store version doesn’t cut it). My nana used to stew rhubarb, and she died when I was 11, so I lost touch with stewed rhubarb. Then, a few years ago, I opened up the menu on a little hole-in-the wall and there it was. I admit, I was skeptical that it could match nana’s … one taste, and I was rocketing back to her kitchen. Now I stew my own … ah, rhubarb!!

Pat McC.

Pat, I’ve been a lonely voice speaking up for rhubarb, the delicacy that people consider a weed, and I thank you for joining me. I may try to make rhubarb pie this year, and I’ll start looking for my mother’s recipe now. Hers and Betty Crocker’s were probably quite similar.

GK

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Me: I have a story I’d like you to read and tell me if you think it would make a good screenplay. Maybe you can help me with it or help get it recognized.

You: I don’t read other people’s unsolicited projects ... it’s dangerous and bad business.

Me: Yes, but you keep telling everyone you’re out of the business — more or less. The book is about one’s coming of age while working as a saloon singer in a famous Midwestern tourist town. It’s about friendship and it’s about tourist towns. It’s a true story. I was there. Got tired of all the rejection letters so I self-published ... the book is available on Amazon. You could Kindle it for free. Don’t kill me — I’m only the Entertainer.

You: No thank you. Why do you think I can help you? Why me?

Me (with undiminished respect): You are from the Midwest, and you are a good writer. But mostly because you’re on TV, dummy.

David Schneider

I shall look for it, sir. But I warn you that I have no patience. I’m 79 and time is becoming extremely precious. If nothing in the first five pages grabs me, out it goes.

GK