Post to the Host

Comments from the week of June 25

I am acquainted with Stella Morabito whose book recently came out: The Weaponization of Loneliness. I’m not sure which one of you came up with this thought first, or if they sprang up contemporaneously?
https://www.amazon.com/Weaponization-Loneliness-Tyrants-Isolation-Silence/dp/1637582021/refcm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ieUTF8

Gail Weiss

I’m sure she originated the idea since she’s written a book about it (which sounds like an important one, worth reading) and I am only an essayist in the online sandbox, but it does explain why there is no Cellists for Trump or even Trumpeters for Trump. Symphony players and band members aren’t loners. Loneliness can be crazy and chaotic; music, probably not.

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GK,

I read recently in one of your pieces that you regret not getting your parents’ oral histories. I did that for both of my parents and combined their narratives with old photos into hardbound books. For younger people, this is how I recommend doing it. Get the parent in a car and drive while you are interviewing. Have a recording device between you. Looking out the front window driving is more conducive to talking than staring at each other in a room. Start out asking the parent about his or her parents. That is a wonderful icebreaker and will subjectively reveal an amazing trove of information about how they raised you. You will then realize the principles you did or did not carry forward in your life. On each drive with a parent, we visited their childhood home locations. That elicited a wealth of memories.

Tom Low

Thanks for a simple brilliant idea. Unfortunately, the people who need this advice are the Swiftie generation and readers of PTTH tend toward the geezer and galoot end of the spectrum. But it’s still a fine idea. GK

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Hello, Garrison.

Thank you for relating the background story of the lady who photographed the scene on the cover of Cheerfulness. Resting patiently on my desk beside my keyboard is a copy of your new book, which I pick up to read a refreshing chapter when I am dismayed at the progress of my computer work. I am thoroughly enjoying your positive outlook.

On my night table are Lake Wobegon Days and The Book of Guys. I just finished That Time of Year. I read Boom Town earlier this year. Does this tell you something about how I enjoy your writing? Thank you.

Let us know when the baby arrives!

Ruth

Pittsburgh

The mother is Portuguese but grew up in France and she is a very capable and well-balanced and intuitive person who has adapted to America in great style. Everyone in the family adores her. I have three foreign nieces, one in Nantes, one in Ho Chi Minh City, and her, all remarkable young women, one the mother of twins, the one in Nantes expecting, and the photographer. It’s my connection to the millennials and I cherish it. As for the books, when you’re done with them, they make good coasters and weights for pressing leaves. GK

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GK,

Yesterday I took a two-hour drive north to see the Oak Ridge Boys at a theatre in Shipshewana, Indiana. About halfway on the way back home I drove through Wabash. Last time I was in Wabash you were on stage at the Eagles Theatre a bit over a year ago. I recollected how that was a pleasant evening and hoped you might return, remembering the lovely things you wrote about that quiet Hoosier town the next day. 

Well, imagine my surprise when I glanced through their upcoming shows to find you, Heather Masse, and Richard Dworsky will be in Wabash for your Prairie Home Holiday Show. I immediately purchased a ticket. 

This will be at least my ninth time to see you in just about as many different venues — and with each show I feel like I’m sitting in the living room with close family and friends. Thank you for choosing to return to Central Indiana, an area I fondly call Cornfield Central.

Terri Turner

I did a show in a small town in New Hampshire a week ago where people had worked hard for years to restore an old theater on Main Street and it’s a heroic project, to facilitate communal life in the age of the cellphone and computer screen. Sporting events, churches, concerts, fairs, all crucial in giving isolated people a chance to be in a crowd. It’s sad to see the decline in Fourth of July parades and Memorial Day observances, but good souls are at work on all fronts to preserve them. GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor, 

Your advice to college grads is amusing and useful and the Mark Twain quote alone was worth the price of admission, but putting down Bruce Springsteen? No, no, no. The album Nebraska does contain a song about a serial killer and many lesser ne’er-do-wells, but it is brimming with kindness, compassion, and empathy. The song about a family proud of purchasing a “brand-new used car” shines a light on the real lives of many with respect and an eye for detail that rings true. A highway patrolman chases his done-bad brother in a high-speed chase on the backroads of their home state … and then pulls over near the state line, letting his brother get away and watching till the taillights fade in the distance. Poor people look longingly across the abyss between their lives and a mansion on the hill. Even moments of seeming joy like Atlantic City and Open All Night are shadowed by despair. Some wrongly believe the final song titled Reason To Believe is hopeful but really the song wonders how against all logic people do so again and again. 

My favorite song is Johnny 99, in which a law-and-order judge takes delight in sentencing a criminal to 99 years in prison, but the man’s chance to speak lets him recognize how the deck was stacked against him economically all his life and he takes control the only way he can, by asking the judge to sit back down and sentence him to death. It’s a raucous and defiant number. 

Yes, the album is bleak. Nebraska came out in 1982 during Reagan’s America and paints a stark, black, and white picture of hardship and despair. But it’s not cruel or mean-spirited, any more than John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, which Springsteen read and was deeply influenced by while writing the songs for this album and the following blockbuster, Born In The USA. To really see people who are usually ignored, to give them a voice is surely an act of kindness and compassion. 

Sincerely, 

Michael 

Thanks for the correction. I’ll go back and listen to the song. I’d rather you be right than me. I went over to Brooklyn a couple months ago and heard Aoife O’Donovan do the entire Nebraska album to a club packed with young people standing. It was quite an evening. GK

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GK,

Mary, my bride of 56 years, and I were blessed to attend your show in Peekskill, New York, this past Sunday evening. We were fortunate to have seats in the second row as you stood with the audience leading us in song, laughter, and memories. The way you suddenly appeared amongst us at the advent of the show and slowly faded away up the aisle at the conclusion reminded me of the classic film Field of Dreams. You may recall that the ball players from the 1919 Chicago Black Sox baseball team suddenly appear out of a cornfield and after playing on the newly built ball field slowly disappear as they return to the field of corn. The ball players remind the viewers of the film of a different time. A past shaped by different values and a unique culture of the time. 

Thank you for sharing the story of Pastor Liz’s call to Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church. It reminded me of when, as a 12-year-old boy I jumped out of a muddy ditch throwing mud balls at a school bus as it passed by. I walked home for supper and saw the bus sitting in my driveway. I anticipated my father’s righteous anger and to my surprise he simply instructed me to clean the school bus inside and out. As I ashamedly scrubbed the bus my father appeared with a ladder and bucket and sponge and began to quietly clean away the muddy splats on the back of the bus. I never forgot that lesson in forgiveness, and now on the occasion of my 40th anniversary of ordination, I give thanks for my dad and you and all the men and women who have shared their stories of “redemption” with me throughout the years.

With gratitude,

PC (Pastor Chuck)

This strikes me as a rather innocent infraction, Pastor Chuck. I’ve done far worse and still wake up in the night rolling them over in my mind. I’ve asked my pastor about redemption and forgiveness and it’s a complicated problem. These days I find redemption in immediacy, loving each day as it arrives, putting the past behind. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes about this. I love the daily, the quiet hours of writing at the breakfast table, the moment my wife walks in, and so forth, all the way to the supper on the terrace looking over the city. That evening in Peekskill was a big evening for me, especially standing on the sidewalk afterward in the midst of the crowd, the thought, “These aren’t fans, they’re friends.” Fifty years of shows illuminated suddenly on a sidewalk in an old mill town. Glad you were there. And now I’m thinking of myself as a Black Sox. Intriguing. GK

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Hello, Mr. Keillor.

I’ve always wanted to write a book, so I decided this weekend that I’m finally going to do it. I wrote my first page today. It feels pretty good, but now I don’t know where to go. As a published author several times over, can you offer any advice to someone who’s just starting out? How do you keep yourself motivated and how do you not run out of ideas? Thanks!

Kelly
Spokane, Washington

The book writes itself, Kelly. It tells you where it wants to go and you try to be faithful to it but you keep making mistakes, inserting yourself into it, and you need to keep deleting and let the book be free. There is no mistaking powerful conviction when it strikes you. Like the old joke: “I wondered why the ball was getting bigger and bigger and then it hit me.” Maybe you should title the book Spokane. I don’t think there’s another book with that title. GK

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Your experience with double vision corrected by laser surgery interests me very much.

A few months ago I developed double vision in one eye only, which results in “ghosting” and blurred vision, even though the other eye is fine so far. It has become quite irritating since it occurs at both near and far distances.

I had cataract surgery and lens implants about seven years ago. The ghosting consists of a second faint image overlapping a clear primary image. It is not like the clear double images that occur with being cross-eyed for example. My ophthalmologist says a laser treatment should help my situation.

Can you tell me if your problem was with one eye or both? Your situation gives me some confidence it will.

Thank you.
Thomas Johnson

I’m not a good source for ophthalmic advice but I’m assuming double vision is caused by two eyes slightly out of sync. An eyepatch solves the problem but also affects perception. The laser treatment I got helped me enormously with close vision, reading especially, but I think that the double vision dilemma caused me to avoid going for walks (for fear of stumbling) and that the lack of visual stimulation, looking around while in motion, exacerbated the problem. There is no charge for this advice. GK

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CLICK HERE to buy Garrison Keillor’s new book, Cheerfulness.

In Cheerfulness, veteran radio host and author Garrison Keillor reflects on a simple virtue that can help us in this stressful and sometimes gloomy era. Drawing on personal anecdotes from his young adulthood into his eighties, Keillor sheds light on the immense good that can come from a deliberate work ethic and a buoyant demeanor.