Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 11.26.23

Mister Garrison Keillor,

Your recent newsletter comments frankly pissed me off. You took exception to Thoreau’s encouraging quote about “advancing toward your dreams and endeavoring to live the life imagined” with this dispiriting drivel: “He was chewing on the wrong weed when he came up with that, a line that has led people to waste years writing a bad novel who could’ve been happy bus drivers.” It was because of writing for 50-plus years in my off-hours that I was a happier accountant. Now I’ve published five books on Amazon and plan on publishing at least five more (bad or not) in spite of elitists like you who, for whatever reason, would discourage “amateur” creativity.

Here’s a quote from one of my favorite authors for you to chew on with the “right” weed: “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

I really don’t care if you or anyone else reads anything I’ve written.

Tom Czarnik

Brighton, Michigan

Okay then. Thanks for the note. GK

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Hi, Garrison.

A bus trip to NYC is coming up, and your column today put me right in the spirit. I too have been a passenger in cabs crawling down Fifth Avenue, including one where the cabbie spent the entire time gabbing on his phone in a language I didn’t recognize (as well as popping pills that I could only pray were not hallucinogenic). I love to walk, so many times I have jumped out and hoofed it, but fortunately I no longer fear the subway so that is an option. The Christmas market in Bryant Park, ethnic restaurants you’d never find in Scranton, giant bookstores … it’s been four years and I can’t wait!

Best,
Patricia McCormack

P.S. So glad you are doing a show in Scranton! My friend Carol and I are big fans of yours, and we will be there!

It was the slowest ride in an automobile I’ve ever taken. The right lane on Fifth Avenue is for buses only and they whizzed past and sometimes a taxi would sneak over and race ahead but my cabdriver stayed in the left lane and we inched along, watching pedestrians pass us, even elderly persons pushing walkers. It was a profound experience and I’m still trying to fathom it. GK

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Garrison,

Great to see you, Rich Dworsky, Heather Masse, and Sam Hudson in Columbus, Ohio, last night. I’ve been listening to you since I was a kid back in Wisconsin in the early ’80s. I remember first seeing Heather and the Wailin’ Jennys at your Blossom show years ago — as lovely and talented now as then. Last night Sam reminded me of someone out of an old gangster film — even as Tiny Tim. The themes through the evening of the Christmas stocking orange and missing the old folks really hit home — as did the Chet Atkins song — I Still Can’t Say Goodbye. 

It seemed to me that the Buckeyes here last night aren’t as enthusiastic to sing along as us Upper Midwesterners — thoughts?

Also, how do you get up and write so early in the morning and still have so much energy for an evening show?

Thank You for a great show!!! This morning I got tickets for Akron in May — looking forward to it.

Dave E.

(1) An audience sings better in pitch darkness and the lights in the Southern Theatre that night were not dimmed enough. We did Wabash, Indiana, the next night, in real darkness, and the Hoosiers made a beautiful choir. (2) I take a nap. (3) See you in May. GK

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Hi, Garrison.

Yesterday, at the Shakespeare Festival here in Stratford, Ontario, I attended a memorial service for Canadian actress Marti Maraden. She was an old friend from back in my theatrical days. Marti was originally from Minneapolis, and she told me once that when she was at the U. of Minnesota she interviewed you for the school newspaper. (Her name then was Marti Fredrickson.) Just wondering if you remember the interview (probably not). She went on to a long and glorious theatrical career here in Canada as an actress and later as a director. Marti said you were unlike any other student then on campus … and this I can well imagine!

Cheers!
Rick Whelan

For some reason, the name “Marti Maraden” is familiar to me and I know I must’ve heard from her by that name. I don’t remember any interview with a Minnesota Daily reporter when I was a student — I was a nobody, just one more self-absorbed English major trying to imitate E.B. White — and as I google her and read about her illustrious career up north, I realize I should’ve been interviewing her. In fact, maybe I did. I have a faint memory of a University Theater production of (I think) “Hamlet” and I wonder if she and her husband, Frank, may have been in the cast. Now you’ve given me a mystery to try to solve. GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

I was 10 years old when my English teacher parents decided to teach overseas in Lagos, Nigeria. Your Lake Wobegon book was out and my family of Minnesota to California transplants ate it up. The book was beyond me at the time, but my dad got for Christmas a set of 4 cassette tapes, one per season, of Lake Wobegon stories. 

In Africa in 1985 there was no TV or internet. But I did have the tapes, which I listened to over and over again, first to remind me of home, and then for the stories. I fell in love with the stories, but also radio.

Fast-forward through college, some failed attempts at writing and playwriting and I found radio; I had 17 years in as a producer and finally news director for a classic American radio station in Seattle. I left in 2017 when local radio basically became right-wing outlets to chase the last few nickels. But I loved my job, and now I listen to podcasts and tend to my garden and my three kids. I tell them your stories and introduce my friends to writers like A.J. Liebling, whom I had never heard of before you mentioned him.

I guess I just need to say thank you for everything. You have absolutely and directly changed my life for the better.

Be well, do good work, and all of that. But really, thank you.

Peter

The Lake Wobegon stories were born out of a sense of isolation. I grew up in a bubble in Minnesota and never had the courage to leave home. I envy your experience in Africa, which no doubt made you a more enterprising and courageous person. As for me, I’ve been very very lucky. But as James Thurber said, “Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility,” and now I am starting to see painful periods of my life as an elaborate joke. GK

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