Post to the Host

Comments from the Week of 05.07.23

Mr. Keillor,

Per your advice I am following my passion: I advocate not using percents for increasing wages and Social Security COLAs because it leads to gross inequality. Please start a petition to our lawmakers addressing this issue. References on request. 

Sincerely,

Shirley Desimone

I am an old man sleeping off COVID in quarantine and my big projects today were (1) doing two loads of laundry, (2) writing a 750-word column, (3) talking to a friend in distress by telephone, and (4) ordering chicken soup from Zabar’s. The battle for equality is beyond my reach. When I started a radio show, I paid the musicians and did not pay myself anything until the show was well in the black. I make a point of expressing gratitude for help received and I make small talk with doormen and cabdrivers. Percentages are beyond me. But I am cheering for you. GK

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Garrison,

I’m writing for words of wisdom or advice. Or just an assurance that everything will work out. And if you can’t provide any of that, then perhaps just a great recipe for Tuna Hot Dish will suffice.

I am about 15 years behind you on the road of life and I get so distraught at times. Despite having a wonderful family, good health, I still manufacture things to worry and fret about every day. 

My daughter is doing great and recently married. But I worry about my 32-year-old son who is desperately searching for an elementary music teaching position. He is so great with kids and truly enjoys planting seeds of the love of music in children. I fret about getting older and how I will die and when. I fear losing things — life, security, my lovely wife (i.e., what will I do if she is called home before me?). I wonder why I have never suffered or experienced significant loss, like so many of my friends have? And I’m tired of these senseless and unproductive bouts of worry that I find myself in. Why am I wasting this time in the dark corners of my mind in senseless worry? I am so very blessed. I know this, but every day is still a struggle. 

Do you ever find yourself stuck in worry mode? I want to enjoy my life, and yet, like so many these days (I think), I’d rather just hide in my room and stay in bed. Yeah, so what can I do?

Best to you always,
Russell

This sounds like real trouble and luckily for you anxiety is something professionals know a few things about dealing with. I would find a good psychiatrist, a doctor, one who will listen to you say just what you’re telling me, and one who is open to pharmacology. I know people who suffered from bothersome anxiety and who got good relief from medications. I’ve never been troubled by this and any advice I offered would be too glib. There are many roads available but I’d begin with this one: the simple treatment of anxiety by chemical means. GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

Listening to the audience sing How Great Thou Art in the video embedded in today’s Post to the Host brought me a visceral memory of my late dad singing along to that hymn on his Tennessee Ernie Ford 33-rpm record. Thank you so much for bringing back that memory — I actually heard my dad’s voice.

A Poem for My Father, Who Never Saw Winter

There was a red maple today,
Morning sunlight streaming through it
            with all the power and glory of a Protestant hymn.
My father, of course, would only sing the old ones—
His Dartmouth glee club tenor sternly silent
            for the occasional, errant folk hymn.

The cycle of my daily walks has moved to autumn
            in the inner
            and outer landscapes.
One passes from time lived to time left.
 
Now the force that through the green fuse
            drives the flower
Drives maple red age,
Coursing chorus of beech yellow age,
And, finally, relentlessly—brown brittle oak age.
 
No so bad, perhaps,
To sing Vivaldi fall colors in a Beethoven ode to joy,
Then slowly fade, fall, and crumble under winter snows.

But for my father, who never saw winter,
A different stopping place—
Singing only his favorite hymns,
            still in the chorus of autumn light.

                                                             Elizabeth Vozzola, 1992

Elizabeth C. (Elly) Vozzola, Ph.D.

Well said, well said. To which I’d add:

There was an old man named Vozzola
Whose voice was as smooth as Mazola
Singing "How Great Thou Art"
Straight from the heart,
The tears ran down his schnoozzla.  GK

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Mr. Keillor, 

I have total of 15 grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the U.S. school system at various levels.

I am convinced the education system and its struggling teachers have been gradually burdened with addressing various social issues and problems at the expense of basic reading, writing and arithmetic. 

This has resulted with a shift in attention by education system from basic education to trying to address many issues that used to be addressed in the home.

What advice to you have for us senior folks to counter this trend? 

Enjoy all your observations. Do as many as your time allows.

Iowa Farm Boy 

I don’t disagree with you. Every child in America has a right to a good basic education. Sometimes a troubled or abusive home situation gets in the way of this. Sometimes parents aren’t able to encourage and advocate for their children. And it can be hard to navigate the school bureaucracy. But I do know of cases where the close attention of grandparents, aunts and uncles, has made a great difference. Families need to stick together and despite any differences among adults, the needs of the kids must come first. My wife worked fiercely on behalf of our daughter to find a way to a school that was right for her, so I saw it close up. As for the larger issues of public education, that is beyond my pay scale. (I do this column for free.) GK

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Hello,

1. Your thoughts on Donald Trump. 

2. Climate Change 

3. The present Republican Party. 

4. Grief and sadness 

5. Discrimination against transgender folks. 

6. Fun in Central Park 

Thank you. I have always enjoyed your show and work. 

I once walked by you in New York. 

R. Michael Westbay

1. Never again.

2. It’s happening.

3. Chaotic.

4. Inevitable.

5. It’s outside my experience.

6. No better place on earth, where sadness can be cured, where Republicans and trans people can walk freely among the rest of us, and where the climate is ever amiable and good-hearted. You learn civility by walking among it. You don’t learn it by standing at a lectern. GK

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GK,

I grew up in a reformed Baptist family, where isolationism was thought to preserve our holiness and virtue. Our church’s creed was “be not of the world,” but be ye noticeably odd. My parents allowed me to listen to PHC because they were under the false impression that since it was old-timey, it met their Christian ideal of righteousness. PHC introduced me to a world of humor, satire, and nostalgia. Years later I discovered your books and read Lake Wobegon Summer 1956. I laughed until I cried at the exploits of Gary, which were so relatable to my own. Through your works I have sharpened my love of the everyday and gained an appreciation for the stories we all carry with us. That admiration for humanity has done more to strengthen my relationship with God than isolationism ever did. 

Sincerely, thank you.

Andrew in KC

Thank you, Andrew. I too grew up among separatists and I saw the damage they caused — families divided by doctrinal differences, the legalism, the arrogance — but I’ve come to feel grateful to them too. I spent a good deal of time with the Holy Bible, time that was not wasted. My parents loved each other, there was no alcohol in our home, no dark moods, no shouting. We were six children, which afforded a good deal of freedom from close supervision. I say, Make peace with the past and enjoy the present. GK

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Sir,

I am a vacillating freeloader. On the one hand, I admire your talents for sharing your thoughts, sometimes with beauty, sometimes with humor, and occasionally, with a powerful challenge to our moral prejudice and inertia. On the other hand, well, I’m working on it. 

Stay well and stay uxorious. 

Eliezer Eisenberg

Writing the column is a pleasure for me and at my age I cherish that pleasure. The worst aspect of catching COVID last week was the three days of listlessness when I felt no urge to write or do anything else. I worked up to it via laundry, making my bed, making a salad, talking on the phone to my devoted wife, who says she misses me. One night I woke up at 3 a.m. with an urge to put something down on paper and I did. I’ll start doing shows in June, then more in July and August. In October, I get to do solo shows in Dublin, Edinburgh, London, and Berlin. Work, family, a couple books in the works, it’s not bad for an old man. Wish you well. GK

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My anthropology professor explained to me that we are social animals. We feel safest when we are incorporated in our group, and we feel that most when we are doing things together. Yes, that can have a dark side (mob violence) but it also has an extremely bright side. When we sing together, we are not only physically oriented the same way (usually we face the leader), but we are also even breathing in unison. I sang with you and the audience while I watched the clip. It was great.

Caroline M.

Caroline, you’re right, of course, but these are perplexing times when, as Yeats wrote, “The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” The wheels of justice grind slowly, prosecutors move cautiously to make their case, meanwhile the drunk in the red pickup comes crashing through the village, knocking down mailboxes, destroying the shrubbery. Sometimes I think I should become a conservative since there are so few of them still standing. GK

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I am a bus driver at University of Michigan (17 years); I have listened to the goings on in Lake Wobegon a long time. But don’t remember any buses going through town or townspeople dealing with buses or drivers. Have you had occasion to ride any NYC buses? I also drove a school bus for 18 years. Did the Whippets play away games — how did they get there? Or was Lake Wobegon a mostly walking town like Mackinaw in Michigan where all cars are prohibited?

I did pen a book about some of the strange happenings during my 32 years of bus driving. The photo on the cover is bringing troops home from war being welcomed by the townspeople and school kids. 

Thanks,

Busdriver Larry

I rode a school bus for six years to and from high school and I put a school bus driver into Lake Wobegon. His name was Jack and he steered with his knees as he drank his coffee and ate a sandwich. But there wasn’t much travel in the stories, probably because I was doing so much of it touring with the show that I enjoyed the idea of being planted. GK

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Dear Kind Sir,

After reading your recent Post to the Host from May 8, I imagined you and your brother and sister in a car on your way west to Spokane. Perhaps you had a better travel experience than I did, but for my brother and me on our way from Wisconsin to Florida, it was mostly arguing between License Plate Bingo (with plastic slide windows) and lunch from the ice cooler.

How did you all manage? Games? Or hairpulling? I briefly met your lovely sister on one of the cruises, BTW, and imagine her the referee. :)

Lynne Larkin

It was a Ford station wagon, three-seater, I sat in the middle seat behind my mother, and I watched the world go by. Once in a while we played Horse, in which you counted the horses you saw on your side of the car, which was your score, which was wiped out if you passed a cemetery. It was boring. We begged Dad to stop at historic sites so we could walk around and sometimes he did. At several points, the road ran alongside the Great Northern tracks and we raced a train. I don’t miss long car trips. GK

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I absolutely loved the column about the bad boss (and gratitude). I know exactly who Garrison was talking about and couldn’t agree more. Eighteen months into my post-working life I was able to laugh out loud while reading it. A friend shared that column with me, and I hadn’t known there was a regular column like that to subscribe to. (And I’m looking forward to reading and gifting the Cheerfulness books I ordered that may be coming this month!)

Keep up the great work.
Your loyal fan,
Sara Meyer

Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, and you didn’t, so I won’t. Anyway, I wish him well in his new career as a high-priced consultant. I hope he consults his heart now and then. GK

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Mr. K.,

Saw you in Bend, Oregon, a few months ago and the four of us who drove 175 miles up from the tiny town of Lakeview, OR, enjoyed you immensely. Thanks for venturing into the high desert! I wanted to see if you have any advice about an attitude I find myself having: I start noticing when people use the word “like” as a filler in their conversation; also “you know.” I start to count the occurrences, and more and more now I get to a point where I just, one way or another, turn them off. I feel quite curmudgeonly when this happens, but also feel quite put upon. Any suggestions?

Randy Dary

It’s irritating but it only reflects uncertainty on their part and you and I prefer to listen to people who know what they’re talking about. Professional people, for example. If a doctor threw in handfuls of “like” and “you know” in his diagnosis, I’d find a real doctor.

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Announcing:

Join Garrison Keillor on Sept 17th for "Garrison Keillor Tonight," an unforgettable evening of stand-up, storytelling, and poetry set in the breathtaking natural wonder of The Caverns in Grundy County, TN. Reserved seating, yurts & VIP packages, and camping passes are on sale now!

Prepare to be captivated by Keillor's unique blend of sung sonnets, limericks, musical jokes, and tales of the beauty of growing old. Plus you'll hear the news from Lake Wobegon, the fictional Minnesota town Keillor created and featured in his long-running radio show, Prairie Home Companion.

For Tickets: CLICK HERE

With limited seating available, get your tickets early!