Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 08.08.21

Hello, Garrison.

... didn’t like your comment at all about finally getting a president who knows civics. Joe Biden doesn’t know the Constitution. He thinks allowing illegals by the thousands to rush across our southern border is a good thing ... course, he wants all of us to work and give them free EVERYTHING. That is called socialism. For the previous four years, we had a closed border with only legal immigrants coming across. Apparently, you think that is a bad thing. Joe Biden wants to track every citizen ... in China where the government does that exact thing, it is called communism. For the previous four years, Donald Trump tracked no one nor proposed tracking anyone. In Venezuela, where the government started by “giving” everyone healthcare, there is now no electricity and no water and almost no food. That is called UNCONSIONABLE [sic]. For the years prior, there was electricity and water and food. However, the president that you are applauding is wanting to do ALL OF THAT. How can you support that? Are you truly wanting the United States to become a socialist/communist country? Clearly you have never lived in such a country as I have when I taught English in Xian, China. 

I would be interested in hearing how you defend your position.

Regards,

Emma Curry

This must be horrible for you, Emma, to feel you have lost your country to illegal immigrants flooding the land and the government watching you and communism is about to deny us electricity and food and water. I don’t see it that way, but I can appreciate your horror. I wonder if Xian might not be a better place for you to live, where you know what to expect and you don’t have such a big stake since it’s not your country. And of course, they need English teachers there. And if you were in Xian, Joe Biden wouldn’t be able to track you anymore.

GK

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I forgive you for your view and comments about Joe vs. Donald & pray for the Lord to correct your vision on this matter. Agreed, there is a lot not to like about Donald, but he did a good job running America while he was in the White House. I pray that this country can weather and survive the current administration’s policies.

I hope you will continue entertaining us well past 80.

William Fowler

Thank you, sir, but I don’t believe the Lord is actively involved in proselytizing for the Republican Party. The Gospels do not seem to point in that direction.

GK

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Garrison, you grew up in a family of fundamentalists, but somewhere along the way you slipped into an Anglican community. My question: what do you find that these two streams of faith and practice have in common? And have you felt the need to set aside anything central to “fundamentalism” in order to find a home in an Episcopal worshipping community? 

David in Tennessee, a former Presbyterian

The Brethren I grew up in were refugees from Anglicanism back in the early 19th century and were wary of Error and false doctrine, whereas in the Episcopal community there’s plenty of error drifting around and we ignore it, and we believe that Communion and a sense of God’s love for us can unite us. The Brethren took the Mysteries of Faith rather coolly — we were all cradle Brethren, it was an inherited faith –– whereas among the Episcos there is more astonishment. Just my feeling.

GK

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Sorry to hear you’re being somewhat discounted by the youth in your sunset years. Our son is getting married this fall and we went to Ashtabula (Ohio) last week to meet his future in-laws, first-generation Italians. The men went fishing for walleye on Lake Erie while the women had a shower for the future bride. I sat next to Uncle Dominic who told me he came over on a boat in 1966. Everyone on our boat deferred to him, age 94, including how far out on the lake we should go, how deep we should troll. Dominic ruled the roost for five hours and I presume he will at the wedding. He was a lovely man and so kind. Why can’t we respect our elders like the Italians? 

John

I’m doing my best, John. I don’t have many elders anymore, but I show them due deference while trying to irk them often enough to keep the conversation lively. George Latimer, my friend who is 86, disagrees with me vigorously about many things and I try to give him that opportunity. As for my young people, they’re very busy and I sit and admire them whenever I’m with them. I fear for the world we’re leaving them. The recent U.N. report on climate is scary. The world has to change, and I think someday they may curse us for what we managed to ignore.

GK

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I’m interested in your years as a parking lot attendant. I, too, was a parking lot attendant in my college years at Tanglewood. I wonder if being a parking lot attendant contributed to your writing prowess, especially the needed discipline. 

Final question, is your statement, “We live in a city of memories” original with you? 

Peter H Gilligan

I worked a 6 a.m. shift from September through March my freshman year and it was educational, working an enormous gravel lot without markings and having to order people around with great authority to park where they should instead of where they wished to, thereby to avoid chaos and save time and use the space effectively. It sometimes meant that you had to yell at people. Not often but sometimes, and when you did, you had to do it in an authoritative way, not just bullying or insulting. This was a big experience for a shy person. I don’t see any connection between it and writing. And though I did once say “We live in a city of memories” it doesn’t sound brilliant or profound, so I imagine it’s original.

GK

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Garrison,

Just to clarify, the source of “120 years” is Genesis 6:3. The source of “70 years” is Psalm 90:10. Both were written by Moses, who did indeed live to 120.

As a fellow son of 1942, I might mention that it was at age 80 that Moses embarked upon the career for which he is known. Octogenarians are tough cookies; they didn’t last that long by being frail!

Chaim Sudranski, Kiryat Ye’arim, Israel

Thank you for the Scripture lesson, Brother Chaim. I thought King David wrote the Psalms but I’m willing to consider other options, especially coming from the Holy Land.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

I’m especially enjoying the books and essays that you’ve written since your “retirement.” I only hope that I will, one day, find the same contentment and satisfaction that you’ve found in retirement.

Recently I’ve discovered that one can now buy an Ernest Hemingway Mattress! Not one that he slept on, but a new one named in his honor. Would you buy one? Would you be honored if there was a Garrison Keillor Mattress on the market?

Best regards,
Ken Wilson

Mr. Hemingway, with all due respect, had a difficult old age and ended his life in deep depression at the age of 62, and whatever commercial romance is attached to his name goes back to his early productive years in Paris when he didn’t have much money. I doubt that he’d be pleased to know he was posthumously in the dry goods business.

GK

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Hello, Garrison:

My wife has been playing Scrabble daily online with several of her sisters for years — the childhood thrill of thumping your sibling still rages, even though all of them have used all the cheater apps since the beginning. That was how the Dreaded Qi was discovered — it didn’t exactly spring from the basic walk-around grammar of six Catholic-school Baltimoreans.

Here’s my plea — if qi, why not OK? The powers that be allow qi, which probably was not uttered or written by 17 native English speakers worldwide a day before its gaming stardom. So why not OK, which daily is probably the most written and spoken English word in the world among all peoples of all countries? That old no-abbreviation argument doesn’t wash anymore, particularly since no one could agree on the source anyway. OK means Yes, Good, Fine, All Right, Got It, Agreed — maybe the most positive two letters in all language history!

So Happy Birthday. You sound fine at 79 — your Qi is OK.

Dave Minges, Baltimore, Maryland

We are not Baltimorons

Good to get a spirited letter from Ballmer, especially with the Orioles losing nine straight. Maybe instead of a bird, the team should be named for a crustacean. As for OK, we in the North spell it “okay” and that’s how we use it in Scrabble. We permit “qi” because Q is a difficult letter and we’re taking a shortcut. Have mercy. Sounds like the sisters are doing great.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

I’ve seen you at Tanglewood, where the music that continued after the show’s taping was so spirited and fun that friends and I danced in the aisles for an hour. 

I’ve seen you in Lexington, MA, where you softly sang, I think, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” to an audience that seemed to hold its breath. I had tears in my eyes. We were all rapt for the entire show. 

I listened to you in the car for years while driving to various parts of New England, sometimes not noticing I had missed an exit. 

My son, my only child, whom I lost in 1996 when he was on a college semester abroad working on a sustainable development project, drowning while spending a day off at the beach, loved you, too. I would provide him with cassette tapes of Lake Wobegon tales so he could listen on his drives to and from college in Vermont. Oh, how we’d laugh when both of us listened to them in the car; I remember vividly the tale about the golden retriever at the edge of the lake who was “on the verge of speech.” 

After my son’s death and my subsequent divorce — a double whammy — I lost my appreciation for humor, and for pretty much everything else for a while, but when it slowly returned, your shows were such a pleasant escape for me. 

I’m halfway through That Time of Year and enjoying it. 

Please keep writing and posting. 

Thank you,

Laurie 

Thanks, Laurie, and I’m always surprised by the idea of people having so much fun at a show hosted by a tall morose fundamentalist. I look at pictures of the show and the guy in the white suit and red socks looks like a pest exterminator brought in to deal with cockroaches. Maybe it’s the fact that, at Tanglewood, you were sitting far away and could imagine I was smiling. At the moment I’m enjoying a quiet life with an audience of one, my wife, to whom, yesterday, I read my latest work, an epic murder ballad in which three women get revenge on a two-timing man. She thinks it’s brilliant. At this age, less is more. I’m working on an essay about the beauty of 80 and intend to finish it long before I get there, so stay tuned.

GK

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Sir:

You couldn’t know it, but a recent “Post to the Host” from Tom Bethell came from one of the nation’s foremost Social Security experts. Tom is a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance (https://www.nasi.org/about/seniorfellows/) and has written many books and articles on the subject. And Tom nails it: Social Security is a tremendously successful and popular program, and its customer-service woes can be ascribed to years of underfunding by “starve-the-beast” conservatives in Congress.

Unlike you, I haven’t lost my Medicare card. But for the heck of it, I signed into https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ and found I could request a replacement online. This is not to excuse SSA’s inadequate phone and in-person service to vulnerable people who can’t do business online. But really this is a simple request.

Kathy Ruffing

You are so right, and I was so wrong. My only defense for stupidity is that for years I was surrounded by such a capable staff at Prairie Home that I am now unable to deal with the simplest problems. I sat in a little office and had the luxury of being a writer while they, Kay Gornick and Jennifer Howe and Kate Gustafson and Thomas Scheuzger and Kathryn Slusher and Sam Hudson and David O’Neill and a half-dozen others took care of every problem, which turned me into an utter incompetent, unable to go on the phone and deal with a robot. I am, however, still able to pull on my pants one leg at a time though sometimes the right leg insertion is sort of dramatic.

GK

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About the overuse of the word “Perfect.” I started noticing this about three or four years ago, and it drives me nuts. It is a “millennial” or even younger thing. I hand a cashier my card, and the response, “Perfect.” Really? Was the handing over of my credit card to you so exceptional that it deserves a “perfect”? I am a grouchy 42-year-old and have no tolerance for this!

Andrea in Gaithersburg, Maryland

Calm down, Andrea. Superlatives have been around for a long time, just look at some of the fan letters that come in here. I should correct them, but I don’t bother. When people read something that is not bad and they tell me it was beautiful, I accept that they’re expressing some native American optimism that survives even in these hard times. Last night Jenny made a stupendous blueberry crumble with whipped cream made from heavy cream she had whipped, not from an aerosol can, and we ate it with two friends sitting out on a Manhattan terrace with a light breeze whispering as one of the friends talked about his childhood on his family’s cherry orchard near Traverse City, Michigan, and it was all good. Actually it was perfect but I don’t say so for fear of making other people feel excluded or diminished or marginalized.

GK

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Hi, Garrison:

You’ve been writing much lately about headed into your 80s. I once worked with an elderly doctor of that age whom I had not seen for a while. I enthusiastically proclaimed, “You’re looking good!” He smiled and imparted these words of wisdom:

“John, there’s four stages of life: youth, middle age, old age, and you’re looking good.” He also told me that there were five leading causes of death and he had them all, yet was still alive — what a guy.

He and his wife were married for over 60 year and he died a few days after she did — also inspiring.

Best,

John W. Mitchell, West Slope, CO

In another month, John, I’m going back onstage with Prudence Johnson and Dan Chouinard to sing and talk and with that there is an obligation to look good, at least somewhat. I need a haircut and I need to lose a couple pounds so my linen jacket will button and I need to practice SMILING. I don’t want people in Ladysmith and Menomonie to think I’m unwell and wonder what I’m suffering from.

GK

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Your recent essays about nearing 80 (which reminds me of some poems by Updike, who lived one town over) rubbed me especially well, especially the last graf. Wow. Put the hay down where the goats can get it, tell jokes.

Mark

Okay, I will. The little boy went to his baby brother’s baptism and he cried all the way home in the back seat of the car. His father asked him what was wrong. He said, “That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home, and I want to stay with you guys.”

GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

My jaw dropped when I read your comment, “I never saw The Fantasticks.” I could not have been more surprised. YOU could have been the author of the musical’s ironic, wise, philosophical, and delightful lyrics. You’d enjoy singing the whimsical tunes, too. May I strongly urge you to find a performance on YouTube. There’s magic in its ordinariness. Don’t “shuffle off this mortal coil” (and I’m in line right behind you) until you do.

Elizabeth Tenney, Reno, NV

Your jaw would drop even farther if you saw a complete list of books I haven’t read and shows I haven’t seen. My excuse is that I’m a writer, love to sit and work at stuff, and fear that I’d be discouraged by too many encounters with greatness. This is wrong, I know, and my heroes Roth and Updike prove it, both of them dedicated readers, but back in my days as an English major at the U of M, I knew grad students whose literary aspirations were smothered by the study of classics. I opted for ignorance. I know that I’m wrong but am hesitant to reform. And I would add, I am put off by the word “whimsical.” Sorry.

GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor, 

It annoys me that so many people take you to task for being “cranky.” The opposite of cranky is “shut up and take it.” If more people spoke out, we’d have less injustice in the world. 

It seems to me that 30 or 40 years ago, rude or indecent behavior was dealt with efficiently with a punch in the mouth. If some brute slaps a woman … punch him in the mouth. If some guy insults your mother … boom. But today there is less street justice and more litigation. A Boy Scout leader wouldn’t stop threatening my young children. You can guess what put a stop to it. Yes, that. And he sued me for hospital costs. But it was worth it.

Clay

Buffalo, NY

This sounds very much like a Buffalo point of view, Clay, and it’s good to hear from you. Coming from the gentle Brethren of the Midwest, I wouldn’t know how to punch someone in the mouth. Truly, I wouldn’t. It’s foreign to me, like climbing a rope or throwing a curve ball or pruning a crabapple tree. The Buffalonians I know happened to be Unitarian, not given to fisticuffs, but they do speak up when provoked, and I admire that. As a writer, however, I am wary of doing anything that might injure my hand and make it uncomfortable to hold a pen. You understand.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

I’ve enjoyed playing and singing along with the sheet music to “We’re All Republicans Now” over the many years that I’ve had it. I am fortunate to have friends who squeal with delight when I perform it for them.

It’s been 15-odd years since you’ve written the song, and the right has become even more crazy, to put it lightly. Have you thought about writing some new verses? I’d love to hear what you come up with!

Best,
Nick

As you know if you read PTTH, I have some Republican readers and I’m glad for that, especially in these agitated times when people on the left aren’t speaking to ones on the right, and vice versa. It’s a privilege to have friends who are severely irked by me but still enjoy my company. So I’m done with preachments — leave that to the young — and I feel more and more fascinated by the ordinary. The other night, for example, sitting outdoors with friends, the ebb and flow of conversation, nobody raising their voice, like a chorus of crickets.

GK

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I believe you misspoke when you said Suni Lee ran top speed toward the uneven bars. One does run top speed toward the vault but not the bars. Sincerely and hoping for another cruise, Eileen.

Eileen Nelson

You’re right, I’m sure. But we’re done with Prairie Home cruises. Canceling the last one due to the pandemic was very painful and I don’t want to go through that again. And the PHC staff is mostly gone who did the work, and Camille our great travel agent and Caroline Hontz who was Superwoman and loved every one of the twelve. I was a decorative object, Eileen, but the ones who made the thing go are gone. Come to Minneapolis and you and I can float in a couple inner tubes on Loring Park pond and enjoy a couple egg salad sandwiches.

GK

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OK, exactly where is your wife again, and how is she? You have mentioned her too much for a friend not to ask ...

Best wishes,

Wes

She is in the next room, putting on her running shoes, preparing to go out for a seven-mile run/walk, and then a game of Scrabble and then she’ll lie on the couch and read her book. We had a big dinner last night, so there’ll be no cooking today, just a salad. She’ll be on the phone with a niece or two and with our daughter. In a week or so, we’ll drive up to her family’s summer house in Connecticut so she can do some gardening. It’s a lovely summer.

GK

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I read with dismay your column on trying to obtain a replacement SS card. This would have been an opportunity for you to highlight how the Social Security Administration is affected by Republican budget cuts at every chance they get. Those budget cuts aren’t without consequence … customer service is one of the areas that feels the death by a thousand cuts strategy. Just as the postal system is in the same position. If you can’t just outright abolish something you hate, then starve it to death with budget cuts. That’s the Republican strategy. Unfortunately, you missed an opportunity to highlight the INTENDED consequences of the Republican strategy.

Beth Browning

You are right and thanks for writing to make your point clear. I admire a letter like yours, brisk and pointed but not insulting.

GK

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Garrison,

I grew up in Glenwood, MN, and when you talked about getting older it reminded me of my uncle Harold, who when he was 95, playing golf and riding in a golf cart with my wife, hit a terrible golf shot and slammed his club into his golf bag and said, “Oh to be 80 again.” Harold lived to be 101. He had an article written about him in the Pope County Tribune one summer day in his 99th year. That day he shot 92 and the article said, “Harold only fell over once.” When asked how many times he had shot his age, Harold said, “When you get to be my age it’s really not that hard.”

Stephan (Steve) Vegoe

I quit golf long ago and instead of swinging a club, I write limericks and plan to continue until the End.

A man from the county of Pope
Said, "When I'm aged I hope
To be able to write
Five lines nice and tight
Without using illegal dope."

GK

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Exhibition of near perfection in a difficult action demanding disciplined skill and intensity as provided by Suni Lee may indeed lead audiences back to valuing craftmanship in other pursuits, even in comedy and even in old English novels. You might enjoy Susan Tallman’s article on “Knowing How” in the August NY Review of Books:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/08/19/knowing-how/

Myron Pulier

Thanks for the link and I shall look it up as soon as I finish my essay on the glories of growing old.

GK

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Much to agree with in your original commentary on Suni Lee, but your suggestion that she has won her gold medal because of her “heredity” may be mistaken. I followed the Hmong transition from a tribal, Asian provincial people to Americanized immigrant “community” since the 1990s. I read of the problems that arose when the Hmong withdrew their daughters from school at puberty and refused to let them return. I read of their problems with modern sanitation practices. I read of their refusal to obey hunting laws and regulations.

It is interesting that Suni Lee’s family supports her gymnastics and her wearing revealing clothing and activities where she almost always “spreads her legs wide open” to the world. These are Western concepts. If Suni Lee has come close to “perfection” it is because she and her family have become Americanized.

Because a large number of Americans have become fat, lazy, dependent and prefer stupidity to learning does not mean they represent American culture. Suni Lee’s ambition and energetic striving towards excellence in gymnastics is American, not Hmong. 

Kathleen H Casey

Interesting points, Kathleen, and thanks for bringing them forward. I wish her well, even though I got some details wrong.

GK

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Garrison, have you read Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down? An astonishing, amazing book, about Hmong in America. Written in the 1990s about the 1980s, republished a few years ago. When a book is still in print after 30 years …

And there is a Canadian Hmong stand-up comedian. His name is Joe Vu. I heard him on the CBC, on The Debaters. He was debating whether we should complain or not. He said no, we shouldn’t. He was funny. I think stand-up comedy must be the most difficult of all the performing arts, and I am not slighting opera singers.

Someone I know complained that the media were forcing us to watch the Olympics. Now that is complaining that we shouldn’t do!

Elizabeth Block, Toronto, Canada

Good to hear from Canada, Elizabeth, and I shall look up the Fadiman and try to find Mr. Vu. As for complaint, I welcome any and all, but am trying to control my own habit. I crossed a line when I crabbed about a Social Security phone person and was properly chastised by dozens of readers, some of the responses stung, and I shall take this to heart.

GK

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Garrison,

Assuming you have noticed, the gender you and I share is quickly becoming extinct in terms of cultural and moral importance. The American women athletes certainly outshined the men in the Tokyo Olympics with more medals and class. The women in politics today, with some notable exceptions, often make far more sense than their masculine counterparts who like to strut around showing their stuff. Most of the old, mainline church pulpits in America have now been feminized. Many of us are getting our news, weather, and sports more regularly from attractive women in the media than from aging men. And women continue to provide most of the education and health care going on in this country. As far as I can tell, this gender leadership replacement is a good thing for America and maybe for the planet. Any thoughts about what men like us might do to help accelerate this gender takeover?

Leroy Manley, Bitspur, Texas 

This is very acute, coming from someone with your last name, sir, and I would only point out your reference to “attractive women” which is sexist, chauvinistic, obsessive, sick, disgusting, abusive, and amounts to verbal rape, but other than that, I agree with some of what you say. Our Episcopal rector in New York, Kate, is a terrific preacher and a graceful presence and we’re lucky to have her. I like Jennifer Rubin in the Post and Gail Collins in the Times and Amy Davidson Sorkin in The New Yorker. I like Amy Klobuchar though I wish she’d stood up for Al Franken when he was under attack, and I think Lisa Goodman is the smartest person in Minneapolis city government. I think Kamala Harris has been saddled with impossible assignments, but we shall see how that develops. I’m generally drawn toward women poets. And I feel closer to my women friends than the non-women. I’d always tend to confide in women rather than men — isn’t that true of all of us? Why it is so is a topic for another time.

GK

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Mr. Keillor,

You sent a gracious letter a few years ago when our son, Benjamin, received Eagle Scout rank. Here is an update on him since then. He earned his BA in English magna cum laude from Louisiana State University at Alexandria and graduated from Northwestern State University of Louisiana with an MA in English with a literature focus this past May. His thesis focused on Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle. He starts work at the Rapides Parish Library later this month. So, English majors are still being graduated (and they get jobs). Thank you for being one of his inspirations.

Jerry Sanson

I expected Benjamin to become a woodsman and live in a makeshift hut in the North Woods and study the movements of birds and the mysteries of weather and instead he winds up in a library in Louisiana? Remarkable. I hope he’s at work on a novel. I recommend a dystopian novel about an Eagle Scout who goes bad, due to his rejection by a woman, and who uses Scout Law to become the richest man in America and fly in his personal rocket to land on the moon where his rocket develops mechanical problems and an aeronautical engineer at NASA has to talk him through the repairs, step by step, and he falls in love with her and they marry when he returns to earth.

GK

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Mr. Keillor —

Your notes on aging and how it is affecting your tastes and attitudes have been interesting to me as I get ready to turn 60 in a few days, and acknowledge I am now old. Old as a word derives from roots that include “high, deep, noble, profound,” so I’m embracing it. And while I hear you that some find in aging a loss of interest in a variety of things, I’m appreciating a certain sharpening and focus my plans and preferences are going through, even though my eyes are going the opposite direction. My hubris of how much I can accomplish is getting nicely whittled away, and how many children I can help or which projects I can take on now has to consider the time I have left, and the energy I’ve got.

Doing less is enough if it’s the right thing you’re doing. Plus, I’m cooking for my wife more, and I’ve left some programs on the drafting table and said no to others more often, so I can say yes to her. As a 60-year-old, that seems like a good goal. Thanks again for the view twenty years up the road! It helps me commit cheerfully to a firm intention to do less this coming year.

Pax,
Jeff Gill

It’s good to hear that the next generation is smarter. When I was sixty, I was living in confusion and darkness and you’re a man with a plan. Carry on.

GK

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Dear Garrison:

Winters in Toronto are long and dreary, without much sunshine. This past winter, to buck up my spirits, I reread one of your earlier books, “WLT — A Radio Romance.” It made me burst out laughing repeatedly and was a helpful tonic in the depths of winter. I found the shenanigans of “Little Becky” especially funny. Thanks for that.

I was born in New Brunswick, on the east coast. The Westmoreland County Historical Society is housed in “Keillor House,” an early 19th-century structure in the town of Dorchester. I seem to recall once hearing you say that some of your ancestors hailed from those parts. Is that correct? Have you ever visited the place? The area is rather sleepy, but it’s located near some spectacular ocean vistas of the Bay of Fundy and I think you would find the people there very friendly, especially once they heard your last name.

Regards,
David Fine, Toronto 

Thomas Keillor landed in New Brunswick around 1774 after a long voyage from Yorkshire and the Keillors thrived in Canada and mingled with the Crandalls who fled from the American Revolution. My grandpa James Crandall Keillor was a shipbuilder in Chatham, N.B., until his sister Mary, who had immigrated to Minnesota and married and borne three children, wrote to him to say that her husband was dying of TB and so James left his homeland to rescue the family. The husband died and James stayed and eventually married and fathered eight children, one of them being my dad. I intend to come visit the Keillor House one of these days and now I’m definitely putting it on my list.

GK

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Sir: Are you a liberal? I used to think you were and now I’m not sure. Do you mind clarifying?

Ross

Minneapolis

I’m a humorist, Ross. When I read someone writing about their “journey,” I reach for my spitball. When I hear the words “gender creative,” I reach for a rubber binder. Being a liberal, I don’t own a gun, but I am adept at sarcasm.

GK

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Dear Garrison Keillor,

I sympathize with your friend retired from teaching who said, “I hate kids.” Spending years locked up with them does things to the mind. Individually kids are tolerable, and some are even OK, but in a large group they can be painful to behold. Soppy women who say they love children are beyond my understanding.

I write from the UK and would guess that the attitude spans all countries and nationalities.

Best wishes,
Joyce Brown

The same can be said of writers, Joyce. Individually they are tolerable but if you attend a convention of them, you can easily come to despise them. I’ve experienced this.

GK