Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 09.12.21

Thank you, GK, for the story — told by Guy Noir — behind the “-sen” changing to “-son” due to the QLutherans. In my genealogy search, I found that my great grandfather in Audubon, MN (Christian Larson) was the first in the family to change from “-sen” to “-son.” And I was wondering why — and now I know! I recently also discovered my Cox surname ancestry — which I thought would be from England — is not so. I am descended from Pers (Peter) Larsson — from Stockholm, Sweden, who came to the New Sweden Colony in 1641. Took the name Cock from the Swedish for “ship’s cook” — the position he held on the Kalmar Nychol in his journey in 1641. Later generations morphed from Cock to Cox. So now I know I have both versions of LarSON in my ancestry (and many other types of “-sons” also). Thanks again!

Don Cox

Per was tired of Larssonism and decided to make a fresh start. Good for him. My grandpa James could’ve changed his name from Keillor to Carpenter, and that would’ve been okay. The question, Don, is who are YOU and thanks to the word “coxswain” you have an aura of leadership about you. Now you’re just descended from a Lars somewhere who may have emigrated because he committed larceny. I’d suggest you find a good one-syllable name like “Hunt” or “King” and start a new life.

GK

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Mr. Garrison Keillor:

I was digging around my basement when I found a cardboard tube with a poster of “A Prairie Home Companion” with photographs of Butch Thompson, Sean Blackburn, Dakota Dave Hull, Soupy Schindler, Bill Hinkley, Judy Larsen, and more. I just had it framed. I was wondering if You were going to be making a personal appearance somewhere soon, like a book signing, I would like to come out and show it to You. I think you would get a kick out of it. You probably have a copy of the one I am talking about. Anyway, thanks for all the great stories, and good times. I live in Roseville, MN.

Good Luck always,

Charlie Ryan

I’ve seen the poster, Charlie, and I think you should use it for dart practice. I make personal appearances every morning when I wake up and believe me, they’re not worth getting excited about. Put it down on the floor and let the cats scratch it.

GK

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Good morning, Garrison.

I enjoy reading reading your Writer’s Almanac each morning, as well as your “Host” and “Friends” columns. I am taking the liberty of clarifying your grammar puzzlements.

Your question: “Sleep is the great blessing of retirement, especially for someone like me — or is it ‘someone like myself’? I used to know this —”

You were right the first time. Myself is intensive, used to emphasize a preceding pronoun as in “I myself saw the problem.” Too many people use it incorrectly as an object of a preposition, as in “I saved it for myself.”

Your question: “… which everyone except me (I?) has heard …”

You were right initially. “Except” is a preposition and requires an objective case pronoun. Many people think using “I” wrongly makes them sound learned and sophisticated as in “This is a gift for her and I.” 

I have been a fan of yours ever since I heard your broadcast from the New York Public Library while driving home from visiting my mother near Philadelphia. I was twisting the car radio dial looking for something other than music to keep me awake. I have used some of your pieces in teaching subtle humor to my writing classes. The highlight of my 2015. summer was seeing you in person at the Chautauqua Institute in New York.

Wishing you many more years of contentment.

Ruth, Erie, PA

Ruth, you are so good to clarify these things. I only know grammar by ear, from having grown up listening to my parents talk who had a good high school education, but the ear can be tricked sometimes. I never bothered to learn the rules because I didn’t have a strict teacher like you (like yourself?); I had teachers who tried to be encouraging, no matter what.

GK

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Garrison,

Since limericks almost have to be risqué, if not obscene, may I present my most perfect one.

Written for a friend who once lived in Palmer, Alaska, and who, surprisingly, doesn’t find this one as amusing as I do.

A woman from Palmer named Sherri
Whose bush was incredibly hairy
Four birds made their nests
Down under her breasts
And when the swallows returned it was scary

Steve

I’m confused, Steve. Are the swallows the same as the “four birds in the third line? Let me take a stab at it.

A woman named Sherri from Palmer
Liked to drink whiskey to calm her
And got so serene
She took Benzedrine
That she purchased from an embalmer. 

GK

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Dear GK,

As a longtime fan and listener, I had to laugh when you described people falling asleep during your monologue. For several years that was me! Because I was in CA, I listened to your show online on KPCC at 3 p.m. each Saturday afternoon. Being an early childhood educator, I was pretty much pooped on Saturdays. I would grab a cup of chamomile tea and lie on the sofa with my headphones and laptop. I usually lasted until your monologue, then your soothing voice would cause me to fall fast asleep. The good news is I enjoyed listening to a repeat of the show on Sunday mornings, so I didn’t miss anything. Now I’m thrilled because I can stream APHC anytime, anywhere. Thank you so much for getting so many of us through some difficult times and thank you for the entertainment!

Sandy Gilman

Sandy, I am grateful to have been of use. You go into this line of work hoping to be brilliant, of course, but if people need relaxation, then it’s okay to be soporific.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

Thanks for sharing your words about the importance of angels. Even though I’m a long-reformed non-Christian from the old ELC, I am still comforted almost daily by the presence of guardian angels in our lives. And my dad used to warn us as teenagers when we borrowed the car, “Don’t drive faster than guardian angels can fly.”

Mark Larson, Arcata, Calif.

I grew up fundamentalist, Mark, and we didn’t put too much stock in angels, figuring that the Catholics had that covered. But now I have a young daughter and I believe in them fervently.

GK

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Hello, Mr. Keillor. 

Thank you for your daily newsletter. If I may offer a humble critique of your newsletter, I will say, it seems like a missed opportunity that when you’re memorializing great people who may not have been good people, you regularly omit their glaring misdeeds. 

Margaret Sanger is today’s example. While her contributions are undeniable, she was also a well-documented racist and eugenicist. If you are going to include her, doesn’t it seem fair to represent the fullness of her legacy, warts and all? I say this not from a place of judgment, but with concerns for fair reportage and representation, because, of course, as many have noted, “A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.”

Thank you,

Jesse

You’d be absolutely right if I were writing a book about Margaret Sanger but in a 40-second mention of her, I choose to represent the good, knowing that mention of her misdeeds would completely overshadow the rest and that’s all that people would remember. Sorry.

GK

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I have at times found a certain amount of comfort reading humorists of the past. At the moment I am reading Ambrose Bierce. I was wondering whether you have ever read his essay “ASHES OF THE BEACON”; it seems to accurately describe the chaos that defines our times.

Christopher W Murnahan

I shall look that up, sir, but I’m not sure I can recover the enthusiasm I felt for Bierce back in my high school years. I shall try.

GK

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Dear Garrison, 

My three sisters and I all grew up in Racine Wisconsin. We learned to pronounce “bag” as rhyming with tag — i.e., long A.

Each of us has a grown daughter and each daughter has separately told us that bag is pronounced with a short a — like bahg.

I can’t seem to change so I resort to referring to these items as sacks.

Would you like to weigh in on this weighty matter?

Sincerely and with great admiration,

Janet Steiner

A “bahg” is a marsh or swamp, nothing to put your stuff in unless you want to get rid of it. I have several bags, also known as “tote bags,” that I bought at various delis and bookstores, and don’t need any more of them. Are your daughters in theatah? Are they English majors? Do they watch PBS and belong to prestigious country clubs? Why the Brit accent? I am gobsmacked.

GK

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GK,

I first heard about Powdermilk Biscuits from Vinny, a character in Homer, Alaska in 1983. That summer my brother Wayne and I, hitchhiked from Oklahoma to work salmon. I had a “lucky” Greek fisherman’s cap that I left in the McDonald’s before our friend, Mark, left us on the shoulder of I-40 West. Mark spilled the beans about our mode of transportation to our mother when he told her about the missing hat (not sure why this was necessary).

We eventually arrived in Seattle and took the ferry to Haines, camping on the deck with other Alaska-bound vagrants. I accidentally spilled honey on Wayne’s only jacket right before the ferry docked in Haines. He accused me of making him more succulent bear-bait on purpose. A bus ride to Anchorage and more hitching to Homer ensued. My brother and I shared a Sears pup tent pitched near the end of the Homer Spit, which stuck out 4 miles into the Kachemak Bay. Unfortunately, it had ties instead of zippers and filled with water if there was a windy rainstorm (which there always was).

The long list of people waiting for work at the cannery meant we had to hustle for work until something opened up.

Vinny was crow-like with long black hair and a beard. In his strong New England accent he would talk about those Powdermilk Biscuits and laugh in a high-pitched cackle. We had no idea what he was talking about. He had us gutting fish with a short, older Native American woman who could wrestle halibut bigger than she was onto the gutting table. Vinny would disappear when we came to get our measly pay. We later got on at the cannery and had a summer of endless daylight, salmon cooked on a driftwood fire, drinking at The Salty Dog and avoiding the tent lady who wanted us to pay for pitching our tent on the beach. It wasn’t until several years later when I happened to hear the Powdermilk Biscuit segment on PHC that I realized that Vinny was slightly less crazy than I thought he was. And I began listening to PHC and telling people about those Powdermilk Biscuits.

Richard A. Husband

Richard, I am suddenly admiring you and Wayne for doing something I never had the courage to do. This is a heroic story. I hope our young people are still going off on adventures like this and not just tweeting and TikTokking. But I stayed planted in Minnesota because I didn’t have Powdermilk Biscuits that give you the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. At the moment, I’m writing a book about the beauty of growing old, but I’m not about to set out on a ferry and sleep on the deck and pitch a tent on the beach. Bravo, sir.

GK

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Garrison,

Please stop the poems about smoking.

Thanks,
Patrick

Yes, sir.

GK

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Stephen King advises for writers to read half of the time and write half of the time. Makes perfect sense. As a PHC fan, I can honestly recommend: Poartry-A Collision of Poetry and Art, which I think will be right down your wheelhouse. Amazon and B & N.

Douglas Kiburz, M.D.

Okay, but I wish it had a better title.

GK

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A more faithful and much better version of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT was made under the title of THE BREAKING POINT, directed from a screenplay by Ranald MacDougall by Michael Curtiz, with John Garfield, Patricia Neal, Juano Hernández and Phyllis Thaxter. Probably the best film based on Hemingway. Hernández was also in the best film based on Faulkner —

INTRUDER IN THE DUST.

Jeffrey Warren Sweet

I shall take your word for it, sir.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

I have always liked your “voice” as a writer. Do you have any advice for new writers about how to develop their own, unique voice?

Thanks for any advice you can provide! 

Karen Eckert, Greenville, N.C.

I ought to know something about this, Karen, having written reams of stuff, still cranking in my old age, but I don’t want to confuse you with some glib advice. I don’t think this is a question of style ––– I think that in any human encounter, whether face to face or literary, we either trust the other person or we do not, and it tends to be instant, and that you can detect if I am trying hard to gain your trust and you will be put off by it. I open a book and read a page and I discard it. I say, “Don’t waste my time.” I’m sure I cheat myself of some good writers but when I find one who is talking to me, it’s so wonderful. And how many friends does a person really need? Not hundred. I feel a connection to R.W. Emerson that I never did when I was young and have become suspicious of Twain. These things change. As for my “voice,” I just talk low and slow.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

About 50 years ago, I was living in a pink house in St. Cloud, Minnesota. I was young and unmoored with no real plan for my future. One morning, I heard something that caught my attention on the St. John’s University Public Radio station. It was a morning show that was clever and whimsical. I had never heard anything quite like it, but I still remember how it made me feel: a little clever and whimsical myself. A seed was planted in my imagination, and for the next decade, I was to soothe myself with the fantasy of having my own little clever morning show.

However, since that was my unmoored period, I never did anything to pursue my fantasy. My life deconstructed and rebuilt itself numerous times. Fast-forward ten years. I am once again staring into the great unknown, when I was offered a little, minimum wage job on the radio. Meanwhile, I heard the beginnings of Prairie Home Companion and I really felt that you were that entertaining guy who first got me into radio. But how could that be? Were you really in St. John’s, Minnesota, in 1970? It didn’t seem likely. Still, that’s mighty close to Lake Wobegon.

Recently, I read a letter you received from a longtime fan. She said she remembered you when you had a morning show on MPR in 1969. I wasn’t crazy! It was you broadcasting from the cities and on to my little public radio station. Thanks for launching me on a 25-year career that gave me as many adventures as a Minnesota girl can handle. I owe you one.

Susan Barr, Portland, Oregon

You’re welcome, Susan, but a “25-year career” as what? A dancer? A bareback horse rider in the Oregon Circus? A city alderperson? Enough about me, let’s hear about you.

GK

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GK,

My wife has recently sold her beauty parlor and now joins me in retirement, but she wants us to take a trip to New York City of all places. This idea of hers must be the result of reading too many of those glamour magazines she had lying around in her shop. I tried to satisfy her big city trip idea by suggesting we drive over to Houston, which has plenty of big buildings, expensive stores, and lots of people and traffic all jammed together. Besides, I can now legally wear my six-shooters anywhere here in Texas so worries about thugs and purse-snatchers on the streets are minimized. She found a cheap place to stay in the Brownsville neighborhood of NYC. We also have a Brownsville here in Texas on the border although it’s a longer drive from our place. Since you live there, is that part of NYC anything like our Brownsville? Now that we have a new Chinese restaurant here in our town, I don’t see any good reason to come to NYC. But you seem to be doing OK there so I thought I should ask for your recommendation.

Rusty Ferguson, Lometa, Texas

Brownsville is in Brooklyn and it’s a rough neighborhood. I associate it with gangs and troublemakers. Therefore I never go there. Therefore I know very little about Brownsville. I feel the same way about Texas. All I know is what I read in the newspaper, which is not pretty these days so I don’t even read about Texas anymore and so I am rather ignorant. But the other day, after a four-year absence, I walked around downtown St. Paul and felt right at home. It was wonderful. Your wife should find a couple friends who want to see Manhattan and come out and spend a week and leave you back home at the pistol range.

GK

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