Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 5.9.21

Garrison —
Your fellow Minnesotan Robert Zimmerman turns 80 next week. I’m wondering why you never booked him on A Prairie Home Companion. Downtown Hibbing looks an awful lot like Lake Wobegon and God knows Zimmy was and remains well above average. Methinks your musings on Act III of late are shared by Bob. Wouldn’t a grand New Yorker-type dialogue twixt Blind Boy Grunt and Guy Noir be the grandest birthday present to all the rest of us struggling out here in these autumn years with our indigestion, arthritis, and bon mots?

Just a thought.

Dennis
Memphis, TN

P.S. Keep on keepin’ on.

Dennis, you can’t be serious. PHC was a homely little show, live, no remixes, with an impromptu spirit about it, the sort of music you’d make on your own porch, and Bob Dylan is a living legend who, if he dropped in at your porch and sang a song, you’d have to put up a brass plaque. He worked hard at becoming a legend, mainly by being remote and mysterious and elusive and not inviting people from Memphis to write in and ask him questions. If he’d walked onstage at the Fitzgerald Theater to sing on PHC, time would’ve stopped, there’d be a solar eclipse, people would have visions, and the host of the show, a native of Anoka, Minnesota, would’ve been reassigned to the popcorn stand. This happened on the Colbert show when Paul McCartney was his guest. Paul walked out and there was three minutes of standing ovation. They had to hose down the crowd to restore order. And then what do you say, by way of conversation? It was like a small boy meeting the King of Siam. We didn’t have Bob Dylan on the show for the same reason we didn’t have the Archbishop of Canterbury or Queen Margrethe of Denmark or Bill and Melinda Gates on the show. Mister Rogers was as far into Celebrity City as we went and that was enough. It’s purely a matter of ego. I am so nondescript I can be upstaged by a stagehand. I was sometimes in the midst of doing the News from Lake Wobegon and I felt a sudden loss of attention from the audience and turned and saw a page of sheet music fluttering off a music stand. The whole monologue was destroyed by a slight breeze. I refuse to stand and pour my heart out in front of thousands of people who’re all thinking, “When is Bob coming back? What’s he doing now? Will he take requests?” I simply won’t and let that be the end of it.

GK

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Mr. K.

When I was a kid, the main source for national and international news was the 30-minute evening news on the three major networks. I trusted Walter Cronkite to deliver unbiased news. Now we have 24-7 news on multiple cable channels, and they all appear to have strong political biases. What sources do you turn to for news? I know you’re a liberal, but I imagine you want the truth and only the truth. 

Heather P. 

I gave up on broadcast news ages ago because it takes much too long. I get news from print media because I can get a great deal of detail about the things I care about, such as the Taliban car bombing in Kabul that killed the schoolgirls, a horrible tragedy, and I skip the pandemic news and the partisan sparring and look for interesting court cases and news of street violence, which is worrisome, the threats to ordinary civility. I don’t trust people who read the news, I trust facts, and I read opinion pieces that challenge what I think I believe. Zip zip zip zip, fifteen minutes, and I’m done.

GK

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Dear Garrison Keillor,

I think it’s very nice of you to offer this opportunity for conversational exchange. I remember you did a kind of “advice to the lovelorn” type of column in the past that was good to read, and this “Post to the Host” reminds me of that. Folks can be pretty hard on you in their questions.

My question is this: do you have a favorite hymn? Thanks for the years of radio and Writer’s Almanac, etc.

Annie

I have many favorite hymns, Annie, and in the Episcopal church I go to, the music director evidently loves them too because he sometimes tosses one in. They’re not in the hymnal so he puts the words into the program for non-evangelicals to sing, “Jesus, Lover of my Soul” or “Abide with Me, Fast Falls the Eventide,” or “I Am the Bread of Life,” and it’s very moving because everyone sings. The High Anglican hymns in the hymnal were written for choirs in white robes and ruffled collars to sing, which is fine, but church is not a performance, it’s an immersive experience, and when you step into the aisle to go forward for Communion and everyone is singing “Just as I am without one plea,” it brings you to tears and that’s what you go to church for.

GK

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My grandson is graduating with his MS in English and I wondered if Mr. Keillor could suggest an appropriate graduation gift? He’s planning on being a high school English teacher. Thanks! 

Lynn P.

I think you should write out, by hand, Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” and James Wright’s “A Blessing” in your best handwriting and put it in a bag with a bottle of vitamins, a bunch of lilacs, and a $100 bill and a picture of yourself.

GK

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Mr. Keillor, about a quarter century ago when I was new to email, I sent you an urgent question I hadn’t heard resolved via PHC — regarding the fate of Clarice’s kittens (they were in a dryer in the basement and Clarice and Larry were finally absconding and I was desperate to know About The Kittens and I forgot to sign my name on the email — but you responded to my Anonymous query, and I printed that out, and despite the salt waters from the broken levees taking so many of my mementoes, I recently discovered that I still have that response. Somewhere around here ...).

But I’m writing to let you know, eight and a half years after the fact, that my cat Kismet had her kittens under the bed, and I named the second one Clarice. I named the first one Corrie, short for Corrigan, because she was born back feet first.

I’m so glad I found your email portal. Your words are a balm for me. (So are your political thoughts.)

Carole L.

I hope you enjoy your family of cats, Carole, and hope they are a balm, and as for my political thoughts, they are a mixed bag of good intentions and interesting delusions, the result of a writer spending too much time alone.

GK

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Garrison,

In your early broadcasts, you spoke with a Midwestern accent. By the ’90s, it wasn’t there. Did you make an effort to drop the accent or was the accent something you used for broadcasts only? Thanks! Stay well. 

Mark 

I had been a classical music announcer and newscaster before PHC started and I was aware of my pretentious NPR accent when people’d call in and ask, “Are you British?” so I set out to unBrit myself and aimed for a Stearns County tone, which did the job and which gradually wore off when the show went national. The goal is clarity. People listen to the radio who’re busy doing other things and I want the words to come through.

GK

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Dear GK,
We have often wondered what happened to the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band? Pat Donohue, Gary Raynor, Andy Stein, and Rich Dworsky were an integral part of the show — as well as terrific shipboard entertainment on your cruises. Then one day, they simply vanished with no explanation, replaced by guys in skinny ties with $200 haircuts and great teeth from the Coast. Good musicians, yes, but clearly not our people.

Steve

The GAS Band boys are all around, surviving the pandemic as best they can. I’ve lost track of Andy, who’s back East, playing violin and sax, and the drummer Arnie Kinsella, but Pat and Gary are playing here and there, and Rich Dworsky is sitting out the pandemic and is busy composing. He’ll be doing some Hopeful Gospel Quartet gigs in November. The gents who followed them on the show weren’t from the Coast — two were from Illinois, the drummer was local, and Rich stayed at the piano. The new guys gave us a different sound and therein lies the explanation. I hope you can find your people, whatever their hairstyle and dental condition, and have a good time with them.

GK

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I read what you wrote about celebrating turning 80 with a glass of wine. Yikes! Don’t do it! Why do that after years of abstinence? I strongly encourage you to reconsider even though 80 is many days hence. Stay well.

A friend, Pam C.

I dropped alcohol about fifteen years ago as a favor to my sweetie who was worried about it. I thought about AA but read their booklet and dreaded the thought of sitting in a circle of guys in a church basement talking about our fathers’ emotional distance and out of fear of therapy, I simply stopped and, except for a glass of wine on my 70th birthday in 2012, I don’t drink. It isn’t a problem. “Quitting drinking is easy so long as you don’t drink.” But I feel that I’m missing some festivity in my life. I’m awfully industrious and responsible and I think it’d help if I looked forward each day to a single shot of Scotch or cognac or a Portuguese port. I’m not thinking hard about it. Just a whim. Meanwhile, here’s to you.

GK

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Use shorter sentences. I find your writing charming in many ways but difficult to follow. 

Philip W.

Hemingway was the master of short sentences. I can write a fair parody of him but otherwise write for my ear. It’s all a game. Around the house, I speak in short sentences. I say, “I’ll be there in a minute, dear.” “I’d be happy to, darling.” On the page, I feel the freedom to put my foot on the accelerator and go fast around curves and up hills and through tunnels and not stop until there’s a red light and a cop car parked by it. It’s an indulgence of high-spiritedness.

GK

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GK:
When you and I were kids back in the day, it was OK for dogs to run free. Mine accompanied me on my paper route every day and enjoyed it until a hit-and-run driver put an end to her fun. Now, with 200 million or so more people and it seems most of them walking their dogs, I can’t even imagine the chaos. You wouldn’t be able to walk out to your mailbox without stepping in doggy-doo. If only 1 out of 100 dogs are possible biters, you’d have a good chance to get bitten while you’re scraping your slipper on the edge of the driveway. Health insurance rates would skyrocket ’cause oldsters like us like to take walks, but broken hips would proliferate exponentially as friendly well-meaning pit bulls et al. jump up on you to express their joy at being free to poop on your driveway. And then, there are the less local issues, like nationally our dogs eat more protein than half the people on the globe. (I know, I know; that goes to issues we’re not talking about here, but I can’t help myself).

Know anybody who’d like a puppy of uncertain lineage?

Selectively grouchy,

LB

Good point, LB. I was dead wrong to suggest dogs run free to control the squirrel population that is eating the tomatoes my friends plant in their gardens. Tie up the dogs, buy your tomatoes at the market. Done.

GK

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This will likely be considered a weird question to ask Mr. Keillor but I would like to hear his take on it:

How in the world did we get to a situation in the Great United States of America where we have one pipeline with no backup that supplies over 40 percent of the finished fuel products up the East Coast? Would they have ever done such a stupid thing in Lake Wobegon?

Vernon Rowe, Pittsburg, TX

That 5,500-mile pipeline has held up pretty well for sixty-odd years with a few serious spillages and now this ransomware attack and I’m sure that a few hundred computer geeks are at work on the problem. When it comes to engineering, America has plenty of brainpower, which gives the rest of us freedom to pursue our own interests. It’s in the field of political democracy that we’re weak. Let’s see what happens to that infrastructure bill when it comes to the Senate.

GK

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GK —

I hope you don’t mind that I sent an email to the owners/operators of Portland’s Union Station to suggest they put a plaque on the wall by the men’s restroom door to commemorate your visit there — and the lost briefcase with the story about Lake Wobegon in it that inspired you to do a weekly monologue in hopes of recalling it. They said they are undergoing a historical review of the facility for future improvements. We will see if it comes to pass. 

Longtime listener, reader, show attender, visitor to the Prairie Home Cemetery in Moorhead, biannual visitor to family in Detroit Lakes and lifelong resident of Portland,

Don C., Portland, OR

I think it’s too complicated a story to be put on a bronze plaque, Don, and in a few years, people won’t recognize the name of Lake Wobegon or my name and so it’ll be a puzzle, an unrewarding one. How about this instead: “IN 1974, A WRITER LOST A MANUSCRIPT HERE THAT HE REWROTE AND IT BECAME A BEST-SELLER IN 1985. GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO THOSE WHO PERSIST.”

GK

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I read in shock that your ancestors were forced out of Rhode Island in the 1700s. I am a fifth-generation Pawtucket, Rhode Islander, forced out of the state by a husband who preferred San Diego (God knows why) and got himself a job before I could say “No way, Jose,” which is a Rhode Island expression, by the way.

But the point is — and it is a very Rhode Island kind of point — if your people left and my people left … who is left in Rhode Island?

Carol

It seems as if most Rhode Islanders are somewhat left, or left of center, but I’m heading up there next week to have a look. My wife and I feel a need to walk a boardwalk and look at the ocean and sit on a veranda and converse and then sit down to a platter of oysters.

GK

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Mr. Keillor,
Several years ago you mentioned on the radio that Prudence Crandall was one of your ancestors. I live near Canterbury, CT, home of the Prudence Crandall Home and Museum. She was a hero in the face of early 19th-century racism to educate Black students in her school. She faced arrest, trials, and angry mobs but persevered in her belief that all children deserved an education. The fight goes on to this day, but your ancestor took a stand and made her mark on the lives of children and is to be honored for her efforts.

Keep up the good work, sir.

C. David Bousquet

She lost the fight in Canterbury, was driven out, and wound up in Kansas where she took up the cause of women’s suffrage, another losing battle, at least in her lifetime — she didn’t live to see the 19th Amendment, which said the vote could not be denied to persons on the basis of sex. Something about hopeless causes appealed to Prudence, apparently. Somebody should write a book about people like her.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

On January 31st, I got up in the middle of the night to do what old men do in the middle of night, slipped and fell on the floor. In one dramatic flourish, I crushed my T-12 vertebra and broke three ribs. Spent a week in the hospital and the next three mostly in bed, aided in my recovery by three angels from the Providence Home Services rehabilitation program in Portland. Now, I can walk around a bit and seem to be on the mend, thanks be to God. This event has blessed me with the realization of just how dependent one can be on the care of others: My daughter once had two broken arms, and as she said, “You find out who your friends really are.” 

Blessings.

Rev. Larry Hansen

I get up in the night too and I am now going to make a point of turning on the light. Thanks.

GK

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Dear GK,

I like reading about your wife, your sweetie, your muse, and I don’t begrudge you your marital bliss, but it seems almost too good to be true. I wonder if you are describing a real-life wife, a woman you live with, or if she serves a literary purpose. Blissful coupledom can be overplayed. You might gain some credibility if your wife one day leaves after an argument and tells you to go to hell and slams the door, leaving you to ponder the fickleness of love and the impermanence of relationships.

Joe

My wife leaves me every day, sometimes twice a day, and goes for long walks, which give her pleasure, and what she thinks on her walks is not for me to know. She has never slammed the door, not while I was present. I don’t think I’ve used the word “bliss” ever, but we do make each other laugh and I love to be around her, and I depend on her and I am very, very grateful for twenty-five years, soon twenty-six. But maybe I’ve written enough about it. A woman reader told me last year, “I’ve now read three consecutive columns in which you say how pleasant it is to touch her bare shoulder. Give it a break.”

GK