Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 01.07.24

Dear Garrison,

Thank you for the links to various musical pieces that you send us in your post. I was brought to tears by the rendition of “It Is Well With My Soul” sung by the Baptists in Dallas. That hymn is one of our favorites. It spoke to me today because of the sorry state of our world. Laughter and music are balms to my soul.

Mary Polson

Camp Hill, Pennsylvania

There’s a lot of crankiness on display out there and people on the right and left who feel obliged to outrage and I find it bewildering. The crowd in Nashville sang “It Is Well With My Soul” at the PHC show and sang it in four-part harmony, I could even hear the tenors, and the call-and-response chorus, and it brought me to tears too. God has blessed this country and our people have given so much to the world and we ought to be grateful. I take a blood thinner twice a day that has given me twenty years of life that my uncles who had the same heart problem did not enjoy. This fact alone dawns on me every single day. GK

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GK,

Given the geriatric profile of most of your fans, it’s not surprising to hear so many of us relishing past experiences when life seemed sweeter without AI or heartburn over DEI training. I wonder if reading some of the short stories of Flannery O’Connor might open us all up to the terrifying graces that continue to invade the human spirit from time to time. Do you think your fans would get the humor and irony in O’Connor’s stories? Or is the grotesqueness of Southern culture too disturbing for Midwestern sensibilities?

Jack Motes

Dime Box, Texas

I read her stories back in my 20s and loved her style and (to a degree) her wit, but she struck me as being awfully guarded and I went from her to John Cheever and John Updike and never looked back. I’ll bet geography is part of the problem. But I was brought up evangelical so I don’t relish past experience, I feel remorse over it, and life seems very sweet to me right now. I just did a show in Kansas that was so much fun on a bitterly cold night and to be able to do this at a geriatric stage of life is an incomparable pleasure. GK

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Dear Garrison,

My wife, Nancy, and I have been everlasting fans since my days at UCLA in surgery residency, where Nancy and I met; we’re talking 1982! Being from Maine, where we have lived most of our lives post-L.A. The sounds and the stories of Lake Wobegon were reminiscent and reassuring during an insane work time in my life. We are thrilled that Nancy came across your writings for the Union Leader — that leading to here, your website. Reading your last few reflections over the holiday season has been a “blast to the past” and a joy to come in 2024!!

Thank you!! Happy New Year 2024 to you and to yours.

Be well,
Nancy and Thomas Chasse

P.S. Now if we could only find Fiona Ritchie for Thistle and Shamrock?!

Dr. Chasse, I’ve heard a little bit about the insane schedules of doctors in residency and I’m glad the show could be reassuring. I didn’t work hard when I was that age, I was roaming around and grasping at straws and spending late nights alone brooding. I’m working harder now than ever before and it’s a pleasure. I see some slippage in old pals and I feel for them. Work is a tonic, and friendship, and I’m sad to see once fertile minds retire to the sofa and watch golf tournaments. GK

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GK,

Thought you might enjoy this interdenominational joke: After a particularly mild winter the small town of Chestermere became infected with squirrels in the spring. Because the local churches had the best trees, the squirrels often congregated (pun intended) near them and this is what each church decided to do about the pesky animals.

The Presbyterian church called a meeting to decide what to do about their squirrel infestation. After much prayer and consideration, they concluded that the squirrels were predestined to be there, and they shouldn’t interfere with God’s divine will.

At the Baptist church the squirrels had taken an interest in the baptistery. The deacons met and decided to put a waterslide on the baptistery and let the squirrels drown themselves. The squirrels liked the slide and unfortunately, knew instinctively how to swim, so twice as many squirrels showed up the following week.

The Lutheran church decided that they were not in a position to harm any of God’s creatures. So, they humanely trapped their squirrels and set them free near the Baptist church. Two weeks later the squirrels were back when the Baptists took down the waterslide.

But the Catholic church came up with a very creative strategy! They baptized all the squirrels and made them members of the church. Now they only see them at Christmas and Easter.

Not much was heard from the Jewish synagogue. They took the first squirrel and circumcised him. They haven’t seen a squirrel since.

David Facer

I come from Sanctified Brethren and we would’ve found doctrinal differences with squirrels and locked the doors and made ourselves ignore them. Ignorance was a specialty of ours. GK

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Sir,

In October of 2023 when it was advertised that you would be in Nashville at the Ryman, I said I would like to see that. My daughter spent approximately $200 for tickets, made arrangements for parking and ease of entrance. We were having a wonderful evening until you came out with the vulgarity in your monologue, using the f-word and saying your wife called you an a-hole. You destroyed a wonderful evening. I cannot understand how you can have hymn singing at the intermission and come out with such vulgarity. 

Thomas Allison

My wife didn’t call me that, she was talking to the driver of the car in the next lane. The word that so offended you was highly amusing to all the people around you; it got a huge laugh. The whole point, which you missed utterly, was that a guy from an evangelical background is unable to use the language a person needs in order to talk about farmers and truckdrivers and construction workers — the crowd at the Sidetrack Tap. The monologue was my confession of inadequacy. The singing of “It Is Well With My Soul” was beyond beautiful. Evidently you were looking for a church service. There are plenty available and you can get in for free. GK

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GK,

I agree with you about music in restaurants. Loud music? I ask if it can be turned down. Or off. Or I walk out.

A verse of a song I wrote (just the words, not the tune), When Forsythia’s In Bloom:

Brooklyn once was full of folks who didn’t put on airs,
But now it’s full of yuppies and techie millionaires.
High-priced, pretentious restaurants, they make us rage and fume,
But we’ll eat hot dogs at Nathan’s when forsythia’s in bloom.

Forsythia is the official flower of Brooklyn. I’m not making this up!

Elizabeth Block, living in Toronto, Canada, born in Brooklyn

All I know about Brooklyn I know from Christine DiGiallonardo who grew up there and still lives there. She sang “Blue Bayou” beautifully at a show in Kansas the other day. She has terrific enunciation, can belt, is an easy-going coworker, and regularly hits notes that make the crowd shout for joy. I’ll ask her about forsythia. GK

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Hi, Garrison.

Reading your column today took me back to a street vendor in Prague — I pictured the scene in my mind’s eye and then checked my photo library … turns out I had taken a photo of the street, and it was exactly as I remembered. Best sausage I ever ate … (Anthony Bourdain had it right — nothing beats street food.) Thanks for the photo you included in the post — it looks so yummy, I think I may have to take my first trip to Minnesota!

Best,
Patricia McCormack

My sweetie wants to go back to Prague and reconnoiter with our two au pairs who are now grown-up moms, Kaja and Katya. I will keep your advice in mind and look for street vendors. GK

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Hi, Garrison.

You recently stated, “I’ve wondered what it’s like for a physician to be ill, especially one who happens to specialize in the particular illness and who knows precisely what is happening in his or her own body.”

Well, I have the perfect book for you to read. 

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning book written by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist. In it, she tells of her experience in 1996 of having a stroke in her left hemisphere and how the human brain creates our perception of reality and includes tips about how Dr. Taylor rebuilt her own brain from the inside out.

I first heard of this story on the radio on my commute home one day, and I was so fascinated hearing the doctor describe her experience that once I arrived home, I didn’t want to leave my car for a moment and miss anything until she’d finished. My daughter learned of this and purchased the book for me as a gift. I don’t think you’d be disappointed!!

Best regards,

Stan Dalton 

As a guy who’s been hit by a couple ministrokes, no residual damage that I’m aware of, I’m not sure I’m up for reading this. I’m sure it’s a great book but what I need to do is get out and walk briskly and get my heartbeat up on a regular basis. We writers descend into a sedentary state and I need to jump around. GK

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Thank you for today’s column. Do you know the old German joke that (some) Germanophile friends of mine find so hysterically funny that they are unable to complete its delivery at first attempt because they are laughing so hard?
“Everything has an end. Except a sausage, which has two.” Possibly (even?) funnier in German?

Regards from an Australian fan,

Kathryn Couttoupes

I agree, it must be funnier in German. GK

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Thanks a lot, Garrison, for planting that inane Oscar Mayer Wiener song in my head and putting it on endless repeat.

I read somewhere (or perhaps learned on PHC) that “The Girl from Ipanema” is the universal earworm antidote. But it too tends to get lodged in the brain, resisting all efforts to expel it. Instead, may I suggest a Chopin Nocturne (more calming than an étude). Or one of the Bach solo violin sonatas and partitas. Or a Vassar Clements fiddle tune. All will serve the purpose. But if your aim is to summon your muse by consuming a sausage, a mazurka or polka would be in order.

David Hoekema

Green Valley, Arizona 

(onetime resident of Minnesota but not acquainted with Kramarczuk’s Sausage Company)

I think church is the antidote to all sorts of mental debris. The liturgy focuses the mind and the singing around you makes you happy and when you emerge, feeling lighter, and walk out into the world, it feels like a fresh start. GK

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We watched the 50th anniversary show last night. Wonderful. Took us right back to so many Saturday nights of listening. We loved watching the faces, the antics, the Lake Wobegon stories, and the music. So much talent. Almost as good as being there in person, not quite, but darn close! Thanks for doing these live streaming so those of us who are fans and can’t make it in person, can watch and reminisce. Happy 50th, and thanks for the New Year’s gift to your family of fans.

Cheryl and Dennis Brungardt

Longtime Colorado PHC fans

Glad you liked the video stream. Our producer Sam Hudson watched it on a monitor and thought they did a pretty good job though I think the camera guys come from a sportscast background so they change shots more rapidly than I’d like, but then I’m just a radio guy. I hope you got a good look at the audience as they stood and sang “It Is Well With My Soul.” That was, for me, the high point. GK

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I always admire that you seem so comfortable speaking about your religious upbringing and your faith. I am afraid I fall short in publicly expressing my own religious beliefs.

During the pandemic, with our church closed, my wife and I scouted around for alternative worship opportunities and finally found the livestream broadcasts from the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. They did a wonderful job during those dark days and the music was majestic. I thank God we found them because the current state of broadcast ministries is horrible. I’m not sure there has ever been a greater collection of phony, money-grubbing, misguided, miseducated charlatans in history. I see very little of Christ in those so-called Christians and I wonder why a non-churched person would ever choose Christianity after seeing that bunch. With your background in radio and experience in television and movies you seem like a person who could accurately assess the current state of Christian broadcasting. Any thoughts?

Larry Thomas

Sparta, Illinois 

I don’t listen to radio or watch TV except for baseball so I’m ignorant of Christian broadcasting. A working writer needs to keep his mind sort of clear. I love overhearing conversations in a café more than anything on the radio. I have about ten friends whom I can talk to on the phone and know that I’ll learn something from it. The phone is my favorite medium, and also the postcard. Beyond that, I work away at a new novel. GK

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