Post to the Host

Comments from week of January 10, 2022

Jan 17, 2022

You commented to one of your correspondents that the name St. Paul imposed Catholicism on the capital of Minnesota. First, I think Lutherans, Episcopalians and even Southern Baptists acknowledge and revere St. Paul. Second, when St. Paul was around, I don’t think Catholicism, per se, existed.

Richard Ashford

Chevy Chase, MD

When the little village of Pig’s Eye was renamed St. Paul back in 1841, it was the work of a French priest or so I’ve heard, but of course you’re right, nothing is imposed on anybody. I think I’m poking fun at the sort of political correctness that renamed Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis because he was a segregationist. I’d only add that we evangelicals referred to Paul as the Apostle Paul, not St. Paul. We believed in the sainthood of all believers, not just the select few anointed by Rome.

Mr. Keillor,

I went to one of your solo shows and you sang a cappella several sonnets, beginning with a prayer and then one about the secret of a long career and another about radio and then one that seemed to be about cunnilingus. I was sort of astonished. Not offended, but amazed. This was not the familiar homespun aw-shucks prairie philosopher of the radio. The song was graceful, no bad language, a loving description of making love, and I’m curious what leads you to sing it in public.

A fan,

Annika Sorenson

New York

Hard to explain, Annika. I like the poem, enjoy singing it, but of course I wouldn’t unless I stood in front of an audience that gave me a feeling of lighthearted freedom. I’m not interested in giving offense, but my performance is unscripted and open to improvisation and sometimes you have to take risks. I still love to walk out onstage and hope to have another six months, maybe a year, of performing and then I plan to retire and catch up on my reading.

Mr. Keillor,

Thank you for reminding your readers in your response to the guy still fixated on our ex-president that there are many “good Republicans” in this country. Some of us here in Texas have suffered through a generation of big hair Janus politicians who can’t come up with more than two points in their campaigns. Yet, all the methane gas from our cattle industry keeps many of us voting for smarmy people like Ted Cruz who cause more stink than a road littered with dead polecats. Of course, we love our gas and our crazy water as long as it sells. It’s downright embarrassing to some of us when the fearmongers in this state make bogeymen out of the federal government and demonize immigrants who could fill the jobs that no one else around here wants. If you know any good Republicans up your way who haven’t completely lost their marbles, please encourage them to move down to Texas. The weather is decent, the margaritas are tasty, and you don’t have to know the difference between a sommelier and a spelunker. As the owner of the Shack of Sits furniture store has demonstrated, however, you do need to have a sense of humor to live here.

S. David Skilling

Mineral Wells, Texas

You display a fine sense of humor, sir, and I thank you for that. Somehow I’ve managed to ignore Texas but I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

In a recent post you mentioned that you have double vision. So do I. I’ll be 79 this year. I’m in eye therapy for divergent insufficiency. It’s only been three weeks, but the exercises seem to be having a positive result so far. I’m going to Ketchum University Eye Center in Anaheim, CA. Just thot I’d pass it on to you.

Dave

Thanks, Dave Dave, I’ll pass this along to my ophthalmologist ophthalmologist.

GKGK

Mr. Keillor,

On a recent post, you wrote: “Meanwhile we have each other and if someone knocks on your door, invite them in, and it’ll be Christmas.” A nice sentiment, but tell me the truth, when was the last time you invited a stranger in?

Brad Hendricks

Albany, NY

You’ve caught me in a simple hypocrisy, sir. The truth is that I lead a simple private life and don’t operate on an open-door policy. I’m at an age when I hate wasting time and some strangers can waste time wildly, especially younger ones. I am sitting in my kitchen right now and if someone knocked on the door, I’d hope my wife would answer it and deal with them and I’d go on writing the PTTH column.

Did you notice (like I did) that on December 2nd you quoted George Saunders “Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we are used to” and yesterday Tuesday Jan. 10th William James said, “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, just moving at a different speed.” I find that interesting, don’t you?

Donal O’Sullivan

You’re keeping closer track of what I do than I do, but yes, it’s a good point. I don’t think of comedy as necessarily truthful, though it’s playful and there may be truth in it but it’s free to exaggerate and contradict itself and twist the truth. So hard to define and yet when it works, it works beautifully and without explanation.

GK,

The reflection you shared about walking in the Big Apple’s snow and remembering the childhood delights from playing in a Midwestern snowfall prompted me to wonder how those of us in Texas might romanticize winter. While we have plenty of small towns drying up because of the enchanting lure of big-city life, many of us free-market capitalists are not as concerned about Amazon taking over the country as you are. We think Jeff Bezos is too busy flying around in space to fool with America’s contentious politics. As our unctuous Texas senator keeps pointing out, Antifa is the real threat to democracy, along with BLM supporters and all the deranged socialist and communist Democrats who are undermining our gun-toting freedoms and allowing illegal immigrants to take over the country. Never mind that Brother Cruz was caught fleeing to Mexico when Texas was suffering from our winter apocalypse last year or that our vitriolic governor only wants federal help when a disaster strikes us here. We just can’t say enough about their earnestness to keep us safe from those lurking among us who are intent on ruining our Lone Star Camelot. About the only winter snow we get in Texas happens in the panhandle and it’s so flat there that a plastic sled would be useless. Robert Frost’s poems haven’t been of much help to us down here where there are few snowy woods to stop at on the way home from the liquor store. Any suggestions as to how pensive Texans might ponder life’s tragic realizations and wonders without the experience of having ever walked in winter snow?

Fred Cole

Palacios, Texas

Snow is available to you, Brother Cole, and it’s over in the mountains of New Mexico. I hear it’s beautiful. You might also enjoy Montana where you’d be able to walk in snow and also wear six-guns and a cowboy hat. It makes me sad to think of you going through life without experiencing a snowy week in January. It’s not about politics, Brother, it’s about sheer beauty.

Hello, GK.

I’ve lived in the Cariboo region of British Columbia for 38 years and can recall exactly two persons who knew who you were if I mentioned your name, Lake Wobegon, or PHC in a conversation. How do you feel about that?

Paul Lewis
B.C., Canada.

I’m a stranger to British Columbia and it is a stranger to me. We each live in our small worlds and name recognition is not the point of it. The point is to marry well and love your work and respect the creation around you. I’m in New York right now and if I walked through Central Park nobody there would recognize me either. But it’s still a beautiful place to walk.

I’m from the same Midwest that you are, stern, pull-yourself-together folks. Good Lord, man, this column left me in tears. Maybe it’s my age, about the same as yours, but emotions have become my North Star. You are leading the way for us.

Hope to see one of your shows someday.

Yvonne

I went to church Sunday morning and though it’s Episcopal, our music director is a Southern Baptist from Kentucky, and the music moves me so that I’m unable to sing, like “I Am the Bread of Life” by Sister Suzanne Toolan and the old Sunday School hymn “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” and finishing up with a very soulful “Amazing Grace” with Hammond organ accompaniment. It was so moving that you saw Episcos holding their hands up in the air. And it was Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday weekend so we sang “Precious Lord, Hold My Hand” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and on a bitterly cold January morning, it made you love the people around you. I come from chilly fundamentalists and this church is a godsend.

Your column seems to have taken a sharp turn away from political issues and current events and I’m curious to know why. Did the critics get to you? I’m a conservative by any measure but I enjoyed your writing for the style and wit, same as you say you like George Will. I never read your column to find out what I should think.

Tom Davis

Shreveport, LA

There are better political columnists out there, sir, and why should I take up your time giving you a rehash when there are smart challenging writers easily available. The best I can do is offer a firsthand account of a small life with a very limited point of view.