Post to the Host

Comments from the week of Nov. 11.12.23

In today’s Post to the Host, Garrison asked about such a limerick. This may be it.

A spinster who lives in Duluth
Always weeps when she thinks of her youth,
Recollecting the chances
She’d had at school dances,
And once in a telephone booth.

Enjoyed the show for many years.
Rick R.

That’s it! Your memory is admirable. Thanks. GK

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Dear Garrison,

Despite mountains of troubles all over the world, here I am writing to you to ask why you described your two previous marriages as “unhappy?” Certainly, those marriages weren’t unhappy the entire time and, hopefully, there weren’t children involved when you chose the word “unhappy.” 

I sat behind my maternal uncle at the wedding of his ex-wife and his children described her new boyfriend at the time of her death as “the love of her life.” My uncle had been married to her for over 30 years. If people have to be all flowery and gushy, why can’t they just say, “the new love in her/his life.”

As a wordsmith and humorist, isn’t there a better word that you could have used to describe those two marriages?

You are much appreciated. Cheers!

Loren Kramer-Johnson
Minnesota

Those two marriages began with high hopes and ended in mutual misery and, yes, perhaps they deserve a fuller description but both are past and we’ve all moved on. I take responsibility for the unhappiness. Both times I jumped without looking, rushed ahead, and now I’m glad to see young people taking their time. Don’t marry a stranger. GK

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In a recent Post to the Host, you referred to a ball game in which one boy threw a tennis ball at the steps of a school and other boys had to field it. As a child in the ’60s I played that game wherever there was a step or a curb to throw a tennis ball at; the game was called “Pinners.” The kids in the neighborhood played a lot of improvised games back then, which were a lot of fun. I guess they don’t play those games anymore because it’s difficult to do so while clutching a cell phone in one hand all the time.

Will Phoenix be on the schedule for a 50^th anniversary show?

Frank Hudziak

Mesa, Arizona

I thought about taking the show to Phoenix and then I read an article in the paper about a flesh-eating fungus that is affecting people there. Is this something I need to worry about? GK

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Garrison,

Streaming your shows is a relatively simple process and could be a revenue stream for you. Would love to see you do this. Discuss it with your technical people.

Dave Hogan

Lake Junaluska, North Carolina

They’re discussing it. I’m a little dubious because I like to rewrite shows — do a show in Nashville, revise it for Kansas, fix it up for Galveston, change it around a little for Austin, keep improving it, and if we streamed the Nashville show, I’d need to write a new one for each stop down the line. But we’ll figure this out. GK

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Mr. Keillor,

I would be grateful for a reply, from you or anyone on your staff. I’ve enjoyed your work in your books and with A Prairie Home Companion since first seeing you in the early ’80s. I can’t remember when, but with my late wife and several friends I saw you once at Town Hall. It was grand. Your writing has delighted me to no end.

Now in my 70s and living in San Antonio, I was excited to learn you’ll be in Austin next February. It would be kind of a big deal for me to get from San Antonio to Austin and back, but I checked the ticket prices anyway. Whoa! $110.00. The lowest possible price. I’m sure it requires a lot to stage your show, acquire the venue, and feed the dreaded Ticketmaster, but wow! I’m sad that I can’t afford it. But if your travels ever bring you to San Antonio, Mr. Keillor, I’d be honored to stand you a drink — and your lovely missus, if she’s with you — and toast just being alive with you. In any case, all best wishes for good health and happiness. 

Stephen Maynard

I didn’t know tickets had gotten that pricey, Stephen. They were $2 when the show started out and that’s a steep climb. I leave money matters to the show’s producers. I do know that in former days PHC had underwriters such as Cargill and that hundreds of NPR stations paid us carriage fees, and now that income is gone, and we’re strictly cash on the barrelhead. Ever since the $2 ticket days in little 200-seat theaters, PHC has paid decent fees to musicians, $50 per back then and it’s risen accordingly. We paid them first, even if Carson Wyler at the microphone didn’t get paid. The freelance musician life is a perilous life: I know, I married one. But inflation is crazy. I bought my first house when I was 40, earning about $32 grand a year, and now I see it’s up for sale, listed at a cool million. A plain old frame house in St. Paul. Insane. But if I do a show in San Antonio, get in touch and I’ll get you a backstage seat and there’s always coffee back there. GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

We are The Tremaines, identical twin composers from Wilmington, North Carolina. It’s our dream to appear on your show. We’ve been playing together since the late ’90s in the Twin Cities (as The Del Zorros) in Dunn Brothers coffee shops and then moved to Wilmington, and we have become popular artists on indie radio stations all across the world. We have attached links to some of our music.

Sincerely,

Jay and Robin Tremaine

CAROLINA part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?vYSD4MufadAc&t9s

Postcards from Wilmington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?vYSD4MufadAc&t9s

Holiday Getaway - https://www.youtube.com/watch?vLMTOWHoRv60&t€9s

THE TREMAINES
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCggBliVr5BfO2vSSyd3WvFw

https://twitter.com/TheTremaines
https://www.facebook.com/TheTremaines/
https://thetremaines1.bandcamp.com

Hey this is the first time a band posted here to pitch themselves and I admire your enterprise but I’m afraid you’re too young for the show now in its final reminiscent go-round. It’s our last lap and we’re doing it with old friends, but thanks for sending all those links. I saw Paul Simon’s Under African Skies on there, one of my favorite songs. GK

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Hi, Garrison.

I must confess that I share your envy of people with such finely tuned taste buds. My flute teacher once told me he can tell the difference between “regular” coffee and decaf; I was mystified. My good friend Carol is a connoisseur of iced tea — she can tell if it’s freshly brewed versus sitting around in a machine; meanwhile I’m satisfied if the piece of lemon isn’t minuscule (or worse, completely absent). And forget about wine tasting parties — inevitably I wind up choosing the cheap stuff. At least it’s easier on the pocketbook …

Please share, when you ask your rector about the coffee, what her reaction is!

Best,
Patricia McCormack

I am not about to complain to Mother Kate about the coffee at church. It’s served in back of the sanctuary after the 10 a.m. service and it’s a very chatty time and people mill around and since it’s New York, there are plenty of people who’ll strike up a conversation with a shy Midwestern tourist like me. New Yorkers never lack for an opinion about just about anything: I ask a woman if she’s seen Sweeney Todd and she says, “I hate Sweeney Todd,” and a man butts in and says, “You’re kidding. Sondheim is the greatest. I’ve seen every production of Sweeney Todd that ever came down the pike.” If you asked the question in Minneapolis, someone’d say, “It’s a very interesting musical.” Coffee is not what coffee hour is about. GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

One of the many things that no longer show up in this modern age is the books of correspondence.

The Letters of E.B. White comes to mind.

As no one writes letters, is it possible that the “The Emails of ...” or would be more, “The electronic correspondence of ...” so that it includes tweets, texts and posts might be published??

I am very intrigued by your friendship with Jim Harrison.

For myself, I can imagine that the Correspondence of Garrison Keillor and Jim Harrison would be a welcome addition to the canon of American Letters that goes back to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Hey, I can dream great dreams and ask why not, so why not?

Running into cross references between your writing and Mr. Harrison’s is always a reaffirmation of something.

Let me know your thoughts.
Mike Hoffman

I met Jim when we were in our 60s and he was in a speaker series in San Francisco the night before I spoke in the same series and we were both staying at the Huntington Hotel and the series organizer, Sydney Goldstein, told me to knock on his door. So I did and there was a big burly guy, rough looking, with a glass eye. I hadn’t read his books but he knew me because he listened to PHC when he holed up in his cabin on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It wasn’t a literary friendship, it was very casual, and we didn’t talk shop at all. It was just a very amiable guy friendship. I miss him. We had a friend in common, Bill Holm. I am the least well-read author in history and so I only knew him from his poetry, not the big books. A collection of our correspondence would be a slim pamphlet. E.B. White wrote me a letter once, two pages, typed on his letterhead, and I still have it, framed, hanging on the wall. It’s sort of my certificate as a writer. GK

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I thoroughly enjoy The Writer’s Almanac. It would be great if an entire year was published in one book, an omnibus. Perhaps each year if there was a different one. It would be a great personal book, but I can also see it used as a teaching adjunct. If I were teaching literature now, I would start each class with the Almanac for the day every morning. Although, pulling it off internet day by day is already possible. Your thoughts?

Jim

If I were more ambitious, I’d do it, but I’d take out the battles, Gettysburg and D-Day and Verdun and so forth, and the natural disasters and the man-made disasters, and make it an almanac of progress, of inventions and discoveries and great artists and creators. Someone who’s better educated than I should do it. Surely someone will. (Maybe someone already has.) GK

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I read with appreciation your recent column about finding harmony in the midst of chaos but was struck by the anger you seem to still carry around about the wacko who killed John Lennon. Have you considered psychedelic breathing to address this trauma from the past? Emotional cleansing of this type appears to be helpful to stoics and those with deep-seated childhood trauma. As a CBS report suggested, participants sit on yoga mats with eye masks and process their latent anxieties with the help of an Arizona facilitator named Ocean Eagle beating a drum and encouraging deep breathing experiences to induce a spiritual high. This might move you beyond reliance on cheerfulness to address some of the unresolved trauma that religious fundamentalism and Nordic socializing has produced. It’s probably helpful even for Episcopalians. 

Ricky Jung

Oatmeal, Texas 

I only feel the anger briefly when I am at Central Park West at 72^nd. I don’t go around brooding over this. I use my latent anxieties in my work, which I need to do with my eyes open, sitting at a desk, not on a yoga mat. GK

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Dear GK,

We do plan to attend the PHC Anniversary show in Austin but will also be in Wabash as tickets and lodging have been secured. Actually, Be My Baby Tonight should be quite fitting for our anniversary.

I guess we got the idea that it was a holiday show from the way it was listed on your website. Regardless of content, we are certain to be delighted.

Continue to season NYC with kindness. Safe travels and God bless you. 

Carla Keatley

I plan to sing the Sons of Knute Christmas Dance & Dinner in Wabash and also a medley of winter holiday songs with Heather Masse and the audience and maybe talk about Christmas in Lake Wobegon. My wife was very pregnant on Christmas Eve in 1997 and our daughter was born a couple days later, and that’s my dearest holiday memory, and also the big orange in my childhood Christmas stocking and of course Silent Night. The story of the Christmas Eve truce in 1914 when German and Allied soldiers stood on the battlefield in France and sang the carol and then resumed killing each other is so profound, along with the account in Matthew and Luke. GK

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Dear Garrison,

I feel quite let down now by the Lincoln Center and the choice they’ve made for the Twain Award this year. Kevin Hart is a gifted fellow, but I had nominated you for this award because you are the most in line with what that award is supposed to be all about.

I know you well enough to know you will take this in stride. 

I’m glad to see that you are doing shows in so many places, and I wish you’d come to Grand Rapids, Michigan, sometime. I could help you to book St. Cecilia’s auditorium, or Calvin University, or perhaps DeVos Hall. If you come here, I promise to wear my red socks to your show.

All the best to you.

Peter DeBoer

Grand Rapids, Michigan

I’m an old Minnesotan, Peter, and I am award-averse. I’d be horrified if they gave me the Twain Award. I’d be thrilled if it went to David Sedaris. Awards are good for encouraging younger writers. The idea of a Lifetime Achievement Award strikes me as weird. My prize is to walk out onstage and talk to an audience and it’s more than enough. GK

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