Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 08.15.21

Mr. Keillor,

I enjoyed seeing your show in Saint Michael, Minnesota, July 4. Like you, I like to wear clothing as long as possible. However, your seersucker jacket has a hole in the shoulder, and it may be time to replace it.

A fan for years,
Dianne Wolf

My wife said the same to me when I got home, Dianne. The hole seemed far from prominent to me, on the back of the left shoulder, but she of course spotted it right away, just as she notices if I spill a drop of coffee when I take it out of the microwave, but how does a woman in the audience notice this? I’m guessing you were in the row of seats I walked down to get to Jearlyn Steele during intermission to sing “Purple Rain” with her. The jacket is hanging in my closet, I’m sort of fond of it, but I’m guessing I’ll come home one afternoon and it’ll be gone.

GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

Greetings from Scotland where some welcome rain has arrived, the last swifts are gathering for their journey south, and I am reflecting on a story you told some years ago. The sketch was about passing potatoes at dinner time. As I recall, a person from MSP and another from New York each had their own style of asking to be passed the potatoes — one deeply apologetic for asking (for even living?) and the other, well, just saying “potatoes.” I work in conflict management, mostly about environment, and I have used this story to talk about needs and relationships — which is more important, or both, in different situations. I wonder if you know of the “pass the potatoes” question whereabouts online, or in something you have written. I’d love to quote it more accurately.

Yours Aye,
Scott

In my childhood, it was pro forma to say, “I’m sorry but could you pass the potatoes, please?” I don’t know how they did it in New York. In New York, they’d be more likely to eat in restaurants and the potatoes would come with the dinner.

GK

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GK:

We are cousins, I believe, because my last name is Loucks and you have Louckses in your family tree.

I first heard the News from Lake Wobegon in July 1978. I was in Ft. Worth, Texas, at the time, and happened to be tuned in to NPR at about 11 PM, and I heard this amazing voice talking about being raised in a community of fundamentalist Christians — just like me. You had some interesting guests: one was a barbershop quartet. I love bbs quartet music! But I never heard one again. You seem to prefer ladies’ trios. You also had a priest who played a steam calliope. It was too big to bring into the theater, so the audience had to go outside for the performance. I was hooked and listened to the PHC until it went off the air.

Carry on, dear cousin! There will be a smile on my face if I am listening to, or reading something by you, when I croak!

Cousin Ed Loucks

My great-aunt Amelia married a Loucks and I didn’t know her but I knew her son Bill who once stood up at a Keillor family reunion and entertained us by singing a murder ballad. Nobody had ever done that before — we only sang hymns, but this was a humorous ballad about an attempted homicide gone wrong, and it left everyone at a loss for words, but Bill was a good man and so we let it pass. You take your life in your hands when you set out to entertain a roomful of relatives — I can’t imagine a tougher crowd. If I’d known a Loucks was listening back in 1978, I’d’ve been half in a panic. As for barbershop, it became too formal, too structured and rulebound, more of a sport than an art, whereas women’s groups like the Wailin’ Jennys and I’m With Her and the DiGiallonardo Sisters had a lot of soul. I remember that calliope. People were astonished and some people thought I should’ve invited him back but I didn’t want the show to become a novelty show. A calliope is not endlessly interesting: when you’ve heard a couple of tunes, you’ve heard enough. Same with bagpipes. You love it for five minutes and then you hope he’ll go away.

GK

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Garrison … Whatever bad thing you may have done in your life, is now paid for in full. You may save a life today with the piece on smoking. I sent it on to all those I know who did or DO — can you imagine people STILL DO? When I check out at the store, I see the racks of them behind the cashier. No wonder we love you.

Bobbie

Thanks, Bobbie, but I’m not here to advise people on healthy living. I’ve broken all the rules ten times over and I am darned lucky to have made it to 79. No, I have yet to pay my dues, but I’m working on it.

GK

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I’m thinking about trying out for a three-minute comedy routine on open mic night. I’m doing it for more personal growth not to be a comedian. I’m not really that funny but I thought I could cross it off the bucket list. My mom laughs at my jokes anyway. :)

Bex W.

That’s a great opening for your routine, Bex. “I’m not that funny and I don’t expect you to laugh, I’m only doing this for personal growth.” You’ll get a big laugh, an even bigger laugh if you read it off a card. Then you say, “My mom laughs at my jokes anyway.” And then look over some more index cards, reading them silently, and then saying, “No” to each one. And then start to tell one and stop and say, “No.” And do that. And after three minutes, tell a joke, say “thank you,” and sit down. Maybe it’ll work or maybe it won’t, but failure is a crucial factor in personal growth, as we all know.

GK

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Garrison,

I was manager of corporate marketing & communications at Cargill and worked on our underwriting and promotion of A Prairie Home Companion for 12 years and produced those first televised shows on PBS. My boss was Bill Pearce, who was responsible for getting Cargill to provide the lead grant for turning the old World Theater into the Fitzgerald.

Garland West was a colleague for 17 years — he was our director of public relations. He recently wrote a book in retirement: Appalachian Hymnal. I think you’d like it. It’s stories about plain folk in simple circumstances, most quasi-autobiographical and some tarted up a bit.

Thanks for all the years of music, drama, storytelling, and general fun. We still follow A Writer’s Almanac and your newsletter.

Jim

I’m going to look up that book, sir, and meanwhile, my profound thanks for Cargill’s support, without which the show would’ve failed and I’d’ve become an unhappy parking lot attendant. Sally Pope and Bill Kling did some sort of job selling Cargill on the show. I ran into Whitney MacMillan, the president of Cargill, a few times, and wasn’t sure if I should walk up and say thank you or not. I thought he might take one look at me and wonder why he was financing a guy who wears red shoes with a seersucker jacket.

GK

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Mr. Keillor,

I’m exactly 274 pages into That Time of Year, which I’ve been reading on my couch as the cicadas (finally) moan and fizz outside the windows.

I’m 37 and it feels like my writing life is finally learning to stand and take a step or two. I owe some of that to you. I can’t lie though, I struggle with being mad at you, with wondering if I’m betraying my feminist ideas and beliefs by continuing on with your work. I don’t know the truth of it all and I’m sure I never will. I usually end up settling on the complexity of human thoughts, interactions, and emotions, and living with the flawed nature of us all as my partner while I consume art from people who’ve made mistakes (some without hashtags or articles about them).

Your work means a lot to me and not enough people talk about the opening to Pontoon, the sound of the angel’s hair like dry seed pods. I love that part. I wrote a comic book story I’d love to share with you, it’s just one page and it’s called “In On It,” a quick tale of two friends meeting. That’s not the only reason I wrote, it just occurred to me. It’s on my website.

Thank you for reading this and for the stories, even the ones about your own failures. Maybe especially those.

Stories will save us.

Austin Wilson

Good to hear from you, Austin, and I think I’ve found your website and will look at that story when I have the chance. As for your feminist ideas and beliefs, they’re living things, not badges, and they change with experience, that’s a beautiful thing about life. The shakedown in 2017 that you’re referring to is a very interesting story and to me, the fascinating thing about it is that what once seemed a disaster now feels like an enormous gift. Meanwhile, I wish you great success with the writing. My writing found its feet when I was 42. A large moment when you find your readers and talk to them.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

As a longtime admirer of your work and, like yourself, recently retired (from a lifelong career in bookselling), I note that you would like to find a good novelist — can I suggest that you read some of Ken Follett’s prodigious writings, which I certainly found most entertaining, spellbinding, real page-turners. Follett is English and around our age range (I’m 81) and is probably best known for his bestseller Eye of the Needle. If you have not done so already, I would start with the following novels, one a trilogy about Britain and Europe during the two World Wars, followed by a quadrella about the Middle Ages, which if these had been around when I was at high school in Melbourne in the 1950s would have made history so much more entertaining!

The Century Trilogy: 1. Fall of Giants (2010), 2. Winter of the World (2012), 3. Edge of Eternity (2014), The Kingsbridge Series: 1. The Evening and the Morning (2020), The Pillars of the Earth (1989), 3. World Without End (2007), 4. A Column of Fire (2017) — you should start with the first in this series, even though not published until 2020.

Best wishes and regards,

Will Muskens

Re: The disarray situation … my father was a CPA, and his desk was always piled high with folders and files and people sometimes commented on it. He posted a small sign: “IF A CLUTTERED DESK IS A SIGN OF A CLUTTERED MIND, I HATE TO THINK WHAT AN EMPTY DESK IS A SIGN OF.” 

For me, creative people are rarely exceptionally tidy. Do you suppose Van Gogh lined up his paint tubes in order? 

Bobbie Guillory

My wife is sitting across the room, reading a book, and I’m sitting at a table strewn with papers, but one of these days, perhaps when she goes to Florida to visit family, I plan to go through this apartment and put my books in order and clean out the unnecessaries, including the piles of rough drafts of stuff I well know I’ll never finish, and when I accomplish this miracle, I think it’ll stimulate the brain, maybe mightily. That’s the plan.

GK

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Mr. Keillor,

While you have certainly demonstrated you are more than capable of defending your perspective on the many issues your readers address to you, I want to offer this public service announcement to those who write to you to take issue with your political leanings:

PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT GARRISON IS AN UNREPENTANT DEMOCRAT!

There is nothing redemptive or even interesting when you unload your partisan indoctrinations on this aging curmudgeon who lives among and seems to enjoy the progressive elitism of New York City and the sanguine liberalism of Minnesota’s finest. Just in case you don’t know this, Mr. Keillor confessed his political orientation in 2004 in the few plain thoughts he offered in a book he entitled Homegrown Democrat.

As a recovering Unitarian Universalist with libertarian penchants, it is sad for me to read posts sent to you dripping with indictments about your perceived socialist or communist beliefs and harangues about your political dispositions. Geez, after witnessing all the wackos who stormed into the Capitol this past January and the political harlots who have defended this insurrection, we would expect your readers to exhibit more respect for your misguided opinions and partisan incontinence. 

May the Polarizing Spirit of Love and Justice watch over you forever.

Brother Biff Barnwood

Jicama, Texas

An excellent letter, Brother Biff, but I am a Democrat who often repents and as for those letter-writers I am honored that they bother to read what I write. All are welcome. I only hope they won’t park a pickup on the sidewalk and threaten to blow up the house and waste the time of the police department closing down streets and evacuating the neighborhood.

GK

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Garrison:

Interesting exchange between you and Sudranski, mostly on Moses, but comments on the Psalms. The majority of the Psalms are attributed to David, 83 of 150 by the count of Eugene Peterson, but the Psalms were oral poetry, meant to be sung (easier to remember) and not written down until after David since the Hebrews didn’t have an alphabet yet.

Eugene Peterson, notable primarily for his translation of the Bible, The Message, was a remarkable Hebrew scholar and pretty good with Greek as well. In his introduction to the Psalms, he said that the Psalms are guides to how we should pray and that was a prime reason for his translation, to provide a version in more modern English, better guides for praying to many.

Bob Buntrock , Orono, ME

I have Psalms I love to read and others I try to avoid, particularly the ones that call on the Lord to destroy our enemies. It just feels strange to sit in an Episcopal church and pray for vengeance. Against whom? Loud helicopters carrying tourists over Manhattan? Men carrying boom boxes down the street? Pizza deliverymen who don’t stop for red lights?

GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

In Post to the Host Comments (week of 08.08.21), John W. Mitchell (West Slope, CO) reports being told “there’s four stages of life: youth, middle age, old age, and you’re looking good.”

A good line but … in 1960, a neighbor (Francis Perry, then Librarian for the Victoria State Parliament in Australia) told me there were five stages: youth, middle age, old age, dotage, and anecdotage.

I can attest; maybe you can too. I wish I’d asked for his anecdotes: he had helped set up library systems in Indonesia soon after independence. But he later told me about pain in his left shoulder. I lifted weights then (badly), and flippantly advised not training for a bit. Four days later, he died of a heart attack. The pain was a signal, well-known but not to me.

Not a cheery anecdote: I hope there’s a moral.

Best wishes,
Allan Stewart-Oaten

I’m in my anecdotage too. I was walking down Amsterdam Avenue a week ago and passed a crowd of people waiting to go into Central Baptist and I heard a woman cry out, “Mister Wobegon,” and stopped and I met an old Black lady waiting for Sunday night prayer meeting who said, “I saw you once on television, telling a story” and she told me the story in perfect detail, about my driving down a country road fascinated by a V of geese flying above and ahead of me and feeling so attached to them that when they veered off to the right, I steered into the ditch. I was powerfully moved by this, it was worth more than a Pulitzer Prize, a magical connection between me and an old Baptist. Magical for her too. I’ll never forget her.

GK

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Years ago, when my husband and I wintered in SW Florida, the only place we could hear NPR was on our sailboat, which was moored near our condo. I fondly remember sitting in the cockpit, wine glass in hand, listening to Prairie Home Companion.

Ann Evans, Springfield, Illinois

I’ve heard good things about that show and keep meaning to listen to one someday and somehow never have, but I can imagine how, in a sailboat, drinking a glass of wine, listening to a story about a small town in Minnesota might be pleasantly odd, and if there was harmony singing too and some blues harmonica and a jazzy soprano, it could make for a very nice two hours.

GK

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I just realized Garrison, that your mind as a writer works the same way Robin Williams’ mind worked as a comedian. Your article began with your telling us how you unsubscribed from various emails and ended by suggesting that Taliban get their eyes checked by an Afghani woman doctor! I think it took about six separate segues to go from point A to point B.

I can’t pull up a memory of any specific Robin Williams sketch, but I do remember he could begin on one topic and end up 30 miles west of there. At any rate, the point is you both have the mind of a genius who might be just a little bit nuts as well!

And one final critique is that, at least in my youth, Episcopalian women were required to have their heads covered.

I love all your work and still have a copy of your book Lake Wobegon Days with your signature that you penned especially for my dad many years ago.

Sue Olmos

It’s a useful technique for avoiding preachiness and taking yourself too seriously, you think of writing as a game of hopscotch. And it keeps the reader guessing.

GK

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Dear Garrison, 

I think you’re onto something about sports as a substitute for aggression. I see those crazed and bearded Taliban waving their Kalashnikov rifles but I wonder how different they are from my local councilmen who claim to be “good Christians.” Do they really believe in the Book of Revelations, that Jesus will come back for the final battle, and they will join the fight, then arise into heaven? Do they look forward to the End Days, i.e., nuclear war? If good Christians really believe that stuff, I will look for atheists on the next election ballot. Or maybe run myself. (Ugh.) 

Not afraid of burning in hell, and have a great day, 

Clay Blasdel, Derby NY 

There are terrifying books out now, not written by Christians necessarily, that argue that the planet will be uninhabitable in rather short order unless we change our ways and do it soon, which nobody seems to believe is possible. The Book of Revelations is not so scary as the writings of some rational scientists.

GK

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Thanks Garrison. Just spent last night and very early this morning unsubscribing from numerous causes, and thought am I the only person doing this? And there you are doing the same thing. Glad to know we 79-year-olds stick together and get it done.

Cheers!
John P.

I’ll be resubscribing to some of those causes, I’m sure. But for a while, I think I shall see what prayer might accomplish.

GK

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Dear GK,

I have enjoyed your books and currently enjoy reading your columns online. I don’t understand what I might be missing by not being a paying subscriber. The “full experience” you offer under that plan is something that I may not need. We are at a similar time in life, and it is pleasant to observe, recollect, and converse … occasionally and free of charge. You share your thoughts; I consider them and formulate mine. I wonder if reading diaries would provide a similar experience. We have a nice relationship, and it seems inappropriate to pay for it. I recognize that your books and shows are a different deal, since such things require teams to publish and produce, and like day jobs, require compensation.

Regards,
Roger Falcone, Lafayette, CA

Glad to have you here, sir, under whatever arrangement you prefer. The Back Room, for which people pay a small subscription fee, offers more extensive work, some long narrative poems, a reminiscence of my time in Denmark, some Lake Wobegon stories, a reminiscence of my experience at the Mayo Clinic, blah blah blah, and one of these days I plan to put forward a few chapters of the new novel BOOM TOWN, but you’re right, there’s an awful lot to read these days and why pay for what you don’t need.

GK

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Hi, Garrison.

I’m all over the unsubscribe link, and I don’t want to quit getting your consistently entertaining emails, but I have a problem. Here is an excerpt from Daniel Kahneman’s great book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” that sums it up:

“In an experiment that became an instant classic, the psychologist John Bargh and his collaborators asked students at New York University—most aged eighteen to twenty-two—to assemble four-word sentences from a set of five words (for example, “finds he it yellow instantly”). For one group of students, half the scrambled sentences contained words associated with the elderly, such as Florida, forgetful, bald, gray, or wrinkle. When they had completed that task, the young participants were sent out to do another experiment in an office down the hall. That short walk was what the experiment was about. The researchers unobtrusively measured the time it took people to get from one end of the corridor to the other. As Bargh had predicted, the young people who had fashioned a sentence from words with an elderly theme walked down the hallway significantly more slowly than the others.”

I’m a young 69, myself, but I often find myself walking slower after I read your essays. I fear you may be dwelling overmuch on your antiquity, and here I am trying not to think about it. Is this an insoluble conundrum?

Best,

Chris Frank

I’d never try to talk someone into reading what I write and would only say, in my defense, that I love being 79 and that’s my point and everyone is heading that way so look forward to it.

GK

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I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you in Europe but then it didn’t work out for me in the USA. I could never get all the Christian religions straight. But thanks to you I now see differences and am glad yours is a gentle faith. Besides, with age, if we’re “lucky” we discover how little we really know. Only love works. So keep loving.

Jo Ann Hansen Rasch

Well, there you are. Less is more and love is enough.

GK

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Your intellectually bereft attack on conservatives while blatantly ignoring the shameful inhumanity, corruption, and incompetence of your liberal demigods is stunning. Biden’s Afghanistan catastrophe is typical of the destruction that occurs when you so-called liberals are in charge of anything, big cities, boarder, crime control, public education, public health, etc. As a political independent I am as deeply ashamed of you Marxist/Democrats, your shear treachery and hubris as I am of Republican fecklessness, corruption, incompetence, and national betrayal.

Don

Thanks for reading, sir, and let’s pray for rain, keep the humor dry, and eat more fruit and vegetables.

GK

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You write, “We have plenty of Orthodox Jews on the Upper West Side, but they don’t come into St. Michael’s and try to make Episcopal women wear head coverings.” Unless things have changed a lot in the last 60 years, they wouldn’t have to. When I attended church in the ’60s, the Episcopalians required that women wear head coverings during services. There was a bowl in the entrance foyer with lace head coverings for women who forgot their hats (much as each Jewish place of worship has a bowl of yarmulkes at the entrance for men who forgot theirs). I am given to understand that the dictate was based on a line from Paul that runs “a woman’s hair is her glory”; hence the belief that she should cover it up in the face of the Lord.

George Patterson

You have a good memory, sir, but you haven’t been to church in a while. Some women wear hats, others don’t.

GK

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Garrison, I’ve always admired you, and think your writings are amusing and funny. However, I rarely find these new columns thought-provoking. This particular piece reminds me why most of my rambling thought essays stay squirreled away in my journal where no one will read them until I am long gone. 

I am a late baby boomer who leans left and who never gave up his guns. My dad was a marksman in WW2, and he taught his kids how to shoot and handle weapons safely. Not all of us left leaners are these fainting flowers you use as a rhetorical tool in your essays, and I am disappointed that you seem to be glorifying these atavistic nativists who believe politics is about the loudest to trample on the least (to quote from a Don Henley song). 

I fear you are walking too close to the cliff in your fascination with these right-wingers. Let me buy you a craft beer and pull you away from the edge just a little!

Jeff Spradling, Jeffersonville, KY

I do write from a particular bias, sir, which is my own narrow window on the world. My dad was a carpenter, an evangelical, who happened not to be a hunter and never owned a gun. I never owned a gun except a BB gun when I was 16. I don’t know people who own guns. I don’t think too much about right vs. left, I tend to see things in terms of stories. I write what I think, and rewrite it, and let it go, and sometimes I’m capable of utter stupidity — the recent column about Social Security — and I apologize and move on. Life is good.

GK

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Sir, I read somewhere that you don’t bother to read the newspaper anymore, which I find unbelievable. Can you clear this up?

Aaron

Sir, my wife tells me over breakfast what’s in the paper. Sometimes I glance at it too. I don’t read much of the opinion columns because it’s all become sort of predictable. I do read the obits in the Times, which does a particularly good job at it, and did an excellent one on Neal Conan, the NPR host, and is also good about artists like Nanci Griffith and John Prine. And I remember the obit of Vince Lionti, 60, violist in the Met Opera Orchestra for thirty years and conductor of the Westchester Youth Symphony who once said his greatest musical experience was conducting the symphony, 101 players, at a school for the deaf and the deaf kids sat on the stage amid the orchestra and laughed as they felt Beethovenly vibrations. I like it when people’s lives are acknowledged.

GK .