Post to the Host
Comments from the week of 04.16.23
GK,
In your recent column, you say, “If I thought ahead ten or twenty years, I could easily despair for the country, but at my age one lives in the present.” Well, dear sir, I would argue that you need to worry NOW. How can you be so self-centered? I remember once you said, “Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.” How can you not despair for our kids right now?
Belinda
“Doing” for children is different from despairing for them. The children of Manhattan despaired about the lack of snowfall this winter but now it’s spring and the cherry blossoms are out. Life is perilous, as they will find out if they haven’t already. But we need to keep creating beauty where we can and maybe plant flowers where there weren’t any. GK
Garrison,
This ongoing optimistic outlook from you lately makes me wonder if your ophthalmologist also gave you rose-colored glasses. I’m wondering if this is just your natural disposition or whether you had some sort of recent awakening. I’d like to know how I can get some of what you have.
Mark Thomas
I spend less time reading the news and more time writing limericks. I wrote one for him, in fact:
An orno-ophthalmologist Bruce Made specs for a Canada goose So the V in his view Was not a W And the poor bird Got to stay with the herd And not become a recluse. GK
GK,
Between a brain aneurysm, an exploded spleen, and all manner of arthritis well before the “standard” time, I have what my docs lovingly refer to medical PTSD and I’m always wondering which wheel is going to fall off the wagon next. I loved this week’s column, and I especially needed this line: “I haven’t been angry for years.”
I’m not quite there yet in my mid 40s, but I’m working on it.
Best,
Megan Applegate
I’m twice your age and that’s well beyond the age when anger is permissible. I’m a working writer, doing shows, married to a loving woman, and my daughter is very happy, and I have good friends, so my bum knee isn’t a major fact. A person could be angry about the authoritarian fevers in our country but it’s such a fascinating phenomenon and we’ve lived through other crises in my lifetime, several costly wars that accomplished nothing, assassinations, the civil rights struggle, and anyway the future is not mine, it belongs to the young. I’m only an observer. Take care, my dear. GK
Hello there,
I just finished reading your memoir, That Time of Year, and enjoyed it greatly. I especially liked reading it at bedtime because it was mostly very comforting. The gospel songs you mention brought back so many memories, and now I have an idea for your press — that you publish Garrison Keillor’s Songbook of Old-Timey Tunes (or whatever title you choose). Lyrics and scores, or even lyrics only would be grand. I would most surely buy a copy or five.
I figure since you’ve already published poetry collections, you have people on board who can handle the permissions, so I hope you consider this project. I’ve already purchased all the poetry collections and read Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80, and I think the only thing missing in my collection is your songbook.
Thank you for your consideration.
Respectfully,
A fellow Midwesterner and Calvinist at the core, now living a free life in Colorado.
Barbara Ittner
It’s kind of you to suggest this but all of that music is available online in all possible forms. And I have a feeling that book publishing is on the way out. Don’t you? I have a thousand books I’d like to get rid of and nobody wants them. It’s an electronic world and printing a book is now like firing up a kiln and making earthenware pots. It’s a hobby. GK
Dear Mr. Keillor,
As a writer, I was wondering what advice/guidance you could offer to the fledglings like me that can bring our work to a higher level. Do you have a few rules that you live by when you edit yourself, for example? If you have the time I’d like to know.
Be safe and be well.
Roger Wolf
Every writer is a fledgling when he or she starts a new work. The failure rate is high, discouragement is waiting in the shadows. Everything begins with a lurch and a couple stumbles. So it helps to have a passion before you begin. I just finished a book titled Cheerfulness, which began with a passionate conviction that young people need to be talked out of their sense of dread, which leads nowhere. I could easily have talked myself out of writing it — who wants to hear from an old privileged white male? — but I did it anyway. I don’t have passion for writing another novel so I won’t, but I still fiddle around with light verse. I think that “expressing yourself” is not a good enough reason to write, a writer should aim higher and try to create something useful, even indispensable. GK
Sir,
I loved PHC. I miss it a lot. I know you have many of the programs available and this is great. I have trouble navigating the site and finding segments that I would love to hear again. One is the song you sang, “I can’t stay, you know, I left so long ago, I’m just a stranger with memories of those I once knew …” The Mark Twain program you did at his home was also a favorite, which I cannot find in your library. My children gave me three CDs: GK and The Hopeful Gospel Quartet, The Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra and A Prairie Home Christmas. Are there others available? I also like the Lynn Peterson duets if they were on a CD. I really enjoy your Brownie and Pete story, and it brings back memories of my youth growing up on a farm and driving our team in the fields and at threshing bees. You did such a wonderful job with that segment. I could go on and on.
My very best to you.
Bill
No need to buy CDs, sir, most of the stuff is online somewhere. And if you want CDs, you can surely find them for pennies apiece at junk stores if you google around. Meanwhile, here are some links:
“One More Spring in Minnesota” (Click “View All Audio Clips” and go to the last entry: Closing limericks, Credits, One More Spring in Minnesota)
Lyrics of “One More Spring in Minnesota”
Editors note: There are recordings available via our little store online.
SHOP HERE
FOR TICKETS TO THESE GARRISON KEILLOR TONIGHT! EVENTS - CLICK HERE
April 27 - Lexington, MA
April 29 - Jaffrey, NH
April 30 - Peekskill, NH
Hopefully, books will follow the lead of vinyl records and someday will look around at the people and say, “hey, you all, we’re back!”
Best regards, Joe
Back in the late 80’s an unfortunate sister was hospitalized in a diabetic coma and it was time for a last-time visit back to the city I’d escaped. My family was exhausted so I stayed with her that first night after my long drive.
I’d started reading Lake Wobegon Days, so to pass the night I picked up where I’d left off. I thought she might possibly hear me so I read out loud.
It’s a hilarious book, I couldn’t stifle my laughter. After a while I noticed she occasionally stirred. Then during the section describing “Hoppy and Bob” she woke up, laughing. We chatted the rest of the night. She was bright and happy when my family returned in the morning.
On one hand they were glad to see her awake and well. On the other hand, another sister was irritated that the whole family had worn themselves out for days in a vigil, yet the “prodigal son” had simply swooped in and brought her back from the brink overnight.
But it was the book.
Thanks