Your as always funny and accurate description of New Yorkers talking over each other resonates. I grew up in Michigan and came to New York for graduate school. I fell in love with the diversity and craziness and decided to stay. However in my work at CUNY I found it so difficult to participate in meetings because to be heard you had to break in, interrupt, be pretty rude. I learned to do that. When my sister, who had stayed in the mid-west, moved to New York some 30 years later, she watched me hail a cab and give the driver no nonsense instructions. She asked me “what happened to You?” Even now at 80 (I’m a few months ahead of you), I have to fight that learned rudeness at meetings in my beloved Episcopal church where most people seem to have inoculated themselves against
New York rudeness. Ah, but I still love New York, rudeness and all.
You are a very lucky man. You have found your life’s partner, you have found your life’s purpose and you have found your life’s place. It's funny how we find things that perfectly complement our lives. It is almost on autopilot. Our subconscious is searching in the background for that one person, that one thing and that one place for personal happiness. Yours did quite well.
As I read this, I'm sitting in a room at the Golden Nugget Hotel in Las Vegas, having just done a show at a theater and looking around, I miss New York and my wife and I think the show I did was pretty mediocre. I talked for 90 minutes and I'm thinking maybe 45 would've been better.
As a wandering Californian, I used to go through Las Vegas at least once a month. Their marquees seemed to bear the names of pretty bawdy entertainers a lot of the time. "Not Your Crowd." On the other hand, when you're appearing in the Appalachians with the Hopeful Gospel Quartet, you're among Folks Who Love You, I'm sure. Try to imagine Donald T. as an entertainer on a Prairie Home Companion show - I doubt if that audience could even sit still. They might boo, though they probably wouldn't have come prepared with rotten eggs to throw.
There's a factor in public speaking that we sometimes overlook. When things are going well, the entertainer "Plays to the Audience," and we all become a "Mutual Admiration Society!"
I was just listening to Hidden Brain on NPR. Shankar Vedantam had a guest who gave advice on how to deal emotionally with down times and waiting during COVID-19. "Keep busy. Find something to do." If entertainers have a hard time filling tour schedules with engagements, or if the casinos have trouble booking entertainers - then, even what might feel as a "mediocre" job is better for everyone present, than sitting at home and staring at the ceiling!
And, who knows? I remember, on board ship, how sometimes in the audience I'd assume I was speaking to a Liberal Democrat, only to be told that "I'm only on this ship because my spouse likes Garrison Keillor." It could be that there were a few erstwhile spouses at that Vegas gig who actually were entranced with your program!
Whatever else, you get an A+++ for having the courage to take a different sort of venue in the first place! We'll all get through this pandemic together. And maybe we'll broaden our outlooks a little along the way, as well!
Tell me that rats really don't come up out of the toilet in NYC? If you're not prevaricating, then I'm with your father, you couldn't pay me enough to live there. Somehow, I just can't imagine Michael Bloomberg, Yoko Ono, or Steven Speilberg chasing a sewer rat around the apartment with a leaf from the dining room table. Please, tell me it isn't so!
I agree with you about the uncertainty of living in NYC. I worked in Manhattan for 30+ years, lived in Brooklyn for a decade and learned during that time that a short morning's subway ride to work could turn into hours of enforced captivity, a new downstairs neighbor could make you feel like you're living inside a timpani drum when the floors and walls of your apartment reverberate in sympathy with a mega-stereo's bass beat and you end up paying for a secure parking spot nearly what you paid in rent for your first apartment. Eventually my wife and I moved north of the city to live on 2 acres of land in a rural community in the Hudson Valley. I recently retired looking forward to sitting out in the yard, enjoying a glass of wine and listening to the birds sing. We just got new next-door neighbors who've decided their property is actually a motocross course. For hours on end, they will orbit their domicile on an assortment of extremely loud vehicles (motorcycles and ATVs), whooping and hollering like fools. Out in our yard, my wife and I will stand firm, attempting to converse over the din, but ultimately we always cave, retreating to the sanctuary of our home. My advice to you is: stay in Manhattan, always take cabs (if you can afford it) and enjoy the opera.
Those who haven't spent time in New York City might think you were guilty of hyperbole. Others with some first-hand experience can see your words as accurate descriptions! Once, when I was riding a commuter train from NYC to Connecticut, I had a very similar "After you, I'm in no hurry" interaction with a genuine New Yorker. He looked at me as if I had landed from Venus or Mars!
As to the "wild life," while I was in college my Chinese friends asked me to pick up some specialty food stuffs at a grocery store in Chinatown. It was close to the Chinese New Year's celebration, so I wished the cashier "Gung Hay Fat Choy" as I turned to leave. On the stairwell, a foot-long brown rat came down the stairs as I was going up to the street. I was afraid it would bite me, but it was doing a bit of "shopping" in its own way. I glanced at the cashier, but he seemed to think nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
I'm not surprised that you're finding that some adjustment is necessary for "resident" status in "The Big Apple!" Thanks for your observations!
Garrison, you should be aware that Des Moines -- Indianola really, ten miles away -- hosts an annual summer opera festival that is the equal of any in the US. This year it celebrates its 50th anniversary season. The Des Moines Metropolitan Opera (DMMO) auditions apprentices across the US for its choruses, helping to identify the opera stars of tomorrow, and brings in first-rate professionals for lead roles. My wife and I (serious choral singers) had the opportunity to sing in the chorus in Turandot three years ago, and it was a life highlight. There is culture in the heartland without the crowds! Paul Stageberg
You folks had quite a classy experience! Our company chorus didn't quite hit that high - we got to sing in the One Hundred Voice Christmas Concert at Disneyland in Anaheim one year. I have a little trouble finding my key in the alto range on occasion. However, when I was surrounded by really good singers, it felt as if I were in an "Angel Chorus!" Quality matters! Singing with folks with really good voices was a life highlight for me, also!
I'm envious that you got to sing in Turandot! It's one of my favorite Puccini operas, and he's number one on my list to start with! Thanks for sharing this with us! I'll be singing the riddle song all afternoon!
Paul, thank you for your correctton of my snippy snotty comment about Des Moines. I was only talking about the one night we went to see Rigolleto at the Met ––– that it was better than anything we'd find in Des Moines THAT NIGHT. But of course I might be wrong.
I rather expect snippiness from an ex-Minnesotan about Iowa, as I'm an ex-Minnesotan myself. There is a superiority complex that many Minnesotans exhibit toward Iowa. I arrived here after grad school intending to return north, but decided I liked the size of Des Moines. We have many of the attributes of the Cities; just not as many of them. And way less traffic. Thanks for your response!
I look at your two Senators, a rather vacuous woman and a timid geezer, and I do feel that Senators Klobuchar and Smith of Minnesota are a good deal more distinguished.
Years ago, I wanted to treat my wife to a good Italian meal. We went to (the now defunct) Villa Roma and I ordered lasagna. I scooped about a full cup of tomato sauce off the plate I was given, and when the young waiter came back and asked how everything was, I said the lasagna seemed overwrought with tomato sauce. He said, "Well, I didn't make it!" My wife said, "Yes, but you asked..." as he huffed off. I just hope I live to be 89 so I can forego any unnecessary comments and just send a bad meal back to the chef with words like yours!
I have been a GK fan for many years; and I have no interest in suing you…for I am certain, in a future D train ride up to the ballpark, or elsewhere, you would tell us of a White woman’s elbow bump to your chest, as well.
I had a very white childhood in a rather segregated Minnesota and so interactions with Black people are inherently more interesting, but I suppose you're right. My daughter, at 24, is rather unconscious of race, and people growing up in a freely mixed society, where such things exist, will look at others as individuals and not put them in categories. Which is how we see ourselves. I don't mind if you call me a white man but I don't see myself that waynor di I see myself as a white writer. .
He knows I love him so we moved (my dream) to the mountains of New Mexico. My husband is a very patient person so as we approached semi retirement (we both continue to work somewhat) he agreed to the move but had confused New Mexico with Arizona and its 100+ temps. He could not understand why I kept talking about snow and the summer showers. But move we did to a beautiful property at the end of the road bordering a Reservation and National Forest. He had always been a city man but accepted the rural life ... bought a chain saw and now can split wood like a champ. But the city has not been drummed out of us, During the summer we don our dress clothes and drive 1.5 hr to the Santa Fe Opera. I introduced my patient partner not only to rural life but opera which I love with a passion. It was in the very same opera house where we saw Mr Keillor several years ago. Opera and Keillor and New Mexico... divine.
Your as always funny and accurate description of New Yorkers talking over each other resonates. I grew up in Michigan and came to New York for graduate school. I fell in love with the diversity and craziness and decided to stay. However in my work at CUNY I found it so difficult to participate in meetings because to be heard you had to break in, interrupt, be pretty rude. I learned to do that. When my sister, who had stayed in the mid-west, moved to New York some 30 years later, she watched me hail a cab and give the driver no nonsense instructions. She asked me “what happened to You?” Even now at 80 (I’m a few months ahead of you), I have to fight that learned rudeness at meetings in my beloved Episcopal church where most people seem to have inoculated themselves against
New York rudeness. Ah, but I still love New York, rudeness and all.
I don't consider it rudeness. It's simply forward motion, no dallying, whereas midwesterners feel a need to apologize for their presence.
You are a very lucky man. You have found your life’s partner, you have found your life’s purpose and you have found your life’s place. It's funny how we find things that perfectly complement our lives. It is almost on autopilot. Our subconscious is searching in the background for that one person, that one thing and that one place for personal happiness. Yours did quite well.
As I read this, I'm sitting in a room at the Golden Nugget Hotel in Las Vegas, having just done a show at a theater and looking around, I miss New York and my wife and I think the show I did was pretty mediocre. I talked for 90 minutes and I'm thinking maybe 45 would've been better.
Go home, kiss your wife, the show was great. They came to see you, an American Classic.
As a wandering Californian, I used to go through Las Vegas at least once a month. Their marquees seemed to bear the names of pretty bawdy entertainers a lot of the time. "Not Your Crowd." On the other hand, when you're appearing in the Appalachians with the Hopeful Gospel Quartet, you're among Folks Who Love You, I'm sure. Try to imagine Donald T. as an entertainer on a Prairie Home Companion show - I doubt if that audience could even sit still. They might boo, though they probably wouldn't have come prepared with rotten eggs to throw.
There's a factor in public speaking that we sometimes overlook. When things are going well, the entertainer "Plays to the Audience," and we all become a "Mutual Admiration Society!"
I was just listening to Hidden Brain on NPR. Shankar Vedantam had a guest who gave advice on how to deal emotionally with down times and waiting during COVID-19. "Keep busy. Find something to do." If entertainers have a hard time filling tour schedules with engagements, or if the casinos have trouble booking entertainers - then, even what might feel as a "mediocre" job is better for everyone present, than sitting at home and staring at the ceiling!
And, who knows? I remember, on board ship, how sometimes in the audience I'd assume I was speaking to a Liberal Democrat, only to be told that "I'm only on this ship because my spouse likes Garrison Keillor." It could be that there were a few erstwhile spouses at that Vegas gig who actually were entranced with your program!
Whatever else, you get an A+++ for having the courage to take a different sort of venue in the first place! We'll all get through this pandemic together. And maybe we'll broaden our outlooks a little along the way, as well!
Garrison,
Tell me that rats really don't come up out of the toilet in NYC? If you're not prevaricating, then I'm with your father, you couldn't pay me enough to live there. Somehow, I just can't imagine Michael Bloomberg, Yoko Ono, or Steven Speilberg chasing a sewer rat around the apartment with a leaf from the dining room table. Please, tell me it isn't so!
You believed it at first, enough so you asked for clarificaton, and now that makes me wonder if maybe it might be true.
I agree with you about the uncertainty of living in NYC. I worked in Manhattan for 30+ years, lived in Brooklyn for a decade and learned during that time that a short morning's subway ride to work could turn into hours of enforced captivity, a new downstairs neighbor could make you feel like you're living inside a timpani drum when the floors and walls of your apartment reverberate in sympathy with a mega-stereo's bass beat and you end up paying for a secure parking spot nearly what you paid in rent for your first apartment. Eventually my wife and I moved north of the city to live on 2 acres of land in a rural community in the Hudson Valley. I recently retired looking forward to sitting out in the yard, enjoying a glass of wine and listening to the birds sing. We just got new next-door neighbors who've decided their property is actually a motocross course. For hours on end, they will orbit their domicile on an assortment of extremely loud vehicles (motorcycles and ATVs), whooping and hollering like fools. Out in our yard, my wife and I will stand firm, attempting to converse over the din, but ultimately we always cave, retreating to the sanctuary of our home. My advice to you is: stay in Manhattan, always take cabs (if you can afford it) and enjoy the opera.
I hereby take your advice. Motorcycles are not allowed to be operated in the hallways of our building.
Those who haven't spent time in New York City might think you were guilty of hyperbole. Others with some first-hand experience can see your words as accurate descriptions! Once, when I was riding a commuter train from NYC to Connecticut, I had a very similar "After you, I'm in no hurry" interaction with a genuine New Yorker. He looked at me as if I had landed from Venus or Mars!
As to the "wild life," while I was in college my Chinese friends asked me to pick up some specialty food stuffs at a grocery store in Chinatown. It was close to the Chinese New Year's celebration, so I wished the cashier "Gung Hay Fat Choy" as I turned to leave. On the stairwell, a foot-long brown rat came down the stairs as I was going up to the street. I was afraid it would bite me, but it was doing a bit of "shopping" in its own way. I glanced at the cashier, but he seemed to think nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
I'm not surprised that you're finding that some adjustment is necessary for "resident" status in "The Big Apple!" Thanks for your observations!
There's a song with the lyrics" The things we do for love "--keep up the good work.
Nice!
Garrison, you should be aware that Des Moines -- Indianola really, ten miles away -- hosts an annual summer opera festival that is the equal of any in the US. This year it celebrates its 50th anniversary season. The Des Moines Metropolitan Opera (DMMO) auditions apprentices across the US for its choruses, helping to identify the opera stars of tomorrow, and brings in first-rate professionals for lead roles. My wife and I (serious choral singers) had the opportunity to sing in the chorus in Turandot three years ago, and it was a life highlight. There is culture in the heartland without the crowds! Paul Stageberg
You folks had quite a classy experience! Our company chorus didn't quite hit that high - we got to sing in the One Hundred Voice Christmas Concert at Disneyland in Anaheim one year. I have a little trouble finding my key in the alto range on occasion. However, when I was surrounded by really good singers, it felt as if I were in an "Angel Chorus!" Quality matters! Singing with folks with really good voices was a life highlight for me, also!
I'm envious that you got to sing in Turandot! It's one of my favorite Puccini operas, and he's number one on my list to start with! Thanks for sharing this with us! I'll be singing the riddle song all afternoon!
Paul, thank you for your correctton of my snippy snotty comment about Des Moines. I was only talking about the one night we went to see Rigolleto at the Met ––– that it was better than anything we'd find in Des Moines THAT NIGHT. But of course I might be wrong.
I rather expect snippiness from an ex-Minnesotan about Iowa, as I'm an ex-Minnesotan myself. There is a superiority complex that many Minnesotans exhibit toward Iowa. I arrived here after grad school intending to return north, but decided I liked the size of Des Moines. We have many of the attributes of the Cities; just not as many of them. And way less traffic. Thanks for your response!
I look at your two Senators, a rather vacuous woman and a timid geezer, and I do feel that Senators Klobuchar and Smith of Minnesota are a good deal more distinguished.
No disagreement here. They're an embarrassment. Perfect complements to our Governor.
Years ago, I wanted to treat my wife to a good Italian meal. We went to (the now defunct) Villa Roma and I ordered lasagna. I scooped about a full cup of tomato sauce off the plate I was given, and when the young waiter came back and asked how everything was, I said the lasagna seemed overwrought with tomato sauce. He said, "Well, I didn't make it!" My wife said, "Yes, but you asked..." as he huffed off. I just hope I live to be 89 so I can forego any unnecessary comments and just send a bad meal back to the chef with words like yours!
I have been a GK fan for many years; and I have no interest in suing you…for I am certain, in a future D train ride up to the ballpark, or elsewhere, you would tell us of a White woman’s elbow bump to your chest, as well.
Susan Peck
Nobleton, FL
I had a very white childhood in a rather segregated Minnesota and so interactions with Black people are inherently more interesting, but I suppose you're right. My daughter, at 24, is rather unconscious of race, and people growing up in a freely mixed society, where such things exist, will look at others as individuals and not put them in categories. Which is how we see ourselves. I don't mind if you call me a white man but I don't see myself that waynor di I see myself as a white writer. .
He knows I love him so we moved (my dream) to the mountains of New Mexico. My husband is a very patient person so as we approached semi retirement (we both continue to work somewhat) he agreed to the move but had confused New Mexico with Arizona and its 100+ temps. He could not understand why I kept talking about snow and the summer showers. But move we did to a beautiful property at the end of the road bordering a Reservation and National Forest. He had always been a city man but accepted the rural life ... bought a chain saw and now can split wood like a champ. But the city has not been drummed out of us, During the summer we don our dress clothes and drive 1.5 hr to the Santa Fe Opera. I introduced my patient partner not only to rural life but opera which I love with a passion. It was in the very same opera house where we saw Mr Keillor several years ago. Opera and Keillor and New Mexico... divine.
I remember thatt opera house. The roof was open to the sky, as I recall. I hope to get a chance to sit in the audience someday.
yes the Santa Fe Opera house is a magical place ....open air with a view of the mountains