Psalm 90:10 “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away.”
I was a relatively young man when I first heard your show back in 1985, Mr. Keillor. I had just arrived in Sacramento, California to attend law school. One of my housemates insisted that he just had to listen to a certain radio show.
When he turned on the show I thought, "This is rather odd. Here's some guy talking in a mellifluous baritone telling strange stories about odd and eccentric people..."
I was hooked like black bass who swallowed the worm, hook, line and sinker. Each Saturday I waited with anticipation for six p.m. This guy always, and I mean always, without fail had the most interesting, insightful things to say. And he had musical guests on who, outside of the Grand Old Opry, one would never hear anywhere else.
And best of all was the final, "News from Lake Wobegon." A place that, "...time forgot and the decades can not improve..." Somewhere out there on "...the edge of the prairie." Where ever that might be.
It was certianly one of the most intelligent, creative shows on radio. And it has been and will be dearly missed by many including me.
Now I just wish I could remember that guys name...? Carson Wieller or something? Something about walleye? And a private detective named...Guy Noir or something?
And the taciturn, grumpy men who spent the long Minnesota winter in an ice-fishing shack taking turns drinking from a bottle of schnapps. Or was it Kentucky whiskey?
Now I'm an old man and my days are numbered. But in my mind I can still "...hear that old piano from down the avenue, I smell the onions, I look around for you..." Of course it didn't hurt that I was usually two(out of three) sheets to the wind when the show came on. What could I do?! The Unknown Norwegian was sitting across the kitchen table from me refilling my empty glass and insisting I "have another" for old times... "don't ya' know?"
If the "Unknown Norwegian" is sittin' across from you, then why don't you ask him who he is so he can become the "Known Norwegian!" Idiot!
Mr. Keillor is perhaps thinking, "Why is this guy always harking back to PHC?! " That was then. This is now. We're not going to "Make America Great Again" by wallowing in lugubrious and lachrymose nostalgia, are we?
Wasn't he the protagonist in Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow." I read that book in highschool (when I should have been studying algebra) and then I read it again a few years ago as (presumably) an adult. Never understood a bit of it. Something about launching V2 rockets on London from north Germany. Wasn't that Werner Von Braun's thing? And then he was hired by NASA to launch rockets at the moon. Pretty creepy if you ask me... So our Apollo program was headed by a Nazi? Now THAT is creepy.
Hello Thomas, I was probably an even younger man when in 1983 or 1985, I lean for the latter, I heard for the first time GK on a shortwave radio tuned to the BBC whilst one holiday in Corsica. It was some sort of revelation.
I am a youthful sixty-nine and when I was young and foolish my friends and I would have as few beers and then swim in the Niagara River where the flow was a bit too strong. Now I am risk adverse and I float around under the trees in my sister’s aqua blue pool with a glass of lemonade in the summer. I love life too, for so many reasons and “I’m not afraid to die…”, as Woody Allen so aptly put it, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Thank God we don't have subways here in which someone can be shoved. Of course, someone can be shoved in front of our billion dollar transit and get the same effect. We burned our streetcars up here in this Capitol City to provide buses to provide more street cars. What a world! There's another transit link in the SW metro here where the costs could be worse. It seems as if the transit there is a big circle which self-destructs at the start as it approachers the end. One thinks Alice in Wonderland is the Contractor. It's zillions now, but we're told somehow we're all going to pay for it. What a world! It's too bad we don't have the hilly transit like San Francisco where their street cars are just fine and they can take you to Ghiradelli, the finest chocolate there is anywhere and, dare I say, it outsells the the drugs right there.
What a wonderful column, and one that I needed today! I did exactly the opposite: I moved from my lifelong hometown of beautiful Chicago, Illinois to Door County, Wisconsin to please my Milwaukee-born husband (!) It IS beautiful here, but my life has gone downhill in the 17 years I've lived here, marking the move as one of my worst decisions. Nevertheless, I've struggled to fit in and attempt to make lemonade. Thankfully, I have found a lot of fulfilling work in my gazillions of hours of volunteering here - but every day I miss my City by the Inland Sea. I know I probably wouldn't recognise it anymore, but my memories are sweet and you've reminded me of the many facets of city-life that I miss the most.
Door County is a pretty short drive from Chicago. You could visit often with relative ease, maybe even a train or bus if you are missing the EL or CTA. You said your life has gone downhill in the 17 years in Door County, but while you were in Door County, Chicago has also gone downhill, as have many other cities in Illinois and everywhere else in the country. It makes me very sad to see the degradation and dangers of the cities, towns and villages in the USA - largely due to drugs and crime, greed and sloth, I reckon. Who knows.... I wish somebody would tell us why people living in the most wonderful sociopolitical experiment and marvelous natural environment choose to get drugged out, porned out or become vicious predators.
Today the US House voted for their latest fascist despot and for reasons as mysterious to me as the behaviors described above, that loathesome crowd and their mobster crime boss seem to rule the country. How is that possible? Why is it happening?
The questions and mysteries make Garrisons's trips on the subway seem like quaint and fairy-tale musings. Maybe that helps navigate not just the streets of NYC but the narrow path around the abyss that seems ever-widening to swallow us all up, no matter our age, geography, or religion - or none. Time to just gather the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.... not the season for rhubarb pie, but maybe biscuits would do the trick for the Dark Moods!
Curious about Garrison's noted - or anyone's - retreats and returns to Christianity; some elaboration would be interesting. Seeing the woman who spent recent years traveling the country as part of the vaudeville troupe performing with the goal of overthrowing our government in the name of crime, greed, lies and con-artistry, standing in the Georgia court of the brave and smart D.A. Fani Willis, shedding tears (crocodile-trained) and declaring that she, Jenna, is a Christian kind of calls into question the meaning of that word.
Now, today we have yet another demagogue, this one named Johnson from Louisiana, who is also suiting up as a "Christian" all about his faith. And because he and his like-minded/like-mindless cult apparently hold all the power in our country, now we must all bow and scrape to HIS faith, which happens to be a variety that has not shown one bit of care for actual children, in fact, quite the opposite in their costumed marches under their false flag claims to be representing God as they've gone through eons of history and over all of the globe doing horrendous, evil harm to millions of children. No, they don't care about children, but they do love the embryos - as long as they can force women to be the vessels for the embryos because their disregard for actual children is only exceeded by their disdain and hatred for real women, except for women as vessels.
As that "Christian" Johnson and his vile ilk declare their plans to eradicate Social Security and Medicare, he tells his tales of his "father the firefighter" and his "faith" while plotting to get old people on the ice floes (quick! before the ice disappears!) as fast as possible. Children as objects. Women as vessels. Old people as burdens (Garrison seems to share that notion when he talks about the generalized/stereotyped old people.) Embryos as objects of worship, as long as they are in utero and "the uteros" are in bondage to the fascist likes of this Johnson, his crime boss, and their whole apparently successful transformation of our nation into a fascist crime state to the benefit of an extremely wealthy and utterly amoral upper tier of corrupt criminals, quite a number of whom - as Garrison noted - live in the upper reaches of the Manhattan skyscrapers, believing themselves to be above it all.
I'm old enough to remember when the American working class was paid a living wage; not a paltry, wage-slave $7.25 hour. Perhaps that is what so many are in despair and turn to mind-numbing drugs and tranquilizers.
America is far from the most "wonderful sociopolitical experiment..." Most European countries have surpassed us in caring for their citizens. Many countries in South East Asia provide far more equitable and humane environments in which to live (once the U.S. stopped meddling with her overseas wars in that part of the world to enrich her military-industrial complex).
The American working class has done the bidding of their capitalist master since the end of WWII. For providing this service they were reasonably well provide for from 1945 until 1980. Since Reagan's administration the working class has been increasingly hung out to dry.
As Emma Goldman, the early 20th century anarchist said: "You can have socialism or you will have barbarism." We know which one we got.
"What fools these mortals be" grossly understates the problem. We are confronted with a predatory capitalist criminal class and their political lackeys and minions who want to see the working class dead.
The capitalists in America have always hated the working class since the second industrial Revolution got going in the 1870s. The workers were viewed as a impediment to their wealth. Reference the works of the original "Progressives" of that era like Edith Tarbell and Sinclair Lewis' novel, "The Jungle."
So long as Americans accepted the vast inequality and injustice of a capitalist economic system that enriches a few at the expense of the many. there will always be a desperate underclass. Why can't Americans understand this and instead keep buying into a system that, as the late George Carlin said, "threw them overboard thirty[now forty] f**** years ago." (Sorry about the profanity. One can't quote Carlin without at least some profanity.)
"There’s plenty of reason for anxiety but think back to the Romans and the B.C. era and imagine how they felt with the year numbers declining annually"
This must be one of your best lines ever. Still recovering from laughing so hard.
Thanks Garrison for still being GK after so many years, shows, and bumps in the road - and now even in this enhanced, extra charming, deeply cheerful 2023 version!
Sure have to go to a lot of trouble just to send one dumb comment, which is that I was happy to see that I am not the only senior who doesn't catch on to checking her own groceries. I don't try very hard, either. Just stand there wailing "I don't get it."
The world is an odd place. We get to watch unscrupulous attorneys finally speak against their leader after pledging loyalty, then we watch grown men fuss and fight over who is best suited to represent them. And then GK appears on our screens. And we’re suddenly in a safe and warm place again. We’re younger, hopeful, able to laugh and sing. GK, you and Dylan have given us shelter from the storm.
When I was little and went to Sunday School, we sang a song about "Brighten the Corner Where You Are." That's been my mantra for the last 85 years. Seems to me that's a big part of what you're telling us, Mr. K. It's a message we all need; it's what keeps me sane. Thanks, and keep on Brightening!
I’ve always considered you a storyteller in the mould of Twain, whom I also do not consider a journalist. But, I now see that journalists are busy making up stories, too...
It is pure joy to be in the company of my childrens' friends. I'm enjoying a second cup of coffee with my wife. The sun has pierced rain clouds. Be kind. The world's grace endures after all.
Psalm 90:10 “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away.”
Have a blessed day.
I was a relatively young man when I first heard your show back in 1985, Mr. Keillor. I had just arrived in Sacramento, California to attend law school. One of my housemates insisted that he just had to listen to a certain radio show.
When he turned on the show I thought, "This is rather odd. Here's some guy talking in a mellifluous baritone telling strange stories about odd and eccentric people..."
I was hooked like black bass who swallowed the worm, hook, line and sinker. Each Saturday I waited with anticipation for six p.m. This guy always, and I mean always, without fail had the most interesting, insightful things to say. And he had musical guests on who, outside of the Grand Old Opry, one would never hear anywhere else.
And best of all was the final, "News from Lake Wobegon." A place that, "...time forgot and the decades can not improve..." Somewhere out there on "...the edge of the prairie." Where ever that might be.
It was certianly one of the most intelligent, creative shows on radio. And it has been and will be dearly missed by many including me.
Now I just wish I could remember that guys name...? Carson Wieller or something? Something about walleye? And a private detective named...Guy Noir or something?
And the taciturn, grumpy men who spent the long Minnesota winter in an ice-fishing shack taking turns drinking from a bottle of schnapps. Or was it Kentucky whiskey?
Now I'm an old man and my days are numbered. But in my mind I can still "...hear that old piano from down the avenue, I smell the onions, I look around for you..." Of course it didn't hurt that I was usually two(out of three) sheets to the wind when the show came on. What could I do?! The Unknown Norwegian was sitting across the kitchen table from me refilling my empty glass and insisting I "have another" for old times... "don't ya' know?"
Hello! Knock knock. Anybody home?
If the "Unknown Norwegian" is sittin' across from you, then why don't you ask him who he is so he can become the "Known Norwegian!" Idiot!
Mr. Keillor is perhaps thinking, "Why is this guy always harking back to PHC?! " That was then. This is now. We're not going to "Make America Great Again" by wallowing in lugubrious and lachrymose nostalgia, are we?
"Tyrone Slothrope"?! (Gave me a "like".)
Wasn't he the protagonist in Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow." I read that book in highschool (when I should have been studying algebra) and then I read it again a few years ago as (presumably) an adult. Never understood a bit of it. Something about launching V2 rockets on London from north Germany. Wasn't that Werner Von Braun's thing? And then he was hired by NASA to launch rockets at the moon. Pretty creepy if you ask me... So our Apollo program was headed by a Nazi? Now THAT is creepy.
Hello Thomas, I was probably an even younger man when in 1983 or 1985, I lean for the latter, I heard for the first time GK on a shortwave radio tuned to the BBC whilst one holiday in Corsica. It was some sort of revelation.
I am a youthful sixty-nine and when I was young and foolish my friends and I would have as few beers and then swim in the Niagara River where the flow was a bit too strong. Now I am risk adverse and I float around under the trees in my sister’s aqua blue pool with a glass of lemonade in the summer. I love life too, for so many reasons and “I’m not afraid to die…”, as Woody Allen so aptly put it, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Tis from the platform that ye enter. And its from the platform ye'll take your bow, loose your head, or be shoved onto the tracks.
Regardless, if you don't enter that train with its various colors the rewards of those changing leaves in the landscape will never be yours.
Keep traveling, Garrison.
Thank God we don't have subways here in which someone can be shoved. Of course, someone can be shoved in front of our billion dollar transit and get the same effect. We burned our streetcars up here in this Capitol City to provide buses to provide more street cars. What a world! There's another transit link in the SW metro here where the costs could be worse. It seems as if the transit there is a big circle which self-destructs at the start as it approachers the end. One thinks Alice in Wonderland is the Contractor. It's zillions now, but we're told somehow we're all going to pay for it. What a world! It's too bad we don't have the hilly transit like San Francisco where their street cars are just fine and they can take you to Ghiradelli, the finest chocolate there is anywhere and, dare I say, it outsells the the drugs right there.
"Help others and pray harder" our Jesuit retreat-master told us. Why not? It's the best we have....
What a wonderful column, and one that I needed today! I did exactly the opposite: I moved from my lifelong hometown of beautiful Chicago, Illinois to Door County, Wisconsin to please my Milwaukee-born husband (!) It IS beautiful here, but my life has gone downhill in the 17 years I've lived here, marking the move as one of my worst decisions. Nevertheless, I've struggled to fit in and attempt to make lemonade. Thankfully, I have found a lot of fulfilling work in my gazillions of hours of volunteering here - but every day I miss my City by the Inland Sea. I know I probably wouldn't recognise it anymore, but my memories are sweet and you've reminded me of the many facets of city-life that I miss the most.
Door County is a pretty short drive from Chicago. You could visit often with relative ease, maybe even a train or bus if you are missing the EL or CTA. You said your life has gone downhill in the 17 years in Door County, but while you were in Door County, Chicago has also gone downhill, as have many other cities in Illinois and everywhere else in the country. It makes me very sad to see the degradation and dangers of the cities, towns and villages in the USA - largely due to drugs and crime, greed and sloth, I reckon. Who knows.... I wish somebody would tell us why people living in the most wonderful sociopolitical experiment and marvelous natural environment choose to get drugged out, porned out or become vicious predators.
Today the US House voted for their latest fascist despot and for reasons as mysterious to me as the behaviors described above, that loathesome crowd and their mobster crime boss seem to rule the country. How is that possible? Why is it happening?
The questions and mysteries make Garrisons's trips on the subway seem like quaint and fairy-tale musings. Maybe that helps navigate not just the streets of NYC but the narrow path around the abyss that seems ever-widening to swallow us all up, no matter our age, geography, or religion - or none. Time to just gather the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.... not the season for rhubarb pie, but maybe biscuits would do the trick for the Dark Moods!
Curious about Garrison's noted - or anyone's - retreats and returns to Christianity; some elaboration would be interesting. Seeing the woman who spent recent years traveling the country as part of the vaudeville troupe performing with the goal of overthrowing our government in the name of crime, greed, lies and con-artistry, standing in the Georgia court of the brave and smart D.A. Fani Willis, shedding tears (crocodile-trained) and declaring that she, Jenna, is a Christian kind of calls into question the meaning of that word.
Now, today we have yet another demagogue, this one named Johnson from Louisiana, who is also suiting up as a "Christian" all about his faith. And because he and his like-minded/like-mindless cult apparently hold all the power in our country, now we must all bow and scrape to HIS faith, which happens to be a variety that has not shown one bit of care for actual children, in fact, quite the opposite in their costumed marches under their false flag claims to be representing God as they've gone through eons of history and over all of the globe doing horrendous, evil harm to millions of children. No, they don't care about children, but they do love the embryos - as long as they can force women to be the vessels for the embryos because their disregard for actual children is only exceeded by their disdain and hatred for real women, except for women as vessels.
As that "Christian" Johnson and his vile ilk declare their plans to eradicate Social Security and Medicare, he tells his tales of his "father the firefighter" and his "faith" while plotting to get old people on the ice floes (quick! before the ice disappears!) as fast as possible. Children as objects. Women as vessels. Old people as burdens (Garrison seems to share that notion when he talks about the generalized/stereotyped old people.) Embryos as objects of worship, as long as they are in utero and "the uteros" are in bondage to the fascist likes of this Johnson, his crime boss, and their whole apparently successful transformation of our nation into a fascist crime state to the benefit of an extremely wealthy and utterly amoral upper tier of corrupt criminals, quite a number of whom - as Garrison noted - live in the upper reaches of the Manhattan skyscrapers, believing themselves to be above it all.
What fools these mortals be....
I'm old enough to remember when the American working class was paid a living wage; not a paltry, wage-slave $7.25 hour. Perhaps that is what so many are in despair and turn to mind-numbing drugs and tranquilizers.
America is far from the most "wonderful sociopolitical experiment..." Most European countries have surpassed us in caring for their citizens. Many countries in South East Asia provide far more equitable and humane environments in which to live (once the U.S. stopped meddling with her overseas wars in that part of the world to enrich her military-industrial complex).
The American working class has done the bidding of their capitalist master since the end of WWII. For providing this service they were reasonably well provide for from 1945 until 1980. Since Reagan's administration the working class has been increasingly hung out to dry.
As Emma Goldman, the early 20th century anarchist said: "You can have socialism or you will have barbarism." We know which one we got.
"What fools these mortals be" grossly understates the problem. We are confronted with a predatory capitalist criminal class and their political lackeys and minions who want to see the working class dead.
The capitalists in America have always hated the working class since the second industrial Revolution got going in the 1870s. The workers were viewed as a impediment to their wealth. Reference the works of the original "Progressives" of that era like Edith Tarbell and Sinclair Lewis' novel, "The Jungle."
So long as Americans accepted the vast inequality and injustice of a capitalist economic system that enriches a few at the expense of the many. there will always be a desperate underclass. Why can't Americans understand this and instead keep buying into a system that, as the late George Carlin said, "threw them overboard thirty[now forty] f**** years ago." (Sorry about the profanity. One can't quote Carlin without at least some profanity.)
"There’s plenty of reason for anxiety but think back to the Romans and the B.C. era and imagine how they felt with the year numbers declining annually"
This must be one of your best lines ever. Still recovering from laughing so hard.
Thanks Garrison for still being GK after so many years, shows, and bumps in the road - and now even in this enhanced, extra charming, deeply cheerful 2023 version!
Stand clear of the closing doors, please!
Mind the Gap!
Garrison, I'm sure you know the Romans weren't counting down to 0. Just jokin' with us. They were counting up to 753 from the founding of Rome.
Yes, I do.
Sure have to go to a lot of trouble just to send one dumb comment, which is that I was happy to see that I am not the only senior who doesn't catch on to checking her own groceries. I don't try very hard, either. Just stand there wailing "I don't get it."
The world is an odd place. We get to watch unscrupulous attorneys finally speak against their leader after pledging loyalty, then we watch grown men fuss and fight over who is best suited to represent them. And then GK appears on our screens. And we’re suddenly in a safe and warm place again. We’re younger, hopeful, able to laugh and sing. GK, you and Dylan have given us shelter from the storm.
When I was little and went to Sunday School, we sang a song about "Brighten the Corner Where You Are." That's been my mantra for the last 85 years. Seems to me that's a big part of what you're telling us, Mr. K. It's a message we all need; it's what keeps me sane. Thanks, and keep on Brightening!
I’ve always considered you a storyteller in the mould of Twain, whom I also do not consider a journalist. But, I now see that journalists are busy making up stories, too...
It is pure joy to be in the company of my childrens' friends. I'm enjoying a second cup of coffee with my wife. The sun has pierced rain clouds. Be kind. The world's grace endures after all.
We had our first and last visit to the big cityon September 29th. Reminded me of a ant hill. Some thing for everyone, just not me.