Happy Thanksgiving Garrison. Most of us survived his first four years and I imagine most of us will survive the next four. Let’s keep our eyes and hearts open and stand up for those who might need our help. And let’s try so hard to be kind to everyone regardless of who they voted for. Only that will make America great again. If we believe that “God is Love”, then we must know that Love will prevail.
Well, you are assuming that Vance will take over in four years rather than after the subsequent four or eight that his criminal master holds court with the enablement of the court jesters, once upon a time called the Congress of the United States of America. King Mobster Don has landed on the biggest con-game that even his foul mind could ever have imagined and he is not going to let it out of his filthy hands easily. Once he has completed the already-in-progress overthrow of our government and filled his coffers so full that they can hold no more and he has sold all of the tacky trinkets the marks and gullibles can buy and he is not only old, as he is now, but also feeble, and not just morally feeble which he already is, but so feeble that he can't rise up, bloody in the ear-edge, from the embrace of the Secret Service to shout "fight-fight-fight" - when what he really meant had something to do with fellow rapist and felon Mike Tyson and some other barbaric, brutal primitive display and maybe "Don King" who once managed crooked fights.....
And so goes the past, aka the history, of the country, the present, so sordid and tainted and lewd and loud under King Don, and the future, for which there is little to hope for beyond the development of little tribes in little locales trying to hide from the violence and hatred - and, for some, counting their money and eating their cranberries and singing a tune about loving their wife.
Sigh.....
What helps with THIS Thanksgiving is not balderdash and self-appreciation, but the remembrance of the first Thanksgiving when unimaginable hardship was the norm and so few immigrants from their homelands in Europe survived the vouage and even fewer survived the first months in the New World..... what awesome "stuff" they were made of.
I agree with you. I'm only saying that the predictable scenario that will play out (to me, at least) is that Vance is the heir apparent in 2028, if not sooner, and he will have an even greater support base than Trump. It's a dystopian nightmare, but one that we may need to consider as likely to happen.
Happy Thanksgiving, Garrison. Thank you for my daily warm hug, my daily smile. I grew up on the busy east coast, but with parents who were raised in Michigan. So I had a grounded childhood. We were a family who ate heavy, German sausage laden stuffing and canned cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving. Sweet potato and apple casserole, covered in mini marshmallows. Now I am back in the Midwest, and have raised my own kids here. I thank God for that opportunity.
Can we be anything but Happy on such a day? Those times one can get beyond their own ignorance are inevitably flushed with a tart embarassment and bold flavor of the cranberry. From such bogs and swamps come laughter and thanksgiving.
Thank you for writing this. Yes, other people's toddlers are awesome. So were my own, back in the day, but as a parent I had the unpleasant job of occasionally reining in their exuberance. With the ones who belong to other parents, I can sit back and enjoy their antics without feeling the need to apologize for all the noise and mayhem. Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. Keillor.
Wonderful column today. Thank you Garrison, in case you’re reading this. Just what I needed, on a day I’m feeling stressed. Suddenly I’m coping with high blood pressure. Not in my plan! We met years ago (1982?) when the prairie home companion came to lisner auditorium, and the seldom scene was the musical guest. I played guitar in the band then. I also wrote songs the band did. Muddy water is the best known. I enjoy your writing and thoughts. Makes me wish I could still write songs (a stroke 15 years ago wiped out a portion of my brain, including a lot of vocabulary - though most has come back.. That’s my excuse anyway.) Happy thanksgiving to you.
Thank you for this heart felt article. It helped me to remind myself of the good things in life and to appreciate them and not just dwell on all the doom and gloom that seems to flood through our minds sometimes. Enjoy your bland turkey and delicious cranberries and your happy life and family and friends.
We are all grateful for you as well. In your inimitable style, your column is something of a Norman Rockwell with an offering of lined cranberry sauce as the cynosure.
I noticed you are thankful for sunsets, but no mention of 🌅 sunrises! However, I do understand the effort involved. I have had the good intention (a paver on the road to Hell) of seeing one for years.
Thank you Garrison, for continuing to humanize this disturbing point in world history, with a (last-for-a while) Thanks...giving, to us appreciation for a turkey almost under $50 and some proper cranberries to take the favor forward.
Thankfully no one in my immediate family supported the cult leader. I fear for democracy and our country. The list of criminals and incompetents is scary.
I am a transplant from GA to WA state, been here 20 years. Oddly enough there is a huge number of Cult members here. People in America don't know whats really going on and believe lies as truth and truth as lies, I dont get how a reasonably educated population with a free press can be this stupid.
Anyway, on to more pleasant memories. My Dad as a school bus driver in Clayton County GA ( the county now a corrupt criminal enterprise) told a story of an older bus driver in the 50s who had a brake failure and getting the bus stopped was pulling back on the steering wheel yelling WHOA! The kids told on him. Another driver had the kids yell Mr. Elliot there is a woman without a dress on......he ran off the road looking......she was wearing pants.
On thanksgiving, our family would have thanksgiving on the Sunday after at my maternal grandmothers house. My mother's brother and sister and all my cousins would be there. My grandfather, born in 1895 and a WWI veteran was an excellent orator and would have a blessing as long as a sermon. As a hungry young boy, I would sneak a biscuit to tide me over. My mother was never one for Turkey and always had chicken for holidays. For every day life, my grandmother always had a roast beef in the fridge. Today I have a picture of my grandfather on my mantle taken in 1917 in south GA in his uniform beside a car of some kind in knee deep water. He loved his cars and worked for Ford as an administrator.
Today I am 64 and reflect on all my grandparents who were all born in the 1800s. I have a picture of my grandparents on my refrigerator at 64. They were such old people. 15 years ago I was flying army helicopters with Vietnam veterans who were in their 60s. In February I hope to be back on flight status with a military contractor as a helicopter pilot. I also belong to a large Seattle outdoors group where people in their 70s and sometimes 80s are skiing all winter. I guess this generation refuses to allow the old person in.
When I saw you do a 3 hour show in Nashville 3 years ago at the Ryman, i thought you are my hero.
Happy Thanksgiving Garrison. Most of us survived his first four years and I imagine most of us will survive the next four. Let’s keep our eyes and hearts open and stand up for those who might need our help. And let’s try so hard to be kind to everyone regardless of who they voted for. Only that will make America great again. If we believe that “God is Love”, then we must know that Love will prevail.
Problem is, it's sure to be another eight years, not four, with Vance taking control when he truly is too demented to find his way to the oval office.
Well, you are assuming that Vance will take over in four years rather than after the subsequent four or eight that his criminal master holds court with the enablement of the court jesters, once upon a time called the Congress of the United States of America. King Mobster Don has landed on the biggest con-game that even his foul mind could ever have imagined and he is not going to let it out of his filthy hands easily. Once he has completed the already-in-progress overthrow of our government and filled his coffers so full that they can hold no more and he has sold all of the tacky trinkets the marks and gullibles can buy and he is not only old, as he is now, but also feeble, and not just morally feeble which he already is, but so feeble that he can't rise up, bloody in the ear-edge, from the embrace of the Secret Service to shout "fight-fight-fight" - when what he really meant had something to do with fellow rapist and felon Mike Tyson and some other barbaric, brutal primitive display and maybe "Don King" who once managed crooked fights.....
And so goes the past, aka the history, of the country, the present, so sordid and tainted and lewd and loud under King Don, and the future, for which there is little to hope for beyond the development of little tribes in little locales trying to hide from the violence and hatred - and, for some, counting their money and eating their cranberries and singing a tune about loving their wife.
Sigh.....
What helps with THIS Thanksgiving is not balderdash and self-appreciation, but the remembrance of the first Thanksgiving when unimaginable hardship was the norm and so few immigrants from their homelands in Europe survived the vouage and even fewer survived the first months in the New World..... what awesome "stuff" they were made of.
What are WE made of now? What have "we" done.
I agree with you. I'm only saying that the predictable scenario that will play out (to me, at least) is that Vance is the heir apparent in 2028, if not sooner, and he will have an even greater support base than Trump. It's a dystopian nightmare, but one that we may need to consider as likely to happen.
Happy Thanksgiving, Garrison. Thank you for my daily warm hug, my daily smile. I grew up on the busy east coast, but with parents who were raised in Michigan. So I had a grounded childhood. We were a family who ate heavy, German sausage laden stuffing and canned cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving. Sweet potato and apple casserole, covered in mini marshmallows. Now I am back in the Midwest, and have raised my own kids here. I thank God for that opportunity.
Can we be anything but Happy on such a day? Those times one can get beyond their own ignorance are inevitably flushed with a tart embarassment and bold flavor of the cranberry. From such bogs and swamps come laughter and thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is a day that reminds one to look up from their life and simply savor.
I am thankful for you and you should be thankful that you ARE gifted…directly from GOD…He only made one Garrison Keillor.
Thank you for writing this. Yes, other people's toddlers are awesome. So were my own, back in the day, but as a parent I had the unpleasant job of occasionally reining in their exuberance. With the ones who belong to other parents, I can sit back and enjoy their antics without feeling the need to apologize for all the noise and mayhem. Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. Keillor.
Wonderful column today. Thank you Garrison, in case you’re reading this. Just what I needed, on a day I’m feeling stressed. Suddenly I’m coping with high blood pressure. Not in my plan! We met years ago (1982?) when the prairie home companion came to lisner auditorium, and the seldom scene was the musical guest. I played guitar in the band then. I also wrote songs the band did. Muddy water is the best known. I enjoy your writing and thoughts. Makes me wish I could still write songs (a stroke 15 years ago wiped out a portion of my brain, including a lot of vocabulary - though most has come back.. That’s my excuse anyway.) Happy thanksgiving to you.
I’m sure that I met you at a NAMM show.
Thank you for this heart felt article. It helped me to remind myself of the good things in life and to appreciate them and not just dwell on all the doom and gloom that seems to flood through our minds sometimes. Enjoy your bland turkey and delicious cranberries and your happy life and family and friends.
Thank you!
Dairy Queen Heath Bar blizzards. .."to die for"!!
Did Trump go wandering off into the Amazon rainforest again, or was that a REAL dopey President…
The people who work with him say he’s fine. Try to find a book written by someone who worked with the other guy that says the same.
A real dopey president soon to be replaced by a criminal who is a dictator and who doesn’t care at all about you!
Rent free in your heads, or does Trump pay for a lease?
We are all grateful for you as well. In your inimitable style, your column is something of a Norman Rockwell with an offering of lined cranberry sauce as the cynosure.
Thank you.
I noticed you are thankful for sunsets, but no mention of 🌅 sunrises! However, I do understand the effort involved. I have had the good intention (a paver on the road to Hell) of seeing one for years.
Yer welcome.
Thank you Garrison, for continuing to humanize this disturbing point in world history, with a (last-for-a while) Thanks...giving, to us appreciation for a turkey almost under $50 and some proper cranberries to take the favor forward.
Hi Garrison,
Thankfully no one in my immediate family supported the cult leader. I fear for democracy and our country. The list of criminals and incompetents is scary.
I am a transplant from GA to WA state, been here 20 years. Oddly enough there is a huge number of Cult members here. People in America don't know whats really going on and believe lies as truth and truth as lies, I dont get how a reasonably educated population with a free press can be this stupid.
Anyway, on to more pleasant memories. My Dad as a school bus driver in Clayton County GA ( the county now a corrupt criminal enterprise) told a story of an older bus driver in the 50s who had a brake failure and getting the bus stopped was pulling back on the steering wheel yelling WHOA! The kids told on him. Another driver had the kids yell Mr. Elliot there is a woman without a dress on......he ran off the road looking......she was wearing pants.
On thanksgiving, our family would have thanksgiving on the Sunday after at my maternal grandmothers house. My mother's brother and sister and all my cousins would be there. My grandfather, born in 1895 and a WWI veteran was an excellent orator and would have a blessing as long as a sermon. As a hungry young boy, I would sneak a biscuit to tide me over. My mother was never one for Turkey and always had chicken for holidays. For every day life, my grandmother always had a roast beef in the fridge. Today I have a picture of my grandfather on my mantle taken in 1917 in south GA in his uniform beside a car of some kind in knee deep water. He loved his cars and worked for Ford as an administrator.
Today I am 64 and reflect on all my grandparents who were all born in the 1800s. I have a picture of my grandparents on my refrigerator at 64. They were such old people. 15 years ago I was flying army helicopters with Vietnam veterans who were in their 60s. In February I hope to be back on flight status with a military contractor as a helicopter pilot. I also belong to a large Seattle outdoors group where people in their 70s and sometimes 80s are skiing all winter. I guess this generation refuses to allow the old person in.
When I saw you do a 3 hour show in Nashville 3 years ago at the Ryman, i thought you are my hero.
The Hymn singing in that show was magical.