Man of the North finds bliss, becomes incoherent

My family and I are at a swimming pool under the palm trees behind a pink stucco 1929 hotel in San Diego, my wife reading a memoir, my daughter swimming laps of alternate crawl and butterfly, and I am trying to think of what one can say about blissfulness other than that, for a Minnesotan brought up on the principle of “It could be worse,” blissfulness comes as a major surprise, like weightlessness. The hotel looks out on the Pacific, a beach where sea lions fraternize and waves crash on the rocks. As I ate my oatmeal on the balcony this morning, a seagull landed on the railing and cocked his eye at the raisins on the cereal so I tossed him one and he caught it. This almost never happens back on the frozen tundra where nature makes serious attempts to kill us. In paradise, it’s Live and Let Live.

My family was evangelical and believed in the imminence of the Rapture when the Lord would appear in the air and we would rise to meet Him and ascend into glory, but we were simple Midwestern people and had no clear idea of glory. It certainly didn’t resemble Anoka, Minnesota. We knew that much.

When I was a kid some relatives moved to California and sent a Christmas card with a picture of an orange tree in their backyard and we didn’t understand how they could bear to live so far from us. They visited us in June, in their pastel outfits, driving cars with enormous tail fins, Lutherans who’d become Universalists and then Theosophists and (who knows?) maybe nudists and meanwhile we endured the cold, the flatness, the oceanlessness, the angry theology, the merciless scrutiny of neighbors, and they sat in San Diego feeling wonderful. I felt contempt for them and looked on snowbirding as weakness of character and the first sign of dementia, but here I sit, under a white canopy, feeling happy.

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We Are Still Married

2020 marks the 30th anniversary of Garrison Keillor's We Are Still Married, a collection of short stories and poems. To celebrate, we'll be revisiting the book once per month in this very email newsletter and on our Facebook page. Here's how the New York Times described the book when it was released in 1989:

"The other poems, opinions, stories, letters and whatnots in this collection ponder the meaning and nuance of yard sales, sneezes, Woodlawn Cemetery, the last surviving cigarette smokers, the solo sock, the old shower stall, the perils of celebrity, being nearsighted, growing up fundamentalist and traveling with teen-age children. And in these 'ordinary things,' the grace of Garrison Keillor shines through." –New York Times Book Review

Behold, Garrison's poem "The Finn Who Would Not Take a Sauna":

THE FINN WHO WOULD NOT TAKE A SAUNA

In northeast Minnesota, what they call the Iron Range,
Where a woman is a woman and some things never change,
Where winter lasts nine months a year, there is no spring or fall,
Where it gets so cold the mercury cannot be seen at all,
And you and I, we normal folk, would shiver, shake, and chatter,
And if we used an outhouse, we would grow an extra bladder;
But even when it's coldest, when our feet would have no feeling,
Those Iron Rangers get dressed up and go out snowmobiling
Out across the frozen land and make a couple stops
At Gino's Lounge and Rudy's Bar for whiskey, beer, and schnapps—
And then they go into a shack that's filled with boiling rocks
Hot enough to sterilize an Iron Ranger's socks
And sit there till they steam out every sin and every foible
And then jump into a frozen lake and claim that it's enjoy'ble—
But there was one, a shy young man, and although he was Finnish,
The joys of winter had, for him, long started to diminish.
He was a Finn, the only Finn, who would not take a sauna.
"It isn't that I can't," he said. "I simply do not wanna.
To jump into a frozen lake is not my fondest wish.
For just because I am a Finn don't mean that I'm a fish."
His friends said, "Come on, Toivo! Let's go out to Sunfish Lake!
A Finn who don't take saunas? Why, there must be some mistake."
But Toivo said, "There's no mistake. I know that I would freeze
In water colder than myself (98.6 degrees)."
And so he stayed close by the stove for nine months of the year
Because he was so sensitive to change of temperature.

One night he went to Eveleth to attend the Miner's Ball.
(If you have not danced in Eveleth, you've never danced at all.)
And he met a Finnish beauty there who turned his head around.
She was broad of beam and when she danced, she shook the frozen ground.
She took that shy young man in hand and swept him off his feet
And bounced him up and down until he learned the polka beat.
She was fair as she was tall, as tall as she was wide,
And when the dance was over, he asked her to be his bride.
She looked him over carefully. She said, "You're kinda thin.
But you must have some courage if it's true you are a Finn.
I ain't particular about men. I am no prima donna.
But I would never marry one who would not take a sauna."

They got into her pickup, and down the road they drove,
And fifteen minutes later, they were stoking up the stove.
She had a flask of whiskey. They took a couple toots
And went into the shack and got into their birthday suits.
She steamed him and she boiled him until his skin turned red;
She poured it on until his brains were bubbling in his head.
To improve his circulation and to soften up his hide,
She took a couple birch boughs and beat him till he cried,
"Oh, couldn't you just love me now? Oh, don't you think you can?"
She said, "It's time to step outside and show you are a man."

Straightway (because he loved her so, he thought his heart would break)
He jumped right up and out the door and ran down to the lake,
And though he paused a moment when he saw the lake was frozen
And tried to think just which snow bank his love had put his clothes in—
When he thought of Tina, Lord—that man did not think twice
But just picked up his size-12 feet and loped across the ice—
And coming to the hole that they had chopped there with an ax—
Putting common sense aside, ignoring all the facts—
He leaped! Oh, what a leap! And as he dove beneath the surface,
It thrilled him to his very soul!—and also made him nervous!
And it wasn't just the tingling he felt in every limb—
He cried: "My love! I'm finished! I forgot! I cannot swim!"

She fished him out and stood him up and gave him an embrace
To warm a Viking's heart and make the blood rush to his face.
"I love you, darling dear!" she cried. "I love you with all my might!"
And she drove him to Biwabik and married him that night.
She drove him down the road to Carl's Tourist Cabins
And spent a sleepless night and in the morning, as it happens,
Though it was only April, it was absolutely spring,
Birds, flowers, people put away their parkas and everything.
They bought a couple acres around Hibbing, up near Chisholm,
And began a life of gardening and love and Lutheranism.
And they lived happily to this day, although they sometimes quarrel.
And there, I guess, the story ends, except for this, the moral:
Marriage, friends, is a lifelong feast. Love is no light lunch.
You cannot dabble round the edge, but each must take the plunge.
And though marriage, like that frozen lake, may sometimes make us colder,
It has its pleasures, too, as you may find out when you're older.

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The Writer's Almanac News

It was in January 1993 that the first episode of The Writer's Almanac debuted on the web and via public radio stations across the country. The program was created by Garrison Keillor to bring poetry to a larger audience, with each episode featuring a daily history digest and a poem.

It was first offered to stations that carried A Prairie Home Companion but it has built its own loyal audience over 27 years.

It's now available via your favorite podcast apps, on Garrison's website, and as a daily e-newsletter. It's also available on PRX, where individual radio stations can buy a week's worth of episodes. Let your local station know you want to hear it in your community!

To subscribe to the email version of TWA, just scroll down to the bottom of this email and click "update your preferences" to add TWA to your profile of newsletters from Prairie Home Productions.

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The Road Home: Stories from Lake Wobegon

For over 40 years, Garrison Keillor has held our attention with tales of "the little town that time forgot and decades could not improve." Go home to Lake Wobegon once more with these 18 stories including tales about ordinary days, about a young woman and her bridal shower, about the correct time to drive out on the lake ice, about the advantages of dynamite when you're digging a grave in winter, and more. All will hold your attention on the road home. Over 2 1/2 hours on 2 CDs.

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Beautiful Dreamer

This album of duets from Garrison Keillor and Heather Masse includes standards and fan favorites performed over the years during hundreds of concerts across the country. Garrison's understated harmonies give Heather's vocals center stage, while Richard Dworsky and our fine house band provide backup.

LISTEN to "Wild Horses" >>>
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