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Comments from the week of July 16

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Mr. Keillor,

I was at your show at Lime Kiln where you came through the audience and I was astounded by how homely you are. You look like an ogre out of a fairy tale. Have you considered a facelift?

Alice Knowles

Lexington

Now you know why I spent so many years in radio, my dear. People are always asking me if I’m upset about something. I haven’t considered a facelift but maybe I should. Or else I’ll just ask the lighting person to not use a spotlight. GK

Dear Garrison,
I am the pastor of a Congregational church here in Deep River, Connecticut, on the lower Connecticut River where elephant tusks from Africa once were made into billiard balls, piano keys, and ivory buttons. Our triangular town hall has an elephant statue in front of it. Our beautiful old cemetery is the final resting place for 20th-century artist Sol LeWitt, for Samuel Mather (who once set the world speed record traveling to Australia in his clipper ship the Nightingale), for Paul Hopkins (a rookie on the Washington Senators who threw Babe Ruth his 59th home run in his first appearance in the majors), and for Billy Winters (a runaway slave who came to Deep River via the Underground Railroad and disguised himself with a red wig). We celebrate summer with the ringing of horseshoes in the center of town (with the oldest Horseshoe League in the state) and the whistle of the Valley Steam Railroad as it chugs through town. You would love this place, so come for a visit. It’s the most wonderful town in the world!
Timothy Haut, Pastor
Deep River Congregational Church

I’ll mention this to my wife who does the driving now. Her family’s old summer house is on the Connecticut River near Old Lyme. Maybe we’re neighbors. GK

Hello, Mr. Keillor!

Would you please come to Northern Colorado? You were scheduled to come this way a couple of years ago, but COVID and bad weather interfered, and your stop here was canceled. I miss hearing your show Saturday nights very much! Hope to see you in Northern Colorado soon!

Most warmly,
Mandy and family

I’ve been to Boulder and Fort Collins, I know, and in a few weeks I’ll be on the Southwest Limited steaming through Denver on my way to the Grand Canyon. I’d love to come back and spend a few days. GK

Garrison should learn to pronounce LANK-is-ter (not Lan-KAS-ter) before he arrives next week.

Gordon D. Rowe
Lieutenant Colonel, USAF (ret)

I’ve been working on it, Colonel. But it’s easier to come up with a limerick.

A retired colonel from LanCASTer wrote to an aging broadcaster, “The last man who came and misspoke our name departed from town all the faster.” GK

Hi, Garrison.
I’m a longtime fan and miss hearing your shows. I still listen to your stories on Spotify.
On one of your shows, you sang a hymn about a boy who lost his mother and was at her funeral. It moved me deeply. Would you mind sending me the title of that hymn?

William Kang

This sounds like the sort of 19th-century lament that I gave up singing long ago when people complained about it. I used to enjoy morbid songs more when I was young and for some reason I’ve moved over to the sunny side of the street except for the song about the children who died in the blizzard and the one about the Titanic (“husbands and wives, little children lost their lives, it was sad when the great ship went down”) and of course the one with the great line, “Let your teardrops kiss the flowers on my grave.” GK

Hello, Garrison.

I discovered that you celebrate your birth one day after me and that another writer, Wendell Berry, celebrates his birth one day before me. I began to ask myself why I am so drawn to you two writers and I realize it has something to do with how you both uphold rural/small-town/agrarian values in the context of history and in light of the present moment.
My brother who was born the same year as you still lives in the house all seven of us siblings grew up in near a small Midwest town. My sister has the same birthday as you but was born two years later. Both of them spread cheer like you, in their own ways of course.
What I wonder about you is if there is any way you might have stayed in the house your father built in the cornfield if strip malls and fast food and concrete had not come to Anoka the way all those things have not taken over Berry’s Port Royal.
From one who was born August 6th in the ’50s and who reads a lot of Berry who was born August 5th in the ’30s and a lot of Keillor who was born August 7th in the ’40s.
Dolores

Poulsbo, Washington

Dad built the house in 1947 with truck farms all around us but the developers bought out the farmers and made lots and turned excellent farmland to lawns and driveways. Some of my Keillor cousins stayed put near where they grew up but that was north of Anoka, in Ramsey, which still feels rural to me. I don’t know that I uphold agrarian values — it sounds preachy to me — but in order to do what I wanted to do, I abandoned my town, was often away from my family, was too busy to take part in a church, and led a life that was in many ways the opposite of Lake Wobegon. Wendell Berry was much more true to his raising than I. I don’t garden, don’t fish, am useless with hammer and saw, but I do love conversation, and that’s what I do for an audience. GK

Mr. Keillor,

In today’s column, you mentioned that politics is uglier than ever before. I’m deeply concerned that our system of government is simply not working anymore. How do we ever get out of this mess? Or do you think that “this too will pass”?

Janis Burtold

The ugliness will pass. The adolescent gamesmanship and antagonism and the greasy rhetoric will fade, and decent men and women will put their shoulders to the wheel and push. There are so many excellent problem-solvers around and the problems are more fascinating than the cheap tricks. The country has come so far from the one I grew up in, so much more opportunity, ingenuity, personal freedom, access to learning. That’s why so many people try so hard to come here. GK

Garrison,
From its sophomoric cover (balloons, really?) to its devil-may-care ramblings, Cheerfulness smacks of being published by a vanity press. Wasn’t there anyone at your publishing house brave enough to tell you how self-indulgent and dishonest this book is? As we grow older, Garrison, we need others to let us know if we are driveling or not.
Otherwise a fan,
Don Castro

I love the cover and you’re misusing the word “sophomoric,” which means pretending to know more than you do. I published the book myself because I’m old and don’t care to wait two years. When you call the book “dishonest,” you’re talking nonsense. But thanks for the clumsy insults. It’s like hearing a couple of unmuffled Harleys going by at 3 a.m.; it tells you there is a great diversity of humanity around. GK

Hey, Garrison.

I wrote to you a few weeks back about my discovery that the human desire to help others resides in the hypothalamus part of the brain. I explained that as I truly do love to help and be of service to others, perhaps that is why I have a big head (or so I’ve been told). I further remarked that perhaps this may be why you have a well-nourished head as well (no offense) and postulated that the world would be that much better if everyone worked on growing their hypothalamus.

I was surprised by your answer, which if I understood it correctly, basically agreed with me, but for yourself you said that you still need or want to beat yourself up occasionally and practice self-deprecation (“I believe in kindness, try to practice it, but now and then I beat myself up too.”).

I wondered, as I am Catholic, if this could be due to the age-old Lutheran/Catholic theological debate around “faith versus works.” And while (I think) we would all agree these days that it is indeed “faith alone,” but good works is a natural response to faith, I’m wondering if a self-deprecating bent is really beneficial for anyone. Or did I misread what you were trying to say??

If I didn’t misread you, I’d like to challenge you to take the energy used to occasionally beat yourself up and use it to help an extra little old lady cross the street. Or pay for the person’s coffee who is behind you in line. Well, you get the idea. Just try it for a month or two and see if you feel any different.

With respect, humility, and caring ...

Big Head D

That’s a good point about faith and good works being intertwined, and of course I do practice kindness in everyday life and I try to support benevolent causes and be truthful and extend friendship. But I am aware of my shortcomings and I remind myself of them. In 1985, because I had a successful book and could afford it, I left a house I loved in St. Paul and moved to a big brick mansion on the hill, and it destroyed my kinship to St. Paulites who saw me as just another social climber. The mansion was a painful mistake. I failed to reconcile with my first wife whom I’d divorced nine years before and who was loyal to me through my scrappy early years, and I blame myself for that. I never was a good team player and I can blame some of that on my fundamentalist upbringing that taught me a separatist faith, but it’s been a drag on my life. I’m 80, I am very lucky, have a very good life, but I owe myself some honesty too. GK

I recently bought a copy of Cheerfulness from Amazon. The front and back covers were what they should be, but the book inside was titled Still Positive. At first, I thought maybe it was a variation on the cover title, but then I slowly realized that it was a completely different book! I sent it back and Amazon sent the correct version with the matching cover and text. I am enjoying Cheerfulness very much. Thank you for writing it.

Don Peri

You’re most welcome. GK

Garrison,

Marcus Borg (now deceased) was a prominent Christian theologian. He was reared as a Lutheran, but later became an Episcopalian. His wife is an Episcopalian minister. Borg, in a lecture, once shared the following prayer. I think that it speaks wonders to the aura of wonder that you expressed in today’s column.

Coleman Hood

Bishop, Georgia

Amen and amen. GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

My dad is a longtime fan and follower of your work. He has seen you most recently in Nashville a couple years back at the Grand Ole Opry. So naturally he has me now reading your online posts. I lived in Manhattan for eleven years and moved back to Minnesota to my small town on the Mississippi River to be with my now eighty-year-old dad. We spend lots of time together since my mom passed years ago. Anyway, the reason I am writing is because my dad needs a new aortic valve replaced in his heart. I know you had a valve replacement not that long ago and you often speak in your column about the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. We live just fifty-four miles from Rochester, and we are looking to find the best cardiac surgeon to perform the valve replacement. Can you share and recommend your surgeon please? It would mean so much to me. Thank you and keep writing!! You make me smile and laugh out loud some mornings about your New York stories versus Minneapolis. You are so spot on!! Thank you for your time.

Eileen Atkinson

Eileen, you should get in touch with Mayo, which has an enormous cardiology department and talented surgeons. Have your local physician recommend you and whoever at Mayo examines your dad will direct him to the right physician. My procedure was a mitral valve replacement and it was sort of a miracle, to come away from it feeling so good. GK

Hi, Garrison.

Reading about your love of reading as a youngster (and spending recess in the library) brought back memories. I used to visit the bookmobile once a week during the summer and flew through about eleven books a week. The library at school became my refuge once puberty set in and I was badgered by a couple of catty girls (along with boys who delighted in teasing me for sporting the curse of orthodontia, braces).

I fear that the explosion of technology has stolen the thunder from reading — it seems that the love of reading comes from seeds sown in childhood, and most of the people I know who read for pleasure are Boomers like myself. The kids are glued to cell phones and gaming devices. Pity …

Best,
Pat McC.

I’ve spent a few days recently with a great-nephew and great-niece, 9 and 11 respectively, who are passionate readers and have picked up an astonishing wide range of knowledge, much of it from googling this and that, and toss out big words and observations and historic references. It’s stunning when a nine-year-old looks at a painting and says, “Oh, that’s Piet Mondrian.” So I don’t know. Curiosity is a powerful force. GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,
Have you ever written about Sinclair Lewis and his town of Gopher Prairie in his book Main Street?
More and more I think about the Midwest. I just finished The Good Country by Jon Lauck about the history of the Midwest, and it makes me realize you’ve been out there all along representing the quiet goodness of middle of the country.
John Kropf
Arlington, Virginia

I read Lewis when I was in junior high and enjoyed Dodsworth and Babbitt along with Main Street and was impressed that someone could write novels about my part of the country. Jon Lauck is a fine scholar who’s revived Midwestern studies and more power to him. He edits a scholarly journal, writes about Midwestern culture and history, and I am slowly making my way through his book. GK

Hi, Garrison.

I just read your book Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80. Now that you are approaching 81, do you have any new words of wisdom from the past year?

Amanda Dellis

Don’t hesitate to accept assistance. Savor the day from dawn to dark; each day has the possibility to be the best day of your life. Be grateful. Keep moving. GK

Hi, Garrison.

Reading about costume changes reminded me of your tribute to Tom Keith where you dressed in drag along with some beautiful high heels. I was fortunate to be at that show, and it made me laugh so hard that I almost, well, you know. DeSantis wouldn’t allow you into Florida with that outfit, but maybe you should bring that back just to get people riled up and do it in Florida.

Gwen

Glad you enjoyed it, Gwen. My wife did not. She’s put the kibosh on further dragginess. But she is curious to see ordinary normal men walking around Manhattan in skirts. Not kilts. Skirts. GK

GK,

Anyone with a conscience knows that “shilly shallying” while disposing of your stuff is nothing but a cheap bastardization of the original “dilly-dallying” and good people who keep our language pure should never stand for it. Sir, you owe an apology to mankind and generations to come.

Clay Blasdel

Buffalo

The two terms are distinct in my mind, and which one is the bastard is a matter of opinion. Dilly-dallying refers to avoiding work; shilly-shallying is about inability to make decisions. GK

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