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Post to the HostComments from the week of 5.23.21
Garrison, I think you are a conservative and don’t know it. When the “Liberal” party is for bombs and denial of free speech, anti-democracy, anti-America. We are all conservatives. I don’t care what you call it. It’s still a duck. I am an old man who is trying to win the love of young people like yourself and if you want me on your team, that’s fine by me, so long as I don’t have to believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent. My mother had rules about these things. Sneakiness she could understand but outright dishonesty was forbidden. Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay. Jesus rebuked the Philistines because their hearts were false. (I just spent 24 hours in an ER ward in New York City and for those 24 hours at least, I was a liberal Democrat.) GK Dear Garrison: I wonder if any clergy have used your stories in sermons? I did. (I gave you credit). Your story about the professor who taught “classic” languages was a great example of how ordinary good folk are tempted by adultery. He was relegated to the Admissions Office and was scheduled to go to a conference with a new assistant who thought he was brilliant. He was tempted and you showed how that would have a ripple effect on other people. (My sermon wasn’t that effective. I heard “I don’t get it.” Sigh … Nonetheless, it worked for me!) Msgr. Bob Murphy Monsignor Bob, you should never give me credit for a story in a sermon, it will only undercut your authority. Steal and steal with confidence. If I hear about it, I’ll be honored and I’ll also admire your enterprise. Footnotes like that weaken a sermon. A sermon is not a term paper, it is an intimate conversation, and it needs to come straight at the listeners, no frills. I could give a better sermon about adultery than you could because the parishioners would think, “This man is speaking from personal experience.” This is the problem with a monsignorship, it removes you from the ordinary. But sometime if you and I meet, I wish you’d explain to me Jesus’s parable of the unjust steward. I DON’T GET IT. REALLY. GK Garrison, I read your Post to the Host of May 24 and it contained a couple of references to veterans who were at sea when the atomic bombs were dropped; very sorry to hear of your father-in-law’s mind betraying him. David T. My friend who was on a ship when the bomb was dropped was under the impression he was heading for Japan. Perhaps he was going to Okinawa instead. But the conversation on the ship, which was all the information he had, focused on the prospect of an invasion of the Japanese mainland. I don’t question your facts, and I’ll look up that book, but I was simply reporting what had been told me by an old vet. He wasn’t crazy. GK Dear Garrison, I am a semi-retired hospice and hospital Chaplain. When the grown children of infirm parents made comments to me similar to the ones made by the gentleman who wanted to put his father-in-law on an ice flow, this was my response: “When you were an infant, you could not feed yourself, clean yourself, clothe yourself or care for yourself in any meaningful way. But nobody said that you had no dignity, because everyone realized that this was just a stage of your life and, for the most part, people found great joy in caring for you at that time. Fast-forward 90 years or so. Now you need much of the same kind of care that you required as a baby. But where did the idea that you have no dignity come from? For that matter, what is dignity, and who gives it to you? Without for a moment denying that the care of our elderly sisters and brothers can be challenging and frustrating, I’m afraid that too many of us have lost the sense of filial obligation that we owe to each other at each stage of our lives. It is to our culture’s shame that we approach dependent aging in these negative terms. Even more shameful is the way that so many of us are warehoused in ghettos euphemistically described as “nursing” homes, a term that disrespects nurses in many ways. When we have the opportunity to care for our parents in their needy years, we can close the circle of life that was opened for us on the day that we were born. This is a great privilege as well as a duty, and to run away from or ignore it is to deny our own humanity and its attendant obligations.” I’m just four years younger than you, and I have some physical limitations that have made me more grateful each day for the love and care of my family. As one of your and my favorite musical artists Waylon Jennings once wrote, “What goes around, comes around.” Those who ignore their responsibilities to their parents and older relatives would do well to remember that. Thanks once again … Larry Thank you, Larry, for a wonderful note, and I’d just note, with all respect, that the suggestion of the ice floe was made by an elderly gent of 71 who didn’t want to be a burden. He also thought of jumping out a window. I tried to dissuade him. GK Thank you, Garrison, for today’s day-brightener! “Post to the Host” should be regularly featured. I especially enjoy your answers to personal questions, like how could Sanctified Brethren show up in an Episcopal worship. As a recovering alumnus of Abilene Christian University, I joined the throng that cheered your appearance there nearly 10 years ago. Keep writing … you’re good! Perry, I remember ACU as a wonderful evening. I love being with people who know the gospels and love them and know the words to the old hymns and who also feel that Jesus indicated pretty clearly that what we do for the sick and poor and oppressed is accepted as a holy deed by God. God does not grant the same dispensation to tax fraud or dishonesty about elections. Not pointing the finger at anyone, just saying. I can make fun of young progressive Democrats from now until Tuesday and I’d do it because they fail to do it themselves, but my fellow old fundies are personal friends and I don’t ridicule friends. GK Dear Garrison (if I may), In one of your responses about baseball you made a reference to “resin” used by pitchers. I think you meant “rosin.” Rosin is a solid form of resin obtained from pines and some other plants, mostly conifers. It is used for its friction-increasing capacity. Rosin is an ingredient in printing inks, varnishes, glues, medicines, chewing gum, soap, paper sizing, and, in days gone by, sealing wax. Chuck and Dawn Braithwaite Lincoln, Nebraska My opinion of Lincoln always was high but now it’s up higher. I appreciate good explainers. My doctor is one and so is my wife and having them makes me a wealthy man and everything else is a bonus. I do wonder, however, if the “ingredient in printing inks” etc. shouldn’t be resin, not rosin. There can’t be so many Braithwaites in Lincoln that I couldn’t call you and ask but it might be a very long conversation and at the moment I’m starting to write a play about lonesome cowboys. One is a fiddler who plays “Resin the Bow,” which I put in in honor of you. GK Mr. Keillor, I empathize with your spiritual accommodation at this point in life and history. Just wanted to say that my experience with Plymouth Brethren from 2006 to 2008 was surprisingly very positive. My mother was a resident of Carmel Hills Retirement Community in Charlotte, NC, operated by PB. She had been marginally cared for in a nursing home, but CH was able to provide her with a large, private room for substantially less cost than the semi-private one elsewhere, and superior care by a very capable and stable staff with little turnover. Nevertheless, I was mentally prepared to deal with a fundamentalist sect. We received a formal invitation to a “Holiday Luncheon” there just before Christmas in 2007, which we accepted for my mother’s sake. My wife and I don’t celebrate and expected to be overwhelmed with religiosity. Well, it was the most elegant and pleasant social occasion I ever experienced. No holiday music, only sedate classical. Red and green decorations, but no Christmas trees, Santa, or “Merry” anything. The food was excellent with steak and bacon-wrapped scallops. The well-wishing director and staff, including the chef, personally visited each table where residents and visitors were seated. No fundraising. We discovered that we had much more in common with this fine group than I realized. My mother died there less than a year later, and their kindness and professionalism were superb. To paraphrase a line from Driving Miss Daisy, “Don’t go dissin’ Plymouth Brethren ’round me …” Best wishes, Wes G. Thanks for the story, Wes, and I’m glad your mother had a good experience there. I, however, was a teenager, not an old man, when I was in the Brethren and for me it was a different experience and it wasn’t about Christmas or cooking, it was about lack of charity for each other, an atmosphere of fear, the disrespect for women who were the soulful Christians in the group, and the sheer arrogance. GK I’m 46. And I’m pretty much alone in the world. Did you ever struggle with loneliness? Bex Bex, I didn’t struggle. I desperately grabbed for company. I found loneliness unbearable and doing a show with other people was the perfect escape from it. GK Good morning, Mr. Keillor and company, I’ve loved all your media offerings over the course of many years. It wasn’t until I saw, written out, the title of this beloved feature that something struck me: Shouldn’t it be written, The Writers’ Almanac — plural? Written with the apostrophe between r and s indicates that either: The Almanac is the possession of just one Writer, OR a contraction, “The Writer is.” Of course you know how it’s written out; you designed it! (Perhaps you are the one Writer to whom it belongs? If so, that’s not understood by the casual reader/listener, and should be made more clear?) That’s it! My two cents. I’m genuinely sorry if I’ve offended you, but I’ll feel better if you write back and explain why the title is written thus. Thank you, God bless you all — masks! Stay well! Marion Altieri Marion, you haven’t offended me one whit, not a skosh, not a trifle, but you are wrong, wrong, wrong, my dear. “The Writer’s Almanac” is correct, just as “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” is correct, or “The Woman’s Home Companion.” The singular can be universal. I can tell from your well-written note that you are a professional writer, and it isn’t often I get to correct a fellow professional, so today is a happy day for me. It’s a writer’s joy to be right now and then against qualified authority. If I were a drinking man, I’d pour myself a Scotch on the rocks, but instead I’ll put cream in my coffee instead of 2% milk. You are the cream in my coffee. Not literally, but you know what I mean. GK Just listened to you and Heather honor Irving Berlin. You do all right, but Heather has the voice of an angel. A trite metaphor, but I can’t think of higher praise. Thanks for bringing her into my life. Metaphorically speaking, again. Doug, I am not offended by a slighting comment from Rockport, TX, knowing all that you are up against down there these days. The very name “Rockport” says it all. They looked for access to the sea and instead they found a rock. My heart goes out. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: “When you choose a duet partner, choose someone better than yourself, so as to raise your sights.” Which makes me wonder: What was she thinking of? I don’t know. GK Mr. K: You and I are faded emblems of a bygone age, pal, and we know it and we accept it in good grace. I remember Coney Islands. I can buy one at 72nd and Broadway or at White Castle on Lake Street in Minneapolis, but I seldom go by those locations unaccompanied by my watchful spouse. I have, however, discovered that frozen White Castles from the grocery are quite good when microwaved. I love them because when I was 12 and rode my bike downtown to the public library to spend hours poring over books, there was a W.C. across the street where you could get a bagful for a quarter. I earned money back then by babysitting and picking tomatoes at truck farms. No allowance at all. So the burger was a symbol of my independence. Now I’m in love with a woman who considers it a kiss of death. This would make a good novel — hunger, love, symbolism, deceit, freedom, what more do you need? GK Garrison Keillor, You ought to know that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is the target, I mean the actual target, of a bunch of misogynistic troglodytes, some of whom are her colleagues in Congress. So by making your “cute” remark about pronouns on the forehead, you are supporting those troglodytes, standing there, poking the guys with your elbow, and saying “heh, heh, heh.” Just one of the old guys. I’m your age and I don’t feel that old. Susan K Gaffney (Married to an Adirondack 46er — I’m a 9er — so you also managed to offend me with your snarky Adirondacks remark) (It is already strawberry-rhubarb season; I made a pie last week. It was really good.) Susan, it’s nice of you to imagine me having a big troglodyte readership, but really. I have a tiny audience and the AOC leaners are many and so I feel free to be funny about her, or “cute” as you would have it. As for the Adirondacks, I made a joke about deer ticks and Lyme disease, not about the region, which is a beautiful part of America and no little joke can change that. I might be offended by your note but the fact that you made a strawberry-rhubarb pie immediately puts you into a higher category. I’m sorry if that seems patronizing or benevolent sexism or sarcastic, it is quite genuine. I do think that if you and I found ourselves sitting together on the Amtrak northbound up the Hudson Valley, we’d find a lot to talk about and if you stood up for AOC, I’d respect you for it, while arguing my own case. I believe that democracy is in danger and some people need a broader view and if you mark down all of Wyoming and Utah as troglodytes, you’re making a mistake. GK Garrison, Scott Because my faith is weak and needs support. As am I and so I go. GK Hi, Mr. Keillor. I visited with dear friends who live in Portsmouth, RI, last weekend. Their house is on Narragansett Bay. Did you happen to see the stunning sunset on the evening of the 22nd? Last Saturday. I wasn’t an English major, but I wish I could put into words an appropriate description of the sky. Shades of vivid pink, blue, and purple in the sky just seemed to stretch for miles. Glad you enjoyed your trip. That area has a very special place in my heart. English majors haven’t described sunsets since the late 19th century, Ginny. Nowadays they don’t describe anything, they seek out all sorts of spiritual or cultural or gender or racial bias and stomp on them and thereby eliminate classics except those they like, which gives authors under thirty a much better chance of gaining attention. I frankly wish I had majored in geology; it would’ve given me a broader education. Five wasted years of college, but I’m grateful I didn’t waste more. You’re right about the R.I. coast. What a great time we had. GK Thank you, Garrison, for your commitment to writing such wonderful things. Thank you for today’s article “Going to Newport with Mrs. Dashboard.” This, in particular, made me laugh out loud, which is always a good thing. Carol Oh, Carol, as Chuck Berry once sang. You make my day, to think I made you laugh out loud. I live with a woman who laughs a lot and usually at the right places. She liked that column too. GK Hello, Garrison. Dan D. Dan, it fills me with dread whenever I hear that something I wrote in a rush decades ago has been used as a teaching device. I was a radio entertainer desperate to fill time and keep the goat fed and not utterly disgrace myself. You are the one who should’ve written “Hog Slaughter,” not I. You’ve been there and taken part; I was only an innocent bystander. GK Ageing seems central to many posts, so here’s my 74-year-old Australian take on it. There’s a sweet spot when taking your leave — 75 to 85 years. A decade is surely long enough to tidy up, make your peace and get ready to shuffle off. The party is over at 75, the music is lowered so not to annoy the neighbors, and some people start leaving early. By 80 the music is turned off, lights are down, and you can’t get another drink. Most people are now heading for the door, making their goodbyes. At 85 the lights are being turned off. Of course, some people remain, but we all know what happens if you hang around when the party is over — you’re likely to get into trouble. We’ve all been there in our youth. Sure, there are some who wander out into the garden and live well into the following years, but they are the exceptions and not to be counted on. So enjoy your time, be the life and soul, but be prepared to go home cheerfully when the party is over. Patrick Patrick, you are lying about your age, you’re not 74, you are 60 at most, more likely 48. I am 78 with 79 approaching fast. But I won’t beat up on you because I just got out of a hospital ER feeling wildly happy that the outcome was good. There is nothing like being in the company of crazy and dying and unconscious old people and walking out on your own steam. Try it sometime when you’re older. GK Garrison, For many years on Prairie Home you have celebrated the lives of cats in Bertha’s Kitty Boutique, Song of the Cat, Cat You Better Come Home. Did you have cats growing up or do you have any now? Did Bruno the Fishing Dog story come from any dogs in your life? I’m a pet lover and would love to know you are too. Donna I love other people’s pets, Donna. I love the love my friends have for them. I had two cats forty years ago named Ralph and Tuna and a dog named Bob fifty years ago. Bob was run over by a garbage truck and Ralph was killed in a catfight and Tuna was lost in a divorce. None since then. My daughter was terrified as a small child by a friend’s dog who jumped up on her and so she didn’t want to have a dog. We had a nanny who owned a cat and lived with us and that was nice, but we gad about too much to have one of our own. But God bless animals who love us and give them a long life and an easy end. GK I have a slightly different feeling about Newport. Or at least about the state in which Newport is located. As a New Yorker who unwillingly had to relocate to Rhode Island for a bit, I never really liked the place much. Nowadays, for similar reasons, I have to spend part of my time living in Stockholm, Sweden. In Sweden, there is a salad dressing named “Rhode Island.” It seems to be almost a cruel joke. I wrote an essay about it, which was published here in Stockholm on a website that delivers local news in English. I thought you might find it obliquely relevant: https://www.thelocal.se/20200827/why-does-sweden-have-a-salad-dressing-named-rhode-island Ken A. I love this essay, sir. It is a series of diversions leading to an irrelevancy, the very sort of essay I try to write on a regular basis. But you published it in a Swedish paper, which meant you never got enraged letters from Rhode Islanders, which is the real reward. You even insulted Stockholm and didn’t get slapped for it because Swedes are impervious to slights except from Danes. The fact that a New Yorker (you) would write an essay about dreadful salad dressing shows that Sweden has had a big effect on you. Get on the meatball, man. GK I had a thought and wanted to share it with you regarding the future. Have you ever considered taking PHC to Branson? Get the old gang together and open your own theater? Rotate in your favorite musical guests. Have a little mini mall attached to the theater with PHC merchandise and maybe a “Chatterbox Cafe.” I would think the people that go to Branson would absolutely love it . . . Your thought was considered for a minute and gently dismissed, C.J. I am married to a New Yorker and she would no sooner move to Missouri than she’d wear chaps and spurs and ride a bull. It’s just not going to happen. With all due respect, she doesn’t want to see the aging stars of Branson; she wants to see Broadway shows and visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and wander through the rooms of antiquities. Central Park is her cathedral: natural wonders and incredible humanity, all in one place. I’m a writer so I can live anywhere: you could put me in a lighthouse or an island off Australia or a New York apartment or room 218 in the Branson Motor Lodge, and I’m okay. But she is a New Yorker, and I must live with her restrictions. It’s the nature of love. A person could write a song about it. GK Dear Garrison, If you’re listening to the radio these days, what is it? In Switzerland, where I work, there is a mandatory tax of about $350 per year per household. For me that walks the line between support for the arts and the heavy hand of government, but at least you don’t have to suffer through a pledge drive. You don’t have to pay the tax if you can prove that you have no device in your home capable of receiving an analog or digital signal. I wrote this a while back about you, radio, and you some more: https://blakeelder.com/radiohead. Hope you get a chance to give it a read, and I hope you like it. Glad you got all your shows and things back. Take care, Blake E. Thanks for sending that lovely reminiscence of radio, Mr. Elder. I think it’s very rare that a person would take time to put down fond memories of a lifetime of listening. I couldn’t possibly write such a reminiscence myself — I have a few warm memories of childhood listening, a big Zenith floor-model radio, the comedy shows that my mother and I both loved, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee, Amos ’n’ Andy, the Great Gildersleeve, but radio never was my ambition — my ambition was to be a writer at The New Yorker and I got into radio by sheer luck and circumstance and I stayed in it because it was easy and it was fun. NPR was alien territory for the show, and I always knew it. The show went national in 1980 and stayed national until 2016, but it didn’t belong, which was clear to me anytime I attended a national convention. Only the fundraisers would talk to me, never the on-air people. They’d interview me for broadcast but it wasn’t a matter of friendship. So when I got pitched out in 2017 for a couple flirtations with old friends, it only confirmed what I already knew. The guy who fired me knew it too and that’s why he could bear to tell me face to face: it was a three-minute phone call. Nobody in public radio called with regrets except my old boss who hired me and David Sedaris and Paula Poundstone and Billy Collins. I had a fabulous time for forty years and a person who gets that is pressing his luck awfully hard and mine ran out, as it should. I don’t listen to radio at all, haven’t for years. I’m a reader. I miss the PHC audience and am heading out this year and next to reconnect with some of them, but I have less interest in radio than I have in ice skating. I miss skating. GK Dear Mr. Keillor, I loved your book Homegrown Democrat. It was filled with a common sense understanding of balancing our need to care for our fellow man as well as respect for government. How do you feel now about the Democratic Party? Are we heading in the right direction? Kathryn Kathryn, I’m not so involved with the Democratic Party as I once was. I still have friends in the party and am glad to hear news and gossip about goings-on but am a distant outsider. I live in Minneapolis and New York, two cities run by Democrats, so one has some clear views of party virtues and wretched failures. I am glad for clear-headed critical writing about failures of the Clinton and Obama administrations: Bill Clinton has been clear about some of his failings and Walter Mondale was honest as well. I admire Amy Klobuchar as a campaigner who can go into any of Minnesota’s 87 counties, even those that are redder than red, and meet people civilly face to face and hear them out. I think Joe Biden has a spirit to him that is desperately needed in this country. But I’m just an old newspaper reader. No plans to put out a new edition of Homegrown. GK I’ve loved your humor longer than I can remember, Garrison, but these words of yours absolutely made my day: “I defend my competence, slender as it is, by sitting up here on the 12th floor out of range of ticks that carry bacteria that can fog your brain. You hike the Adirondacks and a week later you’re unable to spell ‘cat.’ I stay home. There are excellent picture books about the Adirondacks and a person needn’t go see it firsthand any more than you need to be marched to the gallows to see what that’s like. Just read In Cold Blood.” The COVID thing has deepened my already profound love of being cozy in my little nest. I verge on the agoraphobic these days, but I confess it makes me feel a little bit guilty when my sweetheart wants me to take a walk with her and I don’t want to go. I’m perfectly happy doing my daily steps in a circle from the living room, to the dining room, to the kitchen, and back to the living room, and when I’m done, I can look out on my beautiful patio garden that makes me feel like I’m in nature. If I feel a momentary pull to hike in the wilderness, there are masses of YouTube videos of people cresting mountain peaks or tramping in the woods, which I can watch any time, night or day, without putting my aging bones into any jeopardy. Now I just need a way to bring this quote of yours into our domestic conversation in a way that doesn’t provoke a negative reaction. I’m sure I’ll come up with something. So thanks for being such a great and entertaining role model! Katherine M. Katherine, I pray your domestic life is blessed with peace and I beg you not to weaponize that quote of mine. And now, for the first time ever, I’ve used the word “weaponize,” which gives me some weird satisfaction. There should be an opposite term, for turning a sword into a ploughshare. “Disarmament” is too weak. How about “implementize”? Or “forkify”? “Spoonerism”? GK Mr. K., Ken O. In the sciences, it’s clearer when a corner has been turned, a secret uncovered, and everybody in the field has to master the new stuff or else go sit on their thumb. This is not so true in economics. It isn’t true at all in literature. So that prize is just a good citizenship award, and you need to wait until a writer is old to make sure she or he is respectable. If they’d given the Nobel for innovation, Ezra Pound would’ve gotten it in 1924 and then they’d be faced with a fascist, which is no good. GK Dear GK, I am so frustrated by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, Kevin McCarthy, and seemingly the majority of the GOP. How do we stop the insanity, or should we just give up? And do you think Trump could win again? Many (including my husband) say it won’t be possible, that the country is smarter than that, but we said that the first time around, and look what happened: a cult that continues even after he’s left office. I don’t get it. Melanie G. Melanie, I was in the midst of eating corn on the cob when I read your note and I wish you’d chosen a better time, such as when my wife asks me to join her in yoga. I have a readership of 119 persons, half of them Trumpers, and I don’t care to swim in treacherous waters, especially not with hot corn in my hands. GK Fourth of July weekend is coming up soon. Time to make plans. If you are in the area (or considering a visit to Stillwater, Minnesota; Bayfield, Wisconsin; or St. Michael, just north of Minneapolis), join Garrison Keillor and some of his pals from A Prairie Home Companion for one of these upcoming events celebrating our country’s independence in stories, poetry, classic duets, and more. www.garrisonkeillor.com You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber. Questions: [email protected] |
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