She and I and you and us, all watching TV I have it on good authority that we now have 26 sets of personal pronouns available in English, including the gender-neutral zie, zim, zer, zis, zieself, and I expect there will be more to come since the spectrum of personal differences is endless. My wife, for example, who is adored by me, I can no longer think of as she or her, lumped in with other women including harridans, hags, harpies and shrews,and so my wife is jen and jer and jenself and several individuals whom I despise are scheiss and scheissen and scheissenself. My fellow tall persons have the pronouns hi and hiya. Height is every bit as crucial an identifier as gender and so is intelligence. I don’t know any people I’d refer to as dem or dose but surely dey’re out there somewhere. Go to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack
for THE COLUMN >>> |
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Back on the road after the Ryman! Join us later this month as Garrison teams up with Prudence Johnson and Dan Chouinard for dates in Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin. These concerts are a wonderful evening of love songs, poetry, stories, and sing-alongs, plus the latest News from Lake Wobegon and a bit of advice on getting older.
We’ve also added a dates further out in the fall season and hope to share a few more announcements soon. So keep coming back to this newsletter for the latest Garrison news. View our tour schedule >>> |
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This week on A Prairie Home Companion This week on A Prairie Home Companion, we revisit a classic 2002 show from the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans, with Spencer Bohren, Butch Thompson, Duke Heitger, Topsy Chapman, Geoff Muldaur, Johnny Gimble, Flaco Jiménez, plus our fine band and acting company and the latest news from your favorite small town.
Highlights include some New Orleans flavor from Andy Stein on “Bon Ton Roulet,” Geoff Muldaur talking about “High Blood Pressure” and “Walkin’ to New Orleans,” Spencer Bohren going “Down the River,” plus Catchup, Celebrities, Guy Noir, and a Minnesota Cruise. The link is posted on Saturdays at 5 p.m. CT each week on our Facebook page. Listen to the Show >>>Like our Facebook page >>>
More about this week’s featured guests
SPENCER BOHREN grew up on open range in Wyoming, the son of a deacon — a proper gospel grounding for the blues — and he found the real thing soon enough when he moved to New Orleans. He told writer Mike Zerwin: “I had bands, played with bands, endless bands, bands, bands. Then I went out solo, started to build my own circuit. It got better every day. I wasn’t famous but I was popular in blues circles. I used the genuine Delta — Georgia — whatever you want to call it — blues as a jumping-off point. I love the feeling of early blues. It’s so informative, almost like reading a newspaper.”
A critic called TOPSY CHAPMAN “one of New Orleans’ gifts to the international jazz world.”
She was an original cast member of the Off-Broadway hit One Mo’ Time, and she gained recognition in New York as well as internationally when the show played in London’s West End and toured most of Europe. As a singer of gospel, traditional music, and Dixieland jazz, she toured Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore, Malaysia, England, Spain, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Canada, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and of course the USA. She traveled and recorded with the Magnolia Jazz Band and the Blues Serenaders. Her recordings include 2018’s New Orleans Jazz Ladies with Thais Clark.
GEOFF MULDAUR has played guitar and sung on dozens of albums; some with the Kweskin Jug Band, some with Paul Butterfield, and numerous others. His roots in the blues run about as deep as those roots can go — influences like Leadbelly, Blind Willie Johnson, Son House, Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James, right on up through Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Jimmy Reed, and B.B. King. In his Butterfield Blues Band days he was able to spend time with Muddy Waters, who, he says, could “summon angels and look at his watch at the same time.” Geoff’s latest project, and perhaps most ambitious, is His Last Letter, a wide-ranging two-LP boxed set released in 2021.
BUTCH THOMPSON began playing piano when he was a youngster in Marine-on-St. Croix, Minnesota, and took an early interest in blues and boogie-woogie. As a teenager, he played clarinet in the Stillwater High School band, formed his first jazz group (Shirt Thompson and his Sleeves), and began a lifetime of professional engagements. Jazz Journal International described him as “the premier player in traditional jazz today.” Butch has appeared with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Cairo Symphony, the Erie Philharmonic, and other orchestras. His solo tours have taken him across the globe, and he has toured nationally with his trio and his eight-piece band, The New Orleans Jazz Originals. |
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The Old Man Who Loves Cheese
Did you know that several songs written by Garrison and performed first on A Prairie Home Companion were so popular that they were turned into illustrated books: Daddy’s Girl; Cat, You Better Come Home; and The Old Man Who Loved Cheese. Garrison is working on a book of ballads or story songs and one wonders if this one will make the cut. So, here is “The Old Man Who Loved Cheese”:
There was an old man named Wallace P. Flynn
Who lived in a house in the trees —
You could smell him for several miles downwind
Because of his fondness for cheese.
For the cheese that was dear to W.P.
Was not the mild kind, such as Brie,
The cheese of polite society —
No, he liked cheese that was in your face!
That smelled like socks from a marathon race,
Cheese that really stank up the place!
His wife knelt down and begged him: “Please,
Have mercy, Wallace, and change your cheese!”
His son said, “Cheese makes your breath so bad,
It smells like death to be near you, Dad!”
His daughter asked him, “What is the sense of
Eating cheese that is so offensive?”
Said Wallace P., “It’s offensive to you
But cheese cheers me up when I am blue.
I don’t know why but a nice sharp cheddar
Makes me feel a whole lot better!
A Limburger or Emmentaler
Makes me grin and jump and holler!
And O! the pleasure
Of a slice of old Cheshire!
Some men want fame and their names on marquees.
Some men love money. I choose cheese.”
So his daughter moved to Oklahoma
To escape the aroma,
And his son went away to Arkansas
Where there is a Halitosis Law,
And his wife, Louise,
Sailed away to the Hebrides
Islands, where an ocean breeze
Steadily blows both night and day
And drives unpleasant smells away.
With his family gone, Wallace P. Flynn
Lost all of his self-discipline.
He ate cheese morning and night,
Cheese so strong that his hair turned white.
He walked around with a cheesy grin.
He’d drive his truck to town and park it
In front of Easy Ed’s Used Cheese Market.
Easy Ed was a skinny old geezer
With little green eyes and a great big beezer
Who sold old cheese that he stored in rooms
Deep underground in cool dark tombs,
Cheese that was covered with thick green mold.
Some of the cheese was twenty years old!
Wallace P. Flynn drove his load of cheese
Back to his lonely house in the trees —
To him, it smelled like fresh spring blooms!
Sweet and pure and good and rich.
While other drivers drove in the ditch,
Overcome by deadly fumes.
He wrapped the cheese in a burlap sack
And buried it deep in a hole out back
And covered it up and put in a pipe
So he could smell when the cheese got ripe.
It lay in the ground for days and days
Until out of the pipe came a yellowish haze,
And when it began to gurgle and squish
And bubble and burble and smell like dead fish,
He heard the gurgles and bubbles and squishes
And cried, “By George! it smells delicious!”
And he scooped up the cheese from down in the dirt
And ate it for lunch, with more cheese for dessert.
The odor was gross — so awful and vile,
It drove away mammal, bird, and reptile.
His dog held its nose with a handkerchief,
The cats ran and stood in the swamp for relief.
The squirrels picked up all the nuts they had squirreled
And moved to a distant part of the world.
One day, a pig stood up on its haunches
And fell over flat on its back, unconscious.
The smell was so putrid, so sour and green,
Even the skunks departed the scene.
The smell was so foul, so fetid and rank,
The mailman bought an oxygen tank.
Good heavens, how the neighborhood stank!
The neighbors called the cheese police,
Who ordered Wallace P. Flynn to Cease!
“We’re coming in! Throw down your cheese,
And put your hands in the air and freeze!”
They cried, advancing through the trees.
They wore cheeseproof masks and cheeseproof suits
And rubberized steel-toed anti-cheese boots,
More expensive than a pair of Guccis
And designed to guard against even blue cheese.
They drove a car with special fans
To remove the odor of Liederkranz,
And a powerful defroster
Guaranteed against Gloucester.
But Wallace P. Flynn locked his door
And sat on the floor and ate some more
Norwegian cheese, which he dug up and which
He spread on bread and made a sandwich.
Green putrid cheese — O how it stunk!
Big rotten glops and sour drips —
Huge evil lumps of rancid gunk
That oozed through his teeth and between his lips.
The cheese police surrounded the place,
But tears ran down the captain’s face —
He grabbed a tree and stood quite still —
The smell had made him rather ill —
His face was pale, his knees were weak,
Strong tremors shook his great physique,
He gasped for breath, his eyes went dim,
That cheese was much too strong for him.
“Halt!” he cried, and then “Retreat!”
And gave his men a backward nod,
And they turned and dashed back to the street,
The Cheese Brigade of the Diet Squad,
And stood in rather loose formation,
Engaged in rapid respiration.
The captain did not stand there, flustered,
But ordered the men to load their guns
With butterscotch custard and sticky buns.
They fired once, and again — bang! bang! —
And then a blast of lemon meringue —
And out of the house came a pitiful cry,
“Stop the custard! Please! No more!
The smell of lemon makes me gag!”
And Old Man Flynn came out the door
With his hands held high
Holding a big white flag.
They took him away, the poor old man,
And drove to town in a caravan,
The red lights flashing, the sirens’ wail,
And drove him down to the county jail.
The captain wrote an official report,
And the next day Flynn appeared in court.
The lawyers stood around and gassed,
And motions were argued, and three months passed,
And eventually the case was tried
By Presiding Judge Jacqueline Hyde,
And a jury was chosen and notified,
And they sat in the courtroom bleary-eyed
As hundreds of experts testified,
Taking positions on either side.
Motions to recess were denied,
And Halloween came, and Christmastide —
When Wallace Flynn Jr. stood up and cried,
“Enough of these legalities!
Daddy, you have to give up cheese!”
He had just flown in from Arkansas
With his wife, Eloise, and his mother-in-law
And a baby boy, Wallace Flynn the Third.
“Look,” he said, “you’ve become a grandpa!
If you love your family, give your word —
From this day on,
No Parmesan!
Swiss, Romano, Roquefort, Edam —
Give ’em up, Daddy, you don’t need ’em!
Why devote your life to cheese
When you can have a grandbaby on your knees?”
Wallace P. Flynn looked at Wallace No. 3,
And the child smiled so handsomely
And held out his tiny hands so wide
The old cheesehead broke down and cried.
“I do relinquish and forswear
All cheese, including Camembert,
Colby — and even my Monterey Jack
Gift pack
From my aunts in
Wisconsin.
I never again will face a
Schmierkase.
From now on, this shall be my goal: a
Life of zero Gorgonzola.
No cheese and macaroni or cheese on my beans,
I am all done with cheese cuisines.
Tuna melt and potatoes au gratin
Shall be (by me) henceforth forgotten.”
And the judge said: “Mr. Flynn, your No
Cheese pledge is all we need. Now go.
You’re free.”
And the jury whooped and cried,
And his daughter ran to the old man’s side,
And kissed his cheek and stroked his hair
And whispered, “Daddy, we love you so.”
And his son wore a smile a mile wide
And he tossed the baby in the air
And the baby laughed — it was quite the show!
And W.P. took the whole Flynn bunch
Around to a corner café for lunch.
He enjoyed a plate of garden peas,
Caesar salad with anchovies,
Fresh fruit flown in from overseas,
Cherries and berries and jujubes,
And two iced teas.
The waitress looked at W.P.
“Is there anything else you’d like?” said she.
“No thanks,” he said. “This is all for me.
All I want is my family.”
That night, he sailed to the Hebrides
And soon he was back with his dear Louise,
And they bought a cottage in a grove of trees
Where humbly buzzed the bumblebees
Among the petunias and peonies.
And Mr. and Mrs. Wallace P. Flynn
Felt quite at home by the oceanside.
Watched the tide go out and the tide roll in,
And were very very satisfied,
Enjoying the days and the beautiful views,
The low-fat lunch and the daily snooze,
Which goes to show that a person can choose
To mend his ways and to begin
A brand-new life
As Mr. Flynn did with his wife. |
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The Writer's Almanac Hat (NEW) |
| Support poetry and The Writer’s Almanac by wearing our new design, which features the show’s name prominently across the front of this three-tone hat. Show name and logo are embroidered in white. |
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| Live from the Hollywood Bowl Garrison Keillor’s final show in July of 2016 at the Hollywood Bowl was a magical evening. Over 18,000 people attended this duet extravaganza! Garrison recently posted what he called his swan song: a collaboration on the hymn “Only Remembered” with a group of heavenly singers including Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, Christine DiGiallonardo, Heather Masse, and Aoife O’Donovan. Watch the video >>>
Buy the Hollywood Bowl CD >>>
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