My Brightest Diamond, Ann Reed and Heather Masse are featured in this Fitzgerald 2012 Classic

Even old people need to explore new realms

I’m an American, I like to believe that nobody but nobody is beyond the reach of friendship and understanding, not even North Koreans or former felons or the creators of complex security systems that have driven me to the brink of madness, trying to remember the password for my computer and then having to replace the password and confirm my identity by typing in a six-numeral code sent to me on my cellphone whose password I now can’t remember either.
I don’t have top-secret documents stored in the phone or in the laptop. I have a lot of appeals for donations from Democratic politicians and lefty organizations such as Citizens United for Diversity & Inclusivity In American Humor (CUDIAH), none of which needs to be kept from prying eyes. I’m a Democrat. So what? I wish I had a friend in the password biz who could say, “Oh, passwords went out of usage long ago, nobody does that anymore, you just need a simple voice-recognition system that eliminates the need for passwords.” My current friends are all liberal-arts grads who know nothing about this stuff. Do you get my drift?

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The Fitzgerald Theater in 2012

Let the warmth of this classic February show take the chill out of the air! This week, we travel back to the Fitzgerald Theater for a show originally performed in 2012, featuring the title track of the Beautiful Dreamer duet album, plus favorites “Tired Old World” and “If You Were Mine” and a few other tunes by the songwriter herself: Ann Reed. Join us on Saturday at 5 p.m. for a listen (or if you simply cannot wait, listen now via the link below). Our special guests: ever-popular Minnesota-based singer-songwriter Ann Reed, otherworldly chamber-pop chanteuse My Brightest Diamond, and vocalist Heather Masse. Plus, the Royal Academy of Radio Actors (Tim Russell and Sue Scott), the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon.

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More about this week’s featured guests:
When Ann Reed was 12, she borrowed her brother’s guitar (the one he bought with the $40 their grandmother had given him to buy a suit) and taught herself to play. Good move. Since then, the skill, her rich alto, and her sly wit have added up to a long and successful career for this Twin Cities-based singer-songwriter-guitarist.

Listen to “Heroes” >>>

Growing up in rural Maine, Heather Masse sang hymns and folk songs around home with her family. Now based in New Mexico, this New England Conservatory of Music alum is a one-third of the Juno Award-winning Canadian trio The Wailin’ Jennys. Garrison will be joined by Heather and Rich Dworsky for a trio of upcoming shows in Fargo, Sioux Falls, and Omaha (details on our EVENTS page).

Listen to “Make You Feel My Love” >>>

Composer and experimental chanteuse My Brightest Diamond (Shara Worden) draws inspiration from diverse sources — folk, opera, pop, classical, Motown, cabaret, and more. After a peripatetic childhood and high school in Ypsilanti, Michigan, she studied opera at the University of North Texas, then moved to New York City (via Moscow) and made her first recordings.

Listen to “I Have Never Loved Someone” >>>

That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life

That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life will be released in paperback on March 7 wherever books are sold. The memoir is a self-reflective look at Garrison’s life, from his early childhood to thoughts on creating and hosting A Prairie Home Companion. In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, after seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty years, more than 1,500 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renée Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation.
He says, “I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That’s the secret: work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I’m heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day.”
From the author:
I sat down and looked at my memoir That Time of Year when it came out and was put off by the sadness, the opening chapter about how much I missed doing A Prairie Home Companion, so I sat down to fix it. That’s why a writer shouldn’t read his own work. But I did and so I sat down to cheer it up a little and wrote a new first paragraph.
I am a Minnesotan, born, bred, well-fed, self-repressed, bombast averse, sprung from the middle of North America, raised along the Mississippi River, which we spelled in rhythm, M-i-ss-i-ss-i-pp-i, a sweet incantation along with the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23 and our school fight song about v-i-c-t-o-r-y. We sang it with a sense of irony, knowing we weren’t winners in the eyes of New York or L.A. or even our football rivals, but we were proud of our North Star State, the flatness, the fertile fields, the culture of kindness and modesty, our ferocious winters, when white people become even whiter, and to top it all off, we were the origin of the Mighty Miss. Wisconsin wasn’t, nor North the Dakota. It was us, and strings of barges came up to St. Paul to haul our corn and beans to a hungry world.
I wrote a new preface and a cheerier first chapter, which came (literally) from the heart — I having undergone heart surgery at Mayo to replace a leaky mitral valve — and I felt good. I did this for readers who missed the hardcover edition, to give them a lift, and also myself. The revision led to Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80 and a new book in progress, Cheerfulness. It’s a happy phenomenon, an author still ambitious at 80, and I give credit to my wife, Jenny. If I were teaching Creative Writing today, I’d teach my students the importance of marrying the right person.” — Garrison Keillor

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Friendship Cards set of 8

Petrarch to Shakespeare, John Milton to John Berryman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning to
Longfellow to Langston Hughes — poets across centuries have found the sonnet to be a compelling form of poetic expression.
Garrison Keillor has too. Now eight of his uplifting sonnets — echoing aspects of friendship or
kindness — are printed on quality card stock, each poem paired with a handsome photographic
illustration.

There are 2 sets of cards available. Here we are featuring SET 2 (vertical format: approximately 7” x 5”).
Four different poems paired with four different photographs
2 cards of each, 8 envelopes
Themes: Walking; Summer’s Bounty; Quietude; Friends — the most valuable acquisition
Here is the sonnet featured on the “Quietude” card:
QUIETUDE

In a world of crunching and grinding and humming
And the confusion of people going and coming
TVs, cellphones, Muzak, hysteria
It’s a blessing to locate a peaceful area
And escape the tumult and travail
And leave a message on your voice mail:
“Just me. Nothing of great import to say,
Except that time is slipping away
And so I wanted to say hello
And hope you are well and all your brood
And that you can sometimes let go
And find something like serenity and quietude.
A quiet day: so much happiness depends upon it,
And that is why I sent you this quiet sonnet.

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From the Archives: The News from Lake Wobegon