Post to the Host

Comments from the Week of 12.04.22

Dearest Garrison,
We had planned to see you in Fort Lauderdale last night, and now pray that you are feeling better. You have been the light of our Saturday nights for nearly 40 years (when friends and relatives didn’t interfere). Thank you so much for that!
Love you.
Peter and Mary Dettmers

I tested positive backstage at Fort Lauderdale and wanted to still do the show solo but the theater wisely has a policy against that so I spent a few days in a dark hotel room until I could fly home to New York and now I believe we’re due to return in early 2023. GK

Merry Christmas.

One of my memories of PHC, I went to visit my father one evening and I was delighted to find him listening to PHC. I had a habit of listening at my home and I would attend an occasional PHC live event. I miss the old show and I think of you, Garrison, with fond memories. Occasionally I see your books on my bookshelf, I can read them again and again.

Happy New Year,
Susan Smith

And a merry Christmas and happy New Year to you, Susan. It looks to be a busy one for Jenny and me. She plays viola at Minnesota Opera and is renovating her old family summer house in Connecticut and has travel plans and I have shows to do and three books in the works. And maybe I should have an 81st birthday party, having done the 80th quietly. GK

Dear GK,
As you are probably one of the few who would enjoy it, I would like you to see my documentary about Richard Wilbur. You can find information about it on the website: film-odysseys.com.
But I would like to send you a copy as a gift for the many years of pleasure and insight you have given me. You are dearly missed on my radio.
All best,
Ralph Hammann

I look forward to it, sir. I never met the man and knew him only as a formalist out East whom we Minnesotans ignored in favor of Robert Bly and James Wright, local heroes. I see that your documentary includes filmed conversations with him, a delightful idea. I tend to avoid talking to poets for fear they’ll get poetic. This is going to be good. GK

Mr. Keillor,

My granddaughter is an English Major and she would like to start a personal library of printed books. I’d like to help her this Christmas by buying her a pile of “must haves.” Would you give me some ideas?

Thomas D.

Indianapolis, Indiana

The poetry of Mary Oliver. A complete Dickinson volume. Patricia Hampl’s The Florist’s Daughter. Charles Portis. Billy Collins. P.G. Wodehouse. The list goes on and on. GK

GK,

I thoroughly enjoyed your column about dystopia and Metallica. The title even held a subtle message — So What is a particularly vulgar British punk anthem that Metallica covered as only they could, unfortunately giving it life beyond its initial curiosity.
I answer 911 calls and send help for a living, and over my nearly 40 years of doing this I have relied upon your radio show and writings as an anchor against some of the stress and ugliness that come with the territory.
I admire Metallica for their musicianship and their breakout hit One, based on Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. Their music is still impressive, and while I agree with you about the bulk of their lyrics, they have been somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me. They have perhaps lent some perspective into the mindset of the more tortured of the souls that are driven to acts such as those you referred to — those whose lives and deeds are interspersed along the course of my working life.
I can then return to things like your column, and the Pretty Good Jokes CD in my car stereo. They align closely with faith and the love of others as bulwarks against cynicism and anger.
I am among the fortunate many for whom the product of your working life has been a source of solace, laughter, and reflection for so many years. Thank you. May God bless you and yours over these holidays and beyond.

John Linko

Your letter, John, is so much more interesting and intelligent than my column, and thanks for writing it. I don’t know Metallica’s work, of course, I’m in the wrong generation, and I’m only reacting to a momentary encounter with a metalhead. Meanwhile, you as a 911 guy have decades of experience that I, a guy at a desk in a silent room, do not have. I love my work though and every day I’m grateful for that fact and sit down to do what I can. And then I get a letter like yours and it’s purely a bonus. GK

Sir,

I so loved your wind delay airport e-mail. I realize this will sound strange coming from a transplanted Chicagoan living in West Virginia to a NYC-living Minnesotan, but I have had a familial feeling toward you for a very long time. Since I was in junior high, I have always wished we could sit on a bench in a park, at a zoo or a busy delicatessen and just talk. Thank you for being an important unknown friend to me. It has meant a lot.

Papa Napier

The high winds in New York that kept our plane on the ground in MSP was one of those unexpected blessings, a chance to sit for a few hours in the terminal and enjoy the humanity. Maybe you have to be 80 to really enjoy it. I’m retired, every day is Saturday, life proceeds at a stately pace. So don’t dread getting old, young man. GK

Esteemed Maestro,
I am so embarrassed to admit that despite my best efforts I am unable to locate one of your funniest pieces that I had been saving for years, waiting for the right occasion, which is my godson’s upcoming wedding. The piece was a brilliant recitation that a bride and groom would make to their guests, begging their indulgence for leaving the party early because they were leaving to have “lots and lots of sex.” My gratitude would know no bounds if you could point me in the right direction to find that piece. Thanks for all of your contributions to our civilization.

Rodger Traynor

Rodger, I’m sorry to contradict you but I don’t think that piece of writing is appropriate for your godson’s wedding. You didn’t say so but I fear you might be planning to read it aloud at the reception. I wrote a sonnet that would be better, “You made crusty bread rolls filled with chunks of brie.” That one. GK

Dear Garrison,

You have snapping turtles up in Minnesota, they are decidedly carnivorous.

Dave Axtell

Edwardsville, Illinois

I never came across one but I’m an indoorsman, so I’ll take your word for it. GK

Garrison,

How many brothers and sisters do you have, and what’s your birth order? Did you get along with them? My older brother’s mission in his teenage years was to antagonize his three younger sisters, and we still talk about this 60 years later. What do you think your siblings would say about you?

Joan S.

I’m the third of six. We’re now five, my oldest brother having died. I got along with him and my younger sister. I was crazy busy for so many years, completely absorbed in career stuff, and now I’m closer to some cousins than to my siblings except for the younger sister who works hard trying to keep us a family. I think three of my siblings would simply say they don’t know me. GK

Dear Garrison,
I have misplaced an essay that you wrote years ago about a plan to solve the water shortages in our southwestern states by emptying Lake Superior of its water and sending it west. That would make the basin that once was Lake Superior a tourist attraction.

I would love to have a copy of that essay if you can provide it.
Thanks,
Tom Joyal

I recall it but don’t have a copy of it handy. It was a column written long ago and if I were smarter I’d know how to google “Superior” and “Keillor” and come up with it, but I’m going to let you do it and I’m going to get back to work on my book, Cheerfulness. GK

Editor’s note: MINNESOTA’S SENSIBLE PLAN

By Garrison Keillor

Time magazine: Monday, Sept. 11, 1995

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,983404-1,00.html

GK,

Love this sonnet of yours … and yes, I believe there are … we lost a son to leukemia years ago. He still hovers overhead.

Cheers,

TK

A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here — and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels hovering overhead? Hark.

Hi, Garrison.

So sorry to hear you are under the weather with this lousy virus that just won’t leave us. I will keep you in my prayers. Feel better soon. And thank you for all those Beatles singalongs; I was almost ten when they hit the U.S., and thanks to them I developed my writing skills — it all started with the stories my cousin and I wrote about them and us, how we were orphaned and they adopted us. I fully expect to still be singing along with their tunes when my family legacy of dementia sets in and I have forgotten most everything else!

Pat McC.

I think I read somewhere that memorization may be a protection against dementia, but I don’t know. GK

Dear GK,

I loved this morning’s essay and your reminiscing about the 20th, especially the innocent, uplifting song lyrics that were beautiful, good, and true. My college students listen to lyrics like “you a hoe, you a hoe, you a stupid hoe.”

But my dear, I’m more than a little worried about you, flying here and flying there, standing in crowded airports and elevators, performing in rooms with hundreds of people. And now you have COVID.

Why don’t you buy yourself a state-of-the-art La-Z-Boy and sit in it? Put on some state-of-the-art headphones and listen to every composer you’ve ever loved. Or reread your favorite Russian novels (you can make cheat sheets for the character names). Or pick your favorite directors and rewatch their movie masterpieces. Did you know that Michael Curtiz directed The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, AND White Christmas? That Robert Wise directed not just The Sound of Music and West Side Story but also Somebody Up There Likes Me AND The Day the Earth Stood Still?

You’ve worked so hard for so long to give so many people such pleasure, and now it’s time to sit in a chair and have some.

Please be well!

Maria in DeKalb Illinois

I’m not the man you think I am, Maria. I am not a student. Clearly, you are. If I sat down with a Russian novel, I’d read four pages and it’d give me an inkling of a story I could write and I’d sit down and write it and then I’d decide it’s really a story that should be told to an audience and I’d head for the airport. I have dear friends who are students like you and who are very happy in their 80s doing exactly what you describe. They live very quiet and fulfilling lives, though they sit upright, not in recliners. They read the morning paper and grieve and then return to the classics and feel restored. But if I did that, Maria, I’d never meet people like you and that’d be a real loss. So onward we go. GK

Garrison,
I noted your thoughtful exchange about forgiveness. Decades ago, during a radio interview, a psychiatrist said: “Absent contrition, there can be no forgiveness.” I have found this idea to be wise, comforting, and psychologically valid. As much as we might want to forgive, we cannot unless the offender is contrite. Conversely, I suppose, contrition might prompt forgiveness to replace bitterness.
Years later, a friend, also a psychiatrist, said simply, “What you want is not available.” What I wanted was an apology for mistreatment. My friend’s words enabled me, then and in the future, to free myself of the burden of wanting what I could not get from others. If the apology ever did come, it would be a pleasant surprise, probably followed by my forgiveness (although some offenses I suspect, Christian theology notwithstanding, are unforgivable).
Thank you for your wisdom, humor, and uniquely brilliant performances over the decades. You continue to enrich my life. Yours are among the declining number of items in my inbox that I open.
David Harris

David, we disagree, and so be it. As I see it, forgiveness is simply a refusal to be stuck on the past. I’m 80 and I woke up this morning feeling grateful for today, which is December 10, and I’m not going to waste a bit of it chewing over old slights and wrongs. I have work to do and people to love and a day of small pleasures to enjoy. GK

Dear Garrison,

I took care of my mother as she was dying, and when her time came, my family was around her bedside with me. This was at the beginning of the pandemic, and despite strict rules surrounding visitors, the assisted living facility allowed all of us to be there. Having my son hold my hand as I was holding my mother’s as she took her final breath created a spiritual connection that I’ll never forget. Have you had any experiences that left this kind of impact on you?

Suzanne Martinson

I was with my siblings around our mother’s deathbed, which happened to be in the bedroom of our house that had been my bedroom when I was in high school and I was distracted by memories of when I lay in bed reading Hemingway and smoking a cigarette and exhaling it out the window but my mother in the kitchen nearby could smell it and she knocked on the door and said, “Are you smoking?” and I lied and said I wasn’t. Not like your experience at all. GK

Dear Garrison,

With the Christmas season upon us, it got me wondering about your favorite or least-favorite Christmas songs or hymns. I’d love to know.

Ann D.

I’ll do a Christmas show in St. Louis in a few days and I love the carols that everyone knows except the rum-pum-pum-pum one about the drummer boy, which I despise, and the Santa songs and the sleigh ride ones, but when a couple thousand people at the Fox sing a cappella the classic three or four, it brings tears to everyone’s eyes. GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,
Would you please tell me which Mary Oliver poem was included in your News from Lake Wobegon, which you so beautifully told in Town Hall on November 26th?
Thank you so much,
Julie Staudenmier

Wild Geese is the poem. “You do not have to be good, you do not have to walk on your knees,” etc. I love the lines, “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you, over and over, harsh and exciting, like the wild geese announcing your place in the family of things.” Glad you liked it. GK

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