Reality is a good antidote, America. Take a long hard look.

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography,” said Mr. Twain, so now you sit in a New York apartment and try to reassemble your memory of Europe, where Germany and Poland are, and text with friends in Prague whose frightened little girls ask, “What is happening?” We don’t know. In one week, we’ve been transported back to 1940, and our Europe of chic vacations and intellectual ferment is now the cauldron of wars that our grandparents fled. My grandpa fled Glasgow, having five children and no wish to see the Great War up close, and my friend Bud Trillin’s people fled Ukraine for the reason Jews have been migrating for centuries. Chic had nothing to do with it, they were quite pleased to become Missourians.

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This Week on A Prairie Home Companion

The classic A Prairie Home Companion broadcast travels back to 1998 for a show from the Fitzgerald Theater with legendary Scottish vocalist Jean Redpath and humorist and newsman Studs Terkel. The program features some poetry from Yeats and Frost, plus Guy Noir, the Cowboys, and a piece of Rhubarb Pie, plus standout performances of “Women of our Time” and “Sweet Thames Flow Softly.” In addition, Andy Stein sits in with the house band. and Studs joins the Royal Academy of Radio Actors. Go to our Facebook page for a listen on Saturday at 5 p.m. CT (or if you simply cannot wait, use the link below).

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Guest Information:
Jean Redpath was a foremost interpreter and champion of traditional Scottish music. The Edinburgh Daily News once suggested that caller her a folk singer was “a bit like calling Michelangelo an Italian interior decorator.” She attended Edinburgh University, and during her years at Edinburgh University, she made use of the university’s vast research archives, material documenting the traditions, legends, and music of the Gaelic and Scottish-speaking people. In 1961, she arrived in the U.S. and joined in a few “hootenannies” — first in San Francisco and then in Greenwich Village. In 1977, Redpath was chosen as one of only four performers commanded to appear before Queen Elizabeth II during the Queen’s Jubilee Year. She was also awarded the prestigious MBE (Member of the British Empire). A tireless performer, Redpath played hundreds of concerts throughout the U.S. and recorded dozens of albums, including Songs of Robert Burns (volumes 1–7) and A Woman of Her Time (Jean Redpath Records). Appearing with Redpath on this performance are Abby Newton (cello), Jacqueline Schwab (piano), and Sue Richards (Celtic harp).

“How Can I Keep from Singing” >>>
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Studs Terkel called himself a “disc jockey,” a reference to his role as host of the Peabody Award-winning talk show The Studs Terkel Program, heard for 45 years on Chicago’s WFMT. After broadcasting his last regularly scheduled radio show, he worked on the Studs Terkel-WFMT Archive, a Chicago Historical Society collection of 7,000 hours of interviews. Before starting with WFMT in 1953, Terkel starred in Studs’ Place, which began airing in 1950, the year that Joseph McCarthy began claiming that he had a list of Communist Party members in the U.S. State Department. The popularity of Studs’ Place couldn’t keep it on the air: the program was dropped by NBC when Terkel wouldn’t reverse his “pro-Communist” positions in favor of price and rent controls and against the poll tax and Jim Crow laws. By the mid-1960s, Terkel’s interviews on WFMT began to be noticed outside of Chicago. In 1965, his first oral history was published, Division Street: America, about class differences in Chicago. Terkel called his writing “bottom-up history ... [interviews with] ordinary people who have something real to say about themselves.” He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1985 book The Good War, the story of World War II told through soldiers and civilians on both sides. Terkel was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Book Foundation honored him with a medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The award is given to an individual who has enriched the nation’s literary heritage through a lifetime of work.

An interview with Studs Terkel >>>

Spring from Life These Days

It’s more than two decades since the release of the audio CD set Life These Days, a collection of News from Lake Wobegon monologues that was first issued in 1998. Below is an excerpt from the bonus story that is tucked into the packaging of this classic three-disc set:
 
This is what life should be like more often, this April day, lilacs in the air, the sun shining as it has all week, a glorious spring after a gentle winter, and if this were a reward for goodness, one might almost consider being good on a regular basis. It is Palm Sunday, and Carl Krebsbach comes chugging up the street on his John Deere tractor to plow up his garden and his sister Eloise’s and several of the neighbors’ gardens as well. A good day to be out on a tractor. His wife has not spoken to him for two days because of what he said to his daughter Carlene who is seventeen and a member of the Prom Committee that has been meeting all week planning the affair and trying to reach consensus on a band to hire and everyone favors Eldon Miller and His Orchestra except Eric Hedlund, who is holding out for Big Pooty and the Snarks, because they are alternative rock and do all original material, unlike Eldon Miller who comes in a white tux and plays mostly Glenn Miller tunes, and last night Carlene came home in tears and said that she was so tired of the haggling that the prom had lost all of its meaning for her, and Carl said, “Fine. Stay home. We’ll return the dress.” And the Duchess turned from kneading the bread dough and shot him a black look and hasn’t said a pleasant word to him since. 

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Make America Intelligent Again Hat

Alas, primary season is in full swing! Let’s have honest and respectful conversations this election cycle, get ourselves to the polls, and do our best to ”make America intelligent again.” 

                                           Get the Hat >>>

A Year in Lake Wobegon

The newest collection of “above average” Lake Wobegon stories!! Our staff and volunteers worked on this collection for about a year, picking the very best newer stories to represent each month of the calendar year. Despite what Keillor often says about it’s being a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, a lot happens in “the little town that time forgot and decades could not improve.”

Material includes more than 3 hours of monologues culled from live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion that aired between 2014 and 2016. Also included: a poem by Garrison for each month of the calendar year, plus music by Peter Ostroushko, a consummate musician who was with us since the early-early days. Here is the poem for March:

It’s March in St. Paul. Eight a.m. A pale
Frozen mist in the air. The snow is gritty gray
Around the stone statue of Nathan Hale.
Scott Fitzgerald walks here almost every day
Hand in hand with Bessie Smith, or Maria Callas,
And Franz Kafka and Judy Garland stroll in the snow
And Princess Diana escapes from Kensington Palace
To meet Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.
They all look calm and very elegant indeed,
Despite all the grief they’ve been through.
To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need,
So said Emily Dickinson. (She’s here too.)
     Life is tragic. Oh God, the miseries we bear
     But it’s always good to get out in the fresh air.

A full description of each story and the contents of the CD set can be found in our blog post below. 

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Get the CD set >>>