An elaboration on the sufficiency of the muffin

There was a cranky grandma in front of the supermarket on Friday, yelling at a baby in a stroller, “Don’t ask for another muffin when you have one in your hand! Eat that one before you ask for more!” and telling a little boy beside her, “Stop walking back and forth like that. Stand still, for God’s sake. And stop your whining.” The poor kid was a little restless and Grandma was at the end of her rope. He started to cry. “Shut up,” she said.

There is a limit to everything, even grandma love. Grandma has just so much saintliness in the tank and then she becomes an ordinary mortal, and I empathize, ma’am. My grandma Dora was so perfect in her black shirtwaist with white dots, her knitting, her scent of lavender, her gentle profanity (“Oh fudge” and “Oh drat”), that my girl cousins find it hard to rise to her standard. Grandma had been a railroad telegrapher and a country schoolteacher, had endured farm life during the Dirty Thirties, could slaughter a goose by wringing its neck, and was a woman of consummate dignity. She never had to say, “Shut up,” she only had to look at you. She had thirty grandkids and every year you got a card from her with a dollar in it.

We worshipped her and so she never needed to yell at us, but the cranky grandma’s line, “Don’t ask for more when you have one in your hand,” struck me as something grandma Dora probably said to me when I was small. It reverberated, like a wooden spoon against a dishpan. I was a greedy child and it has carried on into my old age and I am trying to deal with it.

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Heather Masse 

Heather Masse has been busy lately––she has a new baby girl, she recorded a solo project with Jed Wilson, and she's added several shows over the next few months in addition to her role on the "A Prairie Home Companion" cruise to Jamaica in spring. Recently, she made some updates to our guest interview with her, talking about each of these projects plus her musical influences and a few PHC memories.

On musical influences:
"My earliest influences came from singing hymns and folk songs with my family, and then later I became totally immersed in the singing of Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, and Bonnie Raitt, as well as the singing and songwriting of Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Young and many more."

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Heather Masse will be joining Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Christmas show featuring the full "A Prairie Home Companion" cast, on stage together for the first time in 3 years.  Below are the dates and times of each of the Prairie Home Christmas shows:

November 30, 2019 at 7:30pm
Minneapolis, MN at the Pantages Theater (SOLD OUT)

December 14, 2019 at 7:30pm
San Francisco, CA at the Sydney Goldstein Theater (fka the Nourse)

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December 18, 2019 at 8:00pm
New York, NY at Town Hall

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December 21, 2019 at 2:00pm & 7:30pm
Atlanta, GA at Center Stage 

Get Tickets for 2:00 matinee >>>
Get Tickets for 7:30 evening show >>>

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