This week's Prairie Home episode: June 11, 2016 Originally broadcast from the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, home of some of the most well-crafted picnic spreads you'll ever see. Future host Chris Thile joins us as a guest with a few mandolin licks sure to amaze and astound, and maybe even a new song or two; pianist Jeremy Denk heads in for a program of artful classical pieces; and singer Heather Masse joins for ballads, bluegrass, and duets. Plus: our Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman; and pianist and music director Richard Dworsky has our house band (drummer Bernie Dresel, Larry Kohut on bass, Richard Kriehn on mandolin and fiddle, and guitarist Chris Siebold) in top form. All that, and an update on the News from Lake Wobegon. Check the archive link for a rundown of the show and written scripts. Watch the show >>> Check out the archive >>> |
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In mid-June, we look ahead and think big I’ve now spent three months in a Manhattan apartment with my wife and daughter, a life that is not so different from, say, living in a lighthouse in the Orkneys. We can see tall buildings, some bright lights, helicopters overhead, but it’s not the New York high life I dreamed of growing up in Minnesota. The problem is that I like it just fine. Solitude suits me pretty well. So why am I here? I look back at dining out and I don’t miss it, two hours in a loud room where waiters with big personalities serve you tiny portions of a dish that includes much too much lentils to be worth $48. I look back at dinner parties and most of them were two hours too long and the conversation felt like a rehash of the Op-Ed page. In quarantine, you learn that there’s a lot to be said for a fifteen-minute phone conversation with one other person who’s been in lockdown too and is excited by verbal communication with another human being. I’m not complaining. People have died from the virus, many of them my age (77). I’m a writer, a trade that can be practiced in a lighthouse as well as in New York. I loved working in the reading room of the New York Public Library but sitting in my kitchen in the month of May, I wrote a novel about a small town in Minnesota. It can be done. Continue reading >>> |
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Lake Wobegon: From the Archives, 1981 Pt. II We have raided the vault once again, this time creating the second digital installment of vintage, 1981 monologues from A Prairie Home Companion. In “From the Archives: The News from Lake Wobegon, May - August 1981," you can really hear Garrison developing a knack for telling tales of the town that time forgot and the decades could not improve. This album is available exclusively as mp3s via digital platforms, which means you don't have to wait for shipping! Buy on Amazon >>> View on iTunes >>> |
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Liberty: A Lake Wobegon Novel Many 4th of July celebrations have been canceled due to the pandemic but that does not mean we cannot have some fireworks and a few laughs! Liberty is Garrison Keillor's most ribald Lake Wobegon novel yet, set during a spectacular Fourth of July celebration amid marching bands and circus wagons drawn by teams of Percherons. The Chairman of the Fourth, Clint Bunsen, is in the midst of an identity crisis brought on by a DNA test just as he turns sixty, and he finds solace in the arms of Angelica Pflame, the young beauty who marched as Liberty in last year's parade. Should he remain in Lake Wobegon with his stoic wife Irene or fly to California with Angelica? Liberty is Keillor at his knowing, deadpan, raconteur best. From Publisher's Weekly: Keillor's pacing and command of smalltown plot is impeccable; just at the moment when Clint's obsession with a genealogical discovery has become unbearable, the rug gets pulled out from under him. It's a Keillor novel that does what Keillor novels do: entertain and color nicely within the lines. Here, an excerpt from Chapter 1: Last year’s Lake Wobegon Fourth of July (Delivery Day) was glory itself, sunny and not too hot, flags flying, drummers drumming, scores of high-stepping horses, smart marching units in perfect cadence, and Ben Franklin, Sacajawea, Ulysses S. Grant, Babe Ruth, Amelia Earhart, and Elvis marching arm in arm along with Miss Liberty majestic in sevenpointed crown and wielding her torch like a big fat baton, plus the Leaping Lutherans parachute team, the Betsy Ross Blanket Toss, a battery of cannons belching flame boomboomboom from the crest of Adams Hill and Paul Revere galloping into town to cry out the news that these States are now Independent, God Bless Us All, and Much Much More, all in all a beautiful occasion in honor of America, and the only sour note was that so few in Lake Wobegon appreciated how truly glorious it all was, since Wobegonians as a rule consider it bad luck to be joyful, no matter what Scripture might say on the subject, and so in the swirl of color and music and costumes and grandeur you could hear people complain about the high cost of gasoline and shortage of rainfall and what in God’s Name were they going to do with the leftover food. It was all eaten, that’s what was done. More than seventeen thousand people attended and downed 800 pounds of frankfurters, 1800 of ground beef, a half-ton of deep-fried cheese curds, 500 gallons of potato salad, a tanker-truckload of Wendy’s beer, but the next day the talk in the Chatterbox Cafe was not about exultation and the wonders of the great day, no, it was about the bright lipstick someone smeared on the stone face of the statue of the Unknown Norwegian and the word RATS! painted on walls and sidewalks and the innerspring mattress dumped on the lawn of Mr. and Mrs. Bakke, the work of persons unknown. People grumped about vandals and what made them do the bad things they do (lack of parental discipline, short attention spans) and maybe it’s time to rethink the Fourth of July and pull in our sails a little and not give bad apples an arena for their shenanigans. Continue reading >>> Watch Garrison introduce the book >>> Get the paperback book >>> Get the audio book >>> |
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Our staff and volunteers worked on this collection for about a year, picking the very best newer stories to represent each month of the year. Despite what Keillor often says about it being a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, a lot happens in "the little town that time forgot and decades could not improve." These 12 stories capture family gatherings and holiday celebrations, both humorous and touching, that happen during one calendar year. 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. Get the CDs >>> |
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Dana Gioia, one of our longtime favorite poets, recommends Good Poems, the first anthology of poems featured on The Writer's Almanac. Here is an excerpt from the review posted on his website: "Good Poems left me grateful for Garrison Keillor, whose Writer’s Almanac has probably done more to expand the audience for American poetry over the past ten years than all the learned journals of New England. He understood that while most people don’t care much for poetry, they do love poems, provided they are good poems." Read the full review >>> Get your own copy >>> |
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