Portrait of the columnist as an older man

I respect the Rembrandt self-portrait at the Frick in New York, at which millions of us commoners have stopped and felt chastened by that noble 17th-century gaze that says, “What have you done great lately?” Not much. I look in the mirror and see a grim-faced old fundamentalist staring back and now I understand why, when I went to parties back when there were parties, people social-distanced around me before there was such a thing. I wandered alone around people’s living rooms looking at photographs of their friends on the walls, wishing I had friends too. So I’m thinking about seeing a dermatologist about getting Botox to give me a beautiful smile but my wife says, “Do not go down that road. No matter what, Botox never looks right. I don’t want a husband who looks laminated.” And so I’ve come to accept that being loved by one person is an amazement, especially when I know she looks at me and sees Boris Karloff.

We live in New York because she loves music and shows and has friends here who can talk for three hours nonstop. I’m more at home in Minnesota among friends who are comfortable with silence. I feel uneasy in New York because it has bike lanes and I’m certain that one day I’ll be struck down and killed by a deliveryman on a bicycle. They go whizzing by at top speed and do not slow down for red lights or pedestrians. A shout and a quick whiff of sausage pizza with extra onions and that’ll be the end of me. The obituary will say, “He was struck by a pizza deliveryman and died instantly.” It won’t mention the distinguished limericks I wrote, or my classy memoir, my radio reminiscences. There won’t be a link to a video of me singing “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” with Heather Masse. In people’s minds, I will be forever linked to pizza and they will wonder, “What size and did the family who ordered it get a refund?”

But life is good, especially if you had an unhappy childhood among fundamentalists thinking about the imminent end of the world. After a hellfire childhood, everything is easy. People who complain about pandemic life grew up with unrealistic expectations based on watching Mister Fred Rogers who led kids to imagine the world as a friendly neighborhood in which you are well-liked just the way you are and don’t need Botox. So they find it hard to cope with endless days of isolation.

I was touched on Wednesday when my love said to me, quietly, “I am so excited about my new salad spinner.” In the past, we’ve been excited by various things that I needn’t describe here, and now a salad spinner. Scrabble excites us. She won last night with the word “strainer,” scoring 82 points. If the shutdown continues, we may be thrilled by a bowl of mixed nuts.

To the gospel preachers of my youth, New York was a hotbed of licentiousness, but the COVID virus has brought about a life of rectitude that centuries of preaching never could and here I am at home with a woman excited by a salad spinner. I’m happy. My calendar is clear. I’m free to write a sonnet for her so I did.

When I consider how my life is spent
Searching the apartment, high and low,
Trying to find out where my glasses went,
Where I set them down a minute ago.
From room to room I search in drawers and shelves
While others compose and paint and write
Books and bring great honor to themselves,
I struggle to regain my sight.
The irony of one with such poor vision
Searching for glasses is a symbol, rather clear,
Of the fragility of the human condition,
And then, my love, I look and see you here.
“I lost my glasses,” I say, “can you find them, please?”
And you do and clean them and the blind man sees.

Notice it doesn’t pledge undying love, it only thanks her for finding my lost glasses. They were on the table near my computer and I couldn’t see them. I put them on and saw my reflection in the window and decided to stay home, so go ahead and order pizza and don’t worry you may be responsible for my demise. It isn’t a great sonnet, not as exciting as a salad spinner, but anyway we already have one of those.

Posts to the Host

(In reference to March 24, 2021 column, Pardon me if I want I talk about where I'm from )

In your posting March 24, you mentioned how, like your father, you engage folks you meet in conversation. “The woman behind the convenience store counter wears a name tag, ‘Ifthimiatou,’ and I say, as my dad would’ve, ‘How do you pronounce that? It’s a lovely name. Beautiful day today ...’”

I do the same thing, often with people who are ringing up my purchases. There is the Indian woman at the coffee shop who beams with pride in telling me her son just got a full scholarship to a local university. The Syrian-Armenian grandmother who saw the handwriting on the wall back in the 1980s and immigrated here. Both her sons are successful lawyers now. A woman at a grocery store couldn’t stop chuckling when she told me about her arrival in the U.S. two years ago from her native Uganda. The young Cuban/German woman who has a Chinese grandmother who rang up my beer purchase yesterday. I asked about a medallion she was wearing around her neck and she said it was something from the Cuban version of the Santería religion. As she put it, “I know it won’t bring good fortune, but what if it did — scary!” I chatted with the Chinese-born eye surgeon who replaced my old lenses with new ones that work. She told me about her life growing up in China. Over time, my optimism about this country has been renewed by the stories of these Americans who chose to join us and get on with their lives as Americans.
Bill

Bill, I don’t know where my dad got that habit of making small talk. He was an evangelical Christian, brought up to be wary of unbelievers, but coming of age in the Depression, I believe, gave him a keen sense of empathy. Everyone you met was having a hard time and you offered your friendly banter without discrimination. To me, it’s not a matter of religious principle or political identity, it’s just good manners. I can see cruelty on the left as well as the right, nobody has a monopoly on it, but I think simple decency does a great deal. I was walking along a street in New York a few years ago, to catch a train to Providence to meet a theater guy and talk about a play I was working on. I’ve forgotten about the trip, the theater guy, the play, but I remember clearly that at 88th Street I tripped on the curb and fell, landing on my hands and knees, and that within four seconds, four people were there to help me, a construction guy, a woman, a young Black guy, and a man in a suit. They asked if I was okay. I said yes and got up on my own steam but I remember this scene clearly. It spoke to me deeply. It still does. 
GK

Greetings from Houston. Your note on March 17 started, “I was back home in Minnesota last week, throwing away boxes of old manuscripts to spare my darling from having to deal with them after she plants me in the Home for the Happily Medicated. I saved the stuff thinking it might ferment, like wine, but it hasn’t, so out it goes.” and I actually yelled out loud, “NOOOOO!!!” It really startled my wife, Helen. She asked what had me so riled, I told her, and she repeated EXACTLY my comment. Please do not trash access and insight from future generations of readers and fans!
With warmest regards,
Chip

I appreciate your interest, Chip, but the truth is that when we’re gone, we’re gone, and there is very little left that is of interest. Libraries are stuffed full of collections of papers that nobody will ever lay eyes on, and the only motive for saving them was the arrogance of the donor. If all my papers were saved, and someone looked at them, she’d think, “The secret of this guy’s success was that he threw away most of what he wrote — and he should’ve thrown away more.” My hope for immortality lies with a few limericks that I think are immortal, one on Thoreau, one on Sylvia Plath, one on a young fellow from Pocatello, and then —

         There was an old man of Nantucket
         Who died. He just kicked the bucket.
         And when he was dead
         They found that instead
         Of Nantucket, he came from Barnstable.

That is a great limerick. I wrote it and I deserve credit, but the truth is that, in a short time, all limericks become attributed to Anon., not to an author, and that’s because the limerick is a lowly literary form. But it’s my specialty, and to save me for posterity, you don’t need a shelf in a library, you only need a small envelope. 
GK

We raised our boys in Madison, Wisconsin, and had a great life there and they blamed us for the fact that they couldn’t write good country-western songs because they didn’t have much angst. One thing they loved was Sat. night with PHC and hamburgers at home. We all live in St. Paul now and that other city to the west and we enjoy occasional trips downtown where we can drive past the Fitz and gaze at F. Scott and remember days gone by. The boys still experience significant hunger for hamburgers when they ask Siri to play the theme from PHC.  
Thank you for all the memories.
Patti

You’re welcome. My brother Phil lived in Madison but he was a busy man, a sailor and hiker, skier, skater, active in his church, busy on research projects for the Sea Grant program, and I don’t think he spent much time listening to the radio. Listenership is introspective and he was a doer, a wonderful father and grandfather, which involved a lot of doing. He took after our dad in that respect and I take after our mother who was a reader and letter writer and loved radio comedians. I haven’t been in St. Paul for four years and doubt that I’ll ever set foot there again. Too many memories, too much baggage. I like to travel light. 
GK

Dear Garrison,
When you refer to the Midwest as “Flyover Country,” you should know that the FAA ATC (Air Traffic Control) Center located in Farmington, Minnesota, controls the largest geographical segment of air traffic in the United States. Larger than New York, Boston, and Washington Centers combined; larger than Oakland and Los Angeles Centers combined. Our FAA controllers in Farmington are in charge of the most sophisticated airliner speed control system in the world, thus ensuring safe arrival spacing at destinations throughout North America. A marvelous ballet in the sky that occurs daily so we should be proud of our badge of Flyover Country!
Regards,
Jim Conn
 
I’m sure you’re right, Jim, but every time I land at LaGuardia, I admire the controller who brought us in that twisting pattern, sometimes low over Brooklyn and a hundred feet above the expressway to land on that little runway and immediately hit the brakes hard. The descent over the prairie onto the enormous acreage of MSP feels like a piece of cake compared to the path over the Sound and so close to Rikers Island you can see the prisoners playing basketball in the courtyard. A safe landing at LaGuardia brightens my entire day.
GK
 

(In reference to March 26, 2021 column, Still thinking of George, wishing I'd known him )

I wish you had got your wish and met Saint George. You said you didn’t know him but you wrote as if you knew all the facts of his life. I don’t think religious people try to pass off counterfeit money, but maybe that’s a different type of religious person than I know. 
 
Sad that we made this man a hero and a saint, as you have painted him to be. The officer should be judged by a jury of his peers and afforded a fair trial with all the facts presented — not just a snapshot of the officer with his knee on the neck, which is how he has been judged in the court of public opinion. I don’t see how a fair trial is possible in Minneapolis. The press and a large majority of the people (like you) have already judged him guilty of murder because that fits their narrative of police officers. The city paid a huge settlement (the largest in the nation for that type of case) before they even had a trial and knew all the facts — then to make it worse, they announced the settlement while a jury was being picked on the criminal case.
 
Everyone is entitled to due process of law — that’s the bedrock of our criminal justice system. You would want the same for yourself and your family. Yet, the officer was adjudged guilty the day it happened without the benefit of knowing all the facts. If you think that is fair, then God help you.
 
The real problem in this country for Black people is not the police but the killing that occurs in their own neighborhoods between themselves. Chicago and all the major cities are prime examples of that. You rarely see anything about that in the press. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the narrative that the police and this country is racist. They aren’t and we’re not. Open your eyes, Garrison!
Alan Downen
 
I said in the piece that the cop had his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck. That is clear from the videos. I didn’t say he was murdered. You assume that Mr. Floyd was guilty of passing counterfeit money, and we don’t know that for a fact either. You may be right that Officer Chauvin can’t get a fair trial. I agree that the settlement was probably intended as a bribe to keep the peace and the announcement of it was all wrong. But I stand by my characterization of George Floyd as a man who came to Minneapolis to change his life and who sought the Lord. You are sarcastic to call him “Saint George,” and I really think that is unworthy of you, to joke about a man who lost his life for $20.
GK
 
Originally belonging to Pakistan, I’ve been your reader and listener since the ’80s, I guess. Read Lake Wobegon Days while we were still in Thailand. Moved to U.S. in ’91. But I’ve a confession to make. My perception of you was that you were another privileged white, well-educated, sharp and funny at times writer, broadcaster, and so on, and yet a hard-core racist. Your essay on George Floyd opened my eyes. I apologize for being so judgmental. 
 
I love your writings and discuss them with my son, an English literature major and now an attorney. (God bless America).
 
You’re a loving soul. Today, you reminded me of the graciousness of Holy Christ. May Allah (God almighty) bless you with health and long life. 
Stay safe,
Majeed Akhtar
 
I would confess to being a soft-core racist, Majeed, which to me is simple tribal/family loyalty — I come from a white town — but when I was 18, I went away to university and the first day there I came across a dozen very black African students speaking beautiful French, and this does open your world a little. So did the blues, so did Black gospel. Half the music we loved had Black origins. And Christ is very clear that He speaks to all and loves all and especially the poor and oppressed. Of course I am a racist, no need to deny it. But the image of Mr. Floyd that sticks with me is of him and his girlfriend Courtney standing, hand in hand, and speaking the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. That is permanently implanted in my mind and on the basis of that, he is my brother.
GK
 
Mr. Keillor,
Your essay describing Mr. Floyd as being akin to a “saint” is misleading and not very helpful in the heated conversations being carried out regarding police tactics and the subsequent political action we have been engulfed in for so long, resulting in lethal results in many cases.
 
George Floyd’s manner of death is totally unacceptable and my hope is that law enforcement throughout the USA will review their “restraint” tactics and revise them.
GC
 
A person who seeks the Lord is not the same as a saint, of course. Anyway, I am not an authority on sainthood, God knows. As for police tactics and political action, my weekly column is 750 words roughly and I leave those issues to others.
GK
 

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The Writer's Almanac

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Mary Oliver

Poet Mary Oliver (books by this author) was born in Maple Heights, Ohio, in 1935. She had an unhappy childhood and was sexually abused as a very young girl. She spent most of her time outside, wandering around the woods, reading and writing poems. She once said to a reporter: “I don’t talk about my childhood because it’s time we all get a new subject.” She wrote a poem about skipping school to spend time outside, called “Violets.” It begins: “Down by the rumbling creek and the tall trees — / where I went truant from school three days a week / and therefore broke the record — / there were violets as easy in their lives / as anything you have ever seen / or leaned down to intake the sweet breath of.”

From the time she was young, she knew that writers didn’t make very much money, so she sat down and made a list of all the things in life she would never be able to have — a nice car, fancy clothes, and eating out at expensive restaurants were all on the list. But young Mary decided she wanted to be a poet anyway.

Oliver went to college, but dropped out. She made a pilgrimage to visit Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 800-acre estate in Austerlitz, New York. The poet had been dead for several years, but Millay’s sister Norma lived there along with her husband. Mary Oliver and Norma hit it off, and Oliver lived there for years, helping out on the estate, keeping Norma company, and working on her own writing. In 1958, a woman named Molly Malone Cook came to visit Norma while Oliver was there, and the two fell in love. A few years later, they moved together to Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Oliver said: “I was very careful never to take an interesting job. Not an interesting one. I took lots of jobs. But if you have an interesting job you get interested in it. I also began in those years to keep early hours. […] If anybody has a job and starts at 9, there’s no reason why they can’t get up at 4:30 or 5 and write for a couple of hours, and give their employers their second-best effort of the day — which is what I did.”

She published five books of poetry, and still almost no one had heard of her. She doesn’t remember ever having given a reading before 1984, which is the year that she was doing dishes one evening when the phone rang and it was someone calling to tell her that her most recent book, American Primitive (1983), had won the Pulitzer Prize. Suddenly, she was famous. She didn’t really like the fame — she didn’t give many interviews, didn’t want to be in the news. When editors called their house for Oliver, Cook would answer, announce that she was going to get Oliver, fake footsteps, and then get back on the phone and pretend to be the poet — all so that Oliver didn’t have to talk on the phone to strangers, something she did not enjoy. Cook was a photographer, and she was also Oliver’s literary agent. They stayed together for more than 40 years, until Cook’s death in 2005.

Mary Oliver died of lymphoma on January 17, 2019. Her final book was Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (2017). She said: “I’ve always wanted to write poems and nothing else. There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you’re working a few hours a day and you’ve got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you’re okay.”

Here is her poem “Spring” as presented by her publisher. “Spring” is featured in our compilation book Good Poems for Hard Times. 

Buy 'Good Poems for Hard Times >>>