Post to the Host

Garrison,

Many years ago (1971) I married a guy from Minnesota, and we lived in Minneapolis. We were members of the Exclusive Brethren. After we left and finally had access to radio and television, I discovered your radio program and attended a couple of your live shows in St. Paul. Have listened on Saturday nights for many years. Although I missed quite a few while living on a sailboat in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific...

So now I catch up and still enjoy the old shows.

Thank you so much for sharing your talent and stories.
Anne Symington

Anne, I grew up in the Exclusive Brethren and I guess your Brethren were more exclusive than mine because I never met you. It sounds like your bunch forbade radio and television. Mine was rather squishy about that: we were death on dancing and so rock ’n’ roll stations were out but we listened to the news and I think that some women secretly tuned in Ma Perkins and Romance of Helen Trent. We took a hard line on TV but some Brethren secretly bought sets and hid them in the closet and watched Sunday football and The Lucille Ball Show and Ozzie and Harriet, and standards were weakened and before long they were watching Hollywood movies and didn’t even try to hide it. I think you could make your own radio show out of life on a sailboat on distant seas, and if you do, I’ll tune in. GK

Hi, Garrison.

I was curious if you and your wife have any cats. I think I remember you mentioning you did years ago. Bertha’s Kitty Boutique skits must have come
from some personal experience?? Hah!

Thanks,
Michael Thurman
Lexington, Kentucky

Bertha’s came from two cats we owned back in the early ’80s, Ralph and Tuna, both beautiful and beloved. Ralph was black and a hunter, impossible to keep indoors, and Tuna was cream-colored and very domestic. Ralph was killed in a fight with other cats and Tuna disappeared and we never replaced them. Jenny and I travel too much to be responsible cat owners. My daughter likes to hang out at a café that keeps cats and that’s enough for her. I don’t see cats or dogs in our future, frankly. When I walk down the street and see someone holding a plastic bag in one hand and the leash of a dog in the other, waiting for the critter to defecate, I have no wish to join the club. We had outdoor dogs back in my boyhood, we did not deal with sewage. They were trained to scratch at the door and bark and we let them out to do their business in the neighbor’s yard. It’s hard to teach an old dog owner new tricks. GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

I grew up in a quiet suburb of Manhattan in the ’50s and my mother often drove my twin sister and me into the city to partake in the museums, Broadway plays and musicals, the ballet, and Radio City Music Hall when they had both a Christmas show and an Easter show and a movie. After college, I moved to Manhattan where I lived for over twenty years and enjoy hearing your enthusiasm for its compelling personality. Today I write musicals professionally and last week you helped me fight the darkness once again by mentioning the hymn How Great Thou Art. My mother sent my sister and me to a Bible camp where I first heard and fell in love with that hymn. I still treasure the lyrics, the beautiful Swedish melody, and the power that overcomes the foolishness and damage we are capable of embracing.

Jennie Redling

Thanks to Google, I opened up your website and was impressed at your productivity and the breadth of your career. You’re working in a field I’m trying to get into. I’ve written a wreck of a play, Radio Man, and a mess of a movie, A Prairie Home Companion, and now I’m at work on a musical about a singing group in the ’60s and a movie about Lake Wobegon. Some days I feel hopeful about them and some days I feel I’m deluded, but onward we go. Good luck to you. GK

GK,

Times may change over the years but hate sure doesn’t. Wars are still wars of hate. And also, there was that incredulous mass killing in the bowling alley sans purpose. Joshua blew the walls down in Jericho and brought another temporary peace.

We are condemned to behold it all.

TK

Vietnam was a tragic mistake and Iraq was pointless and misbegotten but I do think Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine is a moral issue for this country and I cannot see how Hamas’s attack of towns and kibbutzim in Israel can be justified. There are complicated histories, but it’s pretty clear where America needs to stand. GK

Hello! I recently read String Too Short to be Saved by Donald Hall. It’s a memoir of his childhood summers spent with his grandparents on their New Hampshire farm.

Have you read it? I think you’d like it.

Susan

I have. I did. GK

Hi, Garrison.

What other countries have the sheer number of mass shootings that the U.S. does? There’s nothing wrong with praying for victims and their loved ones but failing to take action as well is putting the responsibility for fixing things on God alone. The Lord helps those who help themselves. He gave us brains (and hearts) for a reason. I don’t know what it will take to prod those bozos in Congress to act, but maybe THAT’s what we should pray for.

Patricia McCormack

A solid majority of Americans agrees with you, but a tiny minority of gun owners is in the driver’s seat right now. Minorities hold onto power by gerrymandering and otherwise rigging the system. I don’t come from gun people, don’t understand the fascination. I feel safer in Manhattan than I did when I lived in the woods of Wisconsin. But people will have their say eventually, perhaps next year. GK

Dear Garrison,

I’ve been a fan of yours since, by serendipity, I tuned in to APHC one Sunday morning about 25 years ago when I had nothing to do whilst attending, as a UK representative, an International Standards meeting (yawn) in Kansas City. Some years later I managed to record a chunk of your show at the Edinburgh Fringe where you said, in reference to Brits driving on the left side of the road: “We crossed the road between the airport terminal and the bus park. And some looked left and some looked right. And so the average intelligence in America goes up.”

Surely this Darwinian inevitability is an outcome devoutly to be desired.

Americans have for many years driven on the wrong (right) side of the road. Everyone knows that you mount a horse from the left side, so that is obviously the side of the road to which one ought to stick when faced with oncoming traffic. This needs to be fixed. To be really effective in enhancing Darwinism, and to make the change easier, I would suggest the change be done on two consecutive days. Cars with odd license plates on Day 1, and cars with even plates make the change on Day 2. What do you think?

Sandy Tyndale-Biscoe
Penryn, Cornwall, UK

This is an expensive proposition, requiring the redesign of cloverleafs on freeways and moving signage and so forth and the death toll among my fellow elderly would be grievous. We are a great asset here because we remember the words to songs, which young people, thanks to Google, do not bother to learn. We know the Star-Spangled Banner, My Country ’Tis of Thee, America the Beautiful, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and if you stand in front of a big crowd and lead them, they will sing, whereas young people fumble with their phones. I do shows around the U.S. and I stand up and sing, “O Lord my God when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands have made” and they’re all there, everybody, even the agnostics, singing How Great Thou Art and they sound so good they’re moved to tears by their own singing. I am not in favor of killing the choir. GK

GK,

There is no hope without forgiveness. President Biden, families of hostages, and residents of Gaza all speak of hope. They hope for harmony — a life in balance.

Harmony — people can compete and cooperate at the same time. Economic competition creates activity in the marketplace. Interreligious relationships are vital so that diverse faiths may live together and work cooperatively.

While economic competition is a day-to-day activity, long-term resentments undermine cooperation. An attitude of reconciliation requires a commitment to absolution — to pronounce clear of guilt or blame.

Forgiveness — hope — harmony — commitment to reconciliation.

My message of forgiveness has been posted in Tel Aviv at 20 Rabbenu Hanan’El and across from the Banksy Hotel in Bethlehem. 

كنت عبدا
للرجل الذي في القبر
ثم غفرتُ
كي أنقذ حياتي

I was a slave
To the man in the grave
Then I forgave
It was my life to save

Anthony P. Oertel

You’re a messenger of hope, and thank you. I’ve never been to the Middle East. I do know that America enjoys a luxury of tolerance and that this grows. Nonetheless it’s hard to forgive our own enemies, friends who’ve betrayed us, family quarrels, religious bitterness, estrangements of all sorts. I don’t have the answer. GK

Hello, Garrison.

How much of your News from Lake Wobegon did you write out ahead of time vs. improvise on the spot? Also, how did you come to tell stories and incorporate Lutherans into your show when you had a different upbringing? I was raised in a small German Lutheran town west of the Twin Cities and for much of my younger years believed you were a Lutheran yourself.

One of my fondest memories with my grandfather was attending one of the last live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion at the Fitzgerald Theater in 2016. I had recently returned from a multiyear work assignment in Singapore. While abroad I often listened to your show to feel a connection to home. We wrote a note for you to read after the intermission, but our handwriting was likely so poor you had to throw it out!

Best,

Eric Becker

Evanston, Illinois

I always wrote out four or five pages, single-spaced, and I glanced at it before the show but I never took it out onstage. I felt that writing was my way of thinking and that I’d remember whatever was valuable and skip the rest. It worked pretty well. Some Saturdays I used very little of what I’d written.

I grew up Plymouth Brethren, a tiny separatist fundamentalist sect that would’ve been alien to most listeners and I didn’t want to make fun of my own people so I chose a large inclusive semi-majoritarian bunch, the Lutherans, and when I talked about the Midwest being a “Lutheran culture,” the audience seemed to know what I was talking about — the compulsive modesty, avoidance of conflict, even avoidance of declaring personal preference. Anyway the show was welcomed at many Lutheran college campuses so it worked out well.

Glad you got to see a show at the Fitz. We’re going to do a weekend of shows at the Fitz in June, marking the 50^th anniversary, but I’m sure the show will come to Chicago too. GK

Garrison,

Have listened to PHC most of my adult life and loved it. But looking at your tour schedule I see you have left off one key location. New Mexico! We would love to see you out here, and the venue I would suggest is the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. Saw the late David Crosby there several years ago and just saw Jakob Dylan and The Wallflowers. You would love it and so would we. 

Much Love,
John Carlson
Bosque Farms, New Mexico

I will get to work on this, John. GK

Today’s Old Memories Have Deep Roots reflection of yours helped me. In 1990 I moved to Annapolis, Maryland, to attend St. John’s College, study the Great Books, change my life, etc. Another student shared with me a cassette tape of yours that had Meeting Donny Hart at the Bus Stop. I’ve since listened to that story maybe more than a hundred times. The story, with your pitch perfect delivery, helps me contend with my vanity — the major task of my life — and it sort of rights the ship for a while. If I could write one story that approached the impact of Meeting Donny Hart, I would be gratified to have accomplished my task as an encourager of people. Thank you for today’s piece that reminded me of that.

Jerry Januszewski

That story I told happens to be true. It actually happened. I came across a classmate from grade school named Ronnie Lowe on a bus in St. Paul. He was what we used to refer to as “slow” or “retarded,” and here he was, an adult, going home from a sheltered workshop. It brought back painful memories of childhood cruelty. GK

Hello, Garrison.

In an October 2009 episode of APHC, you and Andra Suchy sang a beautiful duet of “Walk Away Renée,”which I played for my wife recently. Could you sing it during your upcoming reunion show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in January, which we will be attending. If it’s not possible, I know we will still enjoy the show to the fullest and are looking forward to it! 

Happy Trails to you,
Bob Evans

You mean “Just walk away, Renée, you won't see me follow you back home”? I don’t think so, Bob. I never understood that song. Andra must’ve suggested it and I, ever polite as I was back then, said, “Okay,” but now, thanks to my daughter, I’m learning to advocate for myself. We have my hero Sam Bush and a bunch of terrific Nashville musicians on that show and if your wife still wants “Walk Away, Renée,” it’s there on YouTube. But maybe we’ll sing “Happy Trails.” GK

You did a sketch once on PHC in which a novelist was typing the last paragraph of her novel when her laptop computer made strange humming sounds and erased the whole thing. Has this ever happened to you?

Jennifer Blake

Toledo

No, but I live in fear of it because I’ve lost chunks of writing that I CUT from a long work, intending to move them, and then unthinking CUT another chunk, which destroyed the first chunk. I’m from the typewriter/carbon paper generation and I’m a slow learner. I do know, however, that panic is the enemy and that if you sit and start writing what you lost it will come back to you, often in better form than what you lost. A big mistake leads directly to a dramatic improvement. GK

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