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Comments from the week of 05.05.24

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GK,
I don’t go to live MLB games anymore, but I do watch some baseball on TV. I watch a few early innings and then come back in the 7th or 8th. If the score has remained the same, I feel as though I have won something.
However there is one thing about baseball that drives me absolutely nuts. Why with today’s marvelous electronics must I watch one highly paid official guess as to whether a given pitch is a ball or a strike while thousands, perhaps millions of other observers with a better view already know which it is, and then if this same single gentleman guesses wrong, he’s still considered correct? This is absurd and embarrassing to watch.
What’s your thought on this conundrum, if you please?
Thanks,
Bill Juntunen
Middlebury, Indiana

Opposed, sir. That’s my opinion. If you want a better opinion, google “Balls and strikes, what should call? App or ump?” GK

Mr. Keillor,
My wife and I were fortunate to attend your performance in Boise on April 26th, a loving gift from our two daughters. Committed stay-at-homes, fearful of braving crowds and downtown parking, we approached the affair with some trepidation.
Chief among the issues to be feared was that of producing the tickets on our phones. My mate, forever a study in practicality, printed an image of the tickets, which I carried as backup for insurance against any cyber-related performance anxiety in which they might refuse to appear at the appropriate moment. Again, my spouse deployed her calming effect by directing my attention to pods of gray-haired, sight- and hearing-limited brothers and sisters puzzling over their phones attempting to unlock the secrets of this 21st century.
Comforted by this display of elder support, we relaxed and thoroughly enjoyed being entertained. The community feeling nurtured by your show was a reminder of how things can be. Thank you.
My brother attended one of your shows a few years ago in Santa Fe. In company with him were two seniors: his mother-in-law, Ruth, age 93, and the brother of his preacher, Don, in his late 80s. Yep, Lutheran. Ruth was completely deaf, Don totally blind. The humor of your performance and inspired camaraderie delighted these folks and touched them beyond their limited mortal senses.
Thank you again.
Biff Burleigh
Boise, Idaho

Biff, you’re a hero to have done this and I admire your calm as you approached Security and made it safely through. That’s why I do shows rather than attend them; I come in through the stage door and I seldom even have to show an ID. Sometimes they even have a dressing room with my name on it. There’s free coffee backstage and sometimes a lunch is provided. An easy life compared to what you went through. GK

Mr. Keillor,

I would like to thank you for many happy Sunday afternoons. I lived in a little wide spot in the road named Possum Trot in the foothills of the North Carolina mountains. When I first started listening to A Prairie Home Companion it only was available to me on a weak AM station. I found if I went up US21 to the Lookout, a paved area for trucks to cool their brakes, which had a great view of Traphill, Pumpkin Center, and Pea Ridge (real places), I could listen to your show clearly for the whole show. I could also get your broadcast driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway that was a couple of miles from the Lookout. I would slowly cruise along enjoying your show and the views from the ridges and think about the week before and plan the week ahead. I anchored myself to those two hours every week and used it like a reset point.

I took up dirt racing and really enjoyed it, but the races were held on Saturday night. That means I missed your show during racing season. I finally discovered that WFDD did a rebroadcast on Sunday at 2 p.m. It was wonderful; I could go to the races and listen to you too, my version of having my cake and eating it too.

I want to thank you so much for A Prairie Home Companion. It brought me much joy over the years, not to mention the mental reset you were part of every week. When you went off the air, it’s almost like they took away Christmas. You were like a good friend, and I sure do miss you. Thank you for being a part of my life.

Thanks again.
Kenneth “Big” Bauguess

Thank you for the post. I never imagined a dirt track driver would tune in to the show. I figured the audience was all stuck-up English majors like me and it’s very satisfying to imagine a PHC listener who can drive a souped-up car and throw it into a controlled skid around the turns. I miss dirt track racing. It used to be a part of the Minnesota State Fair and then they paved the track and then racing ended and the grandstand was only used for shows, including PHC. I did several shows with the audience in the grandstand and on the straightaway and I walked out in the crowd and we all sang “My country, ’tis of thee” and the U of M fight song and “Amazing Grace” and “In My Life.” But to me it was still the old dirt track. Exciting. GK

Hi, Mister Christian Man.

Let’s not be making fun of rosary-reciters on their deathbeds. The rosary is not mindless repetition; it is a Gospel prayer, and each decade is a Gospel event on which one meditates while praying.

For example, the First Joyful Mystery is the Annunciation (what is God asking me to do today?) and the Third Luminous Mystery is the Wedding Feast at Cana (what do we need to ask from God today?) and the Second Glorious Mystery is the Descent of the Holy Spirit (how can we invite God in today?) and the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery is the Carrying of the Cross (what’s our cross and do we accept it?)

It’s also better than Ambien for inducing sleep, and if you doze off before you finish your rosary, your Guardian Angel finishes it for you. Not a bad way to go out.

Your Catholic friend,

Maria in DeKalb, Illinois

Maria, I’m sorry you mistook my joke. The joke is that I, a Prot, die and go to paradise and discover that they’re all Catholics and so I need to learn to say the rosary. Nothing about mindless repetition. GK

Hello, Mr. Keillor.

I am writing to you to reiterate my thanks to you for coming this past weekend to Wisconsin and attending our Wisconsin grassroots network festival in Appleton. You were a delight, and although our audience was much smaller than we would have liked, I know all the attendees enjoyed your stories.

I did just buy your recent memoir and wish I had purchased it before the festival so that I could have asked you to sign it for my grandson, Keillor.

Keep up the good work!
Sue Schuetz
Cross Plains, Wisconsin

I enjoyed talking to that handful of people, Sue, and was glad to meet you. I’m afraid your grandson will get tired of telling people how to pronounce his name and will have to endure boys who’ll call him “Killer,” as I did, and he may want to change it to Kyle or Cullan or maybe Buddy. Hope you enjoy the memoir. I intend to read it myself someday. GK

I love Garrison and have for many decades, but oh how I wish he’d stop saying that people now can “choose their gender” and using the concept of being transgender for comedic effect. I assure you there is nothing funny about being transgender. I have a transgender son, always a shy person who hates attention, who finally at 25 allowed himself to accept the truth and live as a man, and I assure you this was NOT A CHOICE. He wakes up every day wishing it weren’t the life he now must live. He’s depressed, angry at God, and hates himself. And his father and I worry constantly that he’ll decide that since he was miserable trying to live as a female and is now miserable as a transgender man, that he’ll simply decide not to live. The world is very, very cruel toward the transgender community. Here in the U.S., the Republican Party has made the transgender community, a small group just trying to live their lives and wishing to be left alone to do so, a scapegoat — a focus for their fear of the other vitriol — spreading vicious lies suggesting they are perverts and pedophiles, etc. They also push the idea that being transgender is something these folks have chosen to be. For a voice as revered and wide reaching as Garrison’s to support the GOP’s dangerous propaganda that transgender people “choose” to be transgender is irresponsible. I can’t believe someone like Garrison would want to be complicit in the harm being done to an already suffering community of people.
Thank you for your time,
N.C.

Thank you for your thoughtful letter and consider the joke discarded. Always glad to be corrected. GK

Hi, Garrison.
I read with sympathy about your childhood enslavement on Fred Peterson’s farm. As a boy, I too worked on a dairy farm. This farm was owned by the Wadsworth family in Connecticut. If your name is Wadsworth in Connecticut, you go way back. As a matter of fact, one of the Wadsworths once told me the deed to their land was signed by King George III.
Like you, I spent most of my time on the farm hoeing corn — a tedious, seemingly endless chore, hacking row after row at robust yet unwanted plant life surrounding the early corn sprouts.
Now, as I drive by the weedless cornfields up here in Ontario, I marvel at the powers of modern herbicides, despite having reservations about their long-term side effects; agricultural companies have developed seeds immune to the toxic properties of these herbicides. Surely a miracle! Trouble is, you have to buy these magic seeds from the agricultural companies every season, no seed-saving, which can result in a nasty lawsuit.
As one coming from farm country, you too must be shocked at how agriculture has changed over the years … milking parlours that can handle fifty or sixty cows at once, North American soybean fields that are monitored via satellite by Japanese scientists thousands of miles away … plus astounding improvements in agricultural yields which provide rising output without the need for additional land. But some environmentalists claim modern farming is destroying the planet.
I must confess I’m conflicted. I’m very pro-environmental safeguards, and yet, as a sign states (which I pass regularly as I drive through farming country): “Don’t complain about farmers with your mouth full!”
All the best,
Rick Whelan
P.S. Do you sometimes find that sipping olive oil leaves a bitter taste in your mouth?

I confess that I was kidding when I said I drank olive oil to fend off dementia. I only put olive oil on a salad or on pasta. As for agriculture, in my old age I’m no longer in contact with farms and farmers. My dad grew up on a small rundown farm, poor soil, farmed with horses, and he was glad to escape to the city during the Great Depression. He passed on no sentimental attachment to it. I lead a small life on the 12th floor of a co-op on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. My cousin Wayne was a gardener who opened up a greenhouse that is now quite immense and successful, and many of my relatives work there, and I leave these issues for them to work out. GK

Garrison,

Even English majors who grew up on the prairie can recognize an inflection point in history and today’s resemblance to 1930s Germany. When the highest Court in the land gives serious consideration to whether the President can indeed have his rivals murdered, the stench of danger is in the air. And most 80-year-old men had kin who came back from WW2 and didn’t talk about it, or some who died on those battlefields.

Whistling past the graveyard and singing the praises of olive oil is too easy. We cannot ignore the clear and present danger that the orange Jesus poses to our country and to the world. Another Hitler is poised to take power. I wish you’d speak out. You have a platform. Use it.

Clay Blasdel

Buffalo

What people need to do is to read the transcripts of the man’s speeches that are easily available online. Nothing I can say could be near as convincing as to read the man’s words themselves. I am here to try to provide some lightness of spirit. Hundreds of other people are far better at analysis of contemporary political culture. I stay away from it for the same reason I don’t build houses or practice dentistry. GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

Just a heartfelt thank you for your columns. They always bring a smile to my face and make me a better husband and senior citizen. Life is good; keep up the awesome work, you definitely make a difference.

Sincerely,

Pierre

Pierre, talk to Clay, please. GK

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