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Post to the HostComments from the week of Feb 14, 2022
Dear GK, I read of your friendship with Joe O’Connell in your memoir That Time of Year and remembered when I was young, my mother regaled us with tales of her old boyfriends, one of whom was Joe. Two pieces of his artwork hung on our walls, and he seemed a mythic character to me. ”I could have married Joe O’Connell” was mentioned on bad days. Instead, my mother met a dashing Royal Navy Officer at Oxford, and after a wedding in Chicago, off they went to Malta. Had your mom married Joe, you might’ve wound up in rural Minnesota, part of the Catholic Worker movement, and living on the commissions of Catholic churches that wanted original stone or wood sculptures rather than plastic factory-made. Some churches wanted original art but wanted to only pay fifty bucks for it so Joe had to do a certain amount of begging. And when the sculpting was done, he loved to sit and enjoy a glass of brandy (cheap) and tell stories, many of them set in Chicago among Irish on the South Side. Joe was a good father, I think, and a lover of old jazz, and he was very engrossed in his work, self-critical, ever anxious about money and deadlines, and I do think that if Gertrude had married him, she might’ve had bad days when she regretted having lost that Royal Navy officer. The life of a freelance religious artist is an uphill road. But when you went into his studio and heard Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton while Joe was sanding the BVM he was trying to finish, worrying about a flaw in the wood, you knew he was a happy man. GK Dear GK, You have mentioned that you read the Post and like George F. Will. I do as well. I appreciate his honesty because he quit the Republican Party when the orange-haired fellow was nominated. But mostly, I love his prose. A thesaurus is a handy thing to have when reading him. Luckily, there is a “look this up” option whenever I point the mouse arrow at a word. Here is a favorite phrase from a piece that he wrote just a few days ago: “He larded this fatuity with dollops of the usual rhetorical fat.” Exceptional prose, that. Also, you noted that you endeavor to hit the middle of the toilet bowl. Sir, a toilet is not a urinal. Gentlemen always sit on the toilet. There are sanitary exceptions, but those exceptions are never in the home. And I am certain that you do not live in a gas station. Stay well, stay safe, When George F. Will tells me that gentlemen always sit on the toilet, I will seriously consider it but I’d like it in a handwritten note signed by him and including a $5 bill to show he’s serious. GK Garrison. This is my favorite story about saying “I love you ...” and could easily have been about my Norwegian American parents (now passed, both born before 1920) whom I never saw hug or kiss each other but clearly did love each other through 60-plus years of marriage: Lena was complaining to Ole on their 50th wedding anniversary that he never said “I love you ...” to her on their anniversaries or Valentine’s Day or any other day. Ole quietly replied, “Lena, on our wedding day 50 years ago, I told you ‘I love you ...’ and I also said that I’d let you know if anything changed.” Stay safe and healthy! Mark Larson Arcata, California My parents were unusually demonstrative for Midwesterners and also for fundamentalists and she often sat on his lap and he kissed her and I think it helped matters that their romance went on for several years of the Depression before finally, thanks to scandal, they married over the opposition of both families. They had to work to achieve the union, it was no casual matter. I clearly remember the one time she was seriously angry at him; I was six or so and I went upstairs to bed, weeping, and she came upstairs to assure me that she didn’t mean what she said. That event is engraved in my mind, the angry words especially, and then her reassurance. Since then numerous women have been furious at me and I have reassured myself with her words: “I didn’t mean it. Everything will be okay.” GK My favorite poet sent me news that you are looking for Recipe Poems. Attached is mine. Thank you, Kathy Scott Soup for a Snowy Day by Kathy Scott Oh, take that nasty snow away! I don’t want any snow today. But, if perchance it still will lay, Let’s make some soup to save the day. A kettle large is just the thing Along with ladle for stirring. Cover split peas or beans with water They’ll be just right when cooking later. Add some ham (hocks or pieces) Into the kettle with stock and spices Chop carrots, celery and onions, about a cup Make sure stove heat is not turned up. Cook and stir all day long. And then I’ll sing a different song: See the snow did not go ’way And here’s some soup to save the day.(Note: the first lines of this poem were inspired by Augustus, who did not want any soup. My favorite one as a child. Mother read the poem more often than she wanted, and she made great soup.) Kathy, I don’t know anyone who can “cook and stir” all day except retired folks or prisoners in a penitentiary. You need to make a microwave version for the rest of us. And instead of “stirring all day,” how about putting the pot in the trunk of your car and driving over bumpy roads? GK My father, George, was a copy editor at The New Yorker until he retired around 1970. When I was 12, he used to bring me to his 19th-floor office on a Sunday afternoon, when it was on 43rd Street. I’d wander other offices on the floor, testing typewriters and re-arranging all their rubber stamps. I remember those offices well, Dan, and visited there around 1970 to see my editor Roger Angell who, as I recall, was on 18. Calvin Trillin had an office and Mark Singer, Ian Frazier, Dan Menaker, Bill Whitworth, and a couple dozen others. You submitted a story typewritten on paper and if accepted, it was set in type on a long paper galley where your dad or some other copy editor made their marks, and a checker checked each and every fact, and your editor made some comments or queries, and finally William Shawn himself made some queries with the initials WS in pencil. You made some changes of your own, then it was set in a page proof, which you got to see, and then, voilà, it was in the magazine, in skinny columns running up over the cartoons or between the ads. A writer really had a feeling of Making It Big when his or her piece appeared, and that’s why all of us yearned to get published there. I wrote for them for twenty-three years and loved the whole trip and was thrilled to meet heroes like Joe Mitchell and John Updike and Eleanor Gould the grammar queen and Andy Logan and Ed Koren. Glad you got to visit the scene. GK I joined the Everly Brothers International site and found you singing with them when they were on PHC. What were they like Mr. Keillor? We only got to see them at the Wente Winery in California. Was it fun harmonizing with them? Nancy Jan Don and Phil came to St. Paul to play the show the first time and it was stunning to see them walk into my office and stand there at my desk, sort of like if the pope walked in and gave a benediction. I was in high school when they ruled the world and I knew their songs by heart and now, thirty years later, they wanted to stay current and not go on the oldies circuit and play on a crowded bill with the Flamingos and the Coasters to crowds of geezerettes. They really believed in perfection: every time I heard them they were perfectly Everly. A few years later we did four shows at Radio City and they rode up on the stage elevator singing “Bye Bye, Love” and the crowd roared and wept, remembering their first dates, the brothers were a hard act to follow. I don’t know what they used to get their hair like that. Some sort of adhesive spray, I assume. Backstage, they were amiable as befits old pros, Phil a little more chipper, Don somewhat withdrawn, and they sang “Why Worry,” which I think was them at their best. Look at it on YouTube with Chet and Mark Knopfler playing guitars and the brothers are in perfect sync without even looking at each other. I still love singing that song and thinking of them, “Sometimes this world seems mean and cold / But baby, our love comes shining red and gold,” and it gives me a thrill. Try it sometime. GK Dear Mr. Keillor, I was intrigued by your mention, in a Post to the Host response, of your late Great-Uncle Lew Powell. My maternal grandfather, Archibald Powell, hailed from Western Pennsylvania (just outside Pittsburgh), and I am wondering if we might be distantly related. Sadly, all the Powells of my parents’ and grandparents’ generation are gone, and I have little in the way of genealogical information. I believe that Archibald Powell was born in 1872, and died in or about the 1940s, which I suspect might make him a cousin of Lew Powell if there is any relation. I had the privilege to meet you briefly after a PHC show in New Orleans in 2013. (I served then on the board of the local public radio station.) It would be amusing to think we might have met as distant cousins, unawares. Mark Seyler My Powells were Welsh, maybe mixed with some Dutch, and David Powell grew up in the 1830s in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, and married Martha Ann Cox, and after a stillborn child and then triplets, they began their westward migration to Michigan, then Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, then Colorado, and finally Oklahoma. So I suppose Archibald and Lew (Llewellyn) might’ve been cousins, Lew being born to James Wesley Powell, David’s son, in 1886. Somewhere somebody knows the answer to that question. I’m grateful I didn’t inherit David’s wanderlust, nor did any of my relatives that I’m aware of. I can imagine David and Martha Ann riding in a wagon packed with bags and babies, a cow tied to the rear, perhaps a dog running alongside, heading down a dirt road toward the setting sun. The man was a wild optimist and that’s what pioneering was about. Say what you will about the Westward Urge, I admire them. GK Thought Garrison might want to know this acronym. Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (anthropology) WEIRD Trudy B. Denver, Colorado Or Wild Electoral Insurrectionist Republican Demagogues. GK, My daughter moved to Minneapolis to Teach for America. I visited her pre-COVID, and while exploring the Mississippi mills, we met a local bookstore owner, who gave us a guided tour. As a couple approached us, the man wearing large glasses à la Elton John, I jokingly said, “Here comes Garrison.” Our guide looked, squinting, and said no, that’s not him, but he did move recently back to Minneapolis. So post-COVID I returned to Minneapolis, to watch my daughter cross country ski at Wirth Park. She has embraced the purifying frigidity. Then to the Luminary Loppet we leapt! But since I apparently can’t run into you by happenstance, perhaps we’ll meet otherwise!? Actually, though, NYC is not so far from me. I’m sure you’ve ridden the Staten Island Ferry? I enjoy your good work; keep well! Patrick New Cumberland, Pennsylvania I’m pleased that your daughter got to Minnesota to teach for America and to enjoy winter and cross-country ski. I used to slide on a toboggan down a hill at Wirth Park, but I never had the courage to go into teaching. And I have even less courage now. I wish her well. In fact, all the best, if that’s possible. This country needs more people with that kind of spirit, who cross borders and make a new life among strangers. An infusion of big aspirations and hope and good humor. The world needs it. We Minnesotans carry enough pessimism in our packs to kill off the crabgrass and we need newcomers. Give her a hug from me. GK GK, I am a fan of short sentences. An economy of words would help many of us endure politicians, preachers, and pundits. Being concise should be a virtue among most writers. You, of course, are an exception. So are many of those writing to you. No need to belabor that point. On the other hand, you often appear to strike a literary nerve with some of your posts that produce a landslide of defensive and cheugy responses from those who appear to be unable to accept the fact that we are living in a time of contested facts when everyone wants to be right about this, that or the other even when they are dead wrong with respect to the thoughts and experiences of others whose reality is not theirs nor should we wish it ever to be. Let’s hope the English majors and conservative Georgians reading your columns can learn to appreciate your convoluted literary style that melts together layers of folksy analogies and images that are elevated by humor and punctuated with recurring experiences in entertaining yet often poignant perceptions fermented by old age and bewilderment from listening to Republicans justify voter suppression laws and referring to an insurrection as legitimate public discourse. Enough said. I want to keep this short. Tom Little Van, Texas I admire some of those sentences mightily, especially the one beginning “Let’s hope the English majors …” I don’t share your hope but it’s a beautiful sentence. Enough said. GK Thank you so much for all the wisdom you shared in Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80. If I follow your advice, I hopefully will be able to age without completely alienating everyone I know. My husband and I are trying to perfect the ruse that we are foreigners living in Europe so none of the politics on TV, social media, and the radio matter to us. Being the only two Democrats in the raging red state of Alabama is a difficult cross to bear but your lovely book has given us hope and pretending to be expats may be our saving grace. I’m also pretending the Tennessee in-laws and my idiot brother are overseas and out of mind. Love the book. Please keep writing! Miss the radio show every Saturday night. Ann Landers I am fond of Alabama, having done a show in Birmingham during a blizzard. Most of the audience made their way to the theater downtown and a gospel quartet came and Emmylou Harris walked in the back door and onstage and kissed me and then she sang “Boulder to Birmingham.” That’s all I know about Alabama and that’s enough for me. GK Happy Friday Eve, Mr. Keillor! It’s the case, sir, and if you play your cards right, it can be the case for you. The Town Hall show was a live radio broadcast with a clock to watch and guests to march out and some scripts to write and everything had to squeeze into an hour and 59 minutes, and the Avalon in Easton was a small theater where I could feel the vibe of the crowd and I had the freedom to do as the crowd pleased and I tossed in a few poems, sang some songs, some with the audience, and let the monologue drift around in eddies, and it was fun, and when it was over I went across the street and sat and chewed the fat with some people who’d come from Baltimore to see the show. Very comfortable. I could do that five nights a week for years if my wife would agree to come with me. She’d have loved hiking up the shore and then after the show she could’ve beaten me at Scrabble. GK Garrison, dear, I will be 84 in May, and I have been eating raw oysters since I was 4 years old. Now, not so much as we live in AZ. I grew up on the Gulf Coast and ate them every chance I got. Add Tabasco or hot something of your choice. Ginger is good, too. My dad and I challenged each other to the number. After I grew up and married and went out to the piers with other couples, I was the only woman who dared! They are to be chewed and not swallowed whole — good grief! You miss the deliciousness of them. I LOVE hot stuff — convinced it heals all things. I miss them still and do not trust the flown in ones here. Tried some once and the texture and the taste was not as great. People at other tables point at you — “Look at that woman! Euuu … she is eating oysters!!!!” Ships are not so clean these days — drop oil and stuff. People are killing the planet. Good to be old. Love, Bobbie Bobbie, I’m sorry I didn’t have you there in Easton to coach me on oyster eating. I’m from Minnesota and didn’t get around to oysters until I was in my twenties. First chance I get, I plan to head for the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station and I will hoist an oyster to you. An oyster hoister of the first water. Roy Blount wrote about the oyster that “nothing’s moister, but I prefer my oyster fried. That way I know my oyster’s died.” GK Hello, Garrison. I do love a bacon cheeseburger, one of America’s great gifts to the world along with baseball and the blues, but I limit my intake since I want to maintain mobility and not have to be wheeled around on a cart. Same with breakfast. Once every two weeks or so, because my wife is a late sleeper, I defrost a tenderloin and fry it up with two eggs over easy, and I do think that a hearty meal prepares a man for a productive morning of writing. But these days, we mostly favor a light breakfast and a good late lunch and let it go at that. I am helpless though when faced with sloppy joes, buttered popcorn, or tuna hotdish. And of course Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie, one little slice can revive a guy. Serve it up with ice cream and you are living the American dream. GK ******************************************************** NOW AS AN AUDIOBOOK (MP3 downloads)
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