Post to the Host

GK,

I enjoyed the first chapter of your new book, and in particular this reference.

“When my dad lay in a hospital in 1999, the man in the next room was Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, the father of open-heart surgery, also the papa of the pacemaker, which I have too. He died of cancer. Two years later, the operation he pioneered saved my life.”

Dr. C. Walton literally held my heart in his hands. In the summer of 1959, when I was 10, he and his team repaired the hole between my ventricles, a birth defect. The result of which I have had 62 additional healthy years of life, a 48-year marriage, three kids, and six grandchildren. Lucky indeed! 

There is an interesting book on that history, King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery by G. Wayne Miller, Patrick Cullen, et al.

I have a nice picture of Dr. Lillehei and myself after surgery in July of 1959, but no way to attach to this email. Thanks for all you do to make me laugh and reflect on the good in our lives. By the way, I spent the first nine years of my life in Osakis, MN, which is as close to Lake Wobegon as you can get.

Richard Undlin
St. Cloud, Minnesota

That’s a beautiful story, how an Osakis boy with a problem wound up in the hands of the highly skilled at a major medical center. You must’ve had just the right problem to gain admission. It reminds me of the story I heard from the wife of an old heart surgeon who said, “Some of the surgeons had child care duties and took their kids to sit in the overhead gallery and watch surgery and some of those kids went into the business themselves.” And a moment later, the daughter of an old surgeon, herself a heart surgeon, walked over and pulled open my shirt to look at the incision on my chest and said, “You went down the road to Rochester for that? I could’ve done it better in St. Paul.” I was an invited speaker and suddenly I became an exhibit. Once you pass 70, it’s the age of gratitude.

GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

I’m going to make us both feel old for a minute.

In 1990 (could be off by a year or so), my friend Ray took me to see you perform in Columbus, Ohio (I think it was a “Sweet Corn” show). I still remember a song that I can’t find anywhere: it was about the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of (that part) of the Cold war. The chorus mentioned Václav Havel and had the line “What people in Washington most fear is that democracy will spread over here.” The situation in Ukraine has bits of that song playing in my head. I wish I could hear it again.

I hope you are well.

Thanks for all the memories over the years,
Cat

This doesn’t sound like a song of mine, Cat, but I wouldn’t swear to it under oath. I was floating loose and free back then, doing all sorts of embarrassing things. But looking in my hard drive, the Songs file, I don’t see it. Thank goodness.

GK

GK,

Thought about you while reading This is Happiness by Irish writer Niall Williams. His style and observations reminded me of some of your writings — in some ways maybe he’s the Irish G.K.

Just a thought that for your recreational reading, if you have time, you might enjoy his book.

N.M.

Something tells me I’m going to be cast onto the burning coals of professional envy if I do. I wish Niall well but I’m moving full speed ahead on a half-dozen things and I am a few months short of turning 80. And I am married to a delightful woman and have several good friends, plus various relatives. Where should I find the time?

GK

So you are giving up The Writer’s Almanac? Garrison, you are letting go of a lot of things, but this is huge and causes much sorrow.

Pam

Pam, the Almanac has been running on fumes since MPR cut off funding and it’s outdated and in good conscience I can’t let it go out. Someone else needs to do what it does. I’m a writer, I gave up broadcasting. Sorry.

GK

We would love to invite Garrison to come and visit us in Lawrence, Kansas. October is a lovely month here ...

Thank you,
M. Scott Hickman

I’d love to come. Let me know what’s up.

GK

Good morning,

In this morning’s PTTH, Garrison replies to Alicia and mentions the end of TWA is planned for May. The Editor’s note indicates something in the works that may offer a variation to continue it. I hope that can happen and appreciate the constraints placed on everyone’s time and talent in producing TWA.

I am one of those who regularly fails to appreciate something until it is lost. Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” puts it this way:

“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone …”

I first heard TWA broadcast on my local public radio station a few years back. It was during my morning drive to work and I came to look forward to it. Like Alicia, to whom Garrison was responding, I enjoyed it as part of the start to my day. Before I retired, I found TWA online and integrated it into my COVID “new normal” mornings as I worked from home. Retired in October of last year, I continue this good habit today. I also endeavor to rid myself of bad habits here and there, as has Garrison.

If you aren’t able to continue TWA in any fashion, please know that your team’s work has always been deeply appreciated, albeit by an audience that generally, by its nature, is often too reserved to express it.

Willie K.

Dear Mr. Keillor,

Have received the book Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80 and have begun to enjoy the poetry and prose musings. I will be hitting the “serene” age in September and trust this work will prepare me to accept what age brings. I wish you continued success, serenity, and gaiety.

Roxanne Stern

Given a little good luck, they’re fine years, Roxanne, but one does wish for more grandchildren. My cousins Dan and Isabelle have about ten and I have one. It’s distressing that the next generation is so worried about the future that they hesitate to bear progeny. War in Europe is going to deter them further. I fear for what my generation may have brought to pass.

GK

Hi, Garrison.

Remember your great shows for 30 years plus — almost always wonderful, especially the monologues. Sorry you couldn’t continue them. Read some of the books too. You can hold your head high — you have done a great job with PHC. So much new and offbeat stuff, sense of humor wonderful. The soundmen were great, the stories, the “Librarian” one. The one with the guy with the dog and you went all over the place. Made radio shine again.

Congrats! If you ever make reading appearances or book tours around San Francisco — please let me know.

Ted Pierce

You’re too generous, Ted, and I worry about you. I was in listener-supported public radio, my friend, which is just high-class panhandling and I worry you might walk into Golden Gate Park and come across a storyteller and hand him the keys to your car. Be careful. Happy, but cautious.

GK

GK,

I hardly expected a reply in limerick to that oyster knee-slapper. So thanks for the surprise. To clarify matters:

JPC be a he, not a she.
Hails from Memphis in West Tennessee,
Where barbecue’s smoked,
Blues lines* are invoked,
Where with gerunds we’re droppin’ the “g.”


        *As Little Milton noted,

                        If I don’t love you, baby,
                        Then grits ain’t groceries,
                        Eggs ain’t poultry,
                        And Mona Lisa was a man.

Keep on carrying on,
jpc

I was so impressed by my neurologist six months ago, I sat and wrote her a limerick on the spot, not easy with her Pakistani last name, and when I saw her this week, she looked at me and said, “Limerick Man.” She is a highly educated scientist with a bucket of degrees and I got her attention with a five-line verse. This is some kind of democratic justice, the peasant catching the eye of the professor.

GK

GK,

Despite your recent celebration of contentment in life, I am among those who know that accepting reality is easier for retired writers and plumbers in America than for people in Ukraine or Yemen or those stranded at the Texas border. This societal neurosis probably has its roots in my rejection of fundamentalist Christianity in favor of the social Gospel preached in liberal theological cathedrals like Riverside Church in NYC. Besides that, some of my basic life skills were never as easy as knowing the difference between H and C because my DIY father put the wrong water line connections on the faucets in our home when I was an infant and he never bothered to switch them. So, I am now approaching 75 and still need to readjust my expectations when I use a public bathroom, otherwise, I waste lots of water and worry about contributing to the looming environmental apocalypse that’s headed our way. Thanks for sharing Mencken’s perspective on political theatre. Listening to President Biden’s long-winded excursus on the State of Disunion punctuated with Republican boos and Build Back America reassurances reminded me of the one time I went to a circus as a child and became fixated on the elephant who pooped inside the Big Tent disorienting the clowns who had to be extremely careful where they put their big shoes. I must have learned then this unshakeable awareness that excrement in life happens sometimes even when the bearded lady in a tutu is riding majestically on an elephant decorated by the KKK. Still, I like the tone of Uncle Joe’s message to the nation last night more than anything his Presidential predecessor had to say. That’s probably because Trump had the same speechwriters that Putin now uses. Maybe it’s just too much to hope today’s world leaders might follow the converted king of the Ninevites and put on sackcloth and sit on ashes to repent of their empire lusting ways. 

Billy Moody

Dime Box, Texas 

Billy, I don’t want you to go fight in Ukraine, so put it out of your mind. At 75, you’d only be in the way. I am sending money for medical help and refugee relief and I hear from our friends in Prague that they are very very concerned. It’s a bad situation likely to get worse. I appreciate your good letter and I pray that Joe gets good counsel from the Pentagon. There can be a disconnect between Democrats and the military, which is probably our fault, having enjoyed the antiwar righteousness a little too much, but now is the time for wisdom. God preserve us, no matter what they say at Riverside Church.

GK

Hello, Garrison.

I always enjoy your writing and never more so than this morning. I awoke at 4:30 a.m. local time in my daughter’s home in Sitges in Spain, rested, but in need of any form of a breakfast. It’s now closing in on 7 but the “breakfast room” is two flights down and not yet open. I arrived here from Ottawa, Canada, two days ago, not just to escape from the embarrassing Trucker’s fiasco but to reunite with my daughter Jen after a two-year pandemic separation. I’m still waiting for signs of life in the house and the heavenly smell of brewed coffee but as always, catching up with you has made the wait not just endurable but a great joy.

With thanks,
Janet

I had no idea I might be a caffeine substitute, Janet. It doesn’t work for me. I’m up and coffee is my first stop, I don’t sit and read one of my columns instead. You need to buy Jen a coffeemaker. They must have them in Spain. Isn’t there Amazon delivery available?

GK

Hi, Garrison.

I hope the start of Lent is treating you well and you are happily avoiding sinning while enjoying your bagel. I gave up God for Lent 20 years ago and have been much happier ever since. As for Debussy, do all his works turn you off, or just some? As a pianist, I very much enjoy his “Arabesques” the “Suite Bergamasque” (which includes Clair de Lune), as well as his “Images,” and thoroughly enjoy “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” speaking of sinning. On the other hand, I’d rather drown than listen to “La Mer” ever again, so I can agree with you there. I know that in a prior post you spoke of loving Chopin (today is his birthday) and like to listen to him while reading poetry. I am surprised that Debussy’s piano works do not evoke the same pleasure. 

Take care and enjoy your 40 days.

Todd from Boise

There was a pianist named Todd Who spend his Lent avoiding God And plays Debussy Who is tasteless to me Like mayonnaise on boiled cod.

GK

Garrison,

In today’s column you mentioned H.L. Mencken. He was a Yankee, and more than a little contemptuous of us Southerners. However, he once made a remark about writers and writing that is one of the most insightful observations I have ever read on the matter. Being a writer yourself, I thought that you would appreciate being reminded of it (I am confident that you are familiar with it). “To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies — the man who searches painfully for the perfect word and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said — there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.” 

Coleman Hood

P.S. When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” I hear him advising me to live in such a way that I do not have enemies. It’s a possibility.

The Jews felt it was an impossibility, so they invented Christianity. As for the joy of writing, that is exactly it, my friend, and it comes, not from writing but from rewriting.

GK

You know how you say that you always pay attention when obituaries have your own age on it? I always notice when an obit has someone my father’s age. Older makes me feel good, younger makes me sad, especially when the person was famous and could have been expected to live extra-long due to good living conditions.

Andrew

There are a number of people I still grieve for, years later, friends who died young, some back in the Sixties when I and they were in our twenties, Leeds and Barry and Louis, and dear Corinne gone at 43, and cousin Jimmy a sweet and brilliant alcoholic, but there is no grief like that for a lost grandson, Freddy, lost at 17. It’s beyond understanding. I didn’t weep at his funeral, it was too strange, I got up and sang, like a petrified man. But we go on.

GK

Hello, Garrison.

I see no problem being a liberal, but your admiring AOC, a woman who hates the USA, I think it’s time for a senility check, and maybe time to lay off the rhubarb pie. Someone called you a political idiot, I wouldn’t go that far, I just think you’re either in the early stages of dementia, or possibly the ingredients in the pie are affecting your reasoning.

Take care and keep the humor flowing. My advice is to stay out of the political arena.

Andy

I’m not in the arena, Andy, I’m only a citizen. I was admiring the congresswoman’s story, a bartender/waitress defeating an old Irish pol who didn’t even bother to maintain a residence in the district. That’s democracy: the big bozo can be tumbled by a determined opponent. She went out to the Standing Rock reservation in the Dakotas and observed the Sioux fighting for their land and it filled her with courage. I admire that. Disagree with her as you like, but “hates the USA”??? Please, sir. If you wish to abuse me, you really need to be funnier.

GK

GK ... you probably don’t know this, but firewood that’s salted, such as beach driftwood, releases dioxin when burned. There have been poisoning incidents on the Oregon coast.

Maybe this is addressed in the book, but if not, it could add some excitement in the second printing.

Bayard Pidgeon

Klamath Falls OR

I’m not counting on a second printing since my books sell in the low thousands now, and anyway it’s meant to be comical and that excludes dioxin, I think.

GK

GK,

I was taken with your profile of Deborah Garrison in TWA. I got her 2007 book of poetry, The Second Child.

As I read the first poem the book, the somewhat eponymous title “I,” I was perplexed. Her poem:

“On New Terms Goodbye, New York Not Pleasant but True Play Your Hand Both Square and Round A Short Skirt On Broadway The Past is Still There How Many Bedtime Story I Saw You Walking” 

The meaning eluded me. I read this aloud to my wife, the font of all wisdom, and asked her what it meant.

She replied that it meant I was reading the table of contents.

Sure enough.

Lou Tinaro

Virginia Beach, Virginia

There is something called “found” poetry, Lou, and you found it.

GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

About 40 years ago I subscribed to the now-defunct British humor magazine Punch. One memorable issue presented an advertisement placed by the Harris Tweed Association from the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. The Association announced a competition for which the prizes were double-billed ghillie’s hats made from Harris Tweed. Contestants were to send their hat sizes with their entries. The entries were to contain the words “Harris Tweed” or “Harris Tweeds” in the last line and were to be limericks. There were no other rules.

Harris Tweed provided an example of the kind of verse it sought, apparently to encourage poetasters and perhaps to discourage accomplished limericists:

There was an old Scot from Dunoon
Who went up in a hot-air balloon;
Was the first of his race
To travel to space,
And to wear Harris Tweeds on the moon.

On the following day I brought the ad to the pharmaceutical company where I worked and showed it to an Australian colleague and a British one. We three chemists agreed that it was insipid, vowed to do better, and did.

Perhaps the best of our offerings came from our Australian colleague. He wrote,

A hapless bank teller from Leeds
Was trapped by his bodily needs;
Too far from a closet
He made a deposit
In the seat of his new Harris Tweeds.

Our British colleague contributed this:

Said a randy young fellow from Meade
“I’ve trouble fulfilling a need;
Although I feel chipper,
The teeth of my zipper
Are clogged up by old Harris Tweed.”

The only American in our triumvirate, I composed the following limerick:

An onanist living in Leeds
Was aimless in spilling his seeds;
He said, “It’s no matter
If I scatter and splatter,
Nothing shows on my new Harris Tweeds!”

In a letter that we all signed, I gathered the three limericks, linking each writer’s hat size to his composition. I mailed the letter to Scotland and then we waited for a reply. We waited for weeks and then for months, diligently if not desperately scouring every issue of Punch that crossed the Atlantic. When the Scots had exhausted our patience, we signed and sent to the Isle of Lewis another letter that I composed. Here it is:

We entered your recent contest
With limericks outranking the rest;
You had our hat sizes
But sent us no prizes,
Bare-headed we write to protest.

We complain that your rules gave no hint
That our entries should be fit to print;
Were your judges demented
To think they’d prevented
A contest with an off-color tint?!

Be aware that what Harris Tweed spurns
Would draw praise from the Bard, Robert Burns;
If you don’t believe that,
Send us only one hat
That we’ll share by the taking of turns.

Having waited 40 years for a reply, we consider that, to save postage, the tightfisted Scots have sealed our hats in a carboy that they committed to the briny. It may yet reach us, but in the meantime we have had the repeated pleasure of telling this story to much laughter.

Yours truly,
Dr. Richard Friary

Thanks for your note, Dr. Friary,
Which isn’t a note, it’s a diary,
But I have read it
And now I shall edit By a means that is simple and fiery.

GK

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A big thank you to all of you that are planning on attending our big May adventure in Colorado. The fresh air at Red Rocks may be just what this 2 year Covid hiatus ordered. If you are attending, you may want to pack those long johns.

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