Post to the Host

Have you ever given a thought to stay a while in sunny Florida to escape Lake Wobegon winters? Maybe in the serenity of Coconut Creek. It does exist, a respite for the wary and home to a group of seniors who would relish the opportunity to hear more of the Lake.

Daniel Casher

I’ve had bad luck on Florida vacations, went to the wrong places, wound up in hotels like college dorms on neon strips of fast-food joints and drunken teens and elderly people in garish beachwear. But even when I did find paradise spots, like Maui and Barbados, I discovered that I’m not a paradise person. Lying under a beach umbrella makes me crazy. I don’t sail or surf, I’m wary of skin cancer, and ever since I quit drinking, I don’t enjoy being around dedicated drunks. I prefer winter.

GK

Dear Garrison and his cohorts,

In my recent letter, I see no referral to Donald Trump. Not all Republicans are Donald Trump devotees. Oh, you read too much into every last comment … methinks you watch too much of the late-night comedians. 

I think you owe me a public apology for inferring/implying that I was bowing in devotion to Donald Trump. That is about as far from the truth as the assumption that our country is a better place now that everything Republican is assumed to be in support of or caused by Donald Trump. We’re not all rich white guys rolling in the dough, nor are we all floating down the lazy river, strumming our banjos, looking for someone to shoot. We are just small-business people (and a nurse) who worked hard to better our corner of the world, to educate our kids, and to manage a reasonably comfortable retirement, which we are trying to enjoy despite the idiocy of the country right now. At this stage of life, we don’t have time to dwell on it. 

Maybe that’s why I find a certain humor in your reaction to my original letter. Humor, no humor, either/or … you owe me an apology. 

Janice Gagel

Happy to apologize, of course. You drew a connection between Wabash’s majestic calm and its Republicanism and I drew the connection (which is strong) between the Party and the Man. But I also said there’s no connection between the town and the Man. I can’t imagine him being happy there, walking down the street, hanging out in a café. But I admire your ability to write an angry letter. It’s a good skill to have. And thank you for writing it.

GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

I hope you still have plans to bring your tour to Kent, Ohio, or in general, Northeast Ohio.

Since you canceled last month’s show, the coffee has tasted bitter, the beer is too warm, and food has lost all flavor … I’ve heard of no plans to reschedule your appearance. I think a visit to Northeast Ohio would bring the Universe back into balance.

I grew up in an era where, in late April or early May, the slap of a spring-loaded screen door signal that we could take out the storm windows and hang the screens … in short it was the sign of good weather, planting the garden, newly mown grass. In these times, I miss that.

I wish you and the members of your tour good health and good luck and I hope to see you soon in Northeast Ohio.

Be well,
Bob Huddleston

According to my calendar we’re making a swing through Indiana and Ohio and stopping in Kent on July 28. I’ll sing some duets with Prudence Johnson with Dan Chouinard at the piano and I’ll do my octogenarian stand-up shtick and tell some stories about my hometown and I hope the audience will rise during intermission and we’ll sing as a massed choir some bits of songs we all know by heart that our grandchildren don’t. My friend Ian Frazier is from Ohio and his book Family is a beautiful account of growing up there. Like me, he’s gone East but we still know where we’re from.

GK

Garrison,

I thought of you a number of times this week. More on that in a moment.

In this week’s column, you wrote about parenting. About motherhood a little, but mostly about fathering. Your comments brought to mind one of my favorite poems. I recited it at the rehearsal dinner for my eldest daughter’s wedding. I know this poem only because you once shared it with your listeners/readers on The Writer’s Almanac (and for which you must soon pen a requiem). It speaks beautifully to the wonders of being a parent.

HER DOOR

by Mary Leader There was a time her door was never closed. Her music box played “Für Elise” in plinks. Her crib new-bought — I drew her sleeping there. The little drawing sits beside my chair. These days, she ornaments her hands with rings. She’s twenty-one. Her door is one I knock. There was a time I daily brushed her hair By window light — I bathed her, in the sink In sunny water, in the kitchen, there. I’ve bought her several thousand things to wear, But now this boy buys her golden rings. He goes inside her room and shuts the door. Those days, to rock her was a form of prayer. She’d gaze at me, and blink, and I would sing Of bees and horses, in the pasture, there. The drawing sits as still as nap-time air … Her curled-up hand, that precious line, her cheek. Next year her door will stand, again, ajar But she herself will not be living there.

Now as to thinking of you. I cut the grass on the dam to my pond this past week. That means a good, old-fashioned push mower. Nothing else, short of a herd of goats, could negotiate the terrain. It is May here in Georgia (probably in New York, as well). Anyway, while cutting the dam, I was mercilessly besieged by a swarm of deer flies. I can recall more than one APHC monologue in which you cautioned your listeners that a deer fly’s bite will leave a scar on you that will remain the rest of your life. The monologues were generally humorous in nature, but on this point you were not kidding!!

Thank you for decades of The Writer’s Almanac, from which I have fashioned an extensive collection of excellent poems and also learned the saying, “Ignorance is the mother of admiration.”

Coleman Hood

Bishop, Georgia

You’re a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, sir. Or maybe it’s tattooed on your chest. That is so good of your daughter to let you read it. In public. A poem purportedly about bathing her as an infant. I trust you weren’t hoping to read it at the ceremony itself. I come from a different line of people. I would’ve perished if my father or mother had stood up and said or read anything so sentimental about having me as a child. I left home when I went to college and was glad to be free, even though my parents were kind and generous and devout Christian people, but they weren’t huggers. My wife is one and I’m glad for that. One in the family is enough.

GK

GK,

When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, I earned a career. Being a Bolshevik from Berkeley, I didn’t always get along with my ex-military coworkers. But in my years at Oakland, California, and Reno, Nevada, TWA was always my comrade. If the poem was good, or great, my coworkers and the pilots had a pleasant day. If the poem was shitty, my attitude was harsh and who knew what might happen.

My day shift started at 6:30 and the TWA came on KUNR at 6:24, as I rolled into the tower/TRACON parking lot. I listened for a good poem with all of my heart. You got me through 27 years of separating airplanes (the reward for a good job is no punishment), and I’ve enjoyed sharing your life in the 18 years since retirement when I’ve been able to hike the Sierra and read Gary Snyder poetry.

I’m sorry TWA is going away, but maybe I can summon the energy to replace it. We all need a boost in the morning.

Thanks,

Paul Williams

I had not the remotest thought all those years that my selection of poems might affect the safety of air passengers on the West Coast but now I’m glad that I tended to avoid morbid and suicidal poems in favor of good-humored and hopeful ones. As an English major I was fond of gloom, of course, but when you work the early morning shift in radio, there’s not much room for agonizing, so I gave it up. Glad you’re enjoying Gary Snyder. His work has held water longer than any of his Beat confreres such as Ginsberg and Kerouac and Ferlinghetti. He is 92, a survivor.

GK

Garrison,

About 1991 or ’92, in a speech to the National Press Club, you said (best I can remember):

“In our zeal to create a more just and kinder society, we must be careful not to create one so perfect we can’t stand to live in it ...
     … In a society with no sexual harassment, there will be no flirtation
     … And a world without fiction is unthinkable”

Sadly, Garrison, I think we’re already there …

Warm regards,
John C. Davis II

My flirtations days are behind me, John, so I’m no longer relevant to this discussion. In 1992, I met my wife, Jenny, and courted her assiduously and if she felt harassed, she hasn’t brought it up. I have women friends who tell me funny stories about men who’ve apologized to them for a touch on the shoulder or a peck on the cheek, which the women thought nothing of at the time, having come from families where this was normal, and having a familial feeling about colleagues. COVID certainly changed the workplace and we’ve all been maintaining separation so I don’t think anybody knows what the standards are anymore. I come from formal people but we still feel that a hand on the shoulder is a means of emphasizing what one is saying. Meanwhile, Zoom meetings are as dreary as ever and windbags prevail and ambitious dreamers have to rein themselves in and I am terribly grateful to be out of the workplace, writing this at my dining room table.

GK

Thank you for your show a couple weeks ago in Denver. Even though you didn’t get to do Red Rocks due to spring chill, hope you enjoyed your Colorado visit. We loved the show as we have other times you’ve come to Colorado. Happy Early 80th birthday. We were saying to someone on the elevator this was our 4th time seeing you perform and without a beat our elevator mate said this was her 12th time. She and her friend flew from San Francisco to see the show. Thank you for a lifetime of laughter and joy!!

Cheryl and Dennis Brungardt

Wheat Ridge, Colorado

That Denver show was a winner and I loved standing in the wings and watching Brad Paisley work the crowd and Ellie Dehn sing the Ukrainian anthem and the acting company and the band and I love singing harmony to Heather Masse’s mountain waterfall voice. And the crowd was electrifying. This is turning out to be a wonderful year.

GK

Mr. GK,

Your allusions to your mortality have come through your Posts frequently. Some questions for you regarding same: If they were to make a movie about your life, who would you want to play? You? Also, if the Smithsonian ever decides to make an exhibit about authors who became famous writing about fictional places, peoples, events (e.g., E.R. Burroughs — Tarzan, Venus, Mars; J.R.R. Tolkien — Bilbo Baggins, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Middle-Earth; Garrison Keillor — Middle-West, Lake Wobegon), what do you think they would display to represent You? Your red shoes, your eyeglasses, bushy eyebrows? Just thinking out loud here.

Robert Moats

Sorry to bring up mortality but at my age it’s no big deal. People are disappearing left and right. As for the movie and the Smithsonian exhibit, there won’t be any. Gen X and Z have no interest in my bunch, the Silent Gen, nor should they. They seem interested in Dylan but I don’t think we produced any authors who mean a lot to them. The world belongs to the young and they’re entitled and they seem more inclined toward fantasy than to comic naturalism, so there you are.

GK

Dear Garrison,

Your May 12 post arrived just as I was going through photographs of my parents. I found this one of Mary Ziegenhagen alongside Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey. As her sister Alice Olson wrote:

“I loved coming across this Washington Post photograph taken in 1959 in advance of the Cherry Blossom Festival. Mary was Minnesota’s Cherry Blossom Princess, an honor bestowed each year on one or another congressional staffer. She was on McCarthy’s staff at that time. In the pic: Senator Gene McCarthy, Carole Swanson, Mary, and Senator Humphrey.”

Mary moved to the Twin Cities from Moorhead, Minnesota, after graduating high school, trained to do medical transcription, saw Miles Davis at the Orpheum, and soon after wrote Eugene McCarthy a letter asking to work in his office. As she told it to me, he replied with a date and start time in the letter.

Your shows and broadcasts were present through the years, from my parents and me seeing you perform in the garden outside the Science Museum of Minnesota when I was a kid to the day when my parents, having retired to Sonoma County, went to see the film A Prairie Home Companion and as it ended decided to stay in their seats and watch it again.

Both Mary and David passed away in early 2020, both near 84, and as peacefully as could be. My dad had dementia in his final years, but I would take him for car rides and play The Writer’s Almanac through my phone, and his eyes would light up, recognizing and enjoying your voice.

Thanks,

Eric Ziegenhagen

Your brief description of your mother, Mary, makes me wish you’d write about her and her work for McCarthy. The combination of Mary, Moorhead, medical transcription, Miles, and McCarthy in one sentence is magical. There’s a story here and you seem to be the one designated to tell it.

GK

Mr. Keillor,

I was an English major at the University of Minnesota in the early Sixties about the same time you were and took classes from Toni McNaron, Richard Foster, Samuel Monk, Sarah Youngblood, and other teachers you’ve mentioned, but I don’t remember you at all. Did you not attend classes?

Betsy Moller

Santa Fe, New Mexico

I attended class pretty regularly but I never spoke up in class and I sat in the back of the classroom and was generally lost and bewildered. I’ve contemplated a lawsuit against the University for the inferior education I received and the trauma I’ve suffered since on account of it. Why didn’t they teach us Dickens, Trollope, Hardy, Thackeray, the Brontës. The University was “founded in the faith that men are ennobled by understanding,” according to the inscription on the façade of Northrop Auditorium, and I ask you, where is the nobility? Here I am, stumbling through life, trying to remember why I came in this room, why am I in my pajamas at 11 a.m., what is the name of the device the cardiologist inserted into the artery in my leg and up into my heart? Why do I keep forgetting this? I think it begins with C. Crankshaft? Colander? Catalyst? Catapult? CATHETER. See what I mean? I keep going around in circles. Glad you’re doing well.

GK