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Open in browserPost to the HostComments from the week of 05.23.22
Dear Garrison, My wife and I have listened to PHC for many years. We have also enjoyed the “commercials” for things like catchup, rhubarb pie, and especially Powdermilk Biscuits where you used a word that became a favorite of mine … expeditious. As in “Heavens, they’re tasty and expeditious.” I’ve never been sure if it was the most applicable word to use with biscuits but I love the way it sounds when saying it out loud. In my literary experiences, I’ve never seen or heard the word used by anyone else until I read the book The First Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer. It is the true story of an assassination plot on General George Washington in 1776. In June of that year, Washington had sent General Charles Lee to New York City to try to fortify the city and suppress the Loyalists. In his orders he wrote, “… you will see the necessity of your being decisive and expeditious in your operations in that the Tories should be disarmed immediately.” I want you to know that you are good company with George in the rare use of expeditious. Mark H. New York Suddenly I feel an intimate connection to the Revolution. I thought I had invented the word. And now I am assuming you did not invent the quote. I’m a little suspicious, seeing you use an initial for your last name, but I’m going to go with faith. Gary K. Sir: I am one of your loyal Republican readers but I do not write in order to take issue with something you’ve said — if I did, it’d become a full-time job. No, I write to ask a simple question: did you ever wear your hair in a ducktail like our heroic former president? Sam I never did, Sam. Back in the Fifties when the ducktail was conceived, my classmates Gary Bennet and Duke Carlson had tremendous ducktails and neither of them was a guy whom I cared to emulate. And they were always ducking into a boys’ toilet to do maintenance. A ducktail takes commitment. So when I see pictures of your former president, his left profile, the comb tracks in the hair swept back over the left ear, the swoop of hair over the forehead, I think, “Even with all the product on it, the guy’s got to be touching it up about twenty times a day to prevent slippage. Should the leader of the free world be spending so much time on his hair?” This was one of my objections to his occupying the Oval Office. There were others. Biden’s hair doesn’t make a big statement, it just lies there. I honestly believe that, by the age of 70, a man should forget about what’s on top of his head and focus on what’s in it. GK Dear Mr. Keillor, I am a 64-year-old retired Scotsman living in a small village called Wintersdorf in Germany on the border with Luxembourg. I imagine it is similar in many ways to Lake Wobegon in character and thus a haven for those taking a “break” from the hectic pace of modern living. In 2018 I was working in Tel Aviv, running training courses for their air traffic controllers on behalf of my employer, Eurocontrol. During my period there, I was admitted to a University hospital in central Tel Aviv with a ruptured adrenal gland, which triggered a minor heart attack. I was eight days in hospital before being able to fly home. During my recuperation, I happened upon your broadcast recordings on YouTube and have been an avid follower ever since. The hospital, I have to say, was not the most conducive place to recuperate as there was always the aggression between Arab and Jew and the Hasidic Jews were incredibly demanding of all the hospital staff, shouting for assistance every hour of day and night. In addition, the air-raid warning sirens were going off as Gaza missiles threatened the city. So as you can see, for a Scots lad coming from Wintersdorf it was a bit boisterous! The remedy and escape for me came from putting on my headphones, closing my eyes and listening to your recordings. The timbre of your delivery coupled with the subject matter was like soft music in my ears and transported me to a gentler world. I loved re-engaging with clearing my mind and listening to just plain old talking and the occasional song or two of course. Now back in Wintersdorf, your recordings accompany me and my dog Gelato, on all our walks. It has reminded me to reinforce to my grandkids that like playing on the beach and exploring rock pools, the greatest pleasures come from the simple things in life and if you can get happiness from these things then you’re halfway set for life. Many thanks to you for the pleasure you have created, and I hope this finds you and yours hale and hearty. I wish you all the very best. Slàinte va, Gregor Graham And good health to you, my friend. I admire your prose style, showing that indeed there is nothing so elegant as a good declarative sentence. I’m also impressed, as a monolingual Midwesterner, by your working in Israel and living in Germany. As for the calming effects of the Lake Wobegon stories, a great many Americans found them tedious in the extreme and left the room cursing if someone turned on the show. Younger people wanted stories of crime and violence, and a man in hospital in the midst of warfare enjoyed the pastoral. My wife and I found the simple life when COVID shut things down and we isolated in our apartment in New York. I know of healthy people who were hit hard by the virus but for others, including us, it was a vacation from the ordinary chaos. So tell your grandkids to be sure to marry well. GK GK, We lost 60,000 Americans in Vietnam in a stupid, useless, and pointless war. Might be worth remembering that Vietnam lost about 2,000,000. I’m sorry about your classmate Henry Hill. I’m sorry about my cousin, Tom, who came back but who could never talk about his time in Vietnam. And Tom was a talker. But not about that. Mike Connelly Brunswick, Maine Apparently we have been forgiven in Vietnam. I have a nephew who works there and is married to a Vietnamese woman who has given him beautiful twin daughters, six months old. Surely they will spend some time in Minnesota with their American grandma and I hope to live long enough to get to know them. What will they know of their history and what will they think of it? GK Hi, Garrison, When I read your response to Daniel, who suggested you head for Florida to escape the Lake Wobegon winters, I was reminded of the time my friend Carol and I saw your doppelgänger on the beach. We were sitting under an umbrella at Dewey Beach (Delaware) enjoying watching the folks, when we spied a fellow standing in the shallows nearby — he appeared uncomfortable and was rather overdressed and restless, a fish out of water, and I suspect he was there under duress. You don’t by any chance wear a bucket hat? I have never worn a bucket hat or any hat that resembled a bucket. I hardly ever wear caps. I used to own a cowboy hat, a gift from someone. GK Mr. Keillor, I am one of those millennials you enjoy making fun of and I don’t mind that but I am sorry that you never address the issue of pervasive white privilege and anti-Blackness in our society. I can accept that in Lake Wobegon there are no persons of color, that is your choice as a creator, but to write a weekly column and not take up the reality of racism is, to me, a moral failing. I hope you will address this. Sincerely, Dawn Prentice Brooklyn, NY I grew up in rural Minnesota, and now I live in Manhattan, two very different worlds, and I enjoy both of them. My boyhood was entirely among white families and the big divide was Catholic v. Protestant. My first close encounter with Black people was when my intramural basketball team went to a settlement house in north Minneapolis to play an all-Black team and they beat us handily. I was astonished, stunned, at their athleticism. They were perfectly upright and polite young men but they whipped us on the court. My second encounter was a couple years later when I was a freshman at the University and sat eating lunch among a group of African exchange students who were all speaking French. Once again, astonishment. Black people speaking perfect French. From their textbooks I could see that they were in the Institute of Technology, studying engineering. So there wasn’t much common ground. I don’t associate my upbringing with “white privilege,” though I was aware of families that had more money than mine did and who were able to go to Europe and send their kids to exclusive colleges. Fundamentalist doctrine was an important factor in my upbringing, also the fact that my parents dearly loved each other and I grew up in a happy home. Books were important to me, but reading wasn’t a privilege, it was available to all. I don’t consider the English language to be inherently racist, any more than paint and brushes and canvas are. These days I live in a neighborhood that used to be predominantly Jewish but now is a conglomeration of all sorts of colors and accents and styles, and my Episcopal church is multiracial, which is a blessing. I’d feel odd in an all-white congregation in New York City. Race is a sensitive subject, and history never goes away, it leaves scars, but I do believe that the great challenge is to jump the gap that exists between individuals and to achieve friendship, regardless of race or ethnicity or class. To have intimate understanding between two persons is what it’s all about and it’s miraculous when it happens. Thanks for writing. GK Garrison: We remember the Memorial Day evenings we spent at Wolf Trap at the Friday night PHC rehearsal. Even when it rained, we knew we’d sing — hymns and patriotic songs, which are suspect these days — and we’d sing with you as you walked out on the hill leading us through many unfamiliar verses of hymns we knew. We came for many years, slipping down the hill during the evening, but loving every moment. The annual summer calendar for Wolf Trap arrived last week and we cried — again — for those wonderful summer times. Thanks so much! I wish I could remember whatever inspired those walks by the host into the crowd — maybe I did it to cover a moment of confusion onstage, some monitor feedback, a missing musician, but I do remember how much the audience loved those impromptu medleys of snatches of old songs. Never was so much pleasure gained with so little effort. All I had to do was to imagine the key of C or something close to it and sing the words “My country, ’tis of thee” and thousands of people would pick it up while I switched to singing bass. No need to project lyrics onto a screen. All a cappella. Spirituals, Beatles, hymns, patriotic songs, songs about working on the railroad and roses loving sunshine and so forth. At shows in towns with a high percentage of Lutherans or Mennonites or Dutch Reformed, the beauty of the harmonies was breathtaking. It was such a sweet part of my career, that singing audience. Pete Seeger got audiences to sing “We Shall Overcome” but he never led them in “How Great Thou Art.” I am one of the few persons who’s seen Bruce Springsteen singing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” He was in the crowd, alone, at the old Methodist tabernacle in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. I walked up the aisle past him. I didn’t stare, but I could see that he knew the words. GK Now that you mentioned it about “who v. whom,” I have asked this question of my knowledgeable friends and all I get is “I dunno.” So here you go: Should the British TV show titled Doctor Who really be titled Doctor Whom? And how about those old rock bands “The Who” and “Guess Who”? E.g., “The Whom” and “Guess Whom”? And to show you how serious I am about this, I will not shop in any express line that does not state “10 Items or Fewer.” I am holding out for us until they all get their signs “right.” Or should that be “correct”? A little help here, please. Robert Moats This is a lonely mission you’re on, sir, the life of correct grammar, and if you boycott the ungrammatical, you will wind up living in a boxcar in the woods. This is why I have hired me a copy editor, so that I can wallow in ignorance. I make no less than ten grammatical errors in every thousand words I write and I need someone whom can fix them for me. GK
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