Post to the Host

GK,

I might be one of the younger ones who read your column; I grew up with you as my parents loved your show. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give yourself as a 27-year-old? Any wisdom to impart? 

Peyton, age 27

I was 27 when I took a big chance and quit a comfortable dead-end academic job and though I had an infant son and wife, I spent six months working on a novel until the money ran out and then applied for a job at an adventurous radio station where, five years later, I launched that radio show. The advice is: don’t wait too long to follow your heart. I’m still following what was in my heart at 27. GK

Mr. Keillor,

I need some advice from you as someone I respect for having a good sense of humor. It seems that some things that used to make people laugh are now seen as unacceptable. I’m sorry, but I still laugh at dirty jokes and fart jokes. Haven’t people laughed at these types of jokes for centuries? I mean, body functions are funny. 

Craig Nelsen 

They’re funny among friends and family but less so in the business world and with strangers. The truly dangerous comedy today isn’t about farting, though, it’s about ethnicity, race, gender, diversity, inclusivity, etc. Know your audience. GK

Garrison,

I’m glad your doctor has told you to slow down and take care of yourself after that bad fall. What scares you the most about getting older? And are you still safe in your own home?

Marvin Blandish

He didn’t tell me to slow down, just to wear a knee brace and stay home for a couple weeks. What scares me is that I may not be as fascinating and alluring to my wife. I look at other old men and they look beat-up, scraggly, with ropey necks and glazed eyes, and they get cranky and their voices shake. I warm up my voice every morning singing “Unchained Melody.”I stay away from direct sunlight and keep my chin up. And I think lascivious thoughts. And I keep pouring more wine in her glass. Wine in your wife’s glass is an old man’s best friend. GK

One day my wife heard the Prairie Home Companion show I was listening to. “What is this?” she said — “It’s ridiculous.” We were divorced three months later. My question was this, there is a direct line in one of Keillor’s books, “A woman tries to turn the will of a man to that of her own.” Do you have the actual reference, the actual quote? I have been searching for it to no avail. Love the quotes by the way.

Thanks,
S.L.

I’m sorry about the divorce, having gone down that valley twice. The impulsive romance can be dangerous. That quote doesn’t sound like anything I’d have written. My experience for the past thirty years is that I have freedom of speech and freedom to write what I please but the management of our life is her responsibility, and this has worked out well. She consults me but it’s a formality. GK

Funny thing, you named your show after the cemetery my family is buried in. Just like the show, there is humor in that.

Your show was for our family a true companion and family.

If you want to write about my father, Owen, he grew up on the prairie and was like you a great hero.

You have met him and my great-aunt. They thought highly of you, like family.

Regards,
Thomas Albert Swenson

I’d love to hear about Owen and your great-aunt. I haven’t visited the Prairie Home Cemetery in Moorhead for a while and hope it is being kept in good repair. I once offered to do a benefit concert up there to freshen up the endowment but haven’t heard back. My Keillor relatives are in the Trott Brook Cemetery north of Anoka, which is being well tended by the township of Ramsey. I own a plot there and haven’t yet thought of a good epitaph. Maybe “I used to play here as a kid and look at me now.” Or “Love that well which thou must leave ere long.” Or “We talked about resurrection but I didn’t believe it until now.” GK

Yo, G-Man,

I’m wondering if being way up there in Minnesota when you were at college at a time when most marijuana came from Mexico, that — being so far from the source — you were not receiving top-quality goods. There is a good chance that what you smoked was adulterated with oregano, and wood shavings, and Spanish moss, and dried corn husks. If that’s the case, it’s no wonder you didn’t think much of it. Nowadays, MJ is hybridized, genetically engineered, and grown in optimal conditions to produce a product that is infinitely superior to anything that could have been imagined back in those beatnik/hippie days. You should give it another go — I think you’d be surprised.

I have often listened to A Prairie Home Companion while under the influence of THC, and believe you are a tremendous artist, both as a writer and as a performer. However, as an admirer, I feel I must warn you: Lately you have been verging very close to “Old Curmudgeon.”

It might benefit you to take a couple tokes of the new and improved, 100% legal, certified locally grown marijuana now available in both Minnesota and New York, and chill out. 

All the best,

George Allerton

New York, New York

I’m sure you’re right about the higher quality of pot, but I love my life as it is and don’t feel ambitious to go to the trouble of lighting up. I don’t feel curmudgeonly though I do have opinions about contemporary culture and I do have experiences of exultation bordering on euphoria, once when I heard the NY Philharmonic play the Messiaen “Turangalîla symphonie” and sometimes at church and oftentimes sitting in close proximity to my wife and now and then while writing. I simply can’t believe that anyone would listen to PHC while stoned; I just can’t get my head around that. GK

Well, since you asked ...
No, I don’t think book publishing is over, any more than radio is over.

Reading a good book is the most intimate way of communicating with someone you don’t know; and that’s not entirely true of websites or even e-books because frankly, with all things tech, we’re being surveilled. Robots are reading over our shoulders, which for an introvert, is not ideal.

Writing books can be a calling, a spiritual practice, an exploration, or adventure. I was in the book business once upon a time, and books were for me both a refuge and a great adventure.

Barbara Ittner
Denver, Colorado

I’m sorry if you feel surveilled but glad you love good books. I’m probably out of touch and should keep my opinions to myself. And poor eyesight is a factor too. I’m waiting for my new reading glasses to arrive. GK

Garrison,

You’ve mentioned progressives a couple of times lately, and never gave an adequate description of progressivism. Therefore, I think you mischaracterized the majority of us. 

We’re actually very cheerful when we get small victories by working together to promote progressive solutions. In fact, one of our favorite songs to celebrate such occasions is “This Land Is Your Land.” However, we need to see much more relief for struggling Americans.

When polled directly on proposed solutions, Americans are very progressive. For example, over 80% of Americans, regardless of party registration, favor paid family leave. Is that such a bad thing? Of course, our government squashed it out of “Build Back Better” in 2021. 

We love our country as much as anyone else, so we want to improve it for all of us. We’re concerned because: 

·      Almost 60% of working people are living paycheck to paycheck.

·      The minimum wage is still $7.25 after 14 years.

·      Student and medical debt are at oppressive levels. 

That’s just to name a few issues. 

We admit to pointing out the injustice in our history, and that which still exists. Do we go frequently overboard in our rhetoric? Yes, because our opposition holds so much power by means of corporate wealth and control over our government. Corporate power is crushing working people. 

If we can exclude corporate money from our political system, it makes our elected officials work for their constituents again, instead of doing the bidding of the wealthy and multinational corporations. That would be progress, which would make progressives quite cheerful.

Ray D. in New Jersey 

Thanks for weighing in and glad to hear your thoughts. I agree with some of what you say but I worry less about multinational corporations than about a long-running tide of right-wing populism that is authoritarian and cruel and bigoted and that progressives are as confused by as we slacker centrists are. There’s much on the left that inspires satire and I plead guilty to satire but what is deeply alarming is not our nation’s history but the monster in our midst. This is unprecedented in my lifetime. It must be defeated. GK

Dear Garrison,

Can you please come back to visit us in Minnesota and bring A Prairie Home Companion with you? It has been way too long …

Brad T.

St. Paul, Minnesota

I’ll think about it but maybe you and I should just have coffee. GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

Thank you for your essay on pot. Speaking as someone who lives in a city (Chicago) that legalized pot at the beginning of 2020, hindsight leads me to extend my condolences to the good people of the Twin Cities. Your quality of life is about a take a big hit.

The pungent smell of weed will come from the apartment below yours, it will come from the apartment above yours, it will be in the beautiful park where you used to love to stroll, and it will be on the city streets you used to like to walk.

And pay no mind to claims that pot smoking will only be done in private. Trust me on this: cities that can’t rein in carjacking and shoplifting are not suddenly going to start arresting people for smoking in public. Unfortunately, the list of good reasons for living in a large northern city in the U.S. just keeps getting shorter and shorter ...

Good luck,

Andy McGuinness

I live in New York, Andy, in a big coop apartment building with very few occupants of pot age or temperament –– it’s more of a Chardonnay crowd –– so we don’t have the problems you mention. And there’s a strong sea breeze that blows everything over to New Jersey. GK

Mr. K.,

I’m sorry to hear you have injured you knee. Please rest and let it heal.

The Writer leaves us with concerns. Of a fall his readership learns. Missing the step, into the abyss he leapt. And now makes only left turns!

I hope you are better soon!

G. Brent Ash

Sistersville, West Virginia

Thanks for your thoughts, Mr. Ash. But there are benefits to a crash. So much sympathy Has been given to me, I’m expecting a cruel backlash. GK

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