Soon September, and then sanity returns

A few more days and then summer is over and done, and good riddance, we can put away the humorous T-shirts and resume intelligent life on earth. I felt a hint of September in the air last Wednesday and it made me happy, like walking up the street and hearing the neighbor girl playing a Chopin étude instead of that dang Bach minuet. Finally, we’re getting somewhere.

Summer is nice for about a month and then it raises hopes of euphoria that cannot be met and it’s time to return to reality. Euphoria is available in pharmaceutical form but it’s nothing to base a life on. It tends to lead to stupidity.

I’m an old man, I didn’t just fall off the rutabaga wagon, so you have to listen to me. I look back on a lifetime of wretched vacation trips — the misery of canoeing the Boundary Waters wilderness in a cloud of mosquitoes — the week in Maine, listening to rain on the roof. And then there was Australia, twenty-five hours from Minnesota: either you fly first-class for the price of a three-bedroom home, or you fly steerage like a criminal in leg irons, and spend two weeks dreading the return. And there was Barbados, where a white man who lay on the beach for ten minutes opened the door to a world of pain and spent a week trying to keep any material object from touching his skin.

The lesson here is simple: don’t vacate. It tends to make you feel vacant. Stay home and read a good book. If you need to travel, get a hotel room in Duluth and take the book with you. There’s a lake there that’s superior to any you’ve seen. It’s good enough.

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Prairie Home Christmas Shows

Exciting news!!! The full cast of A Prairie Home Companion (Garrison, the actors, sound effects pro Fred Newman, the house band, and singer Heather Masse) will be reuniting for the first time since Garrison retired in 2016.

"Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Christmas Show" will be playing in Minneapolis, Atlanta, and San Francisco, plus stopping over at our old second home of Town Hall in New York City. We recommend that you book your flights and hotels early and make a vacation of it!

As a token of our gratitude for your enthusiasm about all things Prairie Home, we are setting aside a special presale period exclusively for email subscribers and our followers on social media. The presale dates are August 26th through September 9th, after which tickets will go on sale to the general public. The password for each presale in each city is POWDERMILK (all caps).

Below are the dates and times of each Prairie Home Christmas show, along with presale information for each venue.

November 30, 2019 at 7:30pm
Minneapolis, MN at the Pantages Theater
Presale begins Aug 26 at 10:00am CT

More information >>>

December 14, 2019 at 7:30pm
San Francisco, CA at the Sydney Goldstein Theater (fka the Nourse)
Presale begins Aug 26 at 10:00am PDT

More information >>>

December 18, 2019 at 8:00pm
New York, NY at Town Hall
Presale begins Aug 26 at 12:00pm EST

More information >>>

December 21, 2019 at 2:00pm & 7:30pm
Atlanta, GA at Center Stage 
Presale begins Aug 26 at 10:00am EST

Information for 2:00 matinee >>>
Information for 7:30 evening show >>>

An Evening with Garrison Keillor and...

If you can't make it to one of the five Prairie Home Christmas shows, don't fret – Garrison is also doing a run of shows with pianist and improviser extraordinaire Richard Dworsky, plus a few shows with both Richard Dworsky and singer Heather Masse of the Wailin' Jennys. Below is the full fall and winter 2019 schedule for Garrison's other shows.

Aug 24 - Faribault, MN with Richard Dworsky **That's this Saturday, folks!
Sept 1 - Minneapolis, MN with the Radio Rangers
Sept 13 - Edmonds, WA with Richard Dworsky
Sept 14 - Coeur d'Alene, ID with Richard Dworsky and the Coeur d'Alene Symphony
Sept 19 - Waynesboro, VA with Richard Dworsky
Sept 20 - Waynesboro, VA with Richard Dworsky
Sept 23 - Bethesda, MD with Richard Dworsky and Heather Masse
Oct 5 - New Marlborough, MA in conversation with author Simon Winchester
Oct 11 - New York, NY with Richard Dworsky and Heather Masse
Oct 12 - New York, NY with Richard Dworsky and Heather Masse
Oct 18 - Winona, MN with Richard Dworsky
Oct 19 - Worthington, MN with Richard Dworsky
Oct 20 - Menomonie, WI with Richard Dworsky

A Year in Lake Wobegon

How about a brand-new collection of "above average" Lake Wobegon stories?! Our staff and volunteers have been working on this collection for about a year, picking the very best newer stories to represent each month of the calendar year. Despite what Keillor often says about it being a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, a lot happens in "the little town that time forgot and decades could not improve."

Material includes more than 3 hours of monologues culled from live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion that aired between 2014 and 2016. Also included: a poem by Garrison for each month of the calendar year, plus music by Peter Ostroushko, a consummate musician who was with us since the early-early days and who unfortunately suffered a heart attack and a stroke recently (details and a way to help him in link below).

                                   Get the CD set >>>
Contribute to Peter Ostroushko's GoFundMe >>>

The Best of Guy Noir Collector's Edition

A bounty of cases waiting to be solved by America's favorite private detective. The collector's edition gathers every previously released Guy Noir episode and includes a full CD of never-before-available capers plus a souvenir booklet.

The first 50 units of one of our newest releases will be priced to reflect the year the show began, $19.74, so grab one while you can during this special promotion! (Regular price $39.99) 

Get the CD  >>>