What's going on on the twelfth floor

I come from people who anticipate the worst so this quarantine is right up my alley. My mother, every Sunday morning as we left for church, imagined she had left the iron on and that our house would go up in flames. I always assumed I would die young until I got too old to die young but I still have a lingering fear of putting my tongue on a clothespole in January and being frozen to it and firemen will come and yank me loose and I’ll speak with a lisp for years thereafter. I expect to step off a curb on Columbus Avenue and be run down by a deliveryman on a bike and die with a carton of shrimp in garlic sauce on my chest.

I try, for the sake of my wife and daughter, to keep up a cheerful front but I am my mother’s son. I share her Scots heritage. Scotland is where golf was invented, a game that shows us the worst aspect of ourselves. Bluegrass comes from Scots, songs like “Let Your Teardrops Kiss The Flowers On My Grave” and “The Fatal Wedding” (“The bride, she died at the altar, The bridegroom died next day. The parson dropped dead in the churchyard as he was about to pray.”) Someone told me once, “If one of them isn’t dead by the third verse, it ain’t bluegrass.”

I’ve been severely criticized the past few weeks for writing about how happy I feel at a time when there is death all around us in New York City and doctors and nurses are wracked with anxiety and exhaustion, but that’s exactly the point: grief belongs to those who are in real trouble and though I expect to fall into despair, it hasn’t happened yet and so the privilege of anguish is not mine to enjoy. I used to be a tortured artist who wrote anguished surrealistic poetry and, by George, I could do it again, but I haven’t been so moved.

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The news from Manhattan

Do you love Garrison's weekly column? As we are sheltering at home, Garrison has been documenting his experience of staying in his apartment all day. Each day brings new thoughts and a little bit of hope to help you start out the day. It is something we are publishing as an extension of the weekly column on the Garrison Keillor Facebook page...so, if you want to read his observations of daily life in apartment 12B, 'follow' or 'like' the Facebook page. 

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For your entertainment

As everyone hunkers down at home and practices good social distancing, Garrison and the Prairie Home staff are serving up some virtual comfort food and helping to keep us all entertained and sane! Below are some features and activities to keep the mind occupied:
 

A Prairie Home Companion - April 16, 2016:
In this Prairie Home show from April 2016, future host Chris Thile joins and leads the band with some upbeat mandolin-playing! Also featuring John Fullbright, Aoife O'Donovan, Christine DiGiallonardo, The Royal Academy of Radio Actors (Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman), and Richard Dworsky with the house band (Bernie Dresel on drums, bassist Larry Kohut, Richard Kriehn on mandolin and fiddle, and Chris Siebold on guitar).

This video will be available for one full week of streaming on YouTube before we post the next featured "A Prairie Home Companion" episode.

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The Writer's Almanac:
April is National Poetry Month and we are thankful to listeners of the podcast, many of whom have written in recently to tell us how comforting The Writer's Almanac has been during a time of great anxiety. We are so glad to be of service at this time.

For the past few weeks, we have also been posting homemade videos of TWA poets reading their own work and sharing a few thoughts. Check out our Facebook page and look for the tag #TWApoets, or watch the playlist on YouTube.

If you enjoy The Writer's Almanac, you can help support it with a contribution. All proceeds are used to pay the poets and publishers for the rights to broadcast the individual poems each day. You can contribute here (note: donations to LLCs are not tax-deductible) >>>

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Watch our #TWApoets videos >>>

 

The Prairie Home Archive:
Finally, the www.prairiehome.org archive site is always there for you with audio streams of almost every A Prairie Home Companion show since 1991. Check it out if you haven't already!

The Garrison Keillor Facebook fan page is being updated on a daily basis with videos from the archive, plus new videos from artists and actors who have appeared on the show during its 43-year run. Most days we also have an update from Garrison himself called "The News from Manhattan."

Check out the Prairie Home archive >>>
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The Keillor Reader

"Keillor’s moments of contemplation have produced some of the finest essays in this lovely collection." –Kirkus Reviews

"The Keillor Reader includes an astonishing variety of genres. Poetry, parody that reads like fact for a while then turns toward the absurd, and a few essays, painfully exquisite. Yes, you might stumble on a couple honkers. (One is about Zeus turning into a Lutheran minister, who turns into a dog.) But it also includes some memorable Lake Wobegon monologues and "Prairie Home Companion" tales; in one, he throws a rotting tomato at the butt of his sister, who dooms him to life in prison. Attached to each piece in the book are personally revealing notes from Keillor. On delivering his sort of memorized monologues: 'Just go fast and keep changing the subject. And if you skid off course, don't slow down; go in the direction of the skid.' And, 'Dear God, what a lovely way to earn a living.'" -Minneapolis Star Tribune   

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Read the Introduction >>>