From the marmalade to the long table with green lampshades, I’ve chosen one pleasure after another, and when noon approaches, I have a lunch wagon in mind in Bryant Park, which offers an Italian sausage in a bun. Walking around the park eating a sausage with mustard is my idea of what a real city guy does, a guy with places to go and things to do, so why waste an hour and a half sitting at a table with a tablecloth with three people who are outraged by something in this morning’s paper and eager to share their umbrage, which is sound and fury signifying nothing, whereas my heart is beating, I can form words even if I choose not to, and my Grandpa is with me, a stern old Scotsman incapable of saying “I love you” to a child, but he loved marmalade and so do I and that, my dears, is all I can ask for. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

7m

Mar 30

New Yorkers have this ability, to express despair and municipal pride in the same sentence. I over-tipped him and hiked 12 blocks to my doctor who took my blood pressure and said it was excellent, so I owe Joe for getting me to exercise. I was so surprised though by his language describing his likely November opponent, which I read in a paper I won’t name, a two-word term, a participle of concupiscence modifying a word for a common human orifice. Joe, unlike the other guy, is a churchgoer and if my chest had a bazoom, I would clutch it, but it doesn’t, not yet. I just wonder, where are we headed? This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

7m

Mar 23

We need to commemorate heroic acts of invention and creativity that have improved our lives vastly over those of our ancestors. I see that Microsoft has a little museum at its campus in Redmond, WA, and there are various rock and roll museums. I’ve googled around for a museum celebrating the first successful open-heart surgical operation, which took place at the University of Minnesota in 1952, a great technological feat that has extended the lives of millions, including me, and I don’t find it.Is there a Google museum somewhere? There’s a Motown Museum in Detroit but it sounds like more of a gift shop than museum. Muddy Waters’s old house in Chicago is now a museum, which is good, but more needs to be done. You set aside 6,000 acres in Pennsylvania to preserve the high-water mark of the wretched Confederacy — why not take that land and create a park devoted to the music of Black people who made the world dance and gave it soul? Nobody knows you when you’re down and out. Everybody needs someone to love. So rock me, mama, rock me. And I’ll fly away, O glory. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

7m

Mar 16

He asked about North Dakota, so I told him. Yes, the winters are long and the land is flat, but the people are the salt of the earth. Decency and humor.  No pretense. Nobody lives here to show off. The man in the greasy jacket and barn boots might be a multi-millionaire farmer and he will be friendly without patronizing you, and you can tell him what you think and---- I got sort of rhapsodic, though I am not considering moving to North Dakota myself.A man choosing between Singapore and North Dakota has opened up a broad range of options. I saw him again the next day ---- Grand Forks is the sort of town where you keep running into people ---- and he had a big grin on his face. The cold weather seemed to energize him. And he had met other members of his math tribe. He looked good, a free man, the world his oyster, nothing to hold him back.     This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

7m

Mar 09

In homage to my ancestor David Powell, I’m riding a train across Kansas heading for Colorado, his goal in 1859 when he left Martha Ann and the children behind in Missouri and headed for the gold rush. Kansas is a state of vastness, some of it seems undisturbed since David rode across it. Here is a little farm near the tracks with no neighbor for several miles. A good place for an introvert like me. I could tow a trailer out on the treeless prairie and pull the shades and sit there and slowly go insane, buy a couple rifles with scopes, and yell at the TV about government oppression.David was an extrovert. He was a leader of his wagon train and organized the lashing of wagons together to cross the rivers. He hunted antelope with the Arapaho and traded with them. He arrived in Colorado too late to get rich and instead sat in the territorial legislature and helped draft a state constitution. At age 62, an old man in those times, he settled here in Kansas and wrote to his children: “I built a house 21r x 24r, one-story of pickets, shingle roof, 6 windows and 2 doors, divided and will be when finished one like my house in MO. Dug a well 20 feet deep, plenty of water, and put up a stable for 10 head of stock, covered with hay. We have done very well with oats and I have 25 tons of timothy hay, not yet sold. I am very comfortable, the times are fair here in Kansas, we are all well except for a touch of influenza. Our love and best wishes to all, yours affectionately.” This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

7m

Mar 02

A man stopped at my table who recognized me from my radio days. “Have a seat,” I said. He’s from Ohio, retired high school English teacher. Like everyone my age, he’s worried about young people. “They’re so busy with sports and activities and social media and video games and whatnot, it got so I couldn’t assign reading, they just didn’t have time for it.”“We were lucky to be born when we were,” I say. We had the advantage of boredom, which led us to become readers. And we launched into memories of our long-ago youth. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

7m

Feb 24

The birth of the spotless giraffe at a zoo in Tennessee, the only known one on earth, is important news to those of us who grew up as oddballs, seeing the spotted mama giraffe nuzzling her child, remembering the kindness of aunts and teachers who noticed our helpless naivete and guided us through the shallows.And then there was the story of the cable car in Pakistan that lost a couple cables and dangled helplessly hundreds of feet in the air with terrified children inside. A nightmare in broad daylight. A rescuer harnessed to the remaining cable had to bring the children one by one to safety. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

7m

Feb 17

I hear people complain about police and city planners and the health care system, but never about firemen or EMTs, and few complain about slow delivery of mail, perhaps because so few people write letters these days. I do and delivery is prompt. This morning I wrote a postcard with a limerick for a new father:Byron is his child’s wiperAnd poop does not make him hyper,He cleans the behindWith a calm focused mindAnd fastens a fresh tiny diaper.A phone text would be eco-friendlier but a written message has the hope of being taped to the fridge, maybe saved in a drawer and 50 years from now the infant’s children will find it and be amused. Fundraising appeals are tossed and paid bills but the little poem about defecation will give pleasure long after I am gone: this is the hope. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

7m

Feb 10

But I found my glasses today. They were in my jacket pocket. Sometimes they’re in a shirt pocket, sometimes perched on top of my head. The frenzy ends, the problem solves itself. The comedian is grateful. He looks around and appreciates the beauty of the day, the here and now. It’s 5 a.m. My love is asleep in the bedroom, my daughter in her bedroom. I look out at the lights of New York. I make coffee, take my meds. The day awaits. There is work to be done. Then daughter Maia and I will take a brisk walk around Central Park. There will be lunch, a nap, a phone call, perhaps from cousin Elizabeth explaining how Our Lord, though omniscient and omnipotent, nonetheless experienced our mortality with all its sorrows and pain, or maybe cousin Joyce planning our trip to Scotland, or cousin Richard reminiscing about his travels in Africa. I am rich with cousins. My love has only a couple of second cousins. I have dozens. Cousin Stan is 90, my mentor. Elizabeth is my conscience, Dan my doctor, Susie my family  historian, Janice my authority on cheerfulness. Dad had six siblings, Mother twelve. This connects me to hundreds of people, including a month-old great-nephew. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

8m

Feb 03

At the game I sat next to a true Twins fan named Alex who gave me the lowdown on various players and yelled the right things — “Looked good to me!” at the ump who’d called a strike a ball and “Good eye!” at a Twin who let Ball 3 go by and “Throw him the meatball!” at the opposition pitcher who had an 0-2 count on a Twins batter.It was a big pleasure, the proximity to genuine fandom. I’m old and out of touch. I paid $45 for a Twins cap: in my mind, it should’ve been $5. The Kramarczuk’s bratwurst stand doesn’t take cash, only credit cards. I don’t get it. What country is this? But I bought one, with kraut and mustard, and it was good as ever. I’m not used to the raucous music blaring every half-inning though it thrilled the row of girls ahead of us who stood up, hips shaking, arms waving. I come from the era of intense silence. I may be the only person in the ballpark who remembers the fall day in 1969 when Rod Carew got on base with a double, took a big lead, stole third, and the fans sat transfixed in silence, knowing he might do it, wishing he’d do it, praying, and then he did it — he took a daring lead off third and dashed home and slid under the tag and we jumped up and yelled, “YES!” We didn’t need the Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” to rouse us, the feat of stealing home was enough. I can still see it in my mind, his perfect timing, the headlong slide. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

7m

Jan 27

I imagine that someday at America’s boarding gates, after the wheelchair passengers are boarded and Those Who Need Extra Time, then active military, there will be other categories of merit to be given precedence, Persons Traumatized By Flight, Persons In Need Of Affirmation, Persons Trapped In Bad Relationships, and why not add Unappreciated Poets and Third-Grade Teachers to the list. And then you let the Fat Cats board for First Class, and then the peons and peasants. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

7m

Jan 20

The simple pleasures of a long close marriage on a perfect October day, leaves dropping from the trees, eating an egg salad sandwich after her long morning walk, playing Scrabble. She talks about who and what she saw on her hike and I, the writer, am silent in thought, having played the word “irony,” which triggers the memory of a day long ago in Saginaw, Michigan.I’d gone there to give a speech — don’t remember the occasion, only that afterward, a man in a shiny blue suit said to me, “It’s so hard to get good speakers to come to Saginaw.” And it wasn’t clear if this was a compliment or an insult. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2

8m

Jan 13

So my friend’s fussiness about the coffee was, in fact, a tribute to the excellence of the restaurant. (Did I mention that this was in Northern California, in a town where a small bungalow goes for $1.8 million and you can’t get a Tootsie Roll for less than five bucks?) She sent back the coffee with oat milk because it didn’t taste fresh. I’m in awe of that. In Minnesota, we feed oats to horses and they eat it, no questions asked. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Jan 06

I don’t belong in New York, I’m a loner, I have the social skills of a hoot owl, but I accept the amusement that the city offers. I saw a dog on the subway with earbuds on and I asked the guy holding the leash what the dog was listening to and he said, “Those are hearing aids.” But he said it sort of sarcastically. You get a lot of irony in New York. So I asked my audiologist if there is such a thing as veterinary audiology and she said, “I think so because there is a hearing test for animals but I think it’s a branch of neurology.” She didn’t seem to want to delve into it. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Dec 30, 2023

I went to see The Magic Flute at the Met last week and dozed through the sleepy parts of it, woke up for the Queen of the Night aria, and again when the Papageno dashed into the audience carrying a stepladder. This almost never happens in opera. My beloved explained it to me during intermission: “It means he is looking for something higher.” “Oh, right,” I said. But several times during Act One he dropped the ladder, which made a great clatter and you could feel the audience awaken, which is a good thing.Papageno was played by a Dutch baritone, Thomas Oliemans, and he doesn’t have a big voice but he was having a big time clowning around onstage with the ladder for a prop. He’s a fine actor and quite agile for an opera singer, unlike singers of yesteryear who embraced the “Park and Bark” style, and I was fully awake for his big moment. He did something I’ve never seen before on an opera stage and don’t expect to see again.This is Mozart’s great final opera, written shortly before his death, his homage to Masonic ideals of enlightenment and civility, but here was Papageno lining up a dozen beer bottles on stage and playing a tune on them with sticks of celery. One bottle sounded flat so he pretended to drink from it and thereby raised the pitch. And then another bottle sounded sharp, so he stood, back to the audience, very still, his hands in front of him, and the audience got the joke instantly: Papageno was urinating into the bottle to lower the pitch. (Not really, it’s only acting, but on the other hand, how do we know for sure?) He zipped up, and tapped it and the tone was lower, and the audience fell apart, especially the ones with male pronouns.Garrison KeillorJason Keillor, EngineerJason Keillor, Original Music This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Dec 23, 2023

I’m at the age when you see the insides of more than your share of health clinics and some are like walking into a meat warehouse but when I walked into New York Presbyterian the other day and then the Hospital for Special Surgery, I was struck by the extraordinary kindness of everyone — even the security woman welcomed me like a friend and the receptionists and the guide who took me back to an examining room and the tech who did the exam — it really knocked me out, me a Midwesterner, this being New York — and I found Lillian the supervisor and told her what a wonderful place this is: “Most people walking in here are having a bad week and the kindness and good manners of this place mean So Much. Thank you.”Garrison KeillorJason Keillor, EngineerJason Keillor, Original Music This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

14m

Dec 16, 2023

Friday afternoon, I boarded the Lake Shore Limited in New York, bound for Chicago and then the Grand Canyon, along with my Londoner stepdaughter and her husband who are ambitious hikers and eager to experience one of nature’s great erosion projects. We chugged through tunnels under Manhattan and then emerged along the mighty Hudson, on our way to Schenectady and Syracuse, and along Lake Michigan through Ohio and Indiana, not far from the route my ancestors David and Martha Ann Powell traveled 150 years ago with a milk cow tied to a wagonload of babies, including my great-grandpa James Wesley. David was infected with the westward urge.I have no such urge myself and never did. It’s been an accidental life, a twig floating in the stream of life, like the driverless car that Google is developing but one programmed to be directed by gusts of wind.I love trains. The food was bad but the conversation was good. Something about motion stimulates talk. I come from people of few words; they should’ve gotten on bicycles, it would’ve loosened them up. The train stopped for maintenance problems, then hit top speed to make up the time, so it was a rough ride, a lot of bucketa-bucketa, which stimulated a wild night of interesting dreams: I was in Reykjavik singing in Icelandic, I spoke with my mother who said she loved me, I was in a dinghy with a sail heading up the river to meet my love, I won the Nobel Prize in literature, I fell into a pit of manure but kept my mouth shut, I was sitting in a city room of a newspaper typing on a Royal typewriter and using carbon paper.Garrison KeillorJason Keillor, EngineerJason Keillor, Original Music This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Dec 09, 2023

At lunch with a pregnant woman, you talk about ordinary life, family, summer, the food, the elation of the kids at the graduation we’d attended that morning and the pride of their parents, and we never set foot in politics at all. The naked ex-emperor is 77 and he is irrelevant to the life around us so it’s a pleasure to ignore him. By the time this boy gets around to studying American fascism, I will be gone from the world and unconcerned about the weaponization of falsehoods. But I want to leave something behind that this boy might cherish. I don’t expect him to read my novels. I only want him to know I existed and that I was capable of delight. E.g.––We live by kindness and grace,Good manners, books, an embrace,Good water, good light,A pencil to write,And a bright orange stub to erase,And yet I cannot forgetThose great bawdy stories, you bet,When we sat with good folksAnd told dirty jokesUntil everyone’s trousers were wet.God bless the child. I don’t know his name but I pray for him diligently day by day.Garrison KeillorJason Keillor, EngineerJason Keillor, Original Music This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Dec 02, 2023

Thoreau’s great work wasn’t Walden but his daily journal in which he wrote about his walks in the woods and fields, what he saw, what he loved. Walden is blighted by a great deal of pontificating about solitude and independence. If there had been a Mrs. Thoreau, she’d have agreed with him on “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.” And she would’ve scoffed at his nonsense — “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” He was chewing on the wrong weed when he came up with that, a line that has led people to waste years writing a bad novel who could’ve been happy bus drivers. Henry wouldn’t have said so much about the necessity of solitude with a woman looking over his shoulder.Garrison KeillorJason Keillor, EngineerJason Keillor, Original Music This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Nov 25, 2023

Biden needs a sport to put to rest the whispers about dodderiness. It’s nice to see him putting his arms around his dog and his grandkids — his predecessor was no hugger except with a few foreign leaders — but Biden needs to be seen being physically active. The press is waiting, cameras poised, hoping to see the guy stumble, and what you need to do, Joe, is go hiking in a dense forested area in chaps and boots, a leather vest, a bright red cap, a faithful dog at your side, a shotgun on your shoulder. The dog dashes ahead and flushes a pheasant from the brush and you raise the gun and fire it.Yes, this will offend some vegans and progressives and people with pet pheasants, but everything you do comes with a price, and Dems need to broaden the base. The FDR wing of the party has faded away, we need to attract some people with tattoos and purple hair. Dems do well among fencers and archers but you need to connect with the rural male population that loves firearms. Guns have been around since the 14th century. Get with it. Teddy Roosevelt had the disadvantage of a pampered New York upbringing and he overcame it by going out west and shooting things. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Nov 18, 2023

I’m not nostalgic about olden times. I love these passwords and PIN numbers that give me the sense of foreign agents trying to get into my email, steal my prescription for metoprolol. I am fond of the GPS woman who gives us directions in such a sympathetic tone, not condescending at all. I adore my laptop and have no warm memories of my Underwood typewriter. Someday I believe the GPS woman may become a therapist and tell me to put regrets behind and prescribe a memory-loss drug that will do exactly that.I do feel that young people are overloaded with electronic stimulation. I worry about the environment and economics. I sat in the Oyster Bar and ate a cheeseburger and overheard two smart guys talking about the banking system in a way that made me queasy and I said to them, “But it’s not as bad as it looks, right?” and one of them said, “No, it’s worse.” I heard about a college history teacher who was asked by a student, “You talked about World War Two, does that mean there was a First?” This was not high school, this was c-o-l-l-i-t-c-h. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Nov 11, 2023

I hung out with the customers before and after (there’s no backstage at this amphitheater so I entered and exited through the audience) and it’s startling to hear middle-aged people tell me they listened to “Prairie Home” as kids, grew up with Guy Noir and Dusty and Lefty, I was sort of a distant uncle to them. I was very busy those years, hosting the show, writing it, touring around, and I was an ambitious author. My hard drive is full of the rusted wreckage of unfinished novels and stories and screenplays. I was not paying attention to the radio audience, it was only a statistic and I didn’t really believe it. And now here were the statistics shaking my hand. I stood next to them while they took a picture of the two of us. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Nov 04, 2023

The pleasure of moving is the excavation of the past. I open a box and here’s a photo of my fifth-grade class, the eager neatly-combed-and-dressed boy with glasses sitting behind John Poate is me. I am still that eager boy, heavier but anxious to do well. There is a letter from a fan of my radio show, “Every Saturday at 5 p.m., everything else ceased and we gathered around the radio.” Also, in a brown envelope, eight color photographs of my innards taken by the surgical team that installed a pig valve in my heart: the valve is pale pink, the innards are dark red. And there is a letter from a beloved aunt in 1995, reproaching me for traveling to Rome with my fiancée, engaging no doubt in premarital sex, embarking on a path of philandering and adultery, for which there would be no forgiveness. It’s a powerful articulate letter and I admire her for writing it, which she did out of love. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

8m

Oct 28, 2023

When I moved out of Minneapolis, I sorted through personal papers and it struck me that, in hundreds of pictures of me, I am not smiling in a single one. I look like a mortician with a migraine. Partly this is due to the cold. Winter is brutal and you keep your mouth shut so you won’t frost your lungs. Teachers told me that. Plus which, in Minnesota there never were many people around so what was the point of exercising personal charm? Plus which, there are strong Lutheran tendencies there, people consider humor frivolous, maybe sacrilegious. Jesus wept; He didn’t laugh.I feel much freer in New York. I sometimes talk to myself when walking in the park, assuming I have something interesting to say. If you did this in Minnesota, there would be an intervention, you’d go into rehab for self-consciousness training. In New York, people enjoy this. It’s a looser culture. Crosswalks are ignored and “Do Not Walk” signs are considered only a suggestion. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Oct 25, 2023

What I found inspiring were two Scripture readings, one from the prophet Micah, where the reader faced the line, “O my people, remember what happened from Shittim to Gilgal that you may know the saving acts of the Lord,” and she slowed down when she saw “Shittim” and got traction and very carefully pronounced it “shi-team.” I was the only one in the sanctuary immature enough to enjoy this moment. There were no 13-year-old boys there, just me. I could tell from her voice that the reader had been dreading this for an hour, trying to decide between “shy-tim” and “shi-team” and fearing that she’d slip and pronounce it phonetically and a marble angel would fall and crash and red lights would flash and people would require treatment for post-traumatic stress. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Oct 14, 2023

She also loves to look at art, which I can take or leave and mostly leave. I go to museums to overhear conversations between couples, usually the woman telling the man, “You don’t like it, do you” and he says, “It’s interesting,” and she seizes on his lack of enthusiasm for the splashy canvas he’s looking at, thinking “I could’ve done that,” and she says, “If you’d just take the time to learn something about art, you’d enjoy it more,” as if this is a personal failing on his part.The guy majored in economics, he’s on track to become a vice president at Amalgamated Linguini, they vacation on the Cape, the kids are in private schools, and suddenly she wants him to be an art critic and talk about ambience, brushwork, and chiaroscuro? And she walks on to the next piece as he follows her like a dog on a leash.I find this more interesting than anything on the walls, the competitive aspects of marriage. Women’s ace card is the eye roll; they learn this by the age of 14 and use it on their mothers, and then on the husbands.Garrison KeillorJason Keillor, EngineerJason Keillor, Original Music This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

6m

Oct 07, 2023

I interrupted writing for a while today to have a Zoom meeting about estate planning with a couple lawyers in Minneapolis and for a discussion centered on my own demise it was a lot of fun. We laughed a lot.They mentioned “legacy” and I laughed. What legacy? There’s no such thing. Scripture promises resurrection but it isn’t specific about the form we’ll take, whether vegetable, mineral, gas, or spirit, meanwhile here I am on a sunny day in New York, sitting at a café on Columbus Avenue and watching the passing humanity, the great variety of gaits, brisk and propulsive, ambling, toddling, sidewalk surfing, window shopping, touristy uncertainty, geezerly gimpiness, and the aimless shuffle of people like me whose heads are full of irrelevancies.Garrison KeillorJason Keillor, EngineerJason Keillor, Original Music This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Sep 30, 2023

Prison reform is a truly noble cause because there is no political constituency demanding it. Every time I fly into LaGuardia, I look out at the hellhole of Rikers Island, a prison right out of Dickens’s England, where men languish who are unable to make bail and life is brutal, and the Democratic hacks of New York won’t touch this issue lest they be thought weak on crime. Emily knew all about this, and she nodded.And if you take on prison reform, then you need to reform our broken mental health system that was destroyed by my fellow liberals forty years ago as “deinstitutionalization,” the idea that rather than enormous hellholes, you put the inmates in small hellholes where we wouldn’t be so aware of them. Emily knows about this too. And whatever progress you make will be painfully slow: nobody will come up with an algorithm to produce social justice.Garrison KeillorJason Keillor, EngineerJason Keillor, Original Music This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

6m

Sep 23, 2023

The woman came by a little later and said, “How’s your breakfast, dear?” I said, “It’s wonderful,” though actually it was rather mediocre, but I didn’t want to cause her anxiety because — this is going to sound pathetic but forgive me — her “hon” had given me a very warm feeling deep inside. Me, a published author who once got a terrific review in the Times and who’s attended luncheons at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, but neither the Times nor the Academicians ever called me “hon” and she did and it means something to me.Garrison KeillorJason Keillor, EngineerJason Keillor, Original Music This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

6m

Sep 16, 2023

There is so much plasticity and pretense in the world today that when I come across the authentic such as a little kid bawling because his sister kicked him, it restores my interest in life. He isn’t trying to sell me something or even raise money for a good cause, it’s true feeling. His sense of injustice is real. I think he should hit her, which might spare his having to go through expensive therapy in years to come, but he does not. Perhaps he’ll be a stand-up comic instead.I find authenticity in church, in the prayers, in the psalm, and last Sunday we sang “How Great Thou Art” and it was so joyful it reduced me to rubble. We sang all four verses and the chorus built each time around and the third and fourth choruses were so euphoric, they would’ve melted a stone-cold atheist and my bass voice got shaky, hearing those sopranos soaring. People held their arms in the air, we were freed from our Episcopalian decorum into realms of pure joy, I get teared up now writing about it.Garrison KeillorJason Keillor, EngineerJason Keillor, Original Music This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2 This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5893629/advertisement

7m

Sep 09, 2023