Garrison Keillor

'Tis the season to be grumpy

Garrison Keillor — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:09:00 PST

I was not ready to see Bruce Springsteen bemedaled at the Kennedy Center Honors last week and I still am not ready. It was less than a year ago the Boss did that fantastic slide across the stage on his knees at the Super Bowl halftime show, thrusting his crotch at 90 million Americans on live TV, and here he was, listening to various nobodies tell him how great he is, with a medal around his neck, and his neck looked a little jowly. The Kennedy Honors is for the Extinguished: It's America's way of saying, "Sit down and take a load off, time's up, old-timer." Does this mean Bruce won't sing his angry lost-soul-on-the-highway songs anymore? Will he come out with a Christmas album and sing "Little Drummer Boy"?

Republicans play Scrooge, minus the change of heart

Garrison Keillor — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:02:00 PST

In Phoenix, the bougainvillea is blooming red against a landscape of buttes and rocks outside my hotel window and interesting cacti that look like cellphone base stations or Modigliani sculptures. Midwesterners who came here long ago slapped grass down on the desert, hoping to make it more like Indianapolis, but Phoenicians have come to accept aridity. If you enjoy rocks, you will love Arizona. But for me, it's weird to walk outdoors and hear "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" from little speakers hidden among the cacti and "Dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh."

The dinner of all dinners

Garrison Keillor — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:25:00 PST

We now interrupt Mrs. Palin's book tour to bring you Thanksgiving, a grand old holiday, and we in the book business are thankful for her, that a busy woman who wanted to tell her story chose the medium of ink and paper between hard covers. Her tour is not about politics. It's about books.

Staking out my aesthetic

Garrison Keillor — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:18:00 PST

I was in Chicago with time on my hands and the sweet woman murmured to me -- you know how this goes -- "Would you like to see the Art Institute?" and I was thinking No No No God No, and I said, "Sure. Fine." "You wouldn't rather do something else?" she said. "No," I replied. That's the correct answer when a woman asks you about art. Yes, absolutely, ma cherie.

How to pass healthcare reform

Garrison Keillor — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:11:00 PST

There are some things we will never understand. Death, for one. I overheard a woman in the drugstore say, "He went into the hospital yesterday and he was eating his supper and then he fell asleep and then he died. I don't get it." She didn't seem grief-stricken, just uncomprehending. (Why did it have to happen now?) The paranoia that has seized the Republican Party is beyond my understanding. So is the physics of cord entanglement: how two power cords set separately in a briefcase become so complexly intertwined in only a few hours. And why do you find the rudest people in first class? Passengers in steerage accept their misery with stoical grace, while the privileged sit in luxury in a cold rage.

The great divide

Garrison Keillor — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:04:00 PST

It costs $722 to fly from St. Paul/Minneapolis to Bismarck, N.D., and you can fly from St. Paul/Minneapolis to Paris for $754. Life is unfair; we all know this. Big prizes go to mediocrities while you struggle on, unappreciated. The righteous suffer while the wicked prosper. Bernie Madoff danced around the Securities & Exchange Commission to the tune of billions and the Immigration & Naturalization people deport a good Vietnamese woman for a minor error.

Time to move on from Afghanistan

Garrison Keillor — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:26:00 PDT

The former Marine officer Matthew Hoh, who resigned his Foreign Service post in Afghanistan because he feels the war is pointless and not worth dying for, deserves all the attention he's gotten and more. The Obama administration faces hard decisions there, and the man made a good case against deeper American involvement. He says that our presence among the Pashtun people, the rural, religious people, is only aggravating a civil war between them and the urban, secular (and, it seems, fraudulent) government of Kabul, and the role of the Taliban and al-Qaida is not central -- the real issues are tribal and cultural.

Life is too short to be unhappy

Garrison Keillor — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:21:00 PDT

A gorgeous fall here on the upper Mississippi, but among the old grumblers I drink cheap coffee with, the mood these days is dark, due to low interest rates and the advance of the glaciers, which is why I, sunny optimist that I am, seek out the company of the young and ebullient and drink $4 coffee, but sometimes you get stuck next to some old guy in a plaid shirt who gives you an earful about Wall Street bonuses and how the game is rigged in favor of the custom-tailored suits, and you must be polite and listen.

Betting against America

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:06:00 PDT

Evidently some people were disappointed that Dick Cheney didn't receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and believe me, I sympathize -- I thought Philip Roth should've gotten the literature prize instead of that grumpy Romanian lady with the severe hair -- but it was Mr. Obama whom the Norwegians wanted to come visit Oslo in December and stand on the balcony of the Grand Hotel and wave to the crowd along Karl Johans Gate, and, face it, Mr. Obama is going to draw a bigger crowd than Mr. Cheney would have. When a man has shot somebody in the face with a shotgun, people are going to be reluctant to line up en masse in his presence lest he get excited again. As for Mr. Cheney's boss, he was an unlikely pick for the Peace Prize after it was revealed by a White House speechwriter in a recent memoir that Mr. Bush once said, "I whupped Gary Bauer's ass." Boasting about ass-whupping is not the mark of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. The correct word is "whipping."

Nice 67 Y.O. male has brush with mortality

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:16:00 PDT

The doctor who saw me in the E.R. wrote in her report: "nice 67 y.o. male, flat affect, awake, alert and appropriate." I had appeared with slurred speech and a balloon in my head, had driven myself to United Hospital in St. Paul, parked in No Parking, walked in and was triaged right in to a neurologist who trundled me into the MRI Space-Time Cyclotron for 50 minutes of banging and whanging that produced a picture of the stroke in the front of my brain, so off to the Mayo Clinic I went and the St. Mary's Hospital Neurology ICU and was wired up to monitors. A large day in a nice 67 y.o. man's life.

We need a public pet option

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:19:00 PDT

I caught part of a radio call-in show the other day on which a vet was fielding questions about Addison's disease among basset hounds and a cocker spaniel's hypothyroid problem and what can be done about a bulldog who snores (he needs to lose weight), and it was interesting to discover the excellent medical care that dogs have come to expect these days. The vet was herself a dog parent, as she put it, and there was genuine feeling in her voice when she discussed the bassets' hormonal problems, something I haven't heard in the debate over healthcare for humans this summer.

Stiff upper lip, Democrats

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:18:00 PDT

A pleasant late-August Sunday in London, bright and breezy, the bells of St. Paul's ringing wildly for 11:30 Sung Eucharist, like a sacred pinball machine announcing you've won ten bonus games, the square busy with people including Americans like me, whose business is being tourists. As the poet W.H. Davies wrote:

London calling

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:16:00 PDT

A night flight to London crammed into seat 29A but asleep thanks to modern pharmaceuticals and fairly fresh and bright on arrival at Heathrow. Wrestled the bags aboard the train and cruised into the city and lugged the luggage upstairs and into a lovely quiet hotel. It's in the financial district, near St. Paul's.

The tragedy of the Internet

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:14:00 PDT

You know it's going to be a difficult day when you wake up with "Guantanamera, Guajira Guantanamera, Guantanamera, Guajira Guantanamera" going around and around in your head and it won't stop. You know that probably you should not tackle healthcare reform today though brainlessness has not stopped other people from weighing in on it.

A restless genius

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:20:00 PDT

Last week, we got several perfect days in a row in St. Paul -- fresh and sweet in the morning, afternoons balmy, and evenings you could sit outdoors until midnight and talk extravagantly about life as you did when you were 25. I have no idea what it was like in Minneapolis, but St. Paul was perfect, and so of course one felt the urge to get out of town.

Speaking to our contradictions

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:14:00 PDT

It's good to hear that the FCC is back in business, thinking about the Internet and wireless telecommunications and not so much about assessing huge fines to broadcasters who say "poop" on the air. The new chairman, Julius Genachowski, is a 46-year-old venture capitalist who is more interested in technological advances and bringing high-speed access to all Americans, and so the world moves on. Thank you, sir. How a guy so young came to be named Julius is a question for another time.

Where's the anger over cruelty?

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:15:00 PDT

A summer Sunday in an old Midwestern river town, walking down the avenue under the elms past yards burgeoning with vinous and hedgy things and multicolored flowerage, the industry of each homeowner shown in the beauty offered to the passerby. The children of these homeowners may be telling their therapists harrowing tales of emotional deprivation suffered in this very home, and yet back in April and May, weekends were devoted to making this front yard splendid, and that is worth something. Much can be forgiven of those who make beautiful things.

Freedom from lobbyists

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:18:00 PDT

It was a good Fourth of July where I was -- no Republicans or Democrats, just a crowd of sunburned people sitting on the grass, and a brass band played amid the smell of hot dogs, and Clarence and Ralph, two World War II vets, described their European tour of 1944-45 from Normandy through the Hurtgen Forest, and it was duly noted that the Revolution was not going well in the summer of 1776 when Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Hancock put their names to the Declaration of Independence, an act of treason and great bravado, and then the crowd stood and sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" and discovered that, in the key of G, it is a fine piece of music and very singable. And people know the words.

It's time to stand up for homemade potato salad

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:20:00 PDT

I walked the length of the westbound Lake Shore Limited as it left Albany last Sunday, six crowded coaches, and counted three Twitterers and a couple of phone texters, six laptoppers (two of whom were watching movies), four video gamers, and 27 people reading books. Books made of paper! Turning the pages with their fingers one by one, reading the lines left to right, just as people have done for hundreds of years. Ain't that something?

Leave me alone

Garrison Keillor — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:15:00 PDT

One short weekend, so much to do -- an invitation to go swimming at night by moonlight, the Iran protest march downtown with our mouths taped shut, a dance at the Eagles Club with a hot horn band playing '70s funk that propels people onto the dance floor as if shot from guns -- but here I am stuck with houseguests who are unable to sit in a room without me for more than 15 minutes. They follow me around like faithful collies. We ran out of conversation on Friday and they're here until Wednesday. I have had un-Christian thoughts about them. I may have to run away from home.