Garrison Keillor's Blog, page 55
July 17, 2020
The News from Manhattan: Friday, July 17, 2020
The country in grievous malaise,
And yet we embark
On a walk in the park
And she makes me laugh
For a mile and a half
On these perfect New York summer days.
The beauty part of being 77 is to see how good life is. Painful, yes, lonely, meaningless maybe (welcome to the club), but there are fragrances of soap that we didn’t know long ago – oatmeal, patchouli, cucumber – in the Fifties we never DREAMED of cucumber soap. And the beers today – there are beer magazines that review beer like this: ““Floral notes of marigolds sprinkled with saffron lead a prairie-like aroma, which plays off of earthy vanilla notes with rustic bitterness in the finish.” We never dreamed of rustic bitterness, we just wanted beer to be cold. A beer with notes of marigolds to me is awesome, a word we never used back then, we didn’t know you could, we thought “awesome” was reserved for the Second Coming, now it’s everywhere, songs are awesome, a hamburger can be.
There are more toothpaste options now than ever. Much softer toilet paper. The slots in your toaster are wider now. Cordless phones. You used to be on a short leash and now you can talk anywhere, nobody eavesdropping. I had open-heart surgery in 2001, nowadays a robot would run a tube up my artery and repair the heart while I sit reading a book on Kindle. I’ve got a big zipper mark on my chest like Frankenstein’s monster: no more disfigurement. Life is good. I come from the era of Karens and Dianes and Larrys and Garys and now there are Annabelles, Sophias, Olivias, Avas, Isabellas – opera star names – midwestern boys named Aidan and Liam, Connor, Dylan, even though they’re Norwegian, not Irish. And they all want to be songwriters or screenwriters or actors. This is why we need immigration, to supply us with bus drivers and carpenters.
All around I hear people complaining about the pandemic and my role as a 77-year-old is to point to how much better life is compared to back when there were only three TV channels. There was a lot of bitterness back then but we never had rustic bitterness with floral notes of marigolds, I can promise you that.
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July 16, 2020
The News from Manhattan: Thursday, July 16, 2020
Felt he was sorely oppressed
By a hierarchy
Of utter malarkey
Expressed by the privileged and blessed.
So he shunned his neighbors,
Did not read newspapers,
Or listen when he was addressed,
And in quarantine
He has found the mean-
Ing of life: never resist a rest.
It’s a good life. Early to rise, write, coffee with my bride, a walk in the park, a nap, work work work while she goes for a run, a late supper on the terrace as the sun goes down and planes fly out of Newark and choppers go chopping over the West Side. We’ve never spent so much sustained time together. I’m glad I married this woman. How did I ever get so lucky 25 years ago? Her older sister was a friend of my younger sister: that’s how it happened. Two Anokans in quarantine and I keep finding out new things about her. She loves down pillows, hates foam ones. She rarely curses but does it effortlessly and well. She is the smart dedicated reader that every writer wants. She is restless and curious. She uses apps I never heard of, such as a Google app that when you snap a picture of a leaf it will identify the tree or bush. When she is cranky, I massage a certain spot on her upper back next to a wing and she becomes happy. She knows where everything in this apartment is. She has a quick response to everything I say. She knows Central Park like her own backyard. She misses playing in an orchestra, she thinks often of her mother though long gone from the world, her mother a scientist who loved to look at art. She told me the other day that eels have no gender and are mysterious in most ways, that Freud set out to study them and was bewildered and so turned to psychology instead. This is the sort of information that makes a long walk entertaining. I could write a book about her but won’t.
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July 15, 2020
The News from Manhattan: Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Walked in the park nicely dressed
In a seersucker suit
The shade of grapefruit
And boots and a zebraskin vest
Platinum shades,
His hair in long braids,
And a MAGA badge pinned to his chest
And a long red tie
And the passers-by
Looked and were quite unimpressed.
The big event today is sitting down with a NYC notary and signing over the deed to our house in St. Paul which, now that the deal has been struck, I’m starting to feel nostalgic about. I haven’t set foot in the place in more than a year but we did live there for ten years and had wonderful times and though the living room was much too large to be comfortable, there was a screened porch and a little library and this little workroom just by the side entrance, with a fireplace and a glimpse of the Mississippi. I wrote a couple books and a lot of Guy Noir sketches in there.
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July 14, 2020
The News from Manhattan: Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Man shunned latte and mocha
And drank coffee black,
A fact going back
To his childhood days in Anoka,
And he didn’t smoke
And seldom misspoke
And drank cola without any coca.
I enjoy these leisurely phone calls, a luxury of the pandemic, which never happened back in my ambitious middle years, tearing around like a big shot. I look back on those years with wonder – the pressure, the frenetic busyness, like the mockingbird parents on our terrace feeding their three offspring squeaking, beaks upraised. Our offspring is happy at summer camp and every day we think gratefully of Jennifer Scully, the camp director, who did the due diligence to get Governor Cuomo’s approval. We would hang her picture over our fireplace if we had a fireplace. Yesterday a writer friend says he has a project that’ll take him to Rome for a few months, another friend is putting together a book, meanwhile I finished a draft of a screenplay. My big accomplishment, however, is the daily walk, still a struggle, given my sedentary habits, but I’m committed to the effort. All my old comrades are hoofing it and so must I. The grandson heads for the Boundary Waters with three friends, freedom from the plague. Hard times ahead, enjoy these summer nights.
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July 13, 2020
At a certain age, the blues comes naturally
I am a writing man, I got the sedentary blues. I need to take a walk soon as I find my shoes. I got a good woman and she gave me a talk. She said, “You’re going to need a walker if you don’t get out and walk.” I came to New York City to try to make my mark. Now I am an old man and I walk in Central Park. My heart was weary and my steps were getting slow. She said, “You’ve gone two blocks, you’ve got another mile to go.”
The pandemic had me shut up in our New York apartment since early March because the more I read about the virus, the less I cared to experience it personally so I stayed home and occupied myself with writing a novel and the main exercise I got was walking into the kitchen and opening the refrigerator door.
I came to enjoy the cloistered life, the morning coffee on the terrace, talking with friends on the phone, recycling, the afternoon nap, the evening meal, the game of cards, the sunset, and what’s more, I enjoyed living with my keeper. Quarantine is a good test of marriage, such a good test that it could be made a requirement for obtaining a license, seclude the couple for thirty (30) days in a small apartment and see how they feel about each other afterward. Four months with my wife made me appreciate her beautiful heart and good humor even more. And a week ago, at her urging, I set foot outside the building for the first time and we hiked into the park.
After a long period of sitting, your legs feel like badly designed prosthetic devices made from tree stumps, and you feel unbalanced, and Jenny sensed that, of course, and took my hand, which was sweet, as if we were on our second date rather than in the 25th year of marriage. It’s endearing that she is completely focused on me, which you would be too if walking with a large person who might trip on a curb and collapse on top of you. Meanwhile, the young and beautiful lope effortlessly past us; I seem to have the distinction of being the Slowest Walker In Central Park, which reminds me of the Bob & Ray “Slow Talkers of America” sketch, in which Bob. Spoke. Very. Deliberately. So. As. To. Make. Each. Word. Perfectly. Clear. AndRayblewupinfuryandwantedtostranglehim.
New York is a strange city with show business, restaurants, the hospitality industry pretty much shut down. Few yellow cabs on the street, unemployment is at Depression level, and I suppose that plenty of those bicyclists whizzing past at 11 a.m. are waiters and stagehands and ticket agents, maybe dancers and musicians, and I feel for them. You’re in your twenties, you come to the big city with a big idea, maybe one so grandiose you don’t dare say it aloud, and suddenly a viral outbreak complicated by federal stupidity brings your life to a stop. Do you wait it out, expecting life to resume? Or do you sense that a Dark Age is on the way, that the face masks are permanent, that the Amazoning of America will go on, and the little mom-and-pops never reopen, the office towers remain half-empty as people go on working from home, and there will be no more concerts, no baseball, no handshakes except with life partners, we’ll live in communities of anonymity, and dystopia become the norm.
An old man thinks long thoughts while taking a long hike at a geezerish pace, but there is no sign of despair anywhere I look, only the happiness of dogs and little kids, the geese on the reservoir, the individual styles of runners, the grim determination of old lady joggers, and the saintliness of the slender woman holding my hand. “You’re doing great,” she says. “In a year, you’ll be running.” I think that unlikely but why rain on my own parade? Keep going.
I feel a slight wrench in my left knee and that upcoming park bench looks very good to me but I resist the urge to take a rest, aware a breather can become a siesta, so on I go with determination to stimulate my circulation. I do not run for love or glory but simply to be ambulatory and to enjoy these moving views and hope to lose the sedentary blues.
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July 11, 2020
The News from Manhattan: Saturday, July 11, 2020
It was rainy and windy all day
Which made us feel snug
In each other’s hug
As we read and worked on a screenplay.
Talked to Maia yesterday and she was excited and giddy about all that’s going on at summer camp. After four months locked up with her parents, she gets to hang out with her pals, go to a dance, see a movie, do a scavenger hunt, and she loves working in the kitchen. It’s a pure pleasure to hear the happy voice of your daughter on the phone. Meanwhile, The Lake Wobegon Virus moves toward publication and I’m hammering together a screenplay. Jenny is reading up a storm. Our house in St. Paul has been sold, a big loss and a big load off our minds. And when the sky clears a little, we’ll go for a hike in the park. I am enjoying septuagenarianism and recommend it highly. There is no long-term plan which is okay by me. Every day is a good day so long as you’re vertical and moving and so long as I can sit down by her and put my arms around her and she puts hers around me. Forget about charm, it’s about tactility.
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July 10, 2020
The News from Manhattan: Friday, July 10, 2020
To take pleasure where it may be
And not to complain
About snow or rain
Or neighbors or bosses
Or real estate losses.
A former satirist,
But now what matterest
Is this sweet July
Which we shall try
To live with esprit, you and me.
And so we march forward into July 10, a sedentary writer trying to get limber again with daily walks alongside my agile wife. We walk into Central Park, the Shakespeare garden with its lilies and cowslips, and the stairs are steep and rocky, and she takes my hand out of concern and I, being a writer, interpret it as romance. She is patient and good-humored. I am unable to think while walking so I need to sit down once in awhile to cogitate and she accepts that and waits, while doing lunges and stretches. Distant sounds of construction but the city is rather quiet. I love these days without pressing deadlines, having spent most of my life hurrying up to finish something. My managing editor calls now and then and Kate who’s run the shop for decades hardly ever since she knows more than I and so the time passes. This morning I’m up at 2 a.m. to work on a screenplay, pre-dawn being the most productive time of day. This is a good time of life, the 70s, when all your ambition is burnt away and what’s left is the pleasure of working. Thank you, Lord, for July 10 and for this kitchen table with ants running across it and for this laptop and bless all the men and women who designed and built it. I do not miss the old Underwood at all.
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July 9, 2020
The News from Manhattan: Thursday, July 9, 2020
Every morning my sweetie and me
Or rather my sweetie and I
Walk along peacefully
Under a clear summer sky
In the park quite close to where we
Met each other one day long gone by
Now we’re close as two lovers can be,
Me and her, hand in hand, eye to eye,
Two pronouns in love, him and she.
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July 8, 2020
That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life
Garrison Keillor’s memoir is set to be published by Arcade Publishing on November 3, 2020.
From the Publisher:
With the warmth and humor we’ve come to know, the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion shares his own remarkable story.
In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty years, 750 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renee Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation.
He says, “I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That’s the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I’m heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day.”
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The Lake Wobegon Virus
Garrison Keillor’s memoir is set to be published by Arcade Publishing on September 8, 2020.
From the Publisher:
Bestselling author and humorist Garrison Keillor returns to one of America’s most beloved mythical towns, beset by a contagion of alarming candor.
A mysterious virus has infiltrated the good people of Lake Wobegon, transmitted via unpasteurized cheese made by a Norwegian bachelor farmer, the effect of which is episodic loss of social inhibition. Mayor Alice, Father Wilmer, Pastor Liz, the Bunsens and Krebsbachs, formerly taciturn elders, burst into political rants, inappropriate confessions, and rhapsodic proclamations, while their teenagers watch in amazement. Meanwhile, a wealthy outsider is buying up farmland for a “Keep America Truckin’” Motorway and Amusement Park, estimated to draw 2.2 million visitors a year. Clint Bunsen and Elena the hometown epidemiologist to the rescue, with a Fourth of July Living Flag and sweet corn feast for a finale.
In his newest Lake Wobegon novel, Garrison Keillor takes us back to the small prairie town where for so long American readers and listeners have found laughter as well as the wry airing of our most familiar fears, desires, and beliefs—a town where, as we know, “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”
Preorder an autographed copy →
Preorder an eBook from the publisher →
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