Garrison Keillor's Blog, page 84

Minnesota stands ready to accept New York City’s refugees

Don’t quote me on this, but New York City is in the midst of digging a third tunnel, 60 miles long, deep underground, to bring in water from upstate reservoirs, and until it is finished, if either the first tunnel (1917) or the second (1936) should break down, half of the city would be without water and therefore uninhabitable, and several million inhabitants would need to find homes, and I believe that my state, Minnesota, which took in thousands of Hmong and Somalis, would stand ready to welcome New Yorkers.

Read the full column at the Washington Post’s site →

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No dementia for president, please

How did we wind up with these old people running for president? In 1960, the first election I voted in, Richard Nixon was 47 and John Kennedy was 43 and now, 56 years later, the candidates are mostly my age. Young people are flocking to Bernie Sanders who, given two terms in office, would be Leader of the Free World until age 83, setting a new record — Ronald Reagan was just shy of 78. Where is that new generation of leadership we keep hearing about at college commencements?

Read the full column at the Salt Lake Tribune’s site →

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Keillor: No dementia for president, please

How did we wind up with these old people running for president? In 1960, the first election I voted in, Richard Nixon was 47 and John Kennedy was 43 and now, 56 years later, the candidates are mostly my age. Young people are flocking to Bernie Sanders who, given two terms in office, would be Leader of the Free World until age 83, setting a new record — Ronald Reagan was just shy of 78. Where is that new generation of leadership we keep hearing about at college commencements?

Read the full column at the Salt Lake Tribune’s site →

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The Big Snapper slouches toward Cleveland

Back when I went to college to become a Great Author, I tried to be smarter than I actually was and so greatness eluded me and here I am, a newspaperman, sitting at a battered Underwood, my porkpie hat low over my eyes, smoke curling up from a Lucky Strike hanging on my lower lip, a snazzy blonde eyeballing me from the sofa, saying, “Is you and me goin’ to the Rialto, Lefty, or is we not? Just tell me. I gotta know.”

“I got a column to write, Sugar,” I say, and she says, “Oh, it’s always something, isn’t it. Write about the Republican primaries, that’s what everyone else does.”

Read the full column at the Washington Post’s site →

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A hymn for Jim Harrison

My friend Jim Harrison wrote to me last fall: “Nothing new here except aggressive aging that comes from working every day of the week. I don’t know what else to do. Since age 14 I’ve been a slave to language. There’s a new book about aging — ‘Travels with Epicurus.’ Penguin. Fine and discreet, elegant, truthful. With age all my opinions drift away. Who am I to say for sure? My people thought they’d see Jesus when they died. Now that we know we have 90 billion galaxies, I’m not inclined to discount anything. How can I say what is not possible in this universe? You can disembowel reality all you want and certainties are hard to find, the towering reality being death. I don’t mind. I was never asked. On death, a tour of the 90 billion galaxies would be flattering. Yes? Our curiosity is still in the lead. Wittgenstein said that the miracle is that the world exists.”

Read the full column at the Washington Post’s site →

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This next president better be president for everyone

The country is in the grip of fear and anger, riven by class conflict, so we hear, though this is not so apparent on a spring day as you awaken to the sweet smell of earth and the old farmer DNA in you thinks, This is going to be a good year. Things are looking up at last. Unreasonable optimism is what America was built on, people, and April is around the corner, the song of the meadowlark is heard in the northern latitudes. Baseball will soon head north. My grandson is eagerly learning Chinese. Tell me about injustice and I hear you, meanwhile the world is alive with possibility. That’s not a liberal or a conservative position, it’s your old father talking.

Read the full column at the Washington Post’s site →

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Think moving abroad will save you from Trump? Think again.

After Tuesday’s voting, several folks I know are talking about leaving the country if and when the Great White Snapping Turtle is elected president, and of course Canada is the favored destination: English-language predominant, handsome young progressive prime minister, socialized medicine, nonstop air connections — plus parallel geography of rockbound East, Midwestern prairies and Western mountain ranges. Well, I’m not up for it. For one thing, I’m lazy. And also there is no South up north — no New Orleans, no Delta blues, no high lonesome tenor singing “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” and no strip-mall evangelists proclaiming that Justin Trudeau is the Antichrist and was born in the Bronx — and so Canadian culture is of limited range. A nation of bookkeepers. It is missing the apocalyptic.

Read the full column at the Washington Post’s site →

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A Prairie Home Companion, 1974-2014

I never wanted to be known for longevity

But for brilliant, tragically interrupted brevity.

Immortality is all about brevity, dear heart.

Look at Buddy Holly and Amelia Earhart,

Remembered forever as a beautiful flash,

But I took the low road and my plane didn’t crash.

And now forty years later I’m still not done.

It happens when you’re having fun.

You are surprised to see the sun

Coming up in the east and where is everyone?

The party went on all night and it’s just begun.

And so comes the inevitable question:

How did it last so long? What do you remember?

I remember nothing. See you in September.

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April

March and Lent and we march along on our spiritual journeys

As winter hangs on and the world looks older and duller

And then in the mail comes the spring seed catalogue from Gurney’s

And suddenly there is life and audacious color

And excitement rivaling Times Square or Las Vegas —

Blue Lake, Early Fortune, King of the Garden beans,

Stunning onions, phenomenal fennel, and big brutes of rutabagas,

And the beet that can’t be beat: the extra-early Ruby Queens.

And O the tomatoes! The bearer of pure joy!

From tasteless store-bought stuff, deliver us!

The Crimson Defender, and Pink Delight, and Big Boy,

And the Beef Eater—the tomato carnivorous.

      Lord, whose Arm is powerful, whose Word is valid,

      Preserve us until July when we’ll have salad.

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The Keillor Reader — 2014

Garrison will hit the road for a coast-to-coast tour to launch the book. See all the tour dates →

Read the book’s introduction →

Browse a few reviews and press mentions of the book →

From the Publisher:

When, at sixteen, he caught on as a sportswriter for the Anoka Herald, Garrison Keillor set out to become a professional writer, and so he has done—a storyteller, sometime comedian, essayist, newspaper columnist, screenwriter, poet. Now a single volume brings together the full range of his work: monologues from A Prairie Home Companion, stories from The New Yorker and The Atlantic, excerpts from novels, newspaper columns. With an extensive introduction and headnotes, photographs, and memorabilia, The Keillor Reader also presents pieces never before published, including the essays “Cheerfulness” and “What We Have Learned So Far.”

Purchase from Common Good Books →

Download for iBooks →

Download for Kindle →

At the book launch event, Garrison discussed his early days in radio and described the origins of Lake Wobegon:

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