Garrison Keiler, Lake Wobegon, Prairie Home Companion

You all know everything about Garrison Keillor. Not me, even though I ask and ask I get no cogent answer. It took years for me to get that the name, the place, and the 'Prairie' bit are really the same outfit. Sort of. I have a friend who lives in Brooklyn, actually Rockaway Point, aka Breezy Point, the same place having two zip codes. The identification must be complete: Keillor has three ID's, so he does too. He, my friend, and his wife do private recreations of skits done on Keillor's TV show (the one and only one on PBS, KCET in LA) and because of  this identification simply cannot, will not, did not, even tell me that his idol has a regular, Saturday night (?) TV show that lasts for two hours. 

Finally, by accident, when there was nothing else to watch, I stumbled upon KCET at night and there he was, Garrison Keillor in a conventional dark business suit, red tie and nice hair, rumbled a bit as if to deny he was just a business man. The sneak is probably in the biz of the Spirit. Oh, oh, oh the women! on his two hour show!  Women, black, and white, and really truly women, not carved from ice as manikins of the sort Hollywood and TV has conned itself into believing that's what we like because that's what they like in their hysterical hatred of all women, but especially women unself-conscious of their womanliness and who, when they sing it's not to do something to us, but simply to be with us.

That Prairie Home companion guy doesn't even have commercials as far as I could see. He did a take up of having a commercial but it was actually something else.

Here's a bit of his writing, copied from the back cover of his 'year 2001 book' Lake Wobegon Summer 1956..... a novel:

"I am stunned. I had no idea. God. A TYPEWRITER.

"The enormity of this gift is truly staggering; it's as if he gave me the keys to a new car. I promise myself that I will never think snotty things about Uncle Sugar's hair and his balloon butt ever again. I have lusted for a typewriter for so long. Grandpa is looking out the window of heaven, and Jesus is standing beside him. Grandpa says, 'Jesus, why did you give an Underwood typewriter to a boy who thinks dirty thoughts all thetime?'Jesus says,Well, we'll see what he does with it.' "

Not once since 1996 Online have I heard, read, any of the Keillor undertakings mentioned above. So, I mention them. In defiance I guess. Or as a plea for equal time.  I really, truly, don't know what to make of it all. I think I feel that the media, and my weakness in not resisting advertised media, has cheated me.  I want revenge.

Barry  

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Reunion

My daughter, one of four, long lost to me, came to Thanksgiving Dinner, such as it was, and blew us all away with her tact, grace, humility, beauty, brains, wit, and sense of humor. 

Her half-brother who's nearly four went giddy with delight doing pratfalls, using bad language, and genuinely making a big pest of himself  but didn't annoy my daughter one bit; she seems to understand children perfectly even though she's so far childless and unmarried. She's still young however, so somewhere out there dwells a young man, single, who's gonna get a wife to die for. 

I think I have the toys to post photos here now so when I'm in the mood I'll post a photo of us all sitting in a row on the sofa. I hope Michael is pulling one of his funny faces.

Barry  

A Pilgrim

The Pilgrims, who we honor today, were in effect the first Colonists. No Colonies, no States. No States, no United States of America. It helps me grasp the 'feel' of the period in which the Pilgrims arrived to remember that at the time of the Mayflower's arrival Shakespeare had been dead only four years. He lived, as everyone knows, in a time of extreme religious persecution. It is entirely possible, so says the recently published book on Shakespeare, Will In The World, that the first time Shakespeare walked into London he could very well have seen the murdered bodies, beheaded, strung up on the bridge crossing the Thames. Bodies of Catholics.

Whenever one gets misty eyed about Pilgrims some fiend, anti-sentimental, will blather on and on about the Pilgrim's persecution of the Indians, and the Indian's retaliation in raiding colonist's villages and taking children to Canada, children who later, as adults, refused to go 'Home.' 

Instead of sliding down that slippery path I want, at Thanksgiving 2005, to acknowledge a Pilgrim Minister who left for us his library, and half his property to found a college, a college that became a bastion of free speech, and that rarity even today, complete academic freedom. I've seen a bronze (?) statue of that minister, about life size, mounted on a stone pedestal in front of the college administration building. He looks young, thin, and expensively dressed. He died when he was only 31. The Pilgrims lived in perilous times. Pregnancy, for example, exacted a 50% death rate.

Our hearts should go out to the Pilgrims at least once a year: the rest of the year we can, if  we absolutely MUST, dwell on their bad politics, their supposed racism and religious extremism. We owe them plenty: in fact, almost everything.

Barry

Main Entry: Har·vard
Pronunciation: 'här-v&rd
Function: biographical name
John 1607-1638 American clergyman & benefactor; left his library and half his estate to college at "New Towne" (later Cambridge, Mass.); college named in his honor in 1639

Main Entry: pil·grim
Pronunciation: 'pil-gr&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French peligrin, fromLate Latin pelegrinus, alteration of Latin peregrinus foreigner, from peregrinus, adjective, foreign, from peregri abroad, from per through + agr-, ager land -- more at FOR, ACRE
1 : one who journeys in foreign lands : WAYFARER
2 : one who travels to a shrine or holy place as a devotee
3 capitalized : one of the English colonists settling at Plymouth in 1620