For several decades Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion with Lake Woebegon updates was a Saturday night destiny for many via public radio. (link)
Now in his early 80’s he continues his Prairie Home shows as live performances at 8-10 venues per month around the country.
He continues to write, not fiction, but incisive observations about his life in New York City and from his travels. He also emails prior broadcasts of his five minute daily The Writer’s Almanac, also from PB S radio. They are well researched briefs of writers born on the day or historical events. (e.g. founding of Harvard University).
His virtual engagements with his followers include monthly poetry contests and a periodic Q&A on reader’s questions and concerns. Here is his response to a Marylin H.’s question on our current national mood.
An Old Man’sWisdom
Q. As someone who believes in being “cheerful,” I’m wondering how you manage to feel this way during the mess this country is in right now. I find myself almost despondent; I’m filled with a deep sense of dread and sadness. You and I have seen a lot over the past 80 years (I’m 81), and we’ve managed to make it through, but this feels different. I’m almost glad my years are about over so I don’t have to watch the ongoing destruction. Maybe I’ve lived long enough. Marilyn H.
A. The election of 2020 was one of the closest ever and a paper-thin margin put in office the gentleman who, if you watch his speech to the generals at Quantico or the sailors and Marines on the aircraft carrier in Yokosuka, is putting on a show and enjoying himself, taking great pleasure in trolling people like you and me and driving us to despair. But this adolescent adventure is not going to end well for the GOP. Speaker Johnson and Senator Thune and other Republicans are intelligent people and they know they’re being sold down the river and there will be no way back.
I don’t know about “destruction” but we’re seeing corruption like never before and it’s right out in the open. This is not going to pass. We are a better nation than this and this will be made right. OM