Garrison Keillor Was Telling Our Story

(Prairie Home Productions Photo)

This weekend saw Garrison Keillor's final broadcast as host of A Prairie Home Companion. His weekly program that began in 1974 has certainly had a positive influence on Public Radio. My brother said many years ago that "Garrison Keillor has done more for Public Radio than even Jennifer and Ted Stanley have!" (Long time NPR listeners will get the reference).  Many in the news and broadcast media have been weighing in on Mr. Keillor and his career. I would like to share a bit of my own experience as a frequent listener.

A Wonderful Discovery

Every fan of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion probably has their own story about how they personally connected with the program. I first discovered his radio show in the fall of 1983. I had recently returned to the States after having lived in Hong Kong where I taught in the English Department at Hong Kong Baptist College. Hong Kong was still a British Crown Colony at the time, and one thing I had come to enjoy was BBC Radio. Unlike the U.S., Britain had maintained a wide variety of radio programming with documentaries and radio drama as well as music and news broadcasts. I found that there was something about radio that opened up the imagination in a way that far surpassed the images seen on television or in the movie theater. Radio engages you in a different way. Perhaps it is linked to that ancient art of storytelling that is engrained in our psyche.

Coming back to the U.S. had been an adjustment, and finding a vibrant radio broadcast led by Garrison Keillor helped to ease my transition. No one else was doing radio like that, and it was a wonderful discovery.  As I tuned in to A Prairie Home Companion each Saturday evening, it was a nice two-hour respite at the end of the week. I came to realize that as I listened to the music, the skits, and the news from Lake Wobegon, I was being re-introduced to “middle America.” More important, I was becoming reacquainted with my own story.

A young man who travels the world sometimes tries to shed the old provincial ways that he grew up with. While broadening one’s perspective, becoming more cosmopolitan, and being more open to the world has its distinct advantages, one can also lose one’s moorings in the process. Garrison Keillor, with his humorous quirky style and a rich mellow voice that was perfect for radio, told stories about where he came from. As we all listened each week to those stories, whether we knew it or not, we were also hearing our own stories. In hearing my own story in Keillor’s thoughtful, reflective manner (always made safe and accessible by an ample supply of laughter) I came to have a greater appreciation of my own version of Lake Wobegon. My own version was the small county seat town in Alabama where I grew up. Change is a necessity, but remembering where we came from keeps us real.

Keeping the Music Real

And then there was the music. A Prairie Home Companion always brought a variety of music to the stage. We heard local choirs, bluegrass bands, opera singers, and classical musicians. There have been well-known stars like Chet Atkins, Emmylou Harris, James Taylor, Yo-Yo Ma, Sheryl Crow and Neko Case. The music was always live and always real, with The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band on hand each week for musical accompaniment.

I have always loved music, especially singing in choirs and glee clubs (we never actually had a glee club in our small high school, but I always loved it whenever the music would happen). I was enthralled and amazed when I would hear Garrison Keillor have an entire audience at the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul singing some old song like, “Tell me why the stars do shine, Tell me why the ivy twines…” It was sentimental, but it was happening at the moment, which made it real. It gave me hope, like when Pete Seeger would manage to turn his concert audience into a massive choir.

Shy Person Alert

The New York Times recently ran a story, “The Garrison Keillor You Never Knew,” by Cara Buckley. While never quite reaching the level of exposé, the point of the article was that the persona that Mr. Keillor created for radio is not at all who he is in real life. As I read the article, though the term Asperger's syndrome was never used, the descriptions she gave of the person she encountered were definitely in line with Asperger traits. She noted his being ill at ease with small talk, not at all the garrulous person seen on stage, and quoted the former associate at The New Yorker saying, “He is certainly the strangest person I know.” I wonder if she was even aware that she was describing Asperger traits. I wonder if she knows how many of us shy persons can relate to those traits she was describing?

Just last week on CBS Sunday Morning, Jane Pauley interviewed Garrison Keillor (“Garrison Keillor signs off”). In that delightful interview, Ms Pauley did use the term autism in her conversation with Mr. Keillor:

Keillor may owe his gentle gift for story to his belief that he's on the autism spectrum. Undiagnosed as a child, he was allowed to be himself, a little apart. Noticing, listening ...

"If you weren't high-functioning autistic," Pauley said, "you would've not had the blessings that your childhood gave you, that you are still investing in now as a 73-year-old man."

While I had long suspected that he knew on a personal level his many references to shy people, I had not been aware of the level of his experience. In the past, terms like "painfully shy" and "socially awkward" were often used to describe odd people. Even now, we often hear those terms bandied about without stopping to consider where someone might be on the "autism spectrum." [On a side note: Mr. Keillor spoke at the Minnesota 19th Annual Autism Conference in 2014. For a memorable review of his presentation, go here]

Even Non-Minnesotans Can Be Thankful

We can all be thankful, all of us fans of the long-running NPR broadcast, that Mr. Keillor not only stood where shy persons often fear to go, he graced us with his observations of our lives. Perhaps he was giving courage to other shy people (as well as offering insight to all of those “normal people”) with his humorous ad for Powder Milk Biscuits: “Made with whole wheat grown by Norwegian bachelor farmers…Whole wheat that gives shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.” Not that there is actually a biscuit for shy persons, of course, but that their plight is acknowledged; the recognition that some of us introverts have to call upon that extra reserve to move out and interact with others in order to do what we have to do. It is also therapeutic to be able to laugh about it.

Thank you, Garrison Keillor, for going where shy persons tend not to go. Thank you for telling us stories, for making us laugh, for getting us all to sing along, and above all, for keeping it real.

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April Is Poetry Month

Before we get too far into the month of April, I want to give a plug for National Poetry Month. I often have poetry on my blog, and try to put a special emphasis on poetry during the month of April. It was last April that I posted a brief instructional post on writing haiku, and it generated so much interest that I started a new weekly feature on the blog that I call Saturday Haiku. This month I will post a few new poems, and maybe an old poem or two throughout the month.

Today I would like to call attention to Garrison Keillor's excellent daily presentation of poetry in his radio program, A Writer's Almanac. It is a five-minute broadcast that airs on many Public Radio stations and always presents a poem along with interesting information about poets and writers. It airs on WUAL 95.1 FM in Tuscaloosa, AL just before 9:00 am. It is a great thing to hear in the morning, and I always take heart when I catch it on the radio. I am usually not near a radio at that time of day, but the program can found online at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org. You can also "Like" The Writer's Almanac on Facebook to have the daily programs appear on your Facebook page.

Last week, Keillor had a nice presentation on Robert Frost's life and work. He mentioned Frost's early days of struggling to earn a living and of his trying to make a living farming in New England, on a farm his grandfather had bought for him and his new bride. Keillor states that:

The majority of the poems from those [first] two books had been written at the farm in Derry, and some from his third book too. He wrote in a letter: "The core of all my writing was probably the five free years I had there on the farm. [...] The only thing we had was time and seclusion. I couldn't have figured on it in advance. I hadn't that kind of foresight. But it turned out right as a doctor's prescription."  You can read the entire broadcast, which includes Frost's "A Prayer in Spring"  here.  

As Garrison Keillor says as he closes each program, "Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."

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An Evening with Garrison Keillor

So I went to hear Garrison Keillor last night. He was at Samford University which hosts the Tom and Marla Corts Distinguished Authors Series. Garrison Keillor has a way of drawing you in. He is a writer who tells stories laced with humor and insight that reflect Americana. He appears to be talking about himself, but then you realize that you have been there, too. You laugh out loud at times, you are gently moved at times, and you know he is telling our story as well as his.

“Garrison Keillor: A Brand New Retrospective” That’s how the event was billed. Keillor, the host of A Prairie Home Companion, is a writer who also loves music and he likes to sing. He had described the program earlier in a press release:  "A man at 70 relives the good times - and the music that brings it all back: hymns, jingles, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, pop tunes, limericks, rock 'n roll, Beethoven, love sonnets, rags, blues, rousers, with Richard Dworsky, Rob Fisher, and Christine DiGiallonardo."

The evening began with some jaunty piano music from Richard Dworsky and Rob Fisher. Then Keillor walked onto the stage singing a jingle that he made up talking about how things were “back in the day” when there were no gadgets such as iPods and cell phones and a man could leave the house and actually be alone. He continued with a long list of “how things used to be,” and even worked into the number a bit about how he first came to Birmingham in 1993 when the big snow storm hit “and made us feel right at home.” After the light incidental music, he was joined onstage by Christine DiGiallonardo who accompanied him in some duets. When he introduced the young lady he said that when picking a duet partner, it is always helpful to pick someone who is younger, more talented and knows music better than you do. “Always pick a superior partner,” he added, “as I look out at the audience I see that that is what most of you have done.”

Here’s What You Need to Know about Life

After a couple of more songs, Garrison began to rattle off a list of ten things. They were ten things that he felt like we should all know, most of them were laugh-out-loud bits of insight. For example, he said, “Make sure you marry someone with a good sense of humor,” he paused briefly as he examined the thumb and fingers of his left hand, “because they are going to need it! After all, this is the person who will have the most access to the details of your life.” He went on with his list, until he got to the notion that we should lighten up and be cheerful. Keillor turned 70 this year. He told us that when you reach the biblically allotted number, you learn that it’s best to accept life and be cheerful. You learn to be grateful.

With that Keillor told a story of his trip to the Mayo Clinic for an MRI to try to figure out why he was having headaches. He described in great detail a near accident on the snowy drive up to the Mayo Clinic. After the medical tests, “they were able to see that there was no tumor – which was great news, I was elated. But I would have missed out on that wonderful news if I had died in an accident on the highway, which could have happened – you learn to be grateful.”

The storyteller then went on to describe meeting an elderly couple when he was in the cafeteria of the Mayo Clinic. The wife was in a wheelchair and the husband had obviously suffered a stroke as some point, his right arm hanging downward like a dead weight and his face drooping so that he looked constantly displeased. His wife was saying things like “you just have to take one day at a time; you gotta have faith; doctors don’t know everything, you know, my uncle lived longer than his doctors said he would.” Keillor then said the audience, “That’s the problem with surviving catastrophic things like a stroke – you have to endure words of encouragement from other people. They mean well, but you want to just shoot them…except you don’t have the coordination in your right arm to handle a gun.”

Reminiscence in Story and Song

As the evening continued, we heard the host of A Prairie Home Companion tell about events throughout his life. We heard about his witnessing a baptism in the creek near their house when he was five years old and his father had just come back from the war. He told of not being allowed to play football in the seventh grade because his doctor noted his mitral valve prolapse and how that led to his first job as a writer when he began to report on the games for the local paper. We learned of the first girl he fell in love with in high school, and how she so casually left him the night of the school prom, thus giving him understanding of what those blues songs were about that he had been singing, but didn’t really understand until that moment.

Christine DiGiallonardo
and Garrison Keillor

We heard many songs from Keillor and his small troupe of musicians: gospel, blues, American standard, rock and roll. At 70 years of age, I was impressed that Mr. Keillor still has a vocal range from tenor all the way down to bass. After one of the hymns that he and Ms DiGiallonardo sang, he told the audience about how his mother had died not long before at the age of 97. He and his siblings had sung that hymn along with others to their mother while she was on her death-bed.  Keillor said that his mother believed the message of those songs, and his sister who sang them along with him believed them. He said he had tried to believe them, but he wasn’t at that same place that some people in his family were. “I tried to believe them. I also tried not to believe them, and that’s even harder than trying to believe them.” He added that he was more inclined on certain days toward belief than he was on other days. I think everyone knew exactly what he meant – even those who claim belief would know deep down what he meant. Thus Garrison Keillor was once again telling his story which was really our story as well.

 All in all, it was a delightful evening. We were given some insight into life, but not so much as to get either bummed out or overly elated. Mr. Keillor kept any insight balanced by humor and the simple fun of sharing music together. As we were walking out of the performance hall, I heard a lady humming the tune of the last gospel hymn that had closed the evening. What is that they say in show business? If they leave humming the tunes, the show has been a success.

[Photos are from the AL.com news release]

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Truth As We Know It vs. Truth As We Shall See It

I heard Emily Dickinson quoted last night in a homily for the first Mass of Easter. The bishop who was officiating revealed that he had been an English major in college. I must confess my ears perked up since I, too, am part of that society of English majors that Garrison Keillor often speaks of on A Prairie Home Companion. Of course, Emily Dickinson makes my ears perk up as well. Here is the poem:

     Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant (# 1129)

              By Emily Dickinson

     Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --

     Success in Circuit lies

     Too bright for our infirm Delight

     The Truth's superb surprise

     As Lightning to the Children eased

     With explanation kind

     The Truth must dazzle gradually

     Or every man be blind --

May we continue along those slopes of truth and may our eyes ever adjust to that light revealed.

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