Garrison Keillor

Peius esse potest et probabiliter mox erit

Garrison Keillor

2026-04-17 Garrison Keillor
Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:25:25 GMT
Old man out on the roadThe Column: 04.17.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Old man out on the road
The Column: 04.17.26
Garrison Keillor
Apr 17 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
My new career as a stand-up is more fun than the old one in broadcasting for the simple reason that the audience is right there in front of me and it’s very clear when I connect and when I don’t.
Comedy is intimate. You poke them right, they laugh, it isn’t a conceptual problem. AI can create what sounds like jokes but they’re not funny. AI is going to take over banking and politics long before it takes over comedy.
I had three great nights in Northern California and Nevada and Tucson, some landslides of laughter, and then bombed in Scottsdale. It happened when I said, “These are crazy times we’re living in” and the crowd went dead. Scottsdale is a red city, I found out. They thought I was going to rip into DJT for posting online a Christlike image of himself healing the sick. So they folded their arms and frowned and I stood on stage and took my punishment.
The tour took me to the Granite State of New Hampshire where the state motto is “Live Free or Die,” which strikes me as harsh. There are more than those two options — living free and dying — and anyway dying isn’t an option, it’s an obligation. I lived more freely fifty years ago when I smoked three packs a day and indulged a fondness for whiskey and took the stairs two at a time, and was in love with two women at the same time. Since then I’ve deleted those things in the interest of being happier in the time I have left.
I’m from Minnesota where the motto is Peius esse potest et probabiliter mox erit. (It could be worse and soon will be.) My people were worriers, not warriors. I am 83 and “living free” is a concept I don’t take seriously. Back in January, I got up in the night and suddenly became a physics experiment and I’m still recovering. If I’m to suffer serious injury, I want it to be while defending a child against a vicious beast, not by tripping on a rug. Which, of course, is not for me to choose.
In Portsmouth I heard from some Trumper friends who said, “You need to deal with your Derangement Syndrome. We are going through some bad polling now and $5 gas and jittery stock market, but we are here to stay and you need to make your peace and accept that this is the wave of the future. The Bible says that we should be Christlike and that’s what the president was doing in that post. Get over it. Don’t be such a scumbag weirdo leftist creep. What will persuade you to support him and help make America great?”
I’ll tell you. If the man would use Universal Fight Club cage matches as a way of settling international differences, I would buy the red ballcap and the autographed Bible and stand up to my sleazy radical lefty friends.
Let Don Trump and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf get in the ring and take care of things man to man, no holds barred, kicking and punching and kneeing in the groin, neck-wrenching, along with the spitting, snot-blowing, poop-smearing, and verbal abuse, maybe some eye-gouging and biting, and see who says “Uncle.” Name-calling — any three-year-old can do that. Let’s see what our leaders can do grappling while smeared with all sorts of bodily fluids.
War is terribly expensive. Three hundred billion dollars and more under the bridge and the man has threatened to DESTROY AN ENTIRE CIVILIZATION so they will be LIVING IN HELL and nobody seems quite certain that the Commander is in full command of himself, and his midnight threats have our allies on edge, whereas a simple cage match encounter would resolve things quickly and painlessly. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
I connected with the Portsmouth crowd. I sang and told stories and tossed out some poems and expressed my love of the English language and 600 people went home happy. It was the only time in their life when they sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Abide with Me, Honky-Tonk Women, and I’ve Been Working on the Railroad in one evening. When you’re 83, you have nothing to prove, you’re free to do what you love. Portsmouth is a beautiful town and your life is not complete until you’ve been there and walked around.
Share
Come see for yourself what a singalong with strangers does for the soul. Garrison Keillor is out on the road and possibly coming to a city near you.
CLICK HERE for tickets!
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-04-22 Garrison Keillor
Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:40:54 GMT
A bump at the end of the roadThe Column: 04.20.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
A bump at the end of the road
The Column: 04.20.26
Garrison Keillor
Apr 22 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
Getting old is an adventure and what, I ask you, is life without adventure? And an adventure that is planned such as a canoe trip or the ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro is nothing compared to one that happens to you suddenly such as what happened to me Sunday at Bethel, New York.
I was on tour with Sam the road manager and the pianist Rich Dworsky and we’d done six terrific shows — even I, the naysayer, thought they were good — and were headed to do the seventh and last at a nearby venue on the site of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, which according to some accounts was an iconic week in the saga of my generation and according to some people I knew who were there was a miserable few days of loud music, rain, bad drugs, and chaos, a crowd of almost a half million that had been planned for a crowd of fifty thousand. Janis Joplin sang and Jimi Hendrix and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and I’d written a parody of CSNY’s “Teach Your Children” for it.
Rich and I were going to perform for 500 and I got in the back seat and we headed for the historic site and after a few miles I felt I’d forgotten something at the motel and wanted to get my briefcase out of the trunk to look for it. Except I found it hard to say this. Strange. Words came out of my mouth but they didn’t make sense. I could tell that I wasn’t speaking coherently but I kept trying, a few disconnected words at a time. And Sam the man pulled over and I tried to get out and he stopped me. A few minutes before I’d been an author, college graduate, and Episcopalian and now I was a wayward child.
He got on the phone, called 911, called Jenny back in Minnesota, a car pulled up and an EMT opened my door and checked my vitals and I was still talking garbled talk, but I did know my own name and date of birth, so there was hope. It dawned on me that I was experiencing something I’d been through a few times before, aphasia, an inability to speak clearly.
The EMT said there was a hospital some distance away and offered to take me. I said no, and so did Sam and Jenny. I signed off on the decision to release me. Sam canceled the show and we headed for New York City, two hours away, so he and Rich could fly home. I kept insisting that I wanted to do the show. I was starting to speak more clearly. Sam said no and he had Rich sit next to me in the back seat, maybe to keep me from jumping out of the car. I kept assuring them I was okay and they disagreed.
What bothered me was how good the parody of CSNY was, that I was missing the chance to sing it.
Hear your children say,
It’s moving day, today we’re giving
Orders to you, today you move,
You’re going to assisted living. 
You can argue, you can cry, but the Sixties have gone by,
It’s a sharp stick in your eye, but we love you. 

Yes, the house must be sold, and Neil Young is getting old
And this song is green with mold, but we love you.

You’ll be on the second floor, it says Memory on the door,
You are turning 84, but we love you.
The words were clear in my head but I couldn’t speak them, just hum the tune.
I invited them to spend the night at my apartment on West 90^th Street. They agreed. We unloaded the car and Sam took it to a garage. Rich and I ordered a Thai supper for the three of us. I beat him at Scrabble. The food arrived. We sat down and had a pleasant supper, recalling old Prairie Home Companion days, the annual Talent from Towns Under Two Thousand contest, various mishaps at live broadcasts, and at 10 everybody turned in for the night.
I can’t wait to get back out on the road. At 84 there’s nothing to prove, you just want to make people happy. Life is a gift. It’s a miracle that we exist and so a person must be grateful for every day, including Sunday. But be sure to take good people along with you.
Share
Listen to a book that puts it all into perspective: Garrison Keillor’s Serenity at 80, Gaiety at 80. Learn why you should keep on getting older.
CLICK HERE to download today!
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-04-24 Garrison Keillor
Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:42:10 GMT
Did you hear about my recent T.I.A.?The Column: 04.24.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Did you hear about my recent T.I.A.?
The Column: 04.24.26
Garrison Keillor
Apr 24 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
I’m at the age when you learn more about medicine than you had intended to, such as a T.I.A. or “transient ischemic attack” or what I call “temporary idiotic agitation,” which recently happened to me, the sudden inability of even a published author to speak a simple declarative sentence, which is embarrassing, like suddenly wetting your pants.
Of course much of what you learn about medicine is good, such as noninvasive surgery: a doctor can rearrange body parts leaving such a tiny scar that your swimwear modeling career will hardly be interrupted. Injuries that once would’ve landed you in a rocking chair by the fireplace to peruse National Geographics in your twilight years — now physical therapists put you through your paces to make you nimble, supple, and adroit. And the best news: a study at Harvard shows there is no connection between a healthy lifestyle and longevity.
You heard me right. Those slender vegans in jogging pants do not thereby receive a GET OUT OF DEATH FREE card but run the same risks of choking on a cork or being flattened by a falling anvil or reaching for the energy drink in the fridge and instead getting the bottle of rat poison. Things happen.
I am living proof of this: two-pack-a-day chain-smoker for twenty years, glass of Scotch in my hand — I thought it was what serious writers did — and I loathed calisthenics, never jogged, my idea of physical exercise was cursive writing. And here I am about to turn 84 — it’s like the pudgy kid winning the pole vault.
It’s also an age when anxiety is swamped by gratitude. The plain goodness of life — the pleasure of getting out of bed and accepting the gift of one more day — I didn’t feel this when I was in my early 20s and writing Poor Me poems about a lonely alienated hero but I feel it now. The soft breathing of the sleeping woman next to me, the hike to the kitchen, the smell of coffee.
I keep a warm place in my heart for friends who were cheated of life — Leeds who at 20 went through the windshield thanks to a drunk driver who pulled out on the highway, Barry who at 20 reached for the cigarette lighter on his dashboard and didn’t see the school bus stopped ahead of him, Roger who at 18 dove off the rowboat to impress his girlfriend and forgot he couldn’t swim. Cousin Lynne at 22 who pulled out onto the highway though the sun was in her eyes and the semi struck before the driver could hit the brake.
I keep them in my heart as a reminder not to waste the gift they were denied. Everyone has pain to deal with but talking about it makes it worse; a cheerful heart is a good strategy, which sounds trite because it is trite but nonetheless is true: when you feel down, you meditate on the goodness of life and let yourself be bucked up.
By “goodness of life,” I don’t mean Mozart’s Ave Verum or the lilacs and tulips blooming this week in Central Park or the millions of galaxies a billion light years away, I am thinking of the miracle of this morning’s shower, standing naked in all the complexity of Manhattan but I turn two knobs and hot water falls on me and flows out a drain. I’m thinking of the frozen waffles available at any grocery — I think of the laborious process of mixing dough and heating the waffle iron, which now is accomplished in two minutes in your toaster.
For me, the goodness of life is the memory of Julie, the girl in green shorts who challenged me to leg-wrestle with her in her backyard in 1954 — how could a 12-year-old boy say no? She was long-legged and suddenly I was flipped over backward and she was on me, her hot minty breath in my face, our bodies entangled, her bare left shoulder pressed to my groin, and I don’t know what your sexual awakening was but mine was memorable and I’ve been fascinated by womanhood ever since.
I’m married to a woman who is, thanks to healthful living, strong and quick, and has a playful nature and though respectful of my dignity as a published author, she has made numerous Terribly Interesting Advances toward me and every day brings the possibility of a fresh attempt. A clean man drinks his coffee and eats his waffle and hears the approach of footsteps.
Share
Come see one of Garrison Keillor’s upcoming shows at a venue near you! There’s sure to be singing, stories and lots of laughs.
CLICK HERE to buy tickets.
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-04-27 Garrison Keillor
Mon, 27 Apr 2026 11:00:06 GMT
The Back Room April Poetry Contest Winners 
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
The Back Room April Poetry Contest Winners
Garrison Keillor
Apr 27 

READ IN APP

You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-04-29 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 29 Apr 2026 10:00:06 GMT
Everybody in the park on SundayThe Column: 04.27.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Everybody in the park on Sunday
The Column: 04.27.26
Garrison Keillor
Apr 29 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
I went walking around Central Park Sunday, 843 acres of paradise in the middle of the metropolitan grid; that always makes a person feel good because it contradicts all you read about AI, alienation, angst, atrophy of the arts, urban disaffection and antagonisms — you walk among flocks of different individuals being themselves and also enjoying flocks of dissimilars in passing, a parade of heterogenuflecting homogenuineness, joggers each jogging to their own drumbeat, dogs towing their people, papas pushing babies in strollers, little princesses, cool kids on scooters, elders freed from their four walls, everybody talking, phrases flying past — I don’t see why — I told her, Don’t — it’s nice the blue jay is pretty because it’s a mean bird and the shriek — and for me, a writer from a family of separatist evangelicals who brought me up to avoid the worldly, it is a Carnival of Humanity, it is a feast, everybody is cheerful, how could they be otherwise?
A few minutes before, I was on the phone with a friend having a dour conversation about all the usual things people my age bemoan and beweep, and now I was in a timeless scene of happiness that E.B. White would’ve enjoyed, A.J. Liebling, W.B. Yeats, J.F. Powers, J.D. Salinger, or H.D. My Grandma Dora would’ve felt at home here, her grandfather David Powell who went West in the silver rush of 1859, his wife, Martha Ann, whose father was an English seaman who jumped ship in Baltimore and avoided being hanged and took up farming in Pennsylvania.
There was such a unanimity of cheerfulness, I wished that Thoreau could be here to see it, the sourpuss who went to live in the woods because he preferred solitude. His book Walden would’ve been much improved if Ellen Sewall had married him and there’d been a double bed in the cabin and a little more gossip and less about owls and mice and skip the stuff about self-sufficiency — there’s no such thing.
I think back to when I was 20, a sophomore at the University of Minnesota, majoring in English, writing poetry, such as this glob I found recently:
The roar of ice in glasses on the still Pacific.
The poet in his rock scraped varnish from the wood worn smooth by water.
The sea would gather up its will to clean the wound of San Francisco,
Restore the madness and the lust to balance,
Soothe the troubled stones that dream of flesh and axes. 
Fairly typical undergraduate poetry. Enigmatic. Nothing descriptive, no narrative, aiming only for profundity. I knew other boys writing similar things and sometimes they talked that way too. Cryptic, clipped, determinedly ambiguous.
Bob Dylan cranked out the same stuff but he had a good agent who got him a deal with a major label and the ambiguity of the songs left the listener with two choices, either this was nonsense or the guy was a genius, and nobody wants to be on the wrong side of genius, so he became iconic.
They’re selling postcards of the hanging.
They’re painting the passports brown.
The beauty parlor’s full of sailors.
The circus is in town. 
It’s undergraduate poetry but it’s a hit on the charts so the guy is brilliant.
It was a gorgeous time in my life, out of a small town and into an enormous state university, thousands of people I might never get to meet otherwise, Asians and Africans come to study science and engineering, smart ambitious women venturing into fields gradually opening to them, folkies and artistes, political types, folks of the Ashkenazi tribe, frat boys — a time to stay loose and roam around and make friends and widen my world but instead I wrote incomprehensible poems and became a prisoner of my own pretensions. And majoring in English turned out to be majoring in Anguish: comedy was of no interest to them.
When I was 20, I was unlike anything ever seen and gradually I’ve become commoner and now at 83 I am more or less just like everyone else.
But here on a Sunday afternoon is the country I love. Its greatness is its civility. Tremendous progress made since I was young in its decent respect for those in distress, for all sorts of disabled especially the autistic, for those previously degraded and cast aside, the addicted, the ailing, and here we are all together on a warm Sunday in April, feeling festive, encouraged by this spontaneous community. I want to sing. O beautiful for spacious skies, for graceful woods and lawns, and if we open up our eyes, a brave tomorrow dawns.
Share
Travel back to 1985 with this collection of archived Lake Wobegon stories from Garrison Keillor, featuring memorable monologues from the long-running radio series.
CLICK HERE to purchase today! 
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-01 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 01 May 2026 09:00:05 GMT
We appreciate you and offer you a chance at a rare limited opportunity.May 1 - 31
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
We appreciate you and offer you a chance at a rare limited opportunity.
May 1 - 31
Garrison Keillor
May 1 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
Dear Friends,
You are receiving this letter because you are a subscriber to one or more of these newsletters: Garrison Keillor and Friends, The Writer’s Almanac, A Prairie Home Companion.
This Substack platform has served us well. It allows us to share news from the road, talk about past memories, and continue to feature our favorite poetry segments. Garrison’s columns are published both in print and podcast, and we continue to post daily archived episodes of The Writer’s Almanac and weekly featured classics of A Prairie Home Companion.
Check this out: Of the thousands who subscribe to our newsletters, only a fraction do so at the paid level. So for a limited period, May 1 to 31, any new paid subscriber who signs up for the full-year paid subscription to The Back Room, Writer’s Almanac, or A Prairie Home Companion newsletter will be entered into a drawing.                    The prize: a red silk tie, worn by Garrison on show day and then autographed immediately following the show. Five lucky subscribers will receive this quirky prize early in June; other new paid subscribers will receive a small thank-you gift from our store.
More benefits of the paid subscriptions:
You receive a 20% discount in our store (shop.garrisonkeillor.com), access to the full archive of previously published items in both the free and the paid space — most notably in The Back Room, where we have published over 150 monologues from the 1980s.
Please note: We have three newsletters, each with its own subscriber list — both free and paid. If you are a paid subscriber on one and not the others, you will get additional notes from Substack asking you to subscribe (but only in the autumn and spring, we hope).
Thanks to your financial support, we have been able to keep this ship upright and sailing forward. If you’d like to continue supporting our work, you can do so in one of three ways:
*Click the Subscription button for either Garrison Keillor and Friends or The Writer’s Almanac or A Prairie Home Companion newsletters.
*CLICK HERE and select what works best via our “Support” options.
*Or send a check to Prairie Home Productions at P.O. Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN 55402.

We are a for-profit company, so while your financial support helps defray expenses, it is not tax-deductible.
We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Your subscriptions and contributions help us keep this entertaining work going.
Sincerely,
The Staff of Prairie Home Productions

You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-01 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 01 May 2026 14:00:05 GMT
Man on the run having funThe Column: 05.01.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Man on the run having fun
The Column: 05.01.26
Garrison Keillor
May 1 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
On the road last week, doing one-nighters, living the motel life, which is a good life, though it does raise questions in a man’s mind, such as, “When did America decide to wrap paper cups in plastic? And why?” I’m an old man and I remember when your motel room came with two coffee cups, ceramic, unwrapped, next to the coffeemaker, or a stack of paper cups. Maybe two glasses in the bathroom. Was there a wave of motel cup poisoning back in the Nineties that led to this plastic protectivity? And if so, why do they not put plastic covers on the motel scrambled-egg breakfast?
The plastic film I peel off a paper cup for coffee turns my mind in a direction I don’t want, and instead of thinking about my beloved wife and lighthearted daughter and what I might do this evening to amuse the audience coming to see an old man with a microphone, I think about microplastic pollution, a planet that absorbs 40 million tons of it every year, plastic in the trees, water, the ice in the Antarctic, in my brain, pollution created by powerful corporate interests — men in tailored suits who own three homes have persuaded my motels to plastic-wrap cups and they don’t care about science, only profitability.
Last Wednesday, in downtown St. Paul, I passed a pack of twenty preschoolers wearing bright yellow vests, double formation, holding onto a canvas harness held by Teacher, and it was a beautiful sight, twenty eager tykes in the process of finding personalities but learning to Stick Together, Don’t Push, Take Turns, just as we all did. God bless the children. The future of these kiddos is a main concern of any decent society, and the men in tailored suits are stomping on these children, it’s child abuse, and they should be dealt with severely.
We live in a time of corporate lawlessness and unabashed corruption in high places, pardons offered for cash, federal agents in brazen defiance of common law, and now a lawyer friend tells me that he knows law professors who tell their graduates, “Do not, on any account, apply for a job at the Department of Justice because the stain will stick to you your whole career.” Remarkable.
I learned about law and order when I was a college freshman, working as a parking lot attendant, a 20-acre gravel lot overlooking the Mississippi, and during morning rush hour, you had to set aside Midwestern Niceness and yell at people to make them park in straight double rows and chase down the libertarians who wanted to park willy-nilly and threaten them with parking tickets and possible confiscation of their vehicle. I learned to yell at women, if necessary, so as to avoid gridlock and chaos. Women faculty members who didn’t like taking orders from an 18-year-old nerd. They felt their advanced degree gave them freedom of parking. I didn’t swear at them, I simply rapped on their window and said, “I’ll have a tow truck here in ten minutes to take you to an impound lot east of St. Paul.” And I looked at my watch and I walked away. Turning on my heel was the key: it worked. They imagined how exercising their prerogative could complicate their day and lead to a long wait at Impoundmentville waiting for sullen men to locate their old Chevy among two thousand incarcerated cars and they chose to park in a straight row where directed.
In college, I majored in English because I wanted to be a writer and it was a lousy education, listening to arrogant windbags obsessed with the Literature of Dread and Despair. Two years in the city room of a daily newspaper would’ve been a better education. Assigning bright young undergraduates to write term papers on T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land was like requiring tall people to crawl through a pipe.
And now I have the best job in America. I stand up in front of an audience, an old man with a head full of stuff, and do ninety minutes stream-of-consciousness about the beauty of longevity, the blessings of every day, the delights of English with snatches of story and poems and songs and the joke about the man with his hands full of dog turds who tells his wife, “Look what I almost stepped in,” and at some point I’ll have them all sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and they’ll be like those preschoolers in formation. God bless them.
Share
Come see a live show with Garrison Keillor! There are plenty to choose from, and all over the country.
CLICK HERE for tickets!
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-02 Garrison Keillor
Sat, 02 May 2026 22:00:05 GMT
Join Garrison Keillor and Rich Dworsky in California (May 21 - 24)CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Join Garrison Keillor and Rich Dworsky in California (May 21 - 24)
Garrison Keillor
May 3 

READ IN APP

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-06 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 06 May 2026 06:00:05 GMT
Looking around, not looking aheadThe Column: 05.04.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Looking around, not looking ahead
The Column: 05.04.26
Garrison Keillor
May 6 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
Driving through northern Iowa last week, the flattest farmland in America, I thought of my Uncle Jim and the old Keillor farm I loved as a kid, the big barn and haymow, The cows he milked by hand twice a day, the horses Prince and Ned who pulled the hayrack, a magical place for a boy. My dad, who grew up on that farm, hated it because he saw it as perpetual poverty. He was eager to make a break and start over. He was not nostalgic. I am but I was only a visitor.
It was dramatic to drive for hundreds of miles and see no barns or silos, no windmill or grove around a farmhouse, the Grant Wood landscape of rural America, and see what corporate industrial agriculture looks like. It looks like Siberia. A place you send people as punishment.
A culture is slipping away that raised some fine self-reliant relatives of mine like my Aunt Eleanor who could handle a rifle, hitch up horses to a wagon, bake bread, plant a garden, throw a baseball, kill a chicken, sew clothing from a pattern, do basic repairs, and speak her mind in firm declarative sentences. The farm made her a strong woman and I say the world could use more like her.
Well, cultures are mortal, just as we are, and it’s a shame when the worthwhile peter out and the worst prosper, such as the culture of consultancy. Some of the stupidest managers I’ve encountered in my life now hang out their shingles as consultants prepared to advise on strategic planning and team building, who when I knew them were adept at strategic blather and creative imitation. I believe that AI will devastate their ranks and soon we’ll encounter them at drive-up windows, consulting on condiments and large vs. medium shakes.
AI is surely going to take on politics and government next. Farming is resistant to algorithms, but Iowa has 99 counties and as the state becomes hollowed out into large towns separated by miles of unpopulated prairie, the counties will devolve to a simple set of agencies. AI may be rough on the towns too as robodentistry and alt-education and crypto-Christianity take hold, but it is eager to take over politics and government. Big money is dominating our elections, the young and ambitious have a steep disadvantage against the complacent, and so Congress hasn’t been a deliberative body for decades and a computer the size of a refrigerator could easily replace it next week and public offices could become purely symbolic, like homecoming queens or college presidents.
The Artificial Congress could easily conclude that our political animosities are so deep and severe that the Union cannot be sustained. It lasted 250 years but podcasting has given a place to outright Nazism and racist hatred that once were unspeakable and so divorce is inevitable. Let the evangelicals own the South, Lutherans the Midwest, the Unitarians New England. Let China be No. 1. It’s a very successful state corporation and let them deal with the degradation of the planet and let us spend our days in dismay and derision, complaint and confusion.
This is an old man talking, you understand. When I was five and Mother was enormous with twins, I helped Dad work on our new house in a cornfield north of the city. I mixed mortar, I brought him 2x4s and nails and he showed me how to pound them in. Wham-wham-wham-wham-whack. When she was about to give birth, I was sent to the farm where I got to feed the chickens and collect the eggs and go up in the haymow and throw hay down to the cows. I believe I lived at the best time in human history. I worked summers hoeing corn and picking potatoes on truck farms. I was around when rock ’n’ roll was about cars, girls, and the beach, before it became enigmatic and weird and surrealistic. I did a show in Des Moines last week and the audience was mostly my age and when I sang, “You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain,” they all knew the words — retired teachers, Lutheran pastors, health professionals, all shouted, “Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!” I grew up with storytellers and I got to enjoy the benefits of modern medicine that gave me a long string of bonus years and when I drive through desolate farmland and think about AI, I think, Not My Problem. Good luck, kids.
Share
Upgrade to paid
Check this out: Of the thousands who subscribe to our newsletters, only a fraction do so at the paid level. So for a limited period, May 1 to 31, any new paid subscriber who signs up for the full-year paid subscription to The Back Room, Writer’s Almanac, or A Prairie Home Companion newsletter will be entered into a drawing. The prize: a red silk tie, worn by Garrison on show day and then autographed immediately following the show. Five lucky subscribers will receive this quirky prize early in June; other new paid subscribers will receive a small thank-you gift from our store.
That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life invites readers to journey through Garrison Keillor’s remarkable life, from Mississippi River boyhood to radio fame.
CLICK HERE to purchase today!
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-08 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 08 May 2026 06:00:06 GMT
The Windy City: Watch your stepThe Column: 05.07.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
The Windy City: Watch your step
The Column: 05.07.26
Garrison Keillor
May 8 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
I did a show in Chicago last week and I’m sorry you weren’t there because it was so fabulously good. I’m from Minnesota and was brought up not to say that but I’m 83 and it’s time to take liberties. I was also brought up to tell the truth, so there. I’ve started a new career as a stand-up comic. My mother, who has departed this world, loved comedians even though she was brought up Brethren, and I used to tell her jokes and when she laughed it made me feel loved. And the Chicago audience laughed like crazy. They came to have a good time and I didn’t get in their way by talking about politics and after ninety minutes they gave me a standing ovation and we all went home.
I do the show standing-up but it’s not all jokes and I avoid snark and sarcasm — I think irony is for teenagers. I believe that life is a gift and that our existence here on this planet is a miracle and I am grateful for it. Grateful for the innovations such as Earl Grey ice cream and search engines, online newspapers, the urinal that flushes when I step back and for the fact that I can say, “Alexa, play the Rolling Stones’ ‘Brown Sugar’” and she does, no need to dig through the shelf of LPs. I could find the Rolling Stones on YouTube but then I’d have to sit through commercials for retirement homes, energy drinks, and stool softeners.
The next morning, as a reward, I got myself a good breakfast. On the road I stay at economy motels and eat their industrial scrambled eggs, but in Chicago I found a diner on North Wells called Nookies. In Minnesota, they wouldn’t dare use that name, women would file a class-action lawsuit but I’ll bet the name comes from an old owner with an unpronounceable Slavic name like Gnukieczewicz whom his pals knew as Nookie and the place is near the Moody Bible Institute and the old Baptist Bible scholars enjoyed saying, “Let’s go to Nookies” and anyway the breakfasts are phenomenal. Mine was two eggs over medium in a bowl of chopped red potatoes and onions with chunks of bacon and it made me think I need to spend more time in Chicago. This is a town with a spirit of its own. Chicagoans don’t go in for attitude, they want to get the lowdown, the inside scoop. Nookies. Remember that. Biggest breakfast menu in town, cooked to order, and afterward you’re ready to take on the world.
So I paid up and went out the door into a steady drizzle and somehow I misjudged a step down and fell and came crashing down on the sidewalk. I lay for a moment. Hadn’t hit my head. Landed on my right hip. Thank God I didn’t land on my left shoulder, the one I busted months ago. And then a big guy bent down and said, “You okay?” And another big guy. “Need help getting up?” I did. Two strong arms took my upraised arms and pulled me to my feet. “You okay?” I said yes and I thanked them in a grammatical sentence for their kindness and said, “God bless you. I’ll remember you two.”
My hip hurts but I think it’s a muscle strain, not a fracture. With a fracture I’d be in bed moaning, right? Not writing a story. I’m still trying to get it all clear in my mind. The fabulous evening with the friendly crowd. The beautiful breakfast. The unexpected crash on my keester. What is your message here to me, dear Lord God? Humility? Lord, I’ve got more than enough, I need more bravery.
I come from a large extended family of loving aunts and taciturn uncles. The uncles took pride in certainty and didn’t brook disagreement. The aunts worked hard to keep the family together and heal hurt feelings and forgive the fallen and go out of their way to show kindness where needed. I’m an old northern liberal, which comes with a raft of certitudes and I’m trying to get loose of them and do comedy that gives an audience a sense of solidarity. I closed the Chicago show by singing “Wise men say only fools rush in” and the audience joined and then I switched to singing bass and they sounded beautiful and were surprised by their own loveliness. I couldn’t help falling in love with them. I’ll remember Chicago for a long time. Nookies. On North Wells. Watch your step.
Share
Don’t miss out on the next great show! Find Garrison Keillor performing live at a location near you. 
CLICK HERE for tickets.
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-13 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 13 May 2026 06:00:06 GMT
Dancing in Chelsea with Willy and DylanThe Column: 05.12.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Dancing in Chelsea with Willy and Dylan
The Column: 05.12.26
Garrison Keillor
May 13 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
I’ve just had an amazing weekend in New York, which is what people come to New York for, to experience life in ways they didn’t find likely in Anoka, Minnesota. I love Anoka but it has its limits.
My weekend: Friday I was writing a book, and that night my love and I went to see “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway. Saturday, I worked. I got a call from my doctor saying the CT scan showed that my right hip wasn’t broken when I fell on it but only had a huge hematoma that would ache for a few weeks, and that night we went to a wedding of a friend’s daughter at the famous Hotel Chelsea on West 23^rd Street and a dinner and dancing that followed. A hundred guests, and I looked around as the DJ started spinning the discs with a walloping bass beat I could feel in my butt and I was the oldest person in the room at 83 and I was in a state of delight and started swaying and twisting with my love. Sunday, I slept until 12:30 p.m.
The book is about enjoying a happy old age, which is another good reason to live in New York, a city with excellent public transportation. You do not want to spend your declining years driving around looking for a place to park. If you want a quiet cozy day, just stay home. We live on the 12^th floor, where you can hear the sirens but not the rumble of the subway. Eight floors above us is the former apartment of a Hollywood star who broke up with her Italian heartthrob because he wouldn’t divorce his wife back in Italy and marry her. He loved colorful shirts and she grabbed armloads of them and threw them off her balcony and they fluttered down onto the brownstones below like dying butterflies. She would’ve thrown him too but he caught the elevator in time.
Arthur Miller wrote “Death of a Salesman,” which I saw when I was in college and it’s a great play but it’s also showing its age. It has great lines, like “A salesman is a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that’s an earthquake. A salesman has got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.”
The women on stage were awfully good, especially the wife, but the men were very busy acting, yelling, running around, being actors, and I didn’t believe a word of it. It’s supposed to break your heart but my heart just burned.
But the wedding. Oh my goodness. A Presbyterian bride marrying into a Mexican family. This is a whole new vision of human existence. I have loved the English language all my life and plan to go on using it, but English has its limits and that’s the time to break into dance. The mother of the groom approached me and I took her in my arms, despite my aching hematoma, and it made me very happy. I saw the father of the bride dancing like a wild man. The music was so loud I sang along at the top of my voice and nobody could tell that I didn’t know the words.
I’d never been in the Chelsea Hotel before because Dylan Thomas’s death there in 1953 made it a literary landmark and I despise that sort of landmark. Thomas was a great poet who drank himself to death while living at the Chelsea and having an affair with a lady who took him to her doctor who shot him up with cortisone and morphine and he was taken comatose to St. Vincent’s where the combination of whiskey and bad medicine killed him.
From this comes the legend of the self-destructive genius that has been the ruin of so many. When I saw the kids in fancy clothes jumping around to “Dancing Queen” and joined by their elders and my love dancing with the mother of the bride, I saw Willy Loman dancing with Dylan Thomas and life turning into the brave comedy it is meant to be. The damn fool wrote “Do not go gentle into that good night,” that old age should “rage against the dying of the light” — he wrote that when he was blind drunk, the freaking idiot, and died at age 39. I wish long life to the couple. Make each other laugh. No need to be a troubled genius. Be grateful for each other.
Share
Laugh along with Garrison Keillor and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in The Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra. This music-filled romp turns classical instruments and orchestra life into pure comedic delight.
CLICK HERE to purchase today! 
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-15 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 15 May 2026 06:00:05 GMT
I hear the drumming of somebody comingThe Column: 05.14.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
I hear the drumming of somebody coming
The Column: 05.14.26
Garrison Keillor
May 15 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
Every morning when I swing my legs out of bed and stand erect and think a clear thought, which is: Thank you, dear Lord, for this day, and I insert my hearing aids and switch them on using an app on my phone and thus gain access to spoken English, this magnificent language of my people that emerged from our defeat in 1066 to the Normans, which then enriched our blunt Teutonic tongue with words such as literature and music and passion and coffee, all of which are part of my day, and I think, “I am 83 and truly this is the happiest time of my life, it simply is so, and so don’t deny it,” but then I try to find something worrisome such as the dog I saw in Central Park with a thing in its mouth like what babies suck on, which I racked my brain trying to think of the name for and had to google on my phone to find it — pacifier — which led to thinking about Cognitive Decline Due To Aging and the billion-dollar industry in beverages and supplements that claim to delay decline and Decline, my dears, is an idea that once planted in the brain is not easily dispelled, it stays with you as you amble to the kitchen and take your meds and pour a cup of coffee and you have to sit down and get a grip on yourself and get your head on straight.
I left St. Paul ten years ago and moved to New York. I was a big shot in St. Paul and in New York I am squeezed into the C train along with everyone else. My wife loves New York and is happy here, and living with a happy woman is much much more important than being a big shot. I’ve started a new career as a stand-up comic and it’s great fun to amuse people, most of whom, due to their taking citizenship seriously, lack goofiness in their lives.
This is not the career I was trained for. I decided to become a writer when I was 14 and so went to a liberal arts college and studied Humanities, which was a tragic mistake. My cousins went into medicine, architecture, psychology, engineering, education — cheerful occupations intent on making the world better — and my most successful cousin, Wayne, went into raising flowers and vegetables and built enormous greenhouses and did good on a massive scale, carrying on in the tradition of my aunt Josephine who was a passionate gardener, whereas I got trapped in the sorrows of the 19^th century, which dominated humanities in the 20^th, gloomy philosophers like Kafka, Kierkegaard, Thoreau.
As an English major, I learned how to write impressively about books I hadn’t read and I knew I could always improve my grade by quoting Kafka, who believed the purpose of great literature is to cause pain. Franz and Søren and Henry led solitary lives, accepted alienation as the norm, and each of them tried to turn his own private misery and social awkwardness into a philosophy of life. Each of them died in his forties, an incomplete life. And together, they gave the 20^th century a whole truckload of grievous philosophy, which now, a quarter into the 21^st, we need to finally dispel.
The Three Noodges didn’t have the analgesics we have today or the neurology know-how or the dental care. The tuberculosis that killed two of them can be cured. And what is most significant, none of them had a lasting loving relationship with a woman. Thoreau said, “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” The poor man was missing a necessity of life as important as oxygen, namely someone to say, “Darling, let’s go out tonight and have fun. Enough sitting on your butt. Let’s go dancing.”
That wedding I attended last week was a big deal for me — especially when the DJ cranked up his engines and an earthquake of rhythm shook the room making conversation impossible. No more lamentation about the demise of democracy. We were seized by a primitive pounding beat from before written language and were no longer college graduates but members of a secret tribe joined in sensual jubilation at the fact of belonging in this crowd, not alone in the woods, but here I am at 83, dancing queen got hold of me, yesterday is a memory, don’t need Kafka or H.T., shake your shoulders, swing and sway, that’s the message for today.
Share
In Cheerfulness, veteran radio host and author Garrison Keillor reflects on a simple virtue that can help us in this stressful and sometimes gloomy era.
CLICK HERE to purchase today!
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-20 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 20 May 2026 06:00:05 GMT
Summer is here and what could be better?The Column: 05.18.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Summer is here and what could be better?
The Column: 05.18.26
Garrison Keillor
May 20 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
I am very fond of my current age, the age at which I no longer recognize the names of famous celebrities and when I go to YouTube to hear the songs of my youth I see commercials for walkers and stool softeners — and of the classmates who stood in our blue gowns on the football field that June day and were urged to go make the world a better place, a majority have slipped away into the hereafter.
And yet certain glories are more glorious than ever. A summer day, for one. I took summer for granted in my casual youth and now, grinding away at work all morning at my desk, I step outside into a Manhattan heaven, festive cliff dwellers stream through Central Park, the city is golden, and an old achy man feels it in his soul because today he skipped the newspaper, which is a catalog of decline, despair, and dereliction, and he is getting bulletins from the passing crowd that Americans are as free and brave as ever.
My beloved has told me this for years when I feel blue: “Maybe you just need to take a good long walk.”
She and I went to the Met last Thursday night to see an opera about the hereafter and it was phenomenal. And though I understood very little of it, I enjoyed the energy tremendously. It was El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego by Gabriela Lena Frank, her first opera, its premiere at the Met, and from the first downbeat you knew this ain’t Puccini, the chorus is yipping and shrieking, skeletal beings emerge from below in clouds of steam, the Diego longs for his dead lover Frida, and we set aside expectations and simply experience the evening as it’s given to us, the maestro drawing the music to its long whispery spectral close and silence, and then the audience explodes in applause and people are standing and shouting and there I am, a small-town guy from Minnesota, shouting along with them. Roars of approval for the lead singers, the dancers, the orchestra and a frenzy of approval for the Met chorus.
When I was your age, kiddo, I wanted to be smart and have insights and come to a reasoned judgment that I can defend as principled and now I just let the experience have its way with me.
I go to the opera because my love cares for opera. I put myself in her hands. We get in a cab and head for Lincoln Center. We pass the Dakota on West 72^nd Street and I think of John Lennon and others whose lives were cut short, grandson Freddy, cousin Roger, cousin Lynne, my pal Barry Halper who gave me my first job in radio and was driving east of St. Paul when he took his eyes off the road to light a smoke and crashed into the rear of a school bus, and then, at the opera, I feel them crying out to me. In Spanish. I don’t understand Spanish but I understand them. Life is a gift, it’s a miracle that we exist and have each other, and when it’s gone, our understanding is complete.
Diego’s grief, his pleading to La Catrina the Keeper of the Dead to allow Frida to return to life so that he can hold her in his arms, moves me more than Gabriela Frank may have intended to embrace the woman sitting next to me, her shoulder brushing mine, this beautiful shoulder that has passed me in hallways and lies next to me at night for all these years.
Life is a gift. It’s a miracle that we exist, that the microscopic tadpole goes headfirst into the enormous ovum and even as the two humans are dizzy with ecstasy, science is proceeding to give them YOU whether it’s what they were hoping for or not.
Tennis game is gone, haven’t gone to a movie all year, don’t read fiction anymore, life shrinks to the basics: Eat light, devote yourself to friendship, look after the children, go back to the classics you grew up loving, watch people be astonishing on stage, and if you are joined to another warm body bestow the best of yourself on that person. The Lord is good, His mercy endureth forever. This is the day He has made and we will rejoice and be glad. So a grizzly bear was chasing the Baptist through the woods and the Baptist cried out, “Dear God, please convert this bear to the Christian faith.” And the bear grabbed the Baptist and looked up and said, “God is great, God is good, and I thank Him for my food.”
Share
Now’s a great time to come see a live show with Garrison Keillor. You’re in for a great evening, with singalongs, stories, and lots of laughs.
CLICK HERE for schedule and tickets.
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-22 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 22 May 2026 10:00:07 GMT
Score one for the cowboysThe Column: 05.22.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Score one for the cowboys
The Column: 05.22.26
Garrison Keillor
May 22 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
The old man I knew when I was a kid was my Grandpa Denham who was irritable and not tolerant of playfulness and sat at Sunday dinner and was not amused if one of us kids spoke up — it was our house, he was a guest, we felt entitled to speak — so I imagined I’d wind up cranky like him and now I’m ten years older than Grandpa and I don’t feel it happening. He was a bookkeeper for the Soo Line Railroad and I did a radio show and maybe that’s the difference though I knew plenty of unpleasant people in radio because I was in public radio where folks take their pretensions very seriously and I was in the comedy business, which made me a rube in their eyes. Nonetheless I had a good time and now I feel rather lighthearted, even naively so.
Last Wednesday I flew from JFK to LAX and the plane sat on the runway for two hours while a thunderstorm passed and it didn’t bother me in the least. I sat and worked on a new book, which I think is the best thing I’ve ever done, which surely can’t be true, but I read a few paragraphs and think, “This is what Proust wished he could do but his English wasn’t up to the job.”
America was built on wild optimism, as I see it, and my ancestor David Powell crossed the Missouri in 1859 hoping to get rich in the Colorado silver rush, which didn’t happen, but he got to hunt with the Cheyenne and trade with the Arapaho and see the mountain grandeur of Colorado.
I landed in L.A. at midnight and went looking for the taxi stand and a man came running up and said, “Are you looking for a taxi?” and I was so tired, I said yes, and he took my bags and led me to a car and I said, “I’m going to Malibu” and he said, “A hundred and sixty bucks.” It wasn’t a cab, just a car, no license or anything, and I knew I shouldn’t but I went with him, a stranger, off into the night, in a strange city, and what if the man should pull out a gun? Well, he didn’t. He took me to my hotel. I was so grateful that he didn’t rob me, I tipped him forty bucks.
I did my stand-up comedy show at a theater and afterward a young man and his uncle came backstage. I could tell the boy was autistic, his diction was hard to understand, his gait uneven, he wore a black strap around his chest, which the uncle hung on to, and the uncle explained that Noah was a fan of my old Saturday night radio show, listened to it faithfully, especially the “Lives of the Cowboys” sketches with Dusty and Lefty riding the open plains, and that he had CDs of the sketches and listened to them over and over. But the whole story was written in Noah’s face. He gave me a beatific smile so big and bright, I was stunned. It absolutely knocked me for a loop. One minute I’m a guy telling jokes and then suddenly I’m St. Michael the archangel.
So I sang him a little bit of “Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Dogies” and did some cows mooing and horse whinnies and coyotes howling, and I almost started crying.
I can deal with compliments but to this boy I was Mister Magic and my little show was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and Noah got so happy, he was bouncing up and down on his toes. He wasn’t the audience I had had in mind but here he was. Some people come into the world with a cognitive disability that isolates them from others and one great thing America has done in my lifetime has been to rescue them and find them a way to an enjoyable life. As recently as the Sixties and Seventies, these kids were locked up in state institutions and driven insane by the isolation and now, thanks to a growing cadre of young people who see this as their vocation, kids whom nature has cheated are given a chance. As for me, I meant something to this boy without ever meaning to. Just a friendly voice from a little box. What more can one ask than to be important unawares to someone in need. Thank you, Noah. You made my week.
Share
Saddle up with Dusty & Lefty for six hilarious cowboy adventures straight from the legendary radio world of A Prairie Home Companion. 
CLICK HERE to purchase the CD today! 
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-27 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:05 GMT
The man at the typewriter goes clickety wham bamThe Column: 05.27.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
The man at the typewriter goes clickety wham bam
The Column: 05.27.26
Garrison Keillor
May 27 

READ IN APP

Share
Have I told you about the bad fall I took one morning a few weeks ago coming out of a breakfast café in Chicago, a café called Nookies, the morning after a show I did there? I have? Are you sure? I was coming out the door and there was a step down, which turned out to be two steps down and I crashed down on my right hip and right arm and two guys stopped and hauled me to my feet. I think what caused it was the fact it was the best breakfast I’d had in a long time. You go on tour and unless you’re Paul Simon or Bob Dylan, you stay at economy motels that serve a free breakfast of scrambled eggs that comes in tanker trucks from Hoboken and has nothing to do with chickens, it’s made from sawdust and cornstarch and recycled cellophane. This breakfast was one you’d serve to Paul Simon. Bob Dylan wrote hundreds of songs about being mistreated and misunderstood but when it comes to breakfast, he does not put up with sawdust and cornstarch.
So I told you this story already. Okay. I’ll take your word for it. When you’re my age, 103, your life spans a great deal of American history and culture such as civil rights, the women’s movement, rock stars destroying hotel rooms, the internet, Microsoft Word as a cause of bipolarity, bottled water, gender liquidity, ecology, ultimate fighting, A.I., women’s fashion that employs nudity, motorized kick scooters, Grubhub and DoorDash, urinals that automatically flush when you step away, that it’s hard for one man to keep all of it in mind.
Anyway, as I was about to say, I’ve been using a cane recently and discovering what a pleasure it is. It gives a man a sense of nobility. Dukes and barons, counts, squires, carry canes, and so did Fred Astaire in top hat and tails when he sang “Puttin’ On The Ritz.” My beloved urged me to use a cane so as to avoid crashing to the pavement, but instead it has given me a sense of superiority and elegance that, as a Democrat, I’ve been resisting all my life.
I grew up with Pete Seeger singing “The banks are made of marble with a guard at every door and the vaults are stuffed with silver that the farmer sweated for” and we empathized with the workers and downtrodden and oppressed, and now, with a cane, I feel free to wear a tux and dine at swanky joints that employ orchestras that can play “Begin the Beguine” and “Cheek to Cheek” and if I see a lonely blond at a table in the corner waiting for her beau to show, I just sashay over and give her a grin and hold out a hand and onto the dance floor we go and we start with a graceful waltz with a shuffle or two tossed in and some tap steps and suddenly I throw her in the air and we’re doing swing ballet and the waiters form a dance line behind us and then the patrons join in, old nabobs and tycoons and dowagers who a moment ago were worrying about a Wall Street crash and now they’re dancing up a storm because isn’t that the secret of happiness — to face the music and dance? Hard Times? Of course there’re going to be hard times but life goes on and the band still plays and the rhythm is irresistible and once you hit the dance floor with her in your arms, you’re on East Street again.
Fred kept dancing into his eighties because dancing keeps you young. Democrats set aside dance in favor of panel discussions, but a party isn’t a party unless people dance.
My baby’s a Democrat
But when I wear a top hat
And carry a cane, I engage her,
She forgets I’m an English major.
Yes, I’m a bibliophile
And I’m old but I’ve got style. 
When I’m in a subjunctive mood,
I don’t sit in the dark and brood,
I let the music fill my senses
And conjugate my tenses.
A gentleman of grace and glamour
Who can dance with perfect grammar,
I like to practice seduction
By elegant sentence construction. 
That fall in Chicago was the luckiest thing to happen to me in years. You wait and see. This could be the start of something big.
Upgrade to paid
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-28 Garrison Keillor
Thu, 28 May 2026 11:00:06 GMT
The Back Room May Poetry Winners "I Wish..."
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
The Back Room May Poetry Winners 
"I Wish..."
Garrison Keillor
May 28 

READ IN APP

You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-05-29 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 29 May 2026 10:00:07 GMT
On the road in the Snake CanyonThe Column: 05.29.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
On the road in the Snake Canyon
The Column: 05.29.26
Garrison Keillor
May 29 

READ IN APP

I sat in a bookstore in Enterprise, Oregon, Thursday morning and had coffee with four men my age, all Enterprise residents, an accidental coffee klatch due to my wandering around town waiting for a breakfast café to open and seeing a book in the bookstore window by my friend the poet Jim Harrison and I went in and smelled coffee and there were the four gents around a table and they offered me a chair and I sat down and they asked where I’m from and I said, “New York City” and that is all you need to start a good conversation.
Enterprise is a town of 2,000 in the northeast corner of Oregon and I suppose not many New Yorkers drop in there. One of them asked, “What do you do in New York?” This is a question to avoid. I said, “I live my life there. I go around and look at things and I keep in mind the reason I moved there, which is — whatever you need to do to make your wife happy, you should do it. And it’s a good life, living with a happy woman.”
They liked that. And it disposed of the question. I asked them about the Snake River Canyon that I’d driven along to get to Enterprise. They said there was good hiking in the canyon and they recommended a spot just north of there where the canyon is one mile deep, the deepest in North America. I asked about rattlesnakes. “You just avoid them,” they said.
They asked if I’d been out to that part of the country before and I said, “Yes, when I was a kid, we drove out to visit an aunt in Spokane, and I sat in the back seat and threw gospel tracts out the window at people’s mailboxes. The tracts were wrapped in gold foil so people’d pick one up and read it and maybe accept Jesus as their Savior.”
They asked about the book by Jim Harrison and I read them his poem that begins:
Yes, we’ll gather by the river,
the beautiful, the beautiful river.
They say it runs by the throne of God.
This is where God invented fish.
Jim Harrison wrote it after hearing “Shall We Gather at the River” on my radio show, but I didn’t mention that. The line “God invented fish” broke the ice and people started telling stories, about fishing and lumbering and the Nez Perce and Chief Joseph and it was just very enjoyable, an easy conversation among strangers, just stories, nothing about politics, each person having his say. I thought, “I could live with these people.” It made me want to take more car trips. I travel only for business now. I miss the aimlessness of driving around.
My Aunt Ina, a very proper and decorous woman, took me aside when I was 18, at my graduation party, to tell me that when she graduated from high school in 1930, the ninth of thirteen children, the country sunk in the Depression, “I knew that life would be hard and I’d have to get a job and support myself but I wanted to have one beautiful adventure first and though I’d never driven a car I bought a used Model T Ford and drove with two friends on country roads all the way from Minneapolis to Yellowstone Park to see the mountains and Old Faithful and the hot springs and grizzly bears and had a wonderful time. Then I sold the car to get my railroad fare back home. The only person I told was my sister Jean and when I left, she told Mother and Dad I’d gone to look for work. I was so happy to do that and I came back to Minneapolis and I got a job in an office.”
I was astonished that she told me this story. My people were good at keeping secrets and were wary of telling stories on themselves lest it seem like bragging.
The one time my father confided in me was on a car trip to New York when I was 11. I’d never seen the city before and of course was dazzled. He’d been stationed there during World War II, working in the Army post office, and walking around Manhattan he told me stories about his time there. Now I’m his age and sitting drinking coffee in Enterprise, among classmates in the School of Life. I thank God for inventing conversation.
Share
Richard Dworsky
Sharing another tune and video from my upcoming album. A sad song this time. In the theater world, a show that “closed out of town” means it failed in its opening test run and never made it to Broadway (or London, etc.). Here, it can represent any of our big dreams that were never realized, or even lives that were tragically cut way too short (the actual inspiration for the song). I wrote this with the great playwright/ lyricist, Frank Pike, for a show decades ago, and recently I dusted it off and reworked it. My huge thanks to the fantastic singer, Grammy Award winner, Nicole Zuraitis; to Adi Yeshaya for his beautiful string arrangement; and to Madeleine Hart for creating the lovely and heartbreaking video.
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-06-03 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:00:09 GMT
My speech to the Class of 2026The Column: 06.03.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
My speech to the Class of 2026
The Column: 06.03.26
Garrison Keillor
Jun 3 

READ IN APP

Share
I was chosen to speak at your graduation because I am phenomenally successful, America’s favorite columnist, a best-selling author, winner of countless awards, in demand as a speaker, a frequent consultant to the Vatican, the Pentagon, the U.N., and CNN, and it’s all because I was not bright enough to go into a technological field — my math skill ended with the multiplication of fractions — so instead I majored in English and read Melville and Henry James and the Brontës, which prepared me for a career in baggage handling, but now A.I. has come along and changed everything to my advantage. A.I. is an ace with numbers and it is El Estúpido when it comes to language.
So A.I. is going to take brilliant people’s jobs first — the 4.0 straight-A honor students who got their doctorates in physics and economics and computer science are going to be out on their keesters, lining up at the soup kitchens, living at Dorothy Day, and those of us schooled in irony and humor, metaphor, hyperbole, are going to be in the money, driving Bentleys and Caddies, living in mansions behind iron gates, while the geniuses panhandle with outstretched Phi Beta Kappa caps to catch the small change of sympathetic strangers.
I’ve written a song about this, which is now busting the charts, a hymn to ignorance.
IImagine there’s no physics,
No mathematics too.
Imagine what you imagine
Is absolutely true.
Imagine we’re all successful
And we love this tune.
Hope someday you’ll join us
Living on the moon.

Imagine that Walt Whitman
And Henry D. Thoreau,
And darling Emily Dickinson
Are all you need to know,
And maybe some Franz Kafka
And also Sigmund Freud,
While all the science majors
Are going unemployed. 

That song was not written by ChatGPT, which is incapable of understanding a language as rich and layered and tonal and intimate and exquisite as English. ChatGPT is a child in the Sistine Chapel, bewildered by majesty.
I see you listening intently to this balloon juice and why? Because it employs excellent English. You didn’t understand a fraction of your Microsoft Word instruction manual written by technowhizzes for other whizzes and now those whizzes are looking for work picking avocados and I am living with my gorgeous wife in our exclusive condo apartment in Manhattan where our meals are delivered to us by unemployed mathematicians on kick-scooters, wearing their old Harvard and Yale sweatshirts, their horn-rimmed glasses repaired with grip tape, as they hand us our delicious dinners and we tip them a couple bucks and send them on their way, poor things.
The elevator guy in our building has a Ph.D. from Columbia and wrote his thesis on A.I. and Large Language Models and now, three years later, his thesis is less relevant than the Dead Sea Scrolls and the poor noodge is wearing white gloves and being mannerly to us humanities majors.
Massive bunkers under Nebraska packed with gigantic gazillion-gigabyte self-reprogramming self-managing computers are running science and technology and the economy, the judicial system, and all of Academia, Congress, online influencers, people in big office suites on the 44^th floor — they are purely ceremonial figures, holding pretend meetings, issuing proclamations that the Nebraska control centers laugh at and put into proclamation shredders.
Everything is run by A.I. except your church, baseball, and your humor columnist. In my church, anyway, we still recite the Nicene Creed and haven’t switched to anything nicer, and the Mets are still a losing ballclub even with one of the highest payrolls in the majors, and my readership is thirty-seven million and climbing and it includes Bonnie Raitt, Bernie Sanders, Marco Rubio, Taylor Swift, Novak Djokovic, and Dave Barry.
So where does this leave you young people gazing at me with upturned wistful faces? It means you’ve been royally cheated and you need to grab what you can ASAP. Your major asset is your parents, their home, their stocks and bonds, which they earned back before they screwed up the economy. You need to watch them carefully, taking notes on their ineptitude that you can use when filing for Power of Attorney and sending them to live in Memory Care while you make a good life with their stuff. It’s not theft, it’s foreclosure on your inheritance. They handed the country over to monstrous corporations; let them go to Shady Acres and you have a fabulous life. You’re beautiful. It’s been a pleasure.
Upgrade to paid
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-06-05 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 05 Jun 2026 08:00:15 GMT
I can't help it, I'm a happy manThe Column: 06.05.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
I can't help it, I'm a happy man
The Column: 06.05.26
Garrison Keillor
Jun 5 

READ IN APP

Share
I like being old. When you reach your eighties you finally get to say what you think and people will listen and not interrupt even if they know you’re wrong. Being wrong is a privilege of old age. So shut up and listen and don’t contradict me.
I grew up evangelical and we believed in suffering and looked forward to the Rapture when we’d fly up to paradise along with maybe a few of you Methodists and experience perpetual bliss.
But then I didn’t suffer. I had an easy job, got to be around musicians, went to ballgames, wrote limericks, and fell in love left and right. Of course, I felt bad about this and because I was a humanities major in college, I managed to hide it by reading Kafka, Kierkegaard, Thoreau, and other gloomy 19^th-century philosophers, and I wrote poetry about despair because in college that was the mark of a true intellectual, to be an existentialist and believe life is unknowable and alienation is universal and a writer is a tragic genius like Dylan Thomas or Scott Fitzgerald and probably you’ll die alone in your 40s having written gloomy books that are assigned to college students to write term papers about.
But it didn’t happen. Despite my pretending to be a tortured genius, I was pretty happy thanks to early rock ’n’ roll in the Fifties and Sixties, before rock stars started using drugs that made them stupid and writing existential songs like How does it feel to be without a home like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone, the song that made Bob rich and famous and paid for his mansion in Malibu, back when rock was about cars and the beach and having fun with a girl named Sue who knew just what to do.
I was with a couple of lady friends last weekend and I was talking about olden times and I mentioned “Under The Boardwalk” (where we could almost taste the hot dogs they sell and hear the carousel as we lay under the boardwalk, making love, people walking above) and though the ladies are half my age — they knew the words! — and also “School Is Out” (no more books and studies, I can stay out late with my buddies) and we sang them both — and it made me so incredibly happy! — and now, a week later, the songs are still going around in my head. It’s summer. I’m joyful. I’m in love with my wife, Jenny, and I want to be out of the sun down by the sea, having fun, my baby and me.
I grew up in Minnesota, no boardwalk except on the Monopoly board, no sea, we did what we did in the front seat of a 1956 Ford, but the rhythm of those tunes is so compelling, it is impossible to hear it and not start dancing. You could go around to medical centers and sing these songs to people awaiting colonoscopies and they’d be rocking and rolling, dancing up a storm. Nuts to Thoreau and solitude and Kierkegaard and the anguish of existence. Moving and grooving is the answer to your problems.
 Now I’m done with Thoreau and existentialism
And I think solitude is nothing but a dead-end prison,
The whole idea of marching to your own drummer, 
I’m going to join the kids at the beach and have a great summer. 
(Nuts to Walden)
And Henry David Thoreau,
(Nuts to Kafka)
I am no rolling stone,
(Gimme the Beach Boys)
Get in my Little Deuce Coupe and drive my troubles away
And just go surfin’ across the U.S.A. 
My college professors tried to make me think like an old man and see life as a perilous swamp and man’s destiny as hopeless exhaustion and despair, but now that I’m 83 I’m feeling like a teenager. The sun is shining, people, smell the hot dogs, grab a blanket, head for the ocean with Peggy Sue or Jenny Jenny or the brown-eyed girl or the girl from the North Country, Brown Sugar, a barroom queen from Memphis, and show her some r-e-s-p-e-c-t and also have a good time.
Franz Kafka was lonely in Prague in his existential fog, he coulda found peace with his darlin’ Felice or maybe just gotten a dog, but today is a whole new day in the U.S.A. and there’s no more grief or doubt, because school is out.
PURCHASE CD SET
Thirty-four of the best-loved, most-requested songs and sketches from the original radio broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion.
Contents:
CD 1: Download from Amazon >>> iTunes >>>
Freelance Writer; American Artistic Association; I Am a Tenor; Car Trip; Memories of Pain; The Management Assumes No Responsibility; Second Methodist Church; Moodism; Reaching Out; Sex; Washing Your Hands; The In and Out Cat Song; The Story of Thanksgiving; My Grandmother’s Cat; Animals of Other Lands; Winter Madrigal
CD 2: Download from Amazon >>> iTunes >>>
The Francis S. Key Story; The Ballad of Peanut Butter; Winged Motivational Products; Twelfth Street Tag; The Old Shower Stall; Am I Boring?; Adversity; Bob Wilson Month; Mavis & Marvin Smiley; American Music Association; Losing Your Job; Vanilla; How Does Our Brain Work?; Dad Angel; Old Folks at Home Cottage Cheese; Swanee Tag; The Announcer; Tuna the Food of My Soul
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-06-10 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 10 Jun 2026 06:00:05 GMT
It's a beautiful summer, says meThe Column: 06.08.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
It's a beautiful summer, says me
The Column: 06.08.26
Garrison Keillor
Jun 10 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
It’s good to be home after weeks on the road in motels, back in my own shower stall, not in alien ones designed by cruel engineers, where you must stand directly under the shower head when you turn the knob, not knowing if a clockwise turn will give you an Arctic waterfall or an eruption of hot lava. At home my office chair is set for accurate typing, not a cheap motel chair that’s a few inches too low and you glance at the screen and 797ebw33bq2yb0qtbrb9rt8ggwy.
And at home I have a cushy chair that when I sit in it and close my eyes, I fall asleep. A nap chair. This is crucial for any writer. The ten-minute snooze is the cure for writer’s block. You come to a dead end, you just sit in the chair, and minutes later, open your eyes and the road opens before you. So many writers in my generation tried to achieve this by taking LSD, peyote, heroin, cocaine, gin, etcetera, but the answer is: the nap.
My generation went wrong on so many counts. It romanticized the random itinerant life of cowboys, sailors, magazine subscription salesmen — Life As A Journey, Not A Destination — and it derided domesticity in favor of naivete and narcissism.
I hold the New England transcendentalists responsible for this, Ralph Waldo Emerson and his ilk. He said, “Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.” And thereby encouraged hundreds of people to become songwriters who should’ve gone into trash hauling instead. Songs like “The aunts are my friends, they’re blowing in the wind.” Songs like:
Imagine there’s no countries
And everyone is free.
Imagine we are geniuses
And have a Ph.D.
Imagine if we spread our arms
That we can really fly. 
I’m standing in the window,
I think that I should try. 
Emerson should’ve said, “Dare to dream but meanwhile look around and see what needs to be done and do it. Be useful. Before you write the song, clean your room and do your laundry.”
My generation led the country down the path of willful naivete, thinking we were going to save the world when actually we were only scattering flower petals. Our parents saved the world when they defeated fascism in the Forties. Some of our generation did important research in medical care, treatment of alcoholism and cognitive disabilities and mental illness, electronics, and others threw words at paper or ventured into avant-garde gardening or conceptual choral conversation.
I was never an important writer but I did something useful, a live radio variety show that families sat and listened to together, old and young, the kids fascinated by the fact that the show was being performed at the same time as they were listening to it — simultaneity! Incredible. — and they had fun together in the same room for an hour or so.
I grew up back in radio days when everyone had a yard, a garage, a refrigerator with leftovers in plastic dishes with snap-on lids, and monogamy was the rule, which puts the parents in the background and gives the children center stage to go through the drama of adolescence, the quest to be a Cool Kid, to dream, to be unique like the Zimmerman kid in Hibbing, but we stayed in adolescence too long. Jumpin’ Jack Flash, it’s a gas, gas, gas is all well and good when you’re in your twenties but when the Stones come back fifty years later and fans with walkers and canes are dancing, is this something we really need to see?
We rebelled against our stodgy parents, not understanding that the prosperity they created made our liberty possible, and then we messed up the country. In 1960 I enrolled at the University of Minnesota and paid $71 for tuition for fall quarter. Now a year’s tuition is $18,462. No wonder the young are furious and so they paid us back royally by electing the most inept and brazenly corrupt, thieving, dishonest regime in American history. My generation’s rebellion was mostly imaginary but what Gen Z males did by electing a jackass has made us a laughingstock. That’s why I quit reading the news, because I still love this country, and when I walk around and observe life, I still can. Walk in the park, sit in a coffee shop, go to church, look at kids in the playground, it’s the same country I grew up in. It’s a beautiful summer if you turn off the TV.
Share
In Cheerfulness, veteran radio host and author Garrison Keillor reflects on a simple virtue that can help us in this stressful and sometimes gloomy era.
CLICK HERE to purchase today! 
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-06-12 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:00:09 GMT
Another Monday night in ManhattanThe Column: 06.12.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Another Monday night in Manhattan
The Column: 06.12.26
Garrison Keillor
Jun 12 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
A bagel got stuck in the toaster Monday and I stuck a fork in to pry it out and then smelled smoke and saw that a hot pad was in flames on the lid of the pan I was frying bacon in and I grabbed the hot pad and knocked the lid slightly askew and a big grease fire commenced and meanwhile the bagel was smoking. I put the lid on the pan, dousing the fire, and held the hot pad under the faucet, meanwhile the kitchen was full of smoke.
There are times in life when a man is grateful that his beloved wife is not on the premises. She was up in Connecticut visiting family. I am a professional humorist and my wife is a violinist, which is to say she is a perfectionist. Violinists don’t stick a fork into a toaster and don’t leave a hot pad sitting on a pan on the stove near open flame and they don’t eat bacon. They’d put kale on a bagel and slices of avocado spritzed with a light vinaigrette dressing. A humorist does dumb things often — it comes with the job. If I were a perfectionist I wouldn’t be in this line of work, I’d be a dermatologist and have perfect skin and remove precancerous moles from old ladies’ necks and advise them against Botox.
I used to live in Minnesota, which, having a large German-Scandinavian population, places a premium on perfection. I’m at the age when my gastrointestinal system generates enormous volumes of gas and the expulsion sounds like a tuba playing a whole note while the tubist is being bitten by a dog. In Minnesota, people move away from me when this happens. In New York, it passes without notice.
We sit in a sidewalk café on Columbus Avenue on a summer night enjoying our dinners, enjoying the carnival of street life, which you don’t have in Minnesota — everyone there is in cars — in New York, it’s careless and easy-going. I expel gas and it sounds like a truck backfiring.
The most deeply despised man in America came to New York Monday to see the Knicks play at Madison Square Garden, and the Secret Service shut down Midtown but I didn’t go to the game. I went to the Library and the beautiful Rose Reading Room, thousands of red and blue and green spines of heavy tomes parked on the shelves, the work of armies of scholars gone to the next world, young people around a long table with their laptops, me scribbling on paper.
This is a monastery, we’ve come here to be free of salesmanship and the blather of yahoos and muckety-mucks, the daily insult of a shameless regime that lies to the American people and doesn’t care who knows it. We sit in silence and feel the freedom of thought. Freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Constitution but freedom of thought you need to find for yourself.
I think of my daughter whose genetic disorder means she will likely not patronize libraries, but who knows? Dedicated researchers are at work; enlightenment is on the horizon. I imagined we’d get a tall brilliant daughter with severe anxiety, obsessed with conceptual music, her specialty being the composition of circular concerts of choral whispering and alarm clocks, for which she’d win a Pullet Surprise, and instead we have a humorous daughter who loves the company of others, is kindhearted, polite, but won’t go to college, probably won’t read War and Peace or study French. I love the daughter we got. I’m grateful that the world has come to support and cherish people with cognitive disorders and guide them to a good life.
This is an enormous advance of civility in my lifetime. It was accomplished by dedicated nerds like the people sitting around my table at the Library. They took autistic persons out of the medieval loony bins they were warehoused in and gave them lives. This is why I’m taking an extended vacation from the news. You read the news and you wind up with a head full of despair. New York has given America the worst president in 250 years, who combines arrogance, stupidity, greed, anger, and treachery. Sit in the library and you gain confidence that millions of earnest intelligent young people are working to make this a better world. America is a great country. The bozo who jinxed the Knicks wouldn’t know a cheese grater from the Great Horned Owl. Stay home at Marla Cargo, Don, and do something about the hair.
Share
After reimagining his memoir with a brighter outlook, Garrison Keillor reflects on resilience, gratitude, and the surprising joy of staying ambitious well into his eighties.
CLICK HERE to buy a copy today! 
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-06-17 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 17 Jun 2026 06:00:05 GMT
Sunday morning once againThe Column: 06.15.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Sunday morning once again
The Column: 06.15.26
Garrison Keillor
Jun 17 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
It’s been almost twenty-five years since I entered the pillbox community, men and women who own a little plastic container of fourteen little compartments, which we open morning and evening and take our pills, a sweet ritual for me, marking the time since I likely would have died. I was born with a heart defect that Dr. Mork heard when I was 12 and told me I couldn’t play football and that Dr. Orszulak surgically repaired when I was 60, an age at which numerous Keillors had dropped dead. The pills are to keep me functioning. There is no pill to make a man exercise regularly but otherwise I’m okay.
So in a couple months, I’ll be as old as my grandma Dora who used to send me a dollar on my birthday. She died of a stroke. I take pills to ward off strokes.
These bonus years were given me by flocks of anonymous men and women who excelled in the subjects I got C’s and D’s in and pursued their studies when I was amusing myself writing fiction. I am grateful and I pray for their health and happiness. It’s hard work being so smart. Telling jokes is easy. Ole lay dying at home and awoke to smell fresh-baked rhubarb pie, his favorite, and crawled to the kitchen and found it on the counter and got a knife and Lena grabbed it from him and said, “That’s for the funeral. I got you a cupcake.”
My church, St. Michael’s, is less than a mile from home, an easy walk for a sinner to contemplate the goodness of his life, and up the steps into Romanesque splendor and I take my place in the second pew, and up in the loft, Brother John is playing a delicate prelude, a tranquil pool of music in the midst of Manhattan, which ends in a long hushed chord and we stand for the opening hymn, a spiritual, Guide my feet, Lord, while I run this race, I don’t want to run this race in vain. We sing Psalm 33: The Lord loves righteousness and justice. The loving-kindness of the Lord fills the whole earth. Happy are the people He has chosen to be His own.
I feel at peace. I’m not running a race, I’m watching other people race and people on my team are limping, slowing down. The preacher ascends into the pulpit and due to a poor sound system, the sermon is mystical, fifteen minutes of speaking in tongues, charismatic Anglicanism, but it’s okay, the line from the psalm says enough: The loving-kindness of the Lord fills the whole earth. We confess our sins, what we have done and what we have left undone. I have failed those I love, I am careless with my health, I am not a good citizen, having stopped paying attention to the news. I am forgiven and I reach out to people around me and exchange the peace. I take Communion. We sing There is a balm in Gilead that heals the sin-sick soul, that makes the wounded whole. A favorite hymn of my mother’s sisters, all of us standing around a piano, when I was a boy.
Just before the sermon, the little children are asked to come forward to be blessed and sent off to Sunday School, and so few children are present — one can see that, at least on the Upper West Side, Anglicanism is fading away, like the Amish in Pennsylvania or my Plymouth Brethren in Minnesota. Rents are high in our neighborhood, a young couple pays an arm and a leg for a one-bedroom walk-up on the fifth floor. I see families with kids on the street; I should lean down and say, “May God bless and keep you always, may your dreams all come true, and won’t you join us Sunday on 100^th Avenue?”
But Episcopalians don’t evangelize. We tell jokes. Baptists confess having taken a drink, Catholics confess sins of lust, Episcopalians confess having worn stripes with polka dots. And maybe people of childbearing age find organ music stuffy, pretentious, and we need to switch to Stratocasters and percussion. When you’re 84, you’re not on the cutting edge and you can’t speak about the long-term future, so I just sit and listen and feel grateful for the doctors in my life, Nash and Fink and Johnson and Taylor, and in their honor I savor the day, avoid TV, join the conversation, and cherish English. What a godsend. Enjoy the day.
Share
Come see Garrison Keillor perform live at one of his upcoming shows. Chances are high he is coming to a location near you!
CLICK HERE for tickets and schedule.
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-06-17 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:00:06 GMT
Raleigh, Spartanburg, Savannah and St. Paul - Here we come!!!!CLICK HERE FOR TICKET INFORMATION
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Raleigh, Spartanburg, Savannah and St. Paul - Here we come!!!!
Garrison Keillor
Jun 17 

READ IN APP

CLICK HERE FOR TICKET INFORMATION
Garrison Keillor Tonight is an evening of stand-up, storytelling, audience song, and poetry. One man, one microphone.There are sung sonnets, limericks and musical jokes, and the thread that runs through it is the beauty of growing old. Despite the in convenience, old age brings the contentment of LESS IS MORE. Your mistakes and big ambitions are behind you, nothing left to prove, and small things give you great pleasure because that’s what’s left. (“I was unhappy in college because it was a requirement for an intellectual, but then I went into show business and discovered that people won’t pay tobe made unhappy, their kids will do it for free.”)
Garrison Keillor returns to The Fitzgerald Theater to celebrate his 84^th Birthday on August 15. Joining him will be his longtime friends Maria Jette, Lynn Peterson, Rich Dworsky, Richard Kriehn, and Pat Donohue.
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-06-19 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 19 Jun 2026 06:00:05 GMT
Where we went and whyThe Column: 06.18.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Where we went and why
The Column: 06.18.26
Garrison Keillor
Jun 19 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
A long day of writing is like a day of canoeing down a creek, twisty, some unexpected pleasures since I love writing whereas I hated canoeing. Other than that, they’re similar. I was paddling my canoe in Manhattan last Thursday and Jenny reminded me that we had a date to go hear the Met Orchestra play Bruckner and we should leave in half an hour. So I put on a jacket and took note paper and pens and took a train to Columbus Circle and walked to Carnegie Hall.
I’m not high on Bruckner and she is because she’s a musician and Bruckner wrote some gorgeous delicate passages for strings in between the detonations of brass. But I am glad to give the man another chance. He was a humble organist trying to break into the world of Wagner, Brahms and Beethoven, and who am I to turn my back on him?
Our seats were on the main floor, R1 and R3, and she reminded me that the Symphony No. 8 is 90 minutes long, no intermission. The Met Orchestra filled the stage, warming up vigorously, and they seemed happy to be out of the opera pit and up in public view, no singers to distract us from the music. The brass was honking some serious chords and I took out paper and wrote:
Bruckner’s Symphony No. Eight
Is all about man’s mortal fate.
It’s louder than hell
With a strong brimstone smell
But winds up at heaven’s gate. 
And the orchestra got quiet and the oboe gave the A and then Yannick Nézet-Séguin strode to the podium, a Canadian phenom who, if you ever see him conduct, you’ll never forget, and I mean that in a good way. Principal conductor in Montreal, the Met, and Philadelphia, and Jenny pointed out, the man had no score in front of him, he had the score in his head.
They launched into Bruckner and right away you can see the band is going to get a workout, no snoozing on the job, big stabbing chords and dramatic modulations into pianissississimos and I wrote:
We sit in Carnegie Hall
Enjoying the sound of man’s fall,
And at the finale
We’ll go home by golly,
And get undressed, undies and all. 

What is great music for
If not to arouse sweet amor
And let us embark
On deeds in the dark
Now that Bruckner has opened the door. 
For me, classical music has always been erotic and I only started listening to it in college when my appreciation of women became intense. I fell in love with a pianist listening to her play Schubert and married her. And eventually I met Jenny.
My true love came to New York
To play in a symphony orch-
Estra, violin,
And then lived in sin
With a writer with no tuning fork. 
The man in the gray suit, baton in hand, his sweeping gestures, his cues to the brass, his shushing move, the upraised touchdown arms for forte and the heroic thrust skyward for fortissimo, the focused intensity of musicians, and the music! — a gift from the 19^th century — so many literary lights from then have dimmed because the language has changed but this music — it’s open to all humanity.
Anton Bruckner repeats a lot. 
Again and again, the same thought. 
Thanks to repetition
And no intermission,
It’s impressive though Wagner it’s not. 
And then, a big chord, Yannick punches the air, it’s done, a man shouts BRAVO and the applause mounts as the audience rises and Yannick moves through the ranks, hugging the principals, he waves to the brass to stand, the basses, the harps, and it’s lovely to see the orchestra standing, grinning, a dignified band but in their minds they’re leaping and exchanging high fives. They climbed the cliff and made the impossible sound gorgeous.
The standing O continues as we escape out a side door onto the street and grab a cab and head home, but the magic of the evening stayed with us and still lingers in my mind. To see a battalion of passionate perfectionists create a monumental work of art before our eyes is one good reason to be alive on a June night in New York.
And no, we did not make love
Except in the experience of
Sitting united
And highly excited
By thunder and lightning above.
The limerick’s a modest invention,
Worthy of condescension,
But if you go on
To discover Anton,
This will have been worth your attention. 
Share
Support the stories, music, and daily inspiration you love by making a donation to help keep The Writer’s Almanac and Prairie Home Productions thriving for listeners and audiences everywhere.
CLICK HERE to make a gift today! 
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-06-24 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 24 Jun 2026 06:00:05 GMT
My happy weekend in the sunny SouthThe Column: 06.22.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
My happy weekend in the sunny South
The Column: 06.22.26
Garrison Keillor
Jun 24 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
I flew from New York last Thursday where a big parade in lower Manhattan celebrated the Knicks winning the NBA title and I flew to Raleigh where on Saturday crowds gathered downtown for a parade celebrating the Hurricanes winning the NHL championship, two joyous public events that had nothing to do with me, meanwhile my Brazilian friend Lenny is cheering for Brazil in the World Cup. I’m happy for all of them. The Latino kid with the tattooed arms, who runs the elevator in our building, was in a state of delight the morning after his team beat the Spurs in the closing seconds to take the title.
Everybody wants to be part of a great cause, a tribe, a fellowship, a sisterhood — everybody except Henry Thoreau the great American killjoy who chose solitude. Sit on it and spin, Henry, and when you come back to Concord, do something about your hair.
I did a solo show in Raleigh and when I walked out onstage, into a wall of applause, I decided to do something useful with all that good feeling, and I hummed a note, which the audience hummed, and I sang, “O say, can you see” — and they were all right there on top of it, and the crowd gave it their all, and I held my arms up for “And the rockets’ red glare” and they sang forte bravissimo all the way to the end and they held the note on “free” and sang “home of the brave” so sweetly, and gave themselves a round of applause.
The song doesn’t get sung as often as it should be. It’s a great song. Francis Scott Key, watching the British bombardment of Baltimore in 1814, started out to write a lament for his lost love Antonia: The Banner that we watched in Air So Proudly as it Gleamed But as I saw the Rocket Glare It was of You I Dreamed And as I waited for the Dawn To see if it still flew Or if ---- in Tatters ---- it was Gone ---- As happened, Love, with You.
But then he did the right thing and put aside his own miseries and wrote for the Greater Cause and created a song that has real power to bring people together, including old lefties and Unitarians and ironic skeptics, and fill them with love of country.
Meanwhile, my team, the Democratic Party, stumbles along, and I’m alarmed at some of the candidates the left comes up with, like if the Knicks out of a sense of equity had two starting guards under 4 feet, 6 inches, and I also wish some elderly blockheads would retire and let the gifted move up in the ranks. I saw an interview with Hillary Clinton last week that was painful — the woman is smart, well-spoken, speaks with authority about the Middle East and Ukraine, and is frank, referring to “the president’s private law firm once known as the Department of Justice,” and is funny, and you think of how the world would be if in 2016 she had defeated sexism and the Electoral College and defeated the guy whose name was briefly on the Kennedy Arts Center.
And now Iran has accomplished what America did in 1814, it stood up to British bombardment and survived and so the British withdrew.
But I am taking a sabbatical from the news. Life is so much better if I skip the front page. I walk around town and look at the carnival of humanity and it’s all one country, no polarization apparent except some restaurants are rather chilly. The bounty of America has drawn tides of immigrants and if you talk to the shopkeepers and waiters and cabdrivers, you can learn more about the world than from the paper.
They came here for opportunity, for freedom from fear, to escape murderous regimes, to assure a brighter future for their kids.
And meanwhile, the American people are standing up to the bombardment of stupidity and corruption and malice from Washington, D.C. The man has won the title of Worst President in American History hands down. In 2029, there will be massive parades across the country celebrating Mr. Maralago’s return to his imitation palace and we shall see by the dawn’s early light Air Force One make its last Palm Beach flight and the Star-Spangled Banner will happily fly as he disappears and we wave goodbye.
Share
Celebrate gratitude in style with our limited-edition Garrison Keillor quotation tee featuring the inspiring message, “Giving Thanks is the Key to Happiness.”
CLICK HERE to buy one today! 
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-06-26 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 26 Jun 2026 06:00:05 GMT
A happy landing and the life to comeThe Column: 06.26.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
A happy landing and the life to come
The Column: 06.26.26
Garrison Keillor
Jun 26 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
Life is a gift, dear friend, and you can go along for days, weeks, absorbed by nonsense and then one day you’re on a jet plane, a window seat, as it’s descending toward LaGuardia through dense cloud cover, the plane bucking and bouncing in the storm, and the wheels are lowered and still no sign of ground and there is a prayerful hush among the passengers, even the baby in row 8 who was crying so hard is silent, and you’re thinking of Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper the Day the Music Died, and then suddenly you’re zooming low over rooftops of houses, an alley, someone’s backyard, cars whizzing by on a highway, and then WHUMP you’re on the runway and the pilot reverses the engines hard and you are alive, everyone takes a deep breath, life resumes.
This happened to me last Monday. I hiked through the terminal promising to be a better person and I still intend to clean up my act, walk two miles a day, cut back on carbs, read Scripture, contribute to the food bank, and give up pork sausage in protest against cruel treatment of pigs in honor of the pig whose mitral valve is in my heart.
All these good intentions, as a result of a successful landing. I had a similar feeling after my friend Mark Singer died last week. He and I had adjacent offices forty years ago, two ambitious writers whose ambition sprang from admiration for other writers, whose gift was for persistent rewriting, removing dead wood and letting the light shine through.
I knew how terribly ill Mark was and death was a mercy but I felt a hole in my life. I miss his voice. But then I felt impelled to go back to work on a new book I’ve been wrestling with and the memory of Mark gave me an inspired morning, taking out the pretentious stuff and sticking in a cheerful passage from Emerson:
Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of the year. Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, breathe the wild air. Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Mark had a keen sense of wonder and he worked to describe what engaged him and put it on paper so beautifully as to create the same wonderment in the reader. We need more like him. And in his honor, I plan to take a bite out of Henry Thoreau’s butt and the bad advice he gave about solitude and following your dream and the utter stupidity of “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” which is the arrogance that solitude leads to. My generation produced more than its fair share of pretentious nonsense but it also produced some fine writers and I got to be friends with some of them, Mark and Ian Frazier, Calvin Trillin, Roy Blount.
I once stood late one night on West End Avenue with George Plimpton, author of Paper Lion and Out of My League, who said, “I envy you getting to talk to those people on the radio. I have this accent that when people hear it, they think ‘Harvard snob,’ and turn away.” George’s voice sounded like he had a bandage on his tongue. I felt for him.
I once stood on a downtown C train next to John Updike, the cheerfullest and most prolific writer in the world, sitting down, surrounded by a cluster of college kids talking about a man and a woman, strangers to each other, both drunk, who had sex with each other in a handicapped stall in a lavatory at a football game, some onlookers cheering them on, who were interrupted by a cop and charged with public indecency and returned to her husband and his girlfriend. It was a well-told tale and Mr. Updike had a big grin under his thatch of white hair, admiring the narrative and enjoying his anonymity.
I miss him and Mark and George. I am intent on this book and want it to be the best thing I’ve ever written so then I can shut up and enjoy listening to the life around me and then float down the river that flows by the throne of God.
Share
Sometimes Garrison Keillor steps away from his computer for a few hours to perform a live show. Why not join him for the festivities? 
CLICK HERE for a show schedule and tickets!
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-06-27 Garrison Keillor
Fri, 26 Jun 2026 22:00:05 GMT
June Essay WinnersThis was a tough one.
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
June Essay Winners
Garrison Keillor
Jun 27 

READ IN APP

This was a tough one. There were so many great essays. Your heartfelt stories were wonderful.
D-Day, 1944
The great, teeming mass of American democracy awoke in the dark, jammed into the bellies of steel beasts. Look closely at these nervous, rough-edged sons of Manhattan and Iowa, breathing each other’s sweat and fear. They were mechanics and farm boys, not mere pieces on a distant chessboard. Yet, the high-and-mighty generals and fat-cat financiers orchestrated a horrific theater where the currency was youth and the dividend was dirt. It is the very oldest, cruelest racket in the book; wrapping a proud flag around a meat-grinder to sell it as a holy crusade.
When the ramps dropped into the churning, bloody surf of Normandy, the smooth political speeches instantly evaporated. The sky screamed with lead. The cold ocean swallowed the brave. It was an absolute, chaotic mess of frontline slaughter, won entirely by the raw grit of the common man. These ordinary men waded through hell not for a corporate balance sheet, but for the terrified, breathing soldier right next to them.
By nightfall, the cliffs were won, but the staggering cost was carved deeply into the red sand. Thousands lay still, their songs permanently silenced, their immense, vibrant lives traded for a beachhead. Look at the pale bodies of the young boys who will never grow old, whose heartbroken mothers will receive cold, official telegrams. Let the proud politicians claim victory. The true, eternal glory belongs strictly to the muddy, profane, and sublime souls who looked into the mouth of tyranny, bled for their brothers, and moved forward anyway.
Doug MacKenzie
Dit-dit-dit-Dah
My Father’s Day memories always begin with D-Day. Late at night, my father and I would sit shoulder to shoulder, tuning the FM radio to catch the faint tapping of Morse code. Through the static, he listened intently, deciphering dits and dahs almost instinctively. He recognized handshakes and signoffs with ease, and to me this was just one more remarkable skill possessed by the man who seemed larger than life.
During World War II, my father served as a radioman on the USS Augusta, flagship of the Normandy invasion. On June 6, 1944, he was stationed in the radio room while Admiral Kirk and General Omar Bradley directed the assault from on board. The stakes were immense. A single German shell might have changed history, and my father was there in the middle of it, quietly doing his part.
Most of the messages he relayed from that asbestos-lined radio shack were coded and decoded by others. But in August 1945, while President Truman was returning from Potsdam aboard the Augusta, my father relayed one message in plain language. Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s message told Truman that the atomic bomb had been dropped, and he believed the president should announce it himself before the press released the news. To me, Father’s Day means remembering a man whose quiet skill and courage linked my childhood admiration to history itself, and whose steady hand carried one of the twentieth century’s most consequential messages directly to the President of the United States.
John and Cindy Kirkpatrick

You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-07-01 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:00:05 GMT
Mature white male seeks wellness on West Side of ManhattanThe Column: 06.29.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Mature white male seeks wellness on West Side of Manhattan
The Column: 06.29.26
Garrison Keillor
Jul 1 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
I am dreading Wednesday when I must go see Dr. Taylor, the surgeon who did my shoulder replacement, and confess that I have sinned and not faithfully followed the exercise regimen and so my left shoulder is not fully functional. It aches a little, it’s stiff, doesn’t extend fully, and I repent. On the other hand, what does “fully functional” mean for a man of 83 and 5/6ths? I can still shampoo my hair with my both hands and pull on my underwear. I’m not a rock climber, I’m a writer and a stand-up comic, I enjoy my work, I love my life. I live with a dear woman who fascinates me and also does household repairs and manages the finances. I am an Episcopalian and look forward to the Resurrection and the amazement of my Brethren ancestors that I was allowed through the gates.
So I’m not a model patient. I suffer from Repetitive Exercise Resistance Disorder going back to high school and the trauma of chin-ups and the rope climb in gym class. I looked it up on a wellness website and the symptoms describe me to a T — occasional irritability, mood swings, weird dreams, certain melodies going around in my head, a twinge in my neck, and, what’s most crucial, the inability to call up a therapist and make an appointment. I can dial the first four numerals and then no more.
I am practically the only persons I know who’s never seen a psychotherapist or shrink. My beloved went to one for her obsessive maternal syndrome, the habitual tidying and straightening and reminding, and she’s much happier. My sister had a compulsive assembly disorder, which is like hoarding but with people: she was driven to organize reunions, neighborhood gatherings, community sings, holiday parades, and people blocked her texts until a shrink put her on Solitudinol and she recovered.
The wellness website says that my therapy resistance syndrome can easily turn aggressive, which is concerning, living as I do in New York. In Minnesota, I could go out in the woods with a chainsaw and cut down a few elms, but in Manhattan on the Upper West Side where Republicans are rare as whippets and they have one club, the Fox & Hounds on Columbus Avenue, and what if I pass it on my way home from church and feel a strong urge to burst in through the metal detector and yell, “Which one of you powder puffs wants to go toe to toe with an 83-year-old English major? Take a number and get in line. I’m an Episcopalian but I think it’s time I busted a few jaws and kicked somebody hard where the sun don’t shine. You pinheads elected a pervert president who is making us the laughingstock of the Western World and taking his orders directly from Putin and turning the DOJ into his private law practice to punish his opponents and pardon his pals and pocket payoffs from creeps and crooks and freaks and fruitcakes willing to smooch his big behind, so put up your dukes, you slimeballs, and I’m gonna pound the snot out of you, depants you, and give you a prostate exam with a red-hot poker and make your manhood beg for mercy. Who wants to go first?” And I hock a big gob on the bust of George W. Bush.
I almost did it last Thursday when I read about the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to allow the deportation of 350,000 Haitians and Syrians who’ve been living in the U.S. for years, huddled masses yearning to breathe free who’ve now found work, made lives, started families, which, regardless of the legal mumbo jumbo, is an act of ferocious cruelty by Sextuple Perps who, citing no need for urgency, overturned lower court rulings that were humane.
My grandpa came from Canada in 1893. Did he get citizenship? Who knows? If Stephen Miller kicks me out by executive order for writing this column, would the Six Perps decline to second-guess him?
Okay, I take it back. I didn’t write what appears above and you didn’t read it. Obama was born in Kenya, Biden lost in 2020. Build the ballroom. Make the arch a thousand feet high. The algae in the Reflecting Pool was planted by followers of Alger Hiss. I’m outta here. I feel fine. I’m going to ask Dr. Taylor to recommend a shrink and whatever I need to do to achieve tranquility I will do. I’m feeling calmer already.
Share
Plan ahead for summer and fall with tickets to a live event with Garrison Keillor! Whether you’re Up North or Down South, there’s a show with your name on it.
CLICK HERE for schedule and tickets! 
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-07-04 Garrison Keillor
Sat, 04 Jul 2026 10:00:10 GMT
Descending, looking for the eagleThe Column: 07.04.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Descending, looking for the eagle
The Column: 07.04.26
Garrison Keillor
Jul 4 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
I had an appointment last week for a checkup with my surgeon who repaired my busted left shoulder and I was dreading having to confess that I hadn’t done the exercises, but I did — a person should not lie to your doctor — and he was okay with that. I can lift my computer case up and into the overhead on a plane and I can shampoo with both hands and put on a jacket. The shoulder doesn’t hurt. He said, “If you’re happy, I’m happy.” He is a perfectionist, as you expect your surgeon to be, not a hobbyist, but he also knows that allowances must be made. Past the age of 75, a person has to make their own choices. I’m a writer, not a mountain climber. Modern medicine took care of a congenital heart problem that tends to kill people off around age 59 and I am almost 84. My left shoulder shrugs. I’m happy.
I’ve been wrestling with a book for a year and a half. I want it to be good because it’ll be the last book I write. The world has heard enough out of me, time for an Old White Male to dump his stack of unfinished work, the screenplays, three novels, a musical, files full of promising beginnings that petered out, and use his remaining time to take long walks and see the world. There are historic sites in New York I’ve never visited: the Stock Exchange, Trinity Church, the Tenement Museum, the Morgan Library, Macy’s, the Brooklyn Bridge, which I’ve never walked across, Yankee Stadium. There are books I should read, such as Proust’s. I wrote a limerick about him but never read his stuff, which strikes me as ungracious.
I’m an antique. I go back to the days when big yellow streetcars ran on the streets of Minneapolis, with the long arm extended up to the power cable overhead and the conductor banging his dishpan bell and Mother gave me two dimes and I dropped them in the coinbox, dinging the little metal flanges. We rode along Bloomington Avenue under the great overarching elms back before elm disease killed them off. I still use terms like “the cat’s meow” and “O fiddlesticks” and “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” I am so out of date that I didn’t know about Taylor Swift’s wedding, for which she rented Madison Square Garden, until it was over. I don’t know a one of her songs by heart. I know the Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk” from 1959 and Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire” but nothing of hers.
I’ve been in show biz myself for a while and still amuse myself doing shows, but show biz is capricious, unpredictable, as our President has discovered — once he was bigger than Elvis and then he noticed the empty seats — and sometimes I sense I’m nearing the end, like a glider coming in toward a grass landing strip far ahead but then I see an eagle, wings spread, rising, who has found a thermal and gained lift and I join him and rise and postpone landing — I was at 1,000 feet and soon I’m in puffy clouds at 4,000 feet. Taylor and the other big stars are in their private 747s at 40,000 feet, no problem, and I’m content playing small theaters where I can see faces and hear the varieties of laughter, but once in a while I find an audience that doesn’t lift with me, maybe I quoted Matthew and alarmed the Unitarians, maybe the story about the woman whose dress got stuck in her crack hits Gen X women as crude, which it is, and I feel the ground getting closer. So I’m planning the landing. Better too soon than too late. You don’t want to be descending at 150 feet toward a stand of stately palms. But now I feel a lift again. Life is an adventure. What will we do for fun when it’s over?
Oh. I forgot. The limerick.
The great novelist Marcel Proust
Wrote heavy books that are used
To keep a door shut
Or put under a butt
To give a short person a boost. 
À la recherche du temps perdu.
Now go do something with your hairdo.
Share
Come see two comedians for the price of one! “The Crazy Uncle and his Sensible Niece” are on tour in Florida this October.
CLICK HERE for tickets.
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

2026-07-08 Garrison Keillor
Wed, 08 Jul 2026 06:00:05 GMT
A summer night on a porchThe Column: 07.06.26
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
A summer night on a porch
The Column: 07.06.26
Garrison Keillor
Jul 8 

READ IN APP

Upgrade to paid
A hot summer day comes to a lovely end as we sit on the porch at dusk looking out at a cove on the Connecticut River and she puts her bare feet on my lap and sips her white wine and a boat goes by and she looks at the Weather app on her phone and says that a thunderstorm is heading our way. I enjoy storms, she does not, so this puts me in the role of male protector, which I don’t get to perform often.
I think of my parents, how my mother liked to put her feet on his lap, the affection between them. I knew from when I was tiny that they loved each other. They came of age during the Depression, knew hard times, and she canned vegetables and darned socks and mended pants and bought day-old bread, but they were sweet to each other.
The sky darkens. Flashes of lightning in the distance. We sit and talk about family. This house was built by her maternal great-grandfather in 1911. Her mother grew up in New Jersey and spent summers here. She went to a summer camp for girls across the road and we can hear them at their evening campfire, singing “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.” It’s a camp that doesn’t allow cellphones or laptops, so it hasn’t changed a lot from when her mother was there.
It’s sweet, this sense of timelessness. On the Fourth, the village nearby held a parade with antique cars and firetrucks and campers marching and singing “It’s a Grand Old Flag” and the Garden Club and Democrats and Republicans marching behind their banners and an armored personnel carrier, it was all very neighborly and cheerful. The fireworks got canceled but the heavens provided an even flashier show.
A remarkable day. We don’t celebrate V-E Day or V-J Day but we celebrate the fact that radical thinkers in 1776 committed a capital crime and revolted against their legal ruler, declared George illegal, a violator of their human rights, and in the cemeteries of the original thirteen states you find graves of men who died for the cause. The woman whose feet are in my lap has an ancestor buried nearby, Ichabod Spencer who fought for the Revolution. I believe that my ancestors were Loyalists but we don’t talk about it.
It’s raining now and the lightning is closer. She suggests moving into the house but I want to enjoy this moment. If we go in the house, we’ll see things that need to be done and get busy and I want to sit together and hold her feet, rub the soles, talk quietly. Her father grew up in Minneapolis, near the University, and her mother went west during World War II to study aeronautical engineering. She was quite smart at math and physics and the shortage of men, due to the draft, created openings for women to move into new fields. Her brother was at the U and she was scouting around for a room for him to rent and knocked on the door of a rooming house and there stood a handsome Swede whose mother owned the rooming house. Romance ensued. Both of them were serious pianists and lovers of classical music.
From such happy coincidences most of us are descended. Life is a miracle. My father was a farmboy on a struggling farm and he met a city girl who had a sense of humor and a big heart and was very kind to his disabled father. Times were hard in 1931 and she gave him hope. The woman whose feet I hold is the younger sister of my younger sister’s classmate. She was a freelance violinist in New York when I met her sister and her name came up in conversation and her phone number was given to me and we had lunch at Dock’s on 90^th and Broadway and it lasted for three hours. A taciturn man met a talkative woman.
And now the Weather app is talking about golf-ball hail and high winds and we feel a gust of wind and a brilliant explosion of lightning and we head into the house.
I’m still on vacation from the news and so the domestic pleasures have become the center of my life, overshadowing the affairs of state and the future of democracy and the fact (she shows me this on her phone) of white supremacists marching in Washington, D.C., wearing masks, carrying the Confederate flag. We go indoors and get out of the storm. God bless America.
Share
Help Garrison Keillor celebrate his 84th birthday at the Fitzgerald Theater, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Put on your red socks and come party with your favorite radio show host and some of his most talented longtime friends.
CLICK HERE for tickets! 
You’re on the free list for Garrison Keillor and Friends newsletter and Garrison Keillor’s Podcast. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber and receive The Back Room newsletter, which includes monologues, photos, archived articles, videos, and much more, including a discount at our store on the website.
Upgrade to paid
Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Like Comment Restack 

© 2026 Garrison Keillor
P.O Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN  55402 
Unsubscribe

Garrison Keillor

2026-04-17 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 04.17.26

Come see for yourself what a singalong with strangers does for the soul. Garrison Keillor is out on the road and possibly coming to a city near you.

CLICK HERE for tickets!

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-04-22 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 04.20.26

Listen to a book that puts it all into perspective: Garrison Keillor’s Serenity at 80, Gaiety at 80. Learn why you should keep on getting older.

CLICK HERE to download today!

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-04-24 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 04.24.26

Come see one of Garrison Keillor’s upcoming shows at a venue near you! There’s sure to be singing, stories and lots of laughs.

CLICK HERE to buy tickets.

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-04-27 Garrison Keillor

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-04-29 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 04.27.26

Travel back to 1985 with this collection of archived Lake Wobegon stories from Garrison Keillor, featuring memorable monologues from the long-running radio series.

CLICK HERE to purchase today!

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-01 Garrison Keillor

May 1 - 31

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-01 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 05.01.26

Come see a live show with Garrison Keillor! There are plenty to choose from, and all over the country.

CLICK HERE for tickets!

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-02 Garrison Keillor

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-06 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 05.04.26

That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life invites readers to journey through Garrison Keillor’s remarkable life, from Mississippi River boyhood to radio fame.

CLICK HERE to purchase today!

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-08 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 05.07.26

Don’t miss out on the next great show! Find Garrison Keillor performing live at a location near you.

CLICK HERE for tickets.

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-13 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 05.12.26

Laugh along with Garrison Keillor and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in The Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra. This music-filled romp turns classical instruments and orchestra life into pure comedic delight.

CLICK HERE to purchase today!

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-15 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 05.14.26

In Cheerfulness, veteran radio host and author Garrison Keillor reflects on a simple virtue that can help us in this stressful and sometimes gloomy era.

CLICK HERE to purchase today!

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-20 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 05.18.26

Now’s a great time to come see a live show with Garrison Keillor. You’re in for a great evening, with singalongs, stories, and lots of laughs.

CLICK HERE for schedule and tickets.

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-22 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 05.22.26

Saddle up with Dusty & Lefty for six hilarious cowboy adventures straight from the legendary radio world of A Prairie Home Companion.

CLICK HERE to purchase the CD today!

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-27 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 05.27.26

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-28 Garrison Keillor

"I Wish..."

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-05-29 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 05.29.26

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-06-03 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 06.03.26

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-06-05 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 06.05.26

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.comSubscribe to my Facebook PageSubscribe to TwitterVisit the Garrison Keillor Website

2026-06-10 Garrison Keillor

The Column: 06.08.26

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website

Questions: admin@garrisonkeillor.com
Subscribe to my Facebook Page
Subscribe to Twitter
Visit the Garrison Keillor Website