Garrison Keillor's Podcast

Remembering you but not the rest

I remember when I was a kid, our family driving home from Sunday night gospel meeting and stopping at A&W for root beer floats, how beautiful they were after an hour of contemplating eternal damnation. I remember being sent to Aunt Jo’s house when my mother was having babies, a house with a wood-burning stove and outhouse like in Little House on the Prairie. I remember my first time on skis, skidding down a steep hill and thinking, “I will never do this again,” a promise I have kept. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe

What we learn from air travel

This all came crashing down last Monday night at JFK when I boarded a Delta flight to Seattle around 5 p.m. I consider JFK to be as close to a prison camp as I care to get. The Delta terminal is vast and crowded and ugly, endless lines at Ticketing, TSA agents whose badge entitles them to freely express hostility and contempt, miles of concourses lined with souvenir shops, the smell of bad food. Naming the airport for our late lamented president did him no service.We boarded the plane and sat at the gate for a while, then pulled out and sat on the tarmac. A massive storm was moving east. The pilot came on the horn every 15 minutes to apologize for the delay and say that Air Traffic Control had no idea when, if ever, we might leave. Five became six p.m. and then almost seven when suddenly he said we were clear to go and the plane sprinted toward the runway but something changed, we were too late, and we returned to the gate canceled. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe

My weekly walk to church and back

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for moreMy weekly walk to church and backThe Column: 04.04.25Garrison KeillorApr 4READ IN APPShareWe seem to be in a war against science and research, which is causing anxiety among us geezers grateful for anti-seizure meds that guard against us suddenly shaking uncontrollably on the street corner and strangers having to remember first aid from 4-H to keep us from strangling on a hot dog and when we’re not reading about that, we see news of low-frequency seismic waves that can travel for hundreds of miles underground and cause tall brick buildings to crash to the ground, which is disturbing to us in Manhattan, and then there’s news of Mr. and Mrs. JD Vance who announced their trip to Greenland to see the dogsled races only to be told, “Nobody invited you,” so they flew to the U.S. military base at Pituffik for three hours and Mr. Vance announced that Greenland needed American defense whether it wanted it or not. He did not change the name of the area to Pitiful.An interesting time we live in. And Wisconsin elected a Supreme Court judge other than the one Elon Musk favored and offered large sums of money to voters in a bid for a win.But the crucial news is that spring is coming, the baseball season has begun and I will wend my way to CF and get a broad view of the action, and I will do the last big outdoor Prairie Home Companion of my life at Tanglewood on June 21, and then, unless RFKJ allows dementia research to proceed, I will retire to Shady Acres and play Parcheesi.I’m enjoying being 82 more than I thought I would when I was your age, kiddo. I thought I’d be cranky and irritable but I’m not. I imagined that if the U.S. government canceled research contracts for institutions that used certain terms such as “Gulf of Mexico” instead of Gulf of America, the correct term, that I’d be upset about it. I’m not. I simply find it of interest and I move on. If the Justice Department told me, “You cannot cast scorn upon an elected government official,” I would say, “The idiot doesn’t even know how to punctuate his first two initials.”I believe I know right from wrong and I think about it on a daily basis and also intensely on Sunday morning shortly before 11 depending how long the sermon went. The sermon itself is sinful in that it falls short of perfection and sometimes the attempt of woman or man to approach God in words is so inadequate that it’s best to tune out and I do and sometimes write a limerick in the bulletin.Was Donald J. Trump a recruit in The Russians’ quest for a route in- To the Oval Office By way of a novice? Trump pooh-poohs it: pooh-Putin. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe

The sweet day draws near

And now I worry, as old people do, about the kids I see who are growing up in the dreadful clutter of American life, the gizmos and social media bullying, and can they find delight as I did in skating on the frozen Mississippi and discovering Liebling and Jenny found listening to Prokofiev and Brahms. I pray for our kids to be lighthearted. The darkness is out there, and Christmas becomes utterly beautiful, the circle of love and friendship, the lighted candles, the anticipation of the child, the radiant beams, the redeeming grace. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe

The perils of pedestrianism

And so you have men on bikes racing through narrow gaps on jammed avenues with a backpack full of shrimp curry and pad thai, meanwhile an elderly man (me) on his way to the drugstore to pick up some Alka-Seltzer stands on the curb, peering into the darkness for some glimmer of light, some sign of motion, some clue as to approaching bicycles. This is the adventure of life in Manhattan, serious bodily injury from bicyclists delivering exotic food at high speed to stay-at-home software programmers.This is why I pay extra to live in a doorman building. Felipe will deal with the guy on the bike, accept the charred wok vegetable medley and the crispy calamari and drunken noodles with peanut sauce and hand the bag to Lenny, who will bring it up to the 12th floor and leave it at our door and the food will still be hot though the restaurant is a mile away. This is a remarkable amenity. It’s not the cold weather that keeps my sweetie and me indoors, it isn’t the fear of stickups, it’s the fear of being run down by bicyclemen delivering food to other people. The fear of lying in the street while covered with garlic sauce. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe