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
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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
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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
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My plan for the next four years
Life is good once you master the art of Deletion. Every day my laptop is full of emails asking for money to do worthwhile, even noble, things, which, if I donated to them, I’d soon be living in a cardboard box in a vacant lot, and so I click on “Unsubscribe” and they go away for a while. Instead, I google “What is the prospect of international peace and understanding?” and find that the U.N. thinks it’s inevitable and dalailama.com says it’s based on compassion and foreignpolicy.com thinks the prospects are not good. We didn’t used to have Google, my kiddoes, we used to sit and worry about these things and now at last clear answers are available. Contradictory, but still. 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
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Mother the queen of my heart
I was not a good son. A good son is one who visits his mother regularly and I was too busy to do that. I ran around a lot. Sometimes I traveled in fancy company. I was once in a movie directed by Robert Altman and financed, in part, by the Pohlad family. Carl Pohlad, the richest man in Minnesota, sat next to my mother at the premiere, and the two of them carried on an extensive conversation, which didn’t faze her a bit. I was proud of her. My mother was one of thirteen children of William and Miriam on Longfellow Avenue South in Minneapolis and sometimes during the Depression she went door-to-door peddling peanut butter sandwiches she’d made. When Mr. Pohlad said, “You must be very proud of your son,” she replied, “I am very proud of all my children,” which is the correct answer. 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
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